28-01-2005 ˇParece que nos vamos!


The last weeks have been – besides waiting for the mailman- full paperwork and bureaucracy. Concepts beautifully merged in the Spanish word tramites. I think we all got a little bit frustrated by all the unexpected barriers but happily our general ‘animo’ did not suffer too much. We had a lot of help of our Dutch backup team Egbert and John (thanks!). Furthermore we celebrate small moments like when Nestor received a signature of the man freshly appointed to replace the dean of the university that just (at this very moment when we needed him!) resigned. It can very well be that we got the primary: his first signature in this position!

And YES, it really looks like we are going to be able to leave next week. The date is set on Friday, early in the morning. To start the first lake hopefully on Saturday!

Unfortunately we still can not use our own car. It is still safe at the dealer because of a money issue with the Brazilian central bank. David is having almost a fulltime job dealing with this. But we can use the cars twin brother for the North Argentinean part of the fieldtrip. It is a TOYOTA HiLux like the one on this picture.


So it is down to Argentina now, facing new challenges. The plan is to sample between 15 and 20 lakes until Rawson. Especially the area just above Rawson is very arid, so it will not be that easy to find lakes here. With help of satellite images we managed to find just a couple of wet spots in this area.
We’ll work from North to South leaving the samples that have to be kept at temperatures below 0 in the freezers of the small hotels where we are planning to stay, picking them up on the way back. If all goes well, we’ll be back in Montevideo at the end of March. Veamos what adventures are waiting for us!




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