Torres del Paine

Hola friends! I'm back in the USA! This entry has taken the longest time to write... partially because the experience was so massive and partially because I've been distracted by Christmas cookies:

During the first week of December, I went on the greatest adventure I've ever had. With four friends, I traveled to Chilean Patagonia at the bottom of the world to do one of the best treks in the world: the W in Torres del Paine National Park.

The travel on this trip was complex and not always smooth. But after a week (2 days traveling, 1 day preparing, and 5 days trekking in the national park), I can say I could pick up a Lonely Planet guide book for any corner of the world and feel that any of it's crazy expeditions were within my reach.

To get to the park required us first to fly to the southernmost city in the world, Punta Arenas. There, the airline lost (well actually purposefully removed before takeoff) our baggage. After a few panicked hours camped out at the closed airport cafe plotting how to recover our sleeping bags, tents, hiking poles, rain jackets, and 4 kilos of oatmeal; we retrieved the bags from the later flight they'd been thrown on and having missed our bus to Puerto Natales, found a hostel in the city to spend the night. Lessons from day one included: no matter how semi-fluent you think you are, arguing with airline officials in a foreign language is infinitely more frustrating; always leave room for the unexpected when planning (thankfully we had an extra day before we needed to enter the park); and you really do feel like you're going to fall off the face of the Earth when you're at its bottom... or at least get blown off by the wind.

We flew to Punta Arenas and then traveled by bus 3 hours north to Puerto Natales

Day 2 went significantly more smoothly. We snagged the last 5 tickets on the early bus to Puerto Natales and arrived at the hostel we'd been planning to stay at to find that thanks to my panicked call from the airport information desk, they'd kept our spots for us. The hostel, Erratic Rock (if you're ever in Puerto Natales it is THE place to stay), was absolutely brimming with kindness, tips, reassurance, and really kind people. We spent the day collecting last minute necessities (another lesson: you can't bring propane gas on an airplane!), attending the Erratic Rock info session, and drinking lots of warm things to mentally prepare ourselves for the cold

The red "W" is the most popular trek in the park and the one we did

The next morning, after the best American-style breakfast I had in Chile, we took another bus 2 hours further from civilization into the park. Getting off the bus and loading onto a catamaran that would take us across the lake to the trailhead, with our huge packs strapped to our backs, we were struck by the intense gusts of Patagonian wind. Throughout the trek, we only managed to stay on our feet during those gusts by stabbing our trekking poles into the ground right as we started to sway.

The view from the catamaran 

Battling the wind with Glacier Grey behind us 

After an exhausting 11 kilometer descent into a canyon to arrive at our first campsite, we had the disastrous (and  hilarious in retrospect) realization that the tent we'd borrowed from our exchange program was more of the chillin' in the backyard than the withstanding Patagonian wind variety. After fixing the elastic within the poles, rigging the tarp to stay put without ripping, and moving to a sheltered site within the woods next to a very cranky French couple, we went to sleep cautiously optimistic about its survival.

Sleeping in the other, smaller tent, my friend Lauren and I were awoken in the middle of the night by the howl of the wind that had come back with a vengeance and the shuttering of our tent against it. I stayed up most of the rest of the night worrying about the others in the gimpy tent and willing ours not to collapse during the strongest gusts. In the morning, I unzipped our tent to see how the other had held up... only to find that it has disappeared. Panicked, I jumped out of the tent in my socks, ran across the campsite (tripping over the French couple's tent and eliciting some choice words from the cranky French man) and found that the other tent's poles had snapped, making the tent completely collapse. Unzipping the flap and lifting up the mess of nylon layers, I found my friends lying on their backs in a tangled mess of limbs and fabric, staring straight up at me, and looking like they'd had the worst night of their lives.

We wouldn't have been able to go on with only one tent. But after a morning of scrambling and thanks to unbelievable luck and the incredible kindness of another group of friends, we were able to get another tent for the remaining three nights and unceremoniously trash the broken one at the campsite. Lesson learned: tent must not come from the Chilean version of Walmart.

The next four days on the trail went beautifully. Each morning, two of us would make our breakfast of nescafe and oatmeal while the other three took down and packed up tents. After breakfast, we did dishes in the freezing river water, redistributed weight in packs, heaved them on, and set off for the days hike. We trekked about an average of five hours a day, stopping frequently to rest feet and backs and fill up water bottles from the rivers. Some times we talked, sometimes we goofed around like the loud Americans that we are, and other times we reveled in the silence and the beauty of the place. We arrived at our campsites for the night with just time and energy enough to change into our dry set of clothes, set up our tents, cook dinner over the camp-stove, prepare the essentials for the next day, play a game of UNO huddled together in our borrowed tent, and say our goodnights.

On day two, we climbed up out of the canyon and stopped for our usual peanut butter sandwich and trail mix lunch and a break from the relentless wind. During the afternoon leg, the we entered a section of the park that was much more sheltered from the wind and crossed an incredible, rickety swinging bridge over one of the bigger rivers in the park to our second campsite.

Fire Bush that was all over the park

Readjusting the pack

The swinging bridge - 2 people at a time!

On the third day, we hiked with daypacks into the French Valley (the middle "arm" of the W), seeing and crossing over a few beautiful waterfalls, an avalanche on the mountain slope ahead of us, and a beautiful panoramic view of the valley from a lookout plateau at the top. After getting soaked on the way down, eating lunch, and packing up camp, we hiked another 3 hours to our next campsite. That leg of the day was actually my favorite hike of the whole trip because the entire time we had beautiful views of an impossibly blue lake.

The mountain where we saw the avalanche

View of the French Valley 

A beach where we stopped for a surreal break and stone skipping

The fourth day was by far the hardest as it was pretty much six hours climbing up with our packs. Pushing on to our last campsite after lunch at a site lower on the mountain took a lot of convincing and self-discipline, but was completely worth it in the end to make our climb the next morning possible (and because there was a fox roaming around the higher site!).

Another beautiful river crossing

The  dog-sized fox! I think he was something of a pet to the rangers

On the fifth morning, we woke up at 3 am to climb an hour straight up in the semidarkness (lesson: the usefulness of headlights far outweighs their lameness) to see the sunrise from the base of the granite towers for which the park is named. At the top we burrowed into sleeping bags to fight the bitter cold and marveled at the incredible natural wonder before us. Words can't describe it... and the pictures (provided by my amazing friend Rae) only come close.

The torres

Showing off our tower poses

Once the cold got the better of us, we hiked down, made breakfast, packed up camp, and set off on our last hike out of the park. It was so glad not to be doing the good 3 hours of pretty steep decent in the other direction. Once reaching the lodge at the bottom, we lay in the grass with the other trekkers who we'd become friends with on the trail, waiting for the bus to take us out of the park, airing out or stinking clothes and tents, watching avalanches from a far, and thinking of dinner that night (lamb burgers for us... one of the best meals I've ever had).

The descent back down and out of the park

Part of the park and the torres from the outside

In 5 days, we covered 66 kilometers, crossed 42 bridges (and about 20 others rivers and streams on our own), and saw more of nature than a lot of people ever get to see in their lives. I won't be eating oatmeal or trail mix or even peanut butter again for as long as I can help it and I think my shoulders might never unslouch from the weight of my pack. I will never understand why the rivers and lakes are so vibrantly blue or how their water can taste so incredible. I'll never again complain about uncomfortable dorm mattresses or the walk across campus.

And I will always be ready to go back and do it all over again.

Stay tuned for one more entry!

(Torres del Paine means Granite Towers)

  

¿Chile de todos?

Hi all!

I want to preface this entry by saying that one of my biggest regrets while here has been my failing to get informed on Chilean politics and current events. My biggest sources of news have been the complaints of my host parents and the huge signs placed over building entryways proclaiming worker strikes.

However ill-informed I might be, it has been impossible to miss the national presidential and parliamentary elections that occurred here on November 17. During the week leading up to election day, the huge billboards and posters that had covered the streets and sides of buildings since I arrived in July multiplied ten-fold. There were also pamphlets (either passed out by campaigners in the streets during rush hour or apparently thrown by the hundreds out of windows by the looks of some areas of the city) and men who rode around in the back of patriotically decorated campaign trucks with everything from bullhorns to very sophisticated sound systems alternatingly blasting cumbia music and lobbing campaign promises.

The campaign ads were different from the ones you see back home because they all, without fail, starred a picture of the candidates. I don't think of Chile as a very image-conscious society, so I wonder if the pictures indicate a more personal relationship between the people and their leaders. Regardless, it's definitely quite a risk to put your face out there on the streets of Valpo: I saw many pirate-patched eyes and surprisingly realistic-looking drawn-in mustaches, to mention some of the more benign incidents.

Michelle: Everyone's Chile

Evelyn: Let's win together

Among the multitude of candidates, the two most prevalent were the two front-runners for President, two women: Evelyn Matthei and Michelle Bachelet. Bachelet, who served as President of Chile from 2006 and 2010,  represented the liberal Socialist Party promising constitutional reforms, free higher education, and to diminish the ever-growing gap between rich and poor. Evelyn represented the conservative right Independent Democratic Union party aligned with current president Sebastian Piñera and his policies of privatization and lowering taxes.

The fascinating underlying story here is that these two women have known each other since childhood. Their fathers were both Air Force generals before the 1973 military coup. Under the dictatorship Evelyn's father remained with the military, becoming a member of the junta that was responsible for the torture and death in prison of Michelle's dissenting father. Michelle herself was tortured and exiled.

So, I imagine that for these two women and for most Chileans, the race was underlyingly, an emotionally charged choice between two different versions of history that in turn shape the vision of the country's future.

As expected, Michelle won 46% of the vote, a clear plurality, but not enough to stop the run-off election scheduled for December in which she will again compete (and almost certainly win) against Evelyn, who received just 25%. For a more accurate summary, here's an article from the BBC: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-24977405

I was lucky enough to get get to go with my host mom to her polling place on election day. We drove across the city to a school that has been assigned to her based on gender and her national id number - which means that my host dad actually goes to a different, much closer place to vote. The procedure was familiar, if a little antiquated with paper ballots, cubbies with plastic sheets for privacy, and stamps for sealing the ballots before dropping each into its assigned box. Unfortunately, I wasn't allowed to take pictures.

This was the first general election in which voting was not a requirement. And from what I've heard, turn out, especially among the young people who like to protest and demand action so loudly and frequently, was disappointingly low. All the Chileans I know voted, but were very careful not to show up to the polls before eleven in the morning, because apparently the first people who show up to vote are commandeered (ie legally required) to fill-in for the awol summoned volunteers who are either no longer alive or chose not to devote their entire day to sitting at a table and checking voters' IDs against often inaccurate rosters.

What really struck me was the seriousness in the air. This is a country where for 17 years of military rule, there was not political expression, opposition, or voting. That memory is still fresh, so voting is by no means a burden or a throw-away. It occupies an entire day during which all businesses shut down and the only people on the streets seem to be heading in streams either to or away from polling places.

That did not stop my host mom from stopping to buy celebratory flowers.

(The title means "Everyone's Chile?")

Ciudad informal

Estimados (hah!),

I only have a month left in Valparaíso (less really, when you take out my two remaining weekend camping trips with Mountain Sports and my planned expedition to Patagonia during the first week of December).

It's the strangest thing because from when I got here up until a few weeks ago, I looked forward and saw what seemed like an eternity ahead of me. But now, it feels like there's no time at all. Where did it all go? How'd I go from counting down the months to desperately clinging to each of my precious few days? Is this going to happen for the rest of my life? Ok, I'll save the quarter-life crisis for later. Ironically there's just not enough time for it right now!

I'm going to gloss over the incredible trip down south to Pucón my interchange program took us on. I'm fortunate enough to be returning in a month (AHHHH) with my family (Hi M, D, & Nad! I can't wait to see you guys by the way!) and will certainly share more about that region after that trip. However, I can't resist a small preview of what's to come:

When not traveling or working frantically on applications for things at Georgetown (yes, somehow it still manages to take up more of my time than the university I am actually attending), I've been trying to spend a lot of time with my host family. They are really such wonderful people and have made my transition into their family as smooth as it could have possibly been. And in addition to that, they're my single greatest source of insight into this crazy city.

A few weekends ago, they took me to an exhibition that was part of the Festival Internacional Danzaalborde, a week long contemporary dance festival. My host mom, being an architect and urban planner, wanted to go to this exhibition in particular because it took place outside and was supposed to move from the top of a hill down with each successive performance.

We arrived to the plaza during the start of the first dance. They had delineated their "stage" with tape on the ground and set up giant speakers to blast their creepy modern techno music (I'm at a complete loss for words for how to describe it better). But aside from those two formalities, the performance looked just like people going about their regular business had broken out into beautiful ballet and attracted a small crowd, sitting and standing along the borders of their performance. The dancers were wearing plain clothes and kept on entering and exiting the performance from the street, blurring the lines between audience and participant. There were dogs barking and nipping at the heels of the dancers, children climbing in overhanging trees, and a man walking through completely immersed in an iPad and seemingly completely oblivious to the performance. I still have no idea which parts of it were planned and which weren't.

Note: my host siblings and mom in the foreground and iPad man towards the back

Immediately after the music stopped, things really got weird. A group of five people dressed in street clothes that looked normal from the front, but as if they'd all laid down in the same color yellow paint from the back, struck a pose and then scampered off. The audience followed, demonstrating the porteño (Valparaisian) acceptance of the weird and unexpected that I'm going to fondly call flexibility of thought.

These yellow ballerinas proceeded to lead the audience down the hill, winding, hopping, climbing, prancing, rolling, and frequently stopping to lie down in the middle of the street, on rooftops, on each other. The whole thing was quite frankly baffling.

But what really struck me was how exceptional Valparaíso is. A city where dancers can literally take over the streets? Where cars are expected to wait for the art to pass? Where a passing police car is heckled for not giving creativity a respectful distance? Where these dancers could practice this performance without being committed to an insane asylum? How incredible.

It reminded me of something my host mom had said earlier in the week. I'd walked into the kitchen during what was supposed to be a city-wide water outage to see her washing dishes. Surprised, I asked how the water was on. She thought for a moment, then said "Mi hija, vienes de un lugar distinto. Hay ciudades formales y hay informales. Esta es una informal" ("Daughter, you come from a very different place. There are formal cities and there are informal cities. This is an informal one."). In that moment, she was both laughing, but deeply serious and sad, but proud.

An informal city of water-outages that happen two days late, sidewalks converted into trash mountain ranges by the reverse erosion of a garbage collection strike, streets not assumed to belong to cars, and creativity that seems to seep out of every crack in every deteriorating building. Is the mess needed for the beauty of this place? Could it change? Should it?

I have no conclusions for you today, only wonder. I'm no artist, but hope I've been able to share even a little bit of it.

(Ciudad informal means "informal city")

Lobos marinos

Hola todos!

One my absolute favorite things about this city our prolific sea lion population! I'd never seen a single one before getting here, but now, it's become a regular occurrence.

Everyday, without fail, a whole colony of them hangs out on an abandoned peer called Muelle Barón near my school. To get there, you just have to walk about ten minutes from the main doors, across the metro tracks, and along the walkway that runs along the coast all the way past Viña del Mar.

The first time, I saw them, it took me about ten minutes to realize what I was looking at. I'd walked over with some friends and become very distracted messing around on the outdoor exercise equipment (i.e. adult playground). In the midst of my spinning around on this rotating pedestal, I realized that the concrete peer about 10 meters away wasn't just covered it shadow... it was literally covered in sea lions! Needless to say I lost all interest in spinning and immediately scampered down the rocks to get a better look. I sat there staring for about half an hour before my friends dragged me away.

I've seen sea lions several times since and never really gotten over just how strange they are. Pretty crammed up on this peer, they are incredibly territorial. They lie completely still unless one has invaded another's little piece of sunbaked concrete. They are so so fat and clumsy on land. Their skin dries out lying on the peer in the sun so that they loose all of the luster that's so distinct to marine animals. Their movement on land is a waddle if I have ever seen one and the sound they make certainly earns them their name (think a more throaty roar). And they're actually pretty creepy in some ways: their tail splits in two and acts more like feet when they move and when they look at you, their faces are this dark alien-like void.

Photo from me and Josh's lovely boat tour

With Josh last week, they treated us to a real show! It was cloudy (so no glare!) and I think they were probably just coming back from a morning hunt. The four or five of them in the water finally answered my burning question of how in the world they get up on the peer (it must be about a meter up and like I've said, they are by no means nimble): they jump! It's the funniest thing to watch because they only make it successfully maybe once in every three jumps. The other two times they flop back in the water.

The group that we saw was fighting amongst themselves as they were trying to get back up. They had a lot more energy than I expected and seemed more concerned with pushing the others off than finding a place for themselves to lie.

Here's a video of a small portion of the show:

The great part of this was imaging how nimble they must be in the water to get maneuver into the perfect position to launch into the air. They are really such contradictory animals.

My love to all.

(Lobos marinos means sea wolfs)

¿Tallos defectivos?

Hola friends!

Chilean plants grow upside down! It's the weirdest thing.

 In case you forgot (as I often do), my season's here in the Southern Hemisphere are opposite of yours up north. I arrived here in the middle of Chilean winter and have slowly (tantalizingly, painfully) been moving towards warmer weather ever since. I've been upset about missing fall at home I think in part because our change of season from winter to spring has been subtle to say the least. There has been no beautiful bloom, no slow unfurling of leaves, or even no increase in sunny days.

Our weather has continued to be incredibly erratic. The mornings and evening are quite cold (in the 40s if my iPhone weather isn't lying to me) and made colder by the lack of indoor heating, which leaves buildings in a perpetual frosty state. But in the afternoon, between 11 and 3 most days, the sun usually comes out, raising us into the lower 60s most days.

What never goes away though is the wind. It's a hallmark of Valparaíso Septembers, otherwise known as the Month of Kites. It blows and blows and blows some more leaving everyone to looking windswept and emphasizing the passing of time (which seems to be blowing right past me faster and faster each day). I've actually been told to be careful standing near ledges in this weather!

But, back to the point! I noticed this about the plants when my mom (hi M!) asked me about how the plants have changed with the seasons. Their change happened very quickly and more subtly than I expected. My completely unscientific theory is that because we are in a region where it doesn't frequently go below freezing, not all of the plants change during the winter time. There have always been some flowers in bloom and some leaves on the trees. So the spring has been more of a filling in that anything.

That being said, there's nothing like noticing the leaves on the trees for the first time!

And the upside down plants... they haven't changed a bit. Here's a few:

I think this is actually the Chilean national flower, copihue

Are stems in the southern hemisphere defective? Or better, are they upside down because we're upside down all the way down here? Clarifications welcome.


Love to all.

Aromos, my favorite trees here have been in bloom since the start

Beautiful flowers at the market

Flowers growing on an empty grave

My travel shoes, purple flowers, and a lady bug

(Tallos defectivos means "defective stems")

Aprovechando

Last week, I took another great adventure!

My four days in the Atacama Desert were completely other-wordly.

My friend Rae and I boarded an afternoon plane from Santiago to Calama on Wednesday, arrived in San Pedro late that night (after much complication), and did not stop moving until I unclipped my giant pack and collapsed onto my bed Monday afternoon.

Cristóbal sees me and my giant pack off 

San Pedro is the Disney World of deserts. The town itself is composed of a labyrinth of white-washed clay buildings, 99% of which are either tour agencies, hostels, souvenir shops (that all sell the exact same fabulous variety of alpaca sock), or highly overpriced restaurants selling llama meat. (A small tip for those of you who might make your way down here one day: an empanada should never cost more than $2).

We stayed in hostel on the outskirts of town where the clay looses its white-wash. It was nice seeing the actual residential side of the place... even if it meant getting laughed at by the dueños of the tiny grocery store we visited about ten times to buy ingredients to make our food. At our hostel, we made ample use of the kitchen and free ingredients shelf (who new cinnamon, oregano, salt, powdered garlic, and cooking oil were so versatile?) and actually managed to make ourselves some great meals!

My friend Ellen, cooking up a storm!

But now, on to the good stuff.

Our first tour started with sand boarding on the Great Dune, which was this exhausting cycle of lugging a board up the dune, strapping my borrowed boots into bindings, wiggling to the edge, and flying down. After some great runs and one really epic wipeout that had me shaking sand out of my ears for days, we moved on to the Salt Caves. Our guide told us about the geology of the place while he led us through increasingly cramped spaces. There was some serious multi-lingual swearing going on around me, but I loved the scampering over and through rock as well as the little salt sample our guide literally scraped off the cave wall for tasting. After, we made our way further into the Moon Valley to stake out our spot to watch one of the most beautiful shows on Earth: the sun setting and painting the valley, volcanoes, and sky as if they were made of watercolor paper. I'll let the pictures do the rest...

The next day, we rented bikes and spent five hours exploring the Cordillera del Sal. It was a tough ride considering the path was almost entirely rocks and sand, the later of which caused us to have to get off and walk for long stretches. We biked through the dried-up river bed running through a gorge, taking frequent water-breaks which almost always turned into me scouring the ground trying to decide between all the cool rocks I wanted to take, and then rode as far as we could up the start of the dune before locking up the bikes and hiking up the top of a rock formation on foot. The ride back down was probably my favorite part of the whole trip: the dry air flying by, bumping over rocks, leaning into turns, and feeling like the whole desert was ours was an experience I know I'll remember for the rest of my life.

The next morning, we were up and outside of the gate of our hostel at the ungodly and frigid hour of 4 AM. Our tour took us 4000 meters above sea level to see the sunrise at the highest geyser field in the world, Tatio. You have to go that early to see the most active period of the geysers as the underground pressure changes with the temperature and the steam billows, mixing with the rays of the rising sun. I was not prepared for just how freezing the dessert at altitude and without sun can get, but I'll chalk up my shivering and new knowledge of the initial stages of frostbite to part of the experience. The simple breakfast of cheese sandwiches, hard boiled eggs, chocolate bars, and instant coffee our guides served us goes down in my rankings of favorite meals of all time.

Looking cold at Tatio 

Looking colder at the lagunas - no bus blanket to save me this time!

After the rest of of the day and night spent trying to warm back up and haggle with tour agencies, we again woke up early and ascended to Laguna Miscanti, a highland lake rimmed by volcanoes. I was so cold at that point that I honestly don't remember a lot of what the guide told us, but it was really beautiful. Next, we descended again the the Salar de Atacama, the 5th largest salt flat in the world. There, in the mirror-like water, four types of flamencos eat and breed. How do they spend 80% of their time with their heads in the water looking for sea monkeys to eat? Beats me.

My wonderful friends looking hysterically happy and cold

And then, one more early morning, a van ride to the airpot, a plane ride down south, two bus rides to arrive back in Valparaíso, and one last micro ride up my hill, and I arrived safe, exhausted, and incredibly gratified, home.

Sending all my love back to my first home - always my favorite place in the world no matter how much exploring and discovering I get to do.

(Aprovechando is hard to translate, but it means "taking advantage of")