Summer in Patagonia

From Patagonia

Trying to find inspiration to write after several weeks' absence from the internet is difficult. It would be easy to continue coasting along without looking at emails or blogging but, as with getting out of bed on the weekend, what's good for me sometimes requires effort.

We ended up spending 9 days on the Paine circuit. The terrain ranged from the famous Torres to the immense Glaciar Grey, the weather from rain to snow to the occasional bit of sun to extremely windy, as this entry from the minimal diary I kept describes:

Day 3: Crossed a pass. Wind so strong it blew the spit out of my mouth and the snot out of my nose.

With gusts that literally pushed me backwards several steps, this was no exaggeration. The first half of the trail was relatively isolated and provided a chance to meet some of the other trekkers whose trip coincided with mine and Anne's. Among others was the group we ended up joining at the end of every day, the retired Alaskan couple on their fifth trip to Torres del Paine and whose hiking abilities far surpassed mine, and a woman from New York who commented on the second day that she could have seen the same scenery in New Hampshire. Anne restrained herself from suggesting she go back and finish her hike there.

Apart from the shared conversations while warming ourselves round wood-fired stoves, some of them expanded my knowledge of the English language. Memorably, I learnt the phrase "fuck this shit" can be used not only when you are tired of many days hiking and camping without a shower, but also as a concise way of signifying your desire to leave the dinner table.

The second half of the trail was more accessible to buses and ferries from the nearest town, which brought many day hikers staying in comfy lodges. They breezed past with tiny backpacks by day, and at night as I pitched tent and huddled over my camping stove to cook dinner, I consoled myself by feeling smugly superior.

Speaking of dinner, food figured prominently in the 4-5 sentences I wrote to my diary each day. It's no surprise that when spending hours every day trekking to the next campsite while staring at a spot on the ground roughly 2 meters in front of you, fantasizing about food becomes a regular pastime. I went from imagining what I'd like to eat, to telling Anne in tantalising detail how I would prepare the food (heat up the pan with olive oil, tip in chopped onions, listen to them sizzle, add salt and fresh ground black pepper while you smell the aroma of the onions beginning to caramelise, etc.), to writing diary entries such as this:

Day 5: Leftovers @ breakfast. 2 women who paid for a meal at the hut couldn't finish their food. Excellent start. Too bad we won't see them again.

All this despite eating very well considering Anne and I carried our supplies for the entire trek. Maybe my body is starting to notice the 6kgs I've lost since the start of my travels several months ago and wants them back.

The second hike was a much shorter and easier 4-day affair in Parque Nacional Los Glaciares in Argentinian Patagonia. Christmas day brought views of 2 beautiful ice cold lakes at the base of the Fitzroy peak, along with a lunch where the friend we hiked with excitedly exclaimed, "It's Christmas! What do you normally do to celebrate?" to a trio of Israelis.

Despite the short days, Anne and I, together with a couple others, rewarded ourselves with a large home-cooked steak and vegetable stir-fry dinner at the end. After 3 bottles of wine between the 4 of us, we decided to check out the only bar in town. We stopped en route to convince some renovation workers in the supermarket to open the doors at 1am and let us buy 2 more bottles, which the bar let us bring inside - a sure sign of a friendly small town. We realised the next day on the 15 hour bus ride over unpaved bumpy road just how bad this seemingly good idea was.

The next couple weeks will be a journey north, recrossing into Chile to travel part of the scenic Carretera Austral up the Andes. I'm hoping to make it to Argentina's winemaking region before heading to Buenos Aires. I've been wanting to do a bike tour of wineries - a combination, like chocolate fondue with strawberries, that has the potential to fantastically exceed the already enjoyable sum of its parts.

Out of Contact

Summer has ended temporarily as I'm now far south in windy Patagonia. Boarded a plane at midnight last night, and 3 hours later I was on the runway in Punta Arenas. I managed to drift off during the flight, but sleep was cut short by extremely intense turbulent patches, complete with a woman who screamed with every jolt and drop (which meant there was a lot of screaming).

Anne and I will be hiking around Patagonia for the next 20 days without internet access, starting with the 8 day "Paine Circuit". No, I'm not joking about the name. Yes, this is my idea of a vacation.

Hope everyone has nice end-of-the-year holidays!

Snatch! Dash! Crash!

On the way to Valparaiso, a seaside city an hour and a half northwest of Santiago, I thought to myself, "self, you've been getting too serious with your posts. What with all the dour political news of voting problems and passports. It's time to liven things up a bit. Start travelling. Put some action in there!" Which is why I ended up going to the hospital again. All to give you some excitement. A rush of adrenaline. Something worthwhile to read when you check my blog.

OK, maybe it didn't quite happen like that. Maybe it even involved a certain level of foolishness, but I can pretend it was otherwise.

After arriving in Valparaiso yesterday and having one of the best meals I've had in months (thanks for the cafe recommendation Jess), Anne and I checked our map and decided to following one of the short routes marked as a walking tour. The city reminded me a little of San Francisco, being set on a bay with colourful houses covering the surrounding steep hills. We rode a couple of the ascensors that are dotted around the city on the way to the start of the walk. They're sort of like elevators on extremely steep train tracks which you can take to avoid climbing stairs up some of the hills. Built in the 1880s, the originals are still running today, complete with creaking wood sounds.

Shortly after starting the walk, we began to see some shifty-looking people lazing around. Stopping to look at a local fish market, someone tried to open Anne's backpack without us noticing. But we did and he walked away quickly. In hindsight this may have been the obvious point to turn around, but theft is always a danger when you look like a tourist and it didn't seem unusual.

After walking on a bit further, we found ourselves in an area with a nice view out over some of the hills, empty save for what looked like a young university student who had been walking ahead of us. If you've noticed the lack of pictures so far, you may have guessed where this is headed. Anne got her camera out, took a couple pictures, and just afterwards had it snatched from her hand by the ex-student/newly revealed thief who then made a dash for it.

Reacting instead of thinking, I ran full speed after him only to find his friend throw a large rock at me, then another. After the first hit me on the arm and I dodged the second, it occurred to me that now was the time to stop chasing, and they ran off.

No major damage done, only bruises and cuts. In hindsight there were a lot of obvious clues we should have taken to turn back, but before it happened I had unfortunately not yet developed hindsight. I'm left wondering why the makers of our map plotted a walk through what we later found from the police is one of the more dangerous areas of town, especially so in the daytime.

Luckily as we are in Chile, the police were very helpful. Three of them accompanied Anne and me in a police car to the hospital, where I got my cuts cleaned. They waited for us and afterwards gave us a ride back to our hostel.

In the end, I lost a couple pages full of resume revisions I was in the process of making (left behind at some point in the confusion), and the thieves got a camera half broken due to the previously mentioned manufacturing defect. Good thing Anne has insurance.

Sunshine managed to break through at the end of the day, when Anne and I discovered "completos". Take a hot dog, load it with onions, tomatoes, avocado, mayonnaise and ketchup, sell it for $1, and you have a completo. Dinner was good.

If the lack of pictures has decreased your level of interest in this blog, feel free to chime in in the comments to suggest more fun antics I can get up to in order to keep the excitement level of my posts up.

Passports (and e-Voting Update)

Several days ago I got up early and went to the US embassy to get a new passport. It has 3 years until it expires, but I wanted to get mine replaced before they start manufacturing RFID-enabled ones. This would give me 10 years of RFID-free travelling, which would hopefully be enough time for the government to sort out the mess the new passports are shaping up to be:

"The whole passport design is totally brain damaged. [...] They're not increasing security at all." Grunwald says it took him only two weeks to figure out how to clone the passport chip. Most of that time he spent reading the standards for e-passports that are posted on a website for the International Civil Aviation Organization, a United Nations body that developed the standard.

Unfortunately I would have to wait 2 weeks for the new passport to arrive, and by that time I won't be in Santiago. It might be just as well, because the lady at the US services desk couldn't guarantee that the new passport wouldn't contain an RFID chip. She did give me a strange look, as if to say, "you must be one of those wacky conspiracy theorists." She couldn't understand why I wanted to replace my passport before it expired.

I'm starting to wonder how long it will take before the US gets a significant number of people in government who grasp technology. Money seems to be pouring into worthless IT projects all the time.

In some slightly positive related news, the National Institute of Standards and Technology has recommended that e-voting machines be decertified for future elections. It's up to states to decide whether or not to follow the guidelines, but after millions of dollars wasted and many voting problems, it's a step in the right direction.

Still for a Few Days

It's been a bit over a month since Anne and I were last staying in a home. Here in Santiago, Carlos kindly put us in touch with friends and family who are housing us. Little things I am now appreciating:

• Showering barefoot. Not being afraid to touch the surrounding surfaces that 10 other people already left hair on that day.
• Kitchens. None of the hostels in Ecuador or Peru were equipped with them. First meal cooked: spaghetti the way I like it, i.e. covered with half a block of grated cheese. Eating cereal is a rediscovered pleasure too. Though I may have overdone it when I consumed close to half a kilo in less than 24 hours.
• Music. In my normal life I get a hit of new music every day or two. The last two months' withdrawal has seen me build a list over 60 entries long of albums to check out when I end my travels. So the surprise presence of a Mac in our current place, in other words, a lifeline to put new music on my iPod, has seen me return to my addiction as if I was just out of rehab. There's so much to listen to it's hard to know where to begin.
• Flushing toilet paper down the toilet instead of putting it in the trash can. No further explanation needed.