Rob's Rave and Silvina's Stories Living life at the end of the world
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Outreach – Bariloche Day 3
Today I wake with one eye stuck closed. After washing it with water and heading to the doctors I am informed that it is conjunctivitis, a common ailment here often contracted through dust entering the eye. Unfortunately, all of the pharmacies are too far away to get the needed eye drops, so I continue the [...]
Outreach – Bariloche Day 2
Our second day is quite different, and we spend the morning building brick walls, cooking bread and gnocchi for lunch. All of us get to do something that we have not done before, and have fun doing it too. After lunch we then put on multiple layers of jackets for the cold and the rain [...]
Outreach – Bariloche Day 1
On the 26th of December, Boxing Day, we gathered our team together and heading off on an 18 hour bus journey from Puerto Madryn to Bariloche. Upon arriving in Bariloche, we head out to the church with which we will be working for the next week. Our outreaches tend to be organised per week more [...]
Christmas Night
In Argentina, it is the night before Christmas that is celebrated. Everybody gets together to enjoy the night with a large meal and times of reflection until midnight when we all take hold of our glass and toast to Christmas and celebrate this day. When the next day comes, most are either sleeping, or spend [...]
Puerto Madryn from Afar
It was a sunny day that I decided to head out to the hills around our YWAM base in the Quintas, an area outside of Puerto Madryn city. Here are some photos that show just where the Quintas are located and some of the environs around this city that I have called home for almost [...]
Bonafide
Bonafide is a coffee shop in Puerto Madryn where, before we connected internet in our YWAM base, I spent most of every day building websites and communicating with other YWAM bases around Argentina. In fact, I visited this place so much over the weeks that in the end I became a good friend of the [...]
Visiting Ushuaia
It was the 11th of December that I boarded the bus heading to Rio Gallegos, the last city on mainland Argentina. My bus trip was about to take 16 hours before I got there, so there was plenty of time to think. The entire trip to Ushuaia was something almost instantaneous. Although I had been [...]
Cruise Ship Season Starts Again
Puerto Madryn is one of the main stops on the Cruise Ship ports. Every summer we receive dozens of these huge ships, filled with tourists who then flood our town for the day before re-boarding and heading off to another destination. The Norwegian Sun is one of the first of the ships to arrive, marking [...]
Football Championship
Every year our YWAM base now hosts a football (soccer) championship between all of the churches of Puerto Madryn. Last year our YWAM team achieved third place. This year we did not even make a position, but it was a fun game and we all had a lot of fun. Here are some photos of [...]
Broken iPod
Yep. That’s what you get when you have a wonderful iPod Touch with its glass screen and no protective cover. When it fell from my pocket down onto the rough cement floor below me, with the glass facing down, it was a sickening sound that I heard. Now my iPod has a number of different [...]
Going Walkabout
One day I decided to go for a wander around the local area. What I found was a local dry creek with steep edges. It seems unusual that in a place where it hardly rains there would be a creek that looks like huge amounts of water had passed through it at some point. Heading [...]
Scorpion under my pillow
That is a rather unusual sounding exclamation, but it is exactly what happened to one of our workers here in YWAM Puerto Madryn. Actually, finding a scorpion at all is rather uncommon here, so when he found one underneath his pillow we were all quite concerned. However, in my four years of living here this [...]
Busted Bike
Today I tried to jump my bike over the gutter onto the footpath. I almost made it… but I didn’t. The back wheel landed on the sharp edge of the gutter and left me with a square rim. Some stomping on my wheel, removing the brakes, and careful riding ensured that I was able to [...]
Farewell to Palma Real
Today we said goodbye to a team of four workers from our YWAM base. They are heading into the jungle in the south of Peru for six months, to relieve a missionary couple there who have not had a rest for over five years. Our team will also be working towards starting new ministries and [...]
Pedro and Yanina’s Wedding
A couple from Puerto Madryn had become good friends of ours, and through us they became good friends of many in YWAM Puerto Madryn. As a result, when they decided to get married they wanted to get married here on our YWAM base. So we decorated everything and prepared it for the happy couple, and [...]
Flash Visit to Buenos Aires
For two days I visited Buenos Aires. The reason? To retrieve my permanent residency that I have been waiting almost 6 months for. The result? They told me it was not ready yet and I needed to come back in another two months. So after travelling the 18 hours to get to Buenos Aires, I [...]
It was Time
Yep. I had decided that wrestling with my hair was too much, so I did the best thing that anybody could do… cut it all off.
A Day of Duties
Every day everybody on the YWAM base heads out to do some work around the place to help maintain the place. What follows are some photos of some of the things that we have been up to lately… Brad and Jake fixing a crack in the roof with tar-strip
Staff Meeting
On the good days, this is the way that we all get together for our staff meetings.
Felling Trees
Over the years that we have been in Puerto Madryn, some of the trees have not been able to survive the harsh conditions. Not only is there little water, lots of wind, and harsh winters, but there are also a lot of nasty borer-type bugs that burrow into them and kill them off slowly. As [...]
Not Snow, Not Sleet, Not Hail
It was something in between all of these when it fell. A storm cloud came over and dropped something like soft hail, or firm snow, or dry sleet, or… well, something that wasn’t quite rain either. So here are the photos to explain it.
Sunrise and Sunset
Two photos of my two favourite moments of the day.
The People You Meet
While walking the streets of Puerto Madryn, we encountered this old man who tried to convince us that he was an international hero in the singing world. Apparently he had won some singing competition with his friends and made a fortune but his fortune was now tied up in Spain and he was still here. [...]
Sleepy Dog
Most houses have dogs to guard them. This dog seemed more concerned with sleep than guarding any house. Even when I stood in front of the house, taking photos of the dog, it raised one eye and returned to sleep.