Buenos Aires

I have been in Buenos Aires for nearly 3 weeks now and I have essentially written nothing about it. I will try to fix that without going into long diatribes and boring you all.

I am in Buenos Aires to do a CELTA course, which is four weeks long. The course teaches me how to teach English as a foreign language and, at the end, I will have a certificate that is recognized by language schools around the world (unless I fail, of course, but I doubt that will happen). The course is rather intensive and I haven´t had to use my brain like this is quite a while. Hell I haven´t even had to wake up and be somewhere at a certain time in a long time unless it was to catch a bus or take a fun tour. Its been exhausting but also fun. My fellow CELTA trainees are wonderful. Four of us are American (1 New Yorker, 1 Texan, and a fellow Washingtonian), 2 are Dutch, 1 is Argentian, 2 are English, and 1 is Canadian. The youngest is 21 the oldest is probably in their late 40s or early 50s. We have fun. We laugh a lot. We support each other. We got drunk as a group on Wednesday. Its great fun. I´m going to miss them all and I´ve known them for less than 2 weeks.

I am living this fake little domestic life in my own little apartment, going to the same greengrocers to get my vegetables every few days and recharging my cell phone at the same kiosk. (These are practically the only places that I´m speaking Spanish and the workers at these places are sweetly patient with me). How I found my apartment is another one of those "the universe has my back" stories. I decided to do the CELTA course only a few weeks before it began so I was pressed for time when it came to finding a place to stay. I spent some time on Craigslist and Couchsurfing and sent out a few emails. The day before I headed to Puerto Natales I thought that I had found a place but when I arrived in Puerto Natales I discovered that someone else had claimed the room before me. The next morning I was headed to Torres del Paine, which meant I would be away from internet and phones for 5 days and then I would have just three days to find something before arriving in BA. Luckily for me I had managed to take the morning but to Puerto Natales.

The morning bus from El Calafate to PN had been full when I tried to buy a ticket, but I showed up at the bus station in the morning anyway and crossed my fingers that someone wouldn´t show up and I could snag their seat. This is precisely what happened and just before the bus pulled out I was waved on board. As I headed towards the only empty seat on the bus the long haired, 50 something year old man next to it gruffly proclaims, "Ah, shit. I thought I was gonna have the whole seat to myself." I apologize as I sit down. "Well, you´re small and you speak English so its okay," was his response. This is how Tom and I became friends of sorts. Turned out that in addition to living 5-10 minutes away from the hotel I stay at while LA working for Trek America Tom had been renting an apartment in Buenos Aires that he is planning on leaving around March 8th, which is the exact day I am flying to BA. Upon further investigation I discover that this apartment is quite inexpensive to rent and is two blocks from the metro line that goes to my school and in a neighborhood the school recommended staying in. When I arrived in PN and found out that my apartment had fallen through Tom sent out an email to his landlord and when I emerged from Torres del Paine I had an apartment and Tom was there to meet me when I arrived in BA a few days later. To add to the good fortune of this event, while I was on the bus with Tom I realized that my going from El Calafate to Puerto Natales and then back to El Calafate before going to Rio Gallegos was NOT the most logical thing to do. It would've made much more sense to spend a few days in El Calafate before going to Puerto Natales and to then go straight from Rio Gallegos from Puerto Natales. I hadn't figured this out cause I hadn't looked at a map that showed BOTH Chile and Argentina with the cities marked on it. AND my guide book said nothing about going to Rio Gallegos from Puerto Natales (Tom´s older version of Lonely Planet did). How lucky was I that I hadn't realized this? If I had I wouldn't have met Tom and I wouldn't have lucked into my apartment.

Tom didn´t leave BA on the 8th so we ended up sharing the place for about a week, which was an experience. Tom is an interesting character. He has never married and He can be very chauvanistic. He travelled from Alaska all the way to Patagonia, only flying between Seattle and LA, yet spoke little Spanish, which meant that he was often that kind of tourist I roll  my eyes at, you know the one speaking loudly in a shop and pointing at something. He spoke his mind at all times, even when he knew what he was saying would be offensive. This also involved saying things like "Hurry up Grandma" in a loud voice when an elderly Argentinian woman was taking too long to get on the bus. He was completely over the top in that regard. He got really frustrated by some cultural differences and sometimes expressed these frustrations in ways that I considered inappropriate. But at the same time he was great to be around. He was kind and generous. Despite not speaking any Spanish he had an uncanny ability to develop relationships with people, like the doorman or our building or the waiters at restaurants. He made friends with all kinds of people. He would say some chauvinistic comment in one sentence and then praise me for being a strong independent woman in the next. We had a few wonderful afternoons, evenings, and conversations together. On my first afternoon he was showing me around the neighborhood and we sat down at a cafe. He ordered a beer and I ordered an ice cream, claiming I didn´t feel like drinking. Somehow this turned into both of us drinking. We would finish a beer and order anther one. I have no idea how many beers we had. I do know that I was drunk at 7:30pm and for only having known each other for a day or two we had just had a very intimate conversation about our lives. These type of meal repeated itself at least twice. :)

Next post: Interesting tid bits about BA, for example the trash pick up system, dogs, and taxi headlights.

Catch up posting

It has been quite a while since I last posted anything, which is mildly ironic because I´ve had access to and been using a computer (versus my iphone which is slow to write on ) more than at any other point in my travels. I have been in Buenos Aires for two weeks now and have another 3 weeks before my CELTA course is over. But before I talk all about the wonders and annoyances of BA let me catch you up on the events prior to my arrival here.



Glacier Perito Moreno

I have now seen about five or six glaciers in my life (I haven´t counted really, its possible I´ve seen more) and the most amazing of all of these was Glacier Perito Moreno. It was incredible. Perito Moreno is rather unique because, unlike so many glaicers today, it is growing rather than shrinking. This means that is also a rather active glacier. Chunks fall off every day, hell more like few minutes. The glacier is also pretty the main people come to El Calafate and why the town has transformed from a tiny Patagonian outpost to a booming tourist town with quaint buildings, cafes, fancy outdoor stores, and a population of immigrants all corners of Argentina. There are few native "El Calafatians."



Clarence and my host´s GF, Ani, on the way to the glacier

Me, Clarence, and some adorable Argentinian girls who were enthralled with Clarence

The cheapest way to get to the glacier is to take the public bus, which leaves twice a day and gives you between 3 to 5 hours at the glacier. Cost, $25 (aka 100 pesos). Entrance to the glacier (which is part of national park) is another $25. If you go with a tour the cost starts to rise. OR you can go with your couchsurfing hosts and pay...nothing. The fee to enter the park is cheaper for Argentinians and free for locals from El Calafate. My fellow couchsurfer was one of those people who likes doing things just for the story and he has been hitchhiking around the world for about 2 years so his budget was extremely tight, meaning he didn´t want to pay $25 to get in to the park. So a few kilometers away from the entrance we stuffed him in the trunk (it was a hatchback, so not too bad, though he was like 6 feet tall so it was still a tight squeeze.) When we got to the entrance my couchsurf host´s girlfriend handed me the mate gourd and thermos and told me not to talk. My couchsurf host showed his i.d. to the entrance person, his girlfriend spoke in Spanish, I stayed silent, the guy in the trunk stayed silent. And in we went for free. Couchsurfing is the best (I also got dinner free that night cause my couchsurf host took us to the hotel he manages).

It was stunning how quickly time flew by at the glacier. I could´ve stared at it for hours more and could easily have gone back the next day to see it again. My couchsurf hosts said they never get tired of bringing couchsurfers to the glacier, even though they´ve been over a dozen times, and I completely understand why. The quality of the light constantly changes the glacier. The tones of the blues shift. They can seem to be glowing, they can be pale, they can be deep...its amazing. And then there is the fact that huge chunks of the glacier can fall! We spent at least half of the time we were there staring at one large chunk that looked like it could fall. That chunk never did but while we were staring at it, willing it to tumble into the water, the entire face of the glacier next to slid into the water, with a resounding boom, and created a wave that soaked our couchsurf hosts who were all the way on the other side of the water 2 km away! It was pretty hilarious because there was a group of probably 15 of us staring at this one part of the glacier and then the piece next to it was what fell. There was a collective scream from everyone. It was great. I do not have the words to describe how beautiful this place was. So I will show you photos.

Wave created by the collapse of piece of glacier face (you can sort of see it sliding down). The jutting out piece on in the right corner is what we were willing to fall.





Post slide. Notice the new baby icebergs in the water

 After a few relaxing days in El Calafate I took the bus to Rio Gallegos. Everyone talks about how Rio Gallegos isn´t worth your time, there is nothing to see, its a waste of time...you get the point. For this reason I took the latest bus that I could. I arrived at 8pm and had a 3am flight. I saw very very little of Rio Gallegos. A very kind cab driver took me from the bus station to the city center. I told him I wanted to get dinner at a parilla, which is a type of restaurant that usually specializes in grilled meats and such. He said he knew a good cheap one and dropped me off at an all you can eat Chinese buffet/parilla. It was neither cheap nor good yet I ate there anyway, reading my book in the corner. It was amusing just to watch the people there, it was very popular (despite being neither cheap or good). I planned on eating and then walking around but I ended up spending 3.5 hours at the restaurant. Argentinians eat really late, the restaurant was fairly empty when I arrived at 8:30ish and started filling up after 9pm. I befriended two middle aged gentleman and sat and talked with them for over an hour. They wished me happy International Women´s Day, which surprised me. March is the Month of Women here in Argentina and people actually know and celebrate International Women´s Day! In the USA there is typically an event (for example in Portland there is always something at PSU) but its not a common knowledge holiday.

The airport in Rio Gallegos is quite nice and new. My trip through security was the EASIEST by far I´ve had since 9/11. I didn´t have to take off my shoes. I didn´t have to empty out my water bottle. I didn´t have to take off my sweater to go through the x-ray machine. Incredible. After 2 hours of restless sleep on the place I arrived in BA, where the air was muggy and warm and completely different than Patagonia. I´ll write tomorrow about the serendipity involved in finding my apartment here and my first few days in the city. Slowly I´ll catch you all up.



Torres del Paine

Advance warning. Long blogpost. I really did try to keep my retelling brief, but apparently I'm incapable of that

Puerto Natales

 The bus ride from Puerto Natales to Parque Nacional Torres del Paine is about an hour and a half. The sound of rain on the metal roof of my CouchSurf hosts' house had woken me up at 3am and was still drizzling down from the grey sky as my bus my headed towards the park at 8am. I sad there staring out the window and the drenched yellow green of Patagonia hills and thought "What the hell am I doing? Why am I going to go hike and camp for 5 days? That is five days of mostly alone time, that is about 7 hours a day of just walking where I'll have nothing to do but stare at the scenery and think. Just me and my little brain. Plus this bus if full of tourists! I don't like hanging out where all the tourists are! I want to be around the locals, get to know the local culture. What am I doing this for?"  Those of you who know me pretty well know that the idea of me and my brain having 5 solid days alone together with few distractions can be a very frightening prospect as I tend to think too much. Turns out the five days, even with all the thinking time and the plethora of tourists, was worth it.

Puerto Natales

The park felt very busy and full and I can't imagine what it would be like in January, which is the height of the season. This time of year the number of visitors is declining but with the exception of the first campground I stayed in the campgrounds seemed full to me (though I'll admit not packed to the gills). A lot of people do the hike that I did, the W (named for the shape the trails take on the map), and I passed the same people over and over again on the trail. My first couple of days I mostly kept to myself, actually savoring some of my alone time, but by the end of the 5 days there was a sense of comradery with the people that I'd been seeing everyday and I spent a lot of time talking with a couple from Redding, CA, a couple from Quebec City, and a young guy from North Carolina. I was told that Torres del Paine gets about 200,000 visitors per year. To the people telling me this 200,000 clearly seemed like a very large number and, sadly, a huge number of these people have little experience camping/hiking but do the W (because its very feasible to do with little experience) and end up damaging the park. However, to put this number in perspective...Yosemite National Park received just under 4 million visitors in 2009. About 80% of TDPs visitors are foreigners, which means that prices are high and the local economy is clearly thriving on digging deep into visitors pocketbooks. It cost me $100 to rent gear, $30 to enter the park, $24 to get into the park and back to P. Natales, and $22 to take a catamaran from one of the entrance points to the start of the most popular trail in the park. Not cheap. (It costs a Chilean $10 to get in and the entrance fee plumments in the off season).

Torres del Paine, Lago Grey

The first day was grey and wet and I couldn't see anything on the trip into the park. All of the mountains were obscured. Luckily it cleared up when I hit the trail though. My first two days hiking were the hardest, not just cause my pack was laden with food. Most people stop and camp 4km closer to the start of the trail than I did, but that campground costs money and I'm my father's daughter. The campground was right next to a viewpoint for Glacier Grey and was delightfully empty. There were only two of us there when I went to sleep, me and an 18 year old kid from Pennsylvania, Sam, who was taking a year off from college. However, the trail up to campground was fairly steep and wet and I was ready to scream and start hitting trees with my hiking poles when the campground kept not being visible from the top of hills. I was very happy when it appeared. I had been able to see the glacier for a lot of my hike, but it didn't beat the mirador near the campground. The blues in the crevices and crack were what mesmerized me. Sam had just tried traversing a glacier in Northern Patagonia so I got an awesome miniature lesson on glaciers, including how incredible it was that it was dead calm, no wind at all, where we were.

Glacier Grey

Day two was NOT fun. My shoes had gotten wet the day before and hadn't dried out so my feet were instantly wet when I put them on. The first 2/3rds of the hike was retracing my footsteps from the day before and I  had 23km, which is a little over 14 miles, to hike. Luckily the weather was nice but my feet were KILLING me when I arrived at camp, which was the dirtiest and most cramped of any I camped in. (Apparently it was supposed to be closed but that information wasn't being shared with hikers so it wasn't being enforced by the Guardaparque).

View from Valle Frances

Day 3 was the most amazing. Valley Frances is the "crown jewel" of the park (as told to me by a info guy in P. Natales and was my favorite part of the hike (maybe partly cause I left all my gear in camp and did it with just a daypack). As you hike through the valley there is a mountain with a glacier on your left. Every once in a while there would be a sound like thunder and if you were lucky you would be able to spot where a chunk of ice or snow was tumbling down a cliff of the mountain. You could see waterfalls of glacier melt and the weather was perfect and the sun kept dancing on the cliffs and the snow. If you looked over your shoulder you were greeted with a completely different vista, lakes and rolling green hills. It was beautiful! The hike up the valley ended at a mirador where the mountains and rock formations formed a U in front of you. What ever direction you turned was just stunning. There is no way that a photo could capture it.

Valle Frances

Valle Frances viewpoint

I was really lucky with weather during my hike (As you can see from the sunshine in these photos). Torres del Paine is known for unpredictable, quickly shifting weather and strong winds. I only experienced those strong winds on day 4, but I could hear them throughout the hike, especially on night 3. Where I was camped there was nothing more than a light breeze but I could hear the roar of the wind coming off the mountains and could see the wind pushing, swirling, and blowing the clouds. It was mesmerizing just to sit there and stare at them, which I did for hours (aided by the fact that it doesn't get dark until 10pm this time of here down here.)

Me at Valle Frances viewpoint

Day 4 was the day that I got to actually experience the infamous TDP weather. Most of the hike was through open grassland, the result of a fire caused by a careless hiker a few years ago. It rained most of the hike, starting off as a light mist but turning into real rain later on. But it was sunny so when I put on my raincoat I instantly started to overheat so I just let myself get wet. Then I hit a point where the trail through the grassland meets a trail that runs up the edge of a ravine. That was where the weather hit. The wind was so strong that the drops hitting my skin stung. It felt practically identical to what it felt like when I rode my scooter 35mph in rain with exposed skin. I walked up the hill hunched over like the Hunchback of Notre Dame, my head down so that the wind didn't catch the brim of my hat and blow it off and with sunglasses on to protect my eyes. Without the aid of my hiking poles I am not sure I wouldn't have ended up in the ravine that plunged down hundreds of feet on my right side. Thankfully I could see a refugio (a hotel/camping area) in the distance so I managed to brave my 20 minutes of famous TDP weather easily. After the refugio the trail headed into the woods, sheltered from the wind, and the rain cleared up. By the time I got to camp it was mostly sunny and nice.

"grassland" area

Day 5 was a bit of a disappointment. If you had talked to me about Torres del Paine after day 5 I would have given you a "meh" assessment of the park and my time there. It wasn't until I started detailing each day in my journal and looking through my pictures that I realized/remembered how incredible the scenery and experience was. On day 5 I got up before sunrise and hiked, with pretty much everyone else in the campground, up to the viewpoint for the torres (which is towers in spanish) from the name Torres del Paine. Supposedly they are supposed to be amazing when the sun hits them. I'd hiked up to the torres the night before just before dusk and was looking forward to seeing the sun hit them and light them up pink and make them beautiful. This did not happen. Instead they just came into clearer view as the sky lightened and clouds swirled around their tips and I got to sit there and silently curse the loud Israelis. When I finally headed down to break camp the sun finally caught the torres and danced on them for a second, but it wasn't anything awing or jaw dropping.

Torres del Paine

It was fun to see a shift in all of us W hikers the last day. The last day of hiking was easy, pretty much downhill, and ended on the lawn across from the fancy schmancy hotel that costs nearly 1000 USD per night. For five days we had been mumbling "hola" as we panted past each other or had grunted what worked as a greeting. We had been tiredly smiling at each other at campgrounds and some of us had built little two day long friendships over campstoves. Now that we all collapsed on the ground the energy suddenly became a little festive. There were jokes about mobbing the kiosk and stealing on the ice cream (we had the numbers to pull it off) and comments about stinky feet and armpits and sore knees. It was as though we had unknownly created our own little community during the last few days and this was our last hurrah.

Twisted tree

 The weather was brilliant my last day in the park and as the bus drove away I looked over my shoulder and realized what Torres del Paine looks like from a distance. All of the land around it is low, rolling, and grass covered. Out of this pampa rises this circle of mountains and jagged rock formations, seemingly out of nowhere. It was a stunning sight to see and suddenly made me appreciate more where I had just been. I have had this realization that the combination of growing up in the Pacific Northwest and my work with Trek America has raised my standards of what I find incredible. I have seen many of the most beautiful and awing places in the USA. My parents live in one of the most beautiful regions of the USA. On a clear day in Portland you can see not one, not two, but THREE large snowcapped volcanoes. Sometimes these high standards mean I fail to really give credit to the beauty and wonder of what I'm seeing. That almost happened with TDP. But luckily it didn't.

Leaving the park (aka being too impatient to wait for the $3 shuttle so walking 7.5km cause alerady having walked like 50 wasn't enough)

I really want to write about the AMAZINGNESS of glacier Perito Moreno (where I went yesterday) and the fabulousness of my current couchsurfing experience, but I think that this post is long enough already. So...that will wait for another time.

Cosmic Forces of the World Watching Out For Me

Yesterday I returned to the land of civilization after spending 5 days camping and hiking "The W" in Torres del Paine. I will write all about Torres del Paine and my hiking later. Right now I have about 15 minutes to write and I want to tell you all about how the cosmic forces of the world apparently currently have my back.

A couple of weeks ago I bought an airline ticket from Rio Gallegos to Buenos Aires for March 8th. The flight leaves at 3:30 and lands at 6:30. I assumed that this was 3:30 and 6:15pm. I was making plans according to this, ie there is a bus that leaves El Calafate at 3am and arrives at 7am that I figured I would take cause everyone keeps talking about boring, bland, and awful Rio Gallegos is. On the bus back to Puerto Natales from Torres del Paine I sat next to two guys from New Zealand who had also just finished hiking the W. We had been passing each other on the trail for the last five days, mumbling "hola" as we huffed past each other, and now that we had energy and we shared the comraderie of the hike we talked for the hour and half bus trip. As we pulled in to Puerto Natales they said that a group of W hikers were getting together for dinner at 8pm if I wanted to join. I was going to be eating dinner with my couch surf hosts but I decided to go and meet up with the group for 1/2 an hour or so and grab a beer.  We were sharing travel horror stories (passports misplaced and returned, flights missed etc) and sharing our plans for the coming days (some us heading south, some heading east, some heading north) and one of my fellow travlers mentioned that he had to figure out how to get to Rio Gallegos cause he had a flight on the 8th. "Really?" said I. "I´m flying out of Rio Gallegos on the 8th too. You can take a bus from here, I think that you just have to transfer in Rio Turbio..." He asked me what time his flight was and said "Mine is at 3:30am, cause that was cheaper." "Weird," I commented. "Mine is at 3:30pm..." "Landing at like 6:15?" says he. "Cause that is when my lands. but in the morning." Our brows furrowed. How strange that we had morning and afternoon flights at the exact same time...So I double checked my confirmation and realized that, silly me, they use the 24 hour clock here and my flight is at 3:30 NOT 15:30, meaning it is in the morning!! If I hadn´t met up with these folks for drinks I would´ve completely missed my flight to Buenos Aires.

Thank you universe. Thank you for letting me figure this out days in advance. And thanks for the wonderful weather too! Seriously.

Hiking tales coming soon. ish.

Does Patagonia hate me?

I hate rushing through places. You miss a lot, you get tired, you don't really get a chance to fully know the place you are in, and you end up hitting up the "hot spots" which are invariably tourist filled.  Last night I hung out with two Americans who spent a fair amount of time travelling through southern chile, specifically chiloe and northern patagonia. Their descriptions made me drool. If you look at map you'll understand why. The Chilean side of Patagonia is full of fjords, islands, mountains, and different varieties of forests. The Argentinian side is flat and pretty unvaried until you make it pretty far south. I decided that at the top of my "I don't want to have missed seeing this/doing this if I never come back here" was southern Patagonia, mainly torres del Paine and the perito moreno glacier in el calafate. But I have to go back to southern chile. I need to spend a week soaking up the verdant quiet of Patagonia. I need to kayak through the fjords and hike through the rainforest like parks of northern Patagonia. Consider this your invitation to start saving so you can come with me. 

I was getting worried that Patagonia didn't like me. There was a storm on the southern, aka unpaved, portion of ruta 40 the night before I left bariloche. As our bus pulled into the tiny, nondescript, refreshingly untouristy town of perito moreno, where we were spending the night, we were informed that we might have to detour to ruta 3. The bus heading north from el chalten that day had detoured and they arrived in perito moreno at 6:30 in the morning rather than the scheduled 10pm. Sadly we detoured or, as we decided to call it, got an unexpected tour of half of argentina. Pull up map of Argentina. Find the town of bariloche. Follow the road that goes south until you hit a little town near the end called el chalten. That is what we were supposed to do. Now go back up to bariloche. Follow that road south until you hit perito moreno (it's where the road goes inland a little and then turns back towards chile) now from perito moreno follow the road that goes All The way to the Atlantic. Now follow the road all the way down the coast to rio gallegos. Now turn back inland towards chile. When you reach el calafate go north another 3 hours until you reach el chalten. That is what we did. 18 hours. In a bus without the comfy semi-cama seats long haul buses come equipped with. We arrived at 4:30am. Thankfully we made most of the "adventure" laughing about it, clapping when the obviously lost bus driver finally found the highway after driving around our lunch stop town for ten minutes, playing copious amounts of backgammon, and shrugging, saying "welcome to southern Argentina."

I was eager to explore El Chalten, the hiking capital of parque nacional Los glaciares and home to the amazing rock features Cerro torre and fitz roy. The area is notorious for shifting weather and clouds blocking the views it's famous for. There was sun when I hit the trail but it was long gone by the time I reached the Fitz Roy viewpoint. Fitz Roy was shrouded by grey clouds, but the blue of the glacier below it was still bright despite grey. I sat down to eat my sandwich and enjoy what I could see of the view. It started to rain. Half an hour later, my pants soaked, I turned around and spent the rest of the afternoon and evening playing games in the hostel. 

When I woke up this morning it looked like it was cloudy but when I went outside it was crisp and clear with blue skies. I ended up doing the hike i'd planned for the day before, but in reverse. First I hiked up to the cerro torre viewpoint. The sun was still out and the views good. The clouds started rolling in but fitz Roy was still visible, though photography wise the wall of white behind it was uninspiring. Though the wind picked up for part of the hike it didn't rain, wasn't too cold, and at least I could actually see fitz roy!! The hile concluded with a local microbrew at a ceveceria and a delicious plate of ravioli. And the sun kept breaking through the clouds to momentarily dapple the hills around El Chalten with golden light. Patagonia doesn't hate me after all! Now I just need good weather in torres del Paine and for this cold I'm coming down with to go away and not get worse. 

Final notes:
on my bus ride to El Calafate today we stopped at a hotel where butch Cassidy and the sundance kid hung out for a month after robbing a bank in rio gallegos Argentina.
I seem to have a knack for sitting on the wrong side of the bus as far as scenery watching is concerned.

Ideas vs plans and flying by the seat of your pants

If you talked to me a few weeks ago and asked me what my plans were I would have probably said something along the lines of "I´m heading south toward Patagonia."  I would have admitted that I didn´t really have plans so to speak, just ideas. A few days ago I realized the stark difference between plans and ideas. My "plan" was to take the Navimag ferry to that goes from Puerto Montt to Puerto Natales. My "plan" was to go to the island of Chiloe. My "plan" was not to be like so many other travelers and completely skip over Middle Chile. These were all ideas, not plans, because they were just thoughts in my head and I had taken no actions to make them reality.

As I mentioned in a previous post I fell in love with the city of Santiago. My falling in love with the city and a few interaction that I had with people made me spontaneously apply for a TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language) course in Buenos Aires. The course starts March 10 and lasts a month. Suddenly my ideas needed to actually become plans. My first step was completely skipping Middle Chile and taking an overnight bus from Valparaiso to Pucon in the Lakes District. The Lakes District looks a lot like the Pacific Northwest and Pucon reminded me of Lake Tahoe with a small version of a Colorado alpine tourist town attached to it. I wasn´t all that impressed. People go there to hike up the vocano, which wasn´t too stunning exept for the fact that it looks like it's puffing a cigar all day, go to thermal baths, or go white water rafting. To be perfectly honest none of these really interested me at the prices and with the crowds of tourists they came with. Realizing that I only had about 2.5 weeks before I had to be in Buenos Aires I decided to head straight to Patagonia. Problem, how to get there. That ferry I´d "planned" on taking? It only leaves once a week and it is booked up through the first week of March. There are other ferries, ferries that leave from the island I wanted to visit, which don´t go as far south. Patagonia is a very isolated, remote area without a huge deal of infrastructure. On the Chilean side the highway, which was mostly built in the 1980s, isn´t paved all the way and doesn´t go all the way south. Flights are expensive and booked up far in advance. I decided to head to Puerto Montt, a port city in Chile that is the Chilean gateway to Patagonia and wing it. Then I talked to an Israeli and my plans changed.

Israelis have infiltrated South America and they seem to have the travel circuit down. There must be some sort of information flow that goes from Israeli to Israeli. Why have Israelis infiltrated South America? Cause after 2 or 3 years in the army they need some down time! So they come and spend a year cruising through South America, doing lots of hiking and trekking. This Israeli went over the map with me and said "No, no, no. Don´t go to Puerto Montt. Go to Bariloche then go down Route 40." So in the morning I refunded my ticket to Puerto Montt, bought a ticket to Bariloche, and then ran back to the hostel to stuff some breakfast down my throat and grab my bag cause the bus left in half an hour.

The drive to Bariloche was beautiful, we crossed the Andes, saw tons of monkey puzzle trees, emerged flatter hills that reminded me of Southern Colorado, stopped in a darling little lakeside town, San Martin de los Andes, that was all chic and tourist facade where I hung out in a coffee shop playing cards with a 19 year old English kid on his first big trip, drove through some wonderfully beautifully lakes while the sun was setting. It was lovely. It took forever. I had a wonderful conversation with a young Argentinian border officer on the bus. I stressed a lot cause I had NO clue how I was gonna get to Patagonia, IF I had enough time to go to Patagonia, WHAT I was gonna do if I didn´t. I f*$/%ing plan other people´s vacations for a living!! And here I was, with my own completely unplanned, completely loose at the seams, and I was not comfortable with it. I hadn´t even known that I was going to Bariloche until that morning. I was going to arrive at 11:30pm and I didn´t know how to get from the bus terminal to the center of town. Thankfully I´d at least called some hostels and made myself a reservation while in San Martin.

Bariloche is in a GORGEOUS setting. There are multiple lakes around, stunning mountains, its verdant and green with the sparkle of blue water. The town itself is right on the shores of a lake. The town looks like it was imported from the Alps. There are a lot of chocolate shops. A lot of wooden buildings that would fit right in in Switzerland. Luckily I worked out my travel plans by 12:30 and could go out and enjoy the town, hike up to a viewpoint and then to a little lake beach with a German I ran into and follow it up with chocolate and coffee with an English woman.

The Patagonia plans, which still feel insane to me, are as follows. Tomorrow at 6:30 a.m. I will start a two day bus/road trip down Ruta 40, which is sort of like Argentina´s version of Route 66 as far as folklore goes only Ruta 40 isn´t paved and isn´t a dead road like Route 66. That whole lack of pavement means that it isn´t fully alive yet. This roadtrip ends in El Chalten, a small town near some awesome stuff. I will spend a day and a half here before heading to El Calafate, a town near an awesome glacier but uninteresting otherwise. From El Calafate I will head back into Chile to Torres del Paine National Park, the crown jewel of Patagonia. I will rent gear and hike in TDP for 5 days. I will then go back to El Calafate, take a 6 hour bus to a town called Rio Gallegos and fly to Buenos Aires. If all things go to plan I will have a day and a half to recover before I start my CELTA course.

I will then plan out the next two months of my trip a little bit better cause I don´t really like flying by the seat of my pants.

I hope you enjoyed your little window into Leah trying to make decisions. It´s a delightful universe to exist in.

Addendum: Things that are popular in Chile
1. Wearing brightly colored tights under jean shorts, preferably with some sort of designs on the pockets.
2. Fanny packs, only not worn around your waist but across your chest over one shoulder with the pack part safely resting on your stomach.
3. "Completos" - a hot dog (nasty ones) smothered with avocado, cheese, tomato, and other stuff

A selection of photos! Finally!

Hey look! You get some photos! These are a selection of some photos from Chile, starting with my hike in Yerba Loca, outside of Santiago, and going back to Iquique. It has been so  long since I put up pictures that it is impossible to really show my trip. Maybe if I have time later on I´ll put some more up on Facebook or some other photo sharing site. (I´m trying to move more and more away from using Facebook).

I have been in Valparaiso for a few days and I´m getting restless. Southern Chile is where all of the "good" stuff is and I feel as though it is taking me forever to get there and that I´m going to end up rushing once I´m there. Also, because my trip is so unplanned and things are busier in Southern Chile I am realizing that there are lots of things I wanted to do that I may not get to do (3 day "cruise" from Puerto Montt to Patagonia being one of them). My unplannedness is feeling very uncomfortable and I am really struggling to actually plan it all out while also exploring the places that I am. Ugh.

Valparaiso is an important port city and 150 years ago it was the most important port city in South America. This means that it used to have a lot of money and all of these foreign dudes from England and France built themselves some huge fancy houses. These houses are all now a little ramshackle and weathered, but still beautiful. The house I am currently staying in has ceilings that are like 20 feet high. I don´t think I´m exaggerating. The best thing about the city is the art and the color. The houses are different shades of purple and blue and yellow and green and just lively and wonderful. And every other person here seems to be an artist either selling their goods on the street or in a little shop. The arty vibe actually reminds me of Portland a little.

Some notes on Chile: First of all Chileans speak Spanish as much as Americans speak English, which is to say they speak their own version of the language. They have so many words that no one else uses. Examples: pololo=novio/boyfriend, sipo=si, pues/yes, of course, chivay=intiendo/understand/got it, choclo=maiz/corn. Secondly I learned the hard way that the way an American rights a 7 equals a 1 here (someone elses Chilean cell phone number got 2,000 pesos of credit...). People talk about earthquakes ALL the time. Earthquakes are very common here and Chile is coming up on the 1 year anniversary of a the last large one (February 27, 2010). Earthquakes are more common as you move south I really think that someone has mentioned earthquakes to me every day since I made it to Santiago. Seeing the contrast between Chile and Central America has been really interesting. Similar to the United States Chile (and Argentina) bribed foreigners with free land to get them to come and settle the country. This means that much of Chile has European roots. Plus the country is much wealthier than Central America (and its northern neighbors). I had a really interesting conversation with my CS host and his girlfriend the other night about their travels in Europe. They said that they didn´t experience any racism but they have a friend who looks very indigenous who had problems with racism all over Europe and they know people who look indigenous, people with an education and good jobs, who were denied visas in Spain. They also spoke with frustration about the amount of paperwork they have to go through to get a visa to the United States, hinting that the USA makes them go through this much paperwork to make sure that they aren´t going to try and stay in the USA to work after arriving.

The photos:

This is the most amazing thing ever and I want one. It is a Chilean invention, it is a sleeping bag suit. I tried to buy one in Santiago but the two stores were closed. You can buy it on Amazon.com so I might just buy one once I get back to the states, though they are more expensive then.

Felipe and my reaction upon "reaching" the glacier. The glacier is right above Felipe´s head. What you couldn´t figure that out on your own?

Sunset, Yerba Loca, as seen from where we were camping

Carlos´s aunt, mom, and cousin with Clarence

Me eating my first sopaipilla

Me and Carlos, my new Chilean best friend, in Valdivia de Paine

Sopaipilla, uneaten

Humberstone Nitrate plant (ghost town). Don´t you wanna live out here?

Picture of tins that I really liked from Humberstone

Humberstone, inside a building

Iquique

Llama!

Lago Chungara in Parque Nacional Lauca. This is the highest freshwater, non-navigable lake. Lake Titicaca is a few meter lower but is navigable so it gets more press, much to some Chileans dismay

Parque Nacional Lauca. The pink dots are flamingos. If you open the picture up bigger you can also see some llamas on the edge of the lake

Parque Nacional Lauca

Parque Nacional Lauca

Patricio, the hostel llama in Putre, so cute!

Patricio trying to eat Claudia´s camera

Claudia & I in Parque Nacional Lauca