Memories of Rafting

I didn't write about this at the time, but before crossing into Argentina for the last time, Anne and I spent a couple days in Futeleufú, a very small town in a gorgeous area of mountains. Although there are many things to do as a tourist, it's relatively undeveloped, lacking even an ATM (the first one was scheduled to arrive just a week or two after we were there), which was the ultimate reason we couldn't stay longer though we would have liked to. We went on a rafting trip, which Anne wrote a bit about, and during my time on the river I was wondering what the area would look like if I visited in 15 or 20 years. It's something I've often done in the small beautiful towns in the middle of spectacular nature I've been lucky enough to visit on this trip. I'm always fascinated by those "then and now" books with pictures of a city 100 years ago compared to the same points of view today, and I try to imagine the "then" pictures as the present day small towns with dirt roads, and make up the future "now" pictures in my head.

After the rafting trip I was talking to one of the guides and found that there is a project to dam the river, with construction starting in two or three years. It was a bit shocking to learn that the river I had just been on, one of the top spots in the world for rafting, whose waters have run the same path for hundreds of thousands of years, would be destroyed in just a few short years. There will be no coming back to relive the experience and see how things have changed.

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.

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.

Hitchhiking

From Chile

For hitchhiking, Chile rates somewhere between New Zealand (never waited more than 5 minutes) and Australia (stood by the side of the road for an hour, got a bottle thrown at us). It took us 20 minutes before we were picked up, but when we did, we got to ride in this. Which is where I'm sitting now, with a commanding view of the road. It's a nice way to travel, if a little shaky for writing. It's just as well you're reading the transcribed version otherwise you'd have to decipher my handwriting.

After crossing the border some days back, we took a bus from Arica, a border town in the north, to La Serena, a vacation spot 6 hours north of Santiago. The good part of the trip was that, being in Chile, the roads were good and the bus was comfortable.¹ The bad part was it was still 22 hours on a bus. We passed through terrain containing nothing other than rocks and sand. Fascinating to look at out of a moving bus. Less so, I would imagine, if we were to suffer a breakdown.

A lot of the world's astronomical observatories are scattered in the area around La Serena, due to its lack of rainfall and exceptionally clean and clear skies. There's also a small amateur observatory where tourists can observe the stars. We toured this on our second night there, and the sky was beautiful. If Anne's digital camera hadn't started acting up because of a CCD manufacturing defect, I would have been able to post some photos.

We went on a tour of nearby Elqui Valley the next day. On the way out of town, we pulled up at a stoplight to see two very angry looking men get out of their cars. I couldn't see any sign of a major crash, but from the looks on their faces you would think one had cheated with the other's wife. It didn't take long for a fight to break out. Not a small shoving match, but full on throwing punches. After the first hit, one guy appeared to make a dash for it, but it soon turned out he was heading for a nearby pile of rubble. He returned with a large rock in his hand and a fight-to-the-death look on his face. Then the light turned green and our front row seats were whisked away, leaving behind the sounds of a police siren and screaming women trying to break them apart.

Welcome to Chile.

I'm assuming that's the rare exception rather than then rule. Our hitchhiking driver is so nice he bought Anne and I a bag filled with manjar pastries and insisted on paying.

Our tour of the valley continued with an extended explanation of why Pisco wine is of Chilean, and not Peruvian, origin. Something a bartender in Peru had argued exactly the opposite of when we were in Cusco. Why exactly this is an issue remains a mystery to me. Apparently some people have managed to attach national pride to it, and as with most things to do with nationalism, logic has now left the party.

Our tour ended at a pretty little winery. Although Chile in general is much more expensive than other South American countries, it's hard not to be cheerful when a good bottle of wine is $5, and a very nice one is $8.

Looks like there's a couple hours left before we reach Santiago. I think I'll relax and watch the afternoon scenery roll by.

1. In general the country is much more developed than others in South America, and there is very little corruption. After a 17 year dictatorship, I'm curious as to how this came to be. I'm not aware of other countries progressing so well after a relatively recent political situation such as that.↩