tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-84480431176535222502024-02-20T10:20:14.487-08:00Sí, po!Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17880747940366409418noreply@blogger.comBlogger12125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8448043117653522250.post-17749026659267689592012-04-01T23:14:00.003-07:002012-04-01T23:14:34.087-07:00<div style="text-align: center;">
<b>Torres de Paine</b></div>
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<b>The Plan<o:p></o:p></b></div>
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The plan is to fly from Puerto Montt to Punta Arenas and
then take a bus the three hours to Puerto Natales, the town that is the
“gateway” to Torres del Paine national park. The plan is to stay in the Erratic Rock Hostel in Puerto
Natales, which is known for bringing hikers together at its daily talk about
the park. The plan is to meet
other travelers at this talk, travelers who want to trek the complete seven-day
circuit and who don’t already have a group to hike with.</div>
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On the bus from Punta Arenas to Puerto Natales, the plan
starts to feel unrealistic. The
plane and the bus and the hostel part are easy, but how am I supposed to find
people to hike with, people who want to do the same trek and in the same time
frame? And if I do find such a group,
are they going to be people that I <i>want </i>to
spend seven days with? </div>
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The man in the seat next to me is asleep, the couple sitting
behind is talking quietly in Danish, and the two men in the seats in front of
me are conversing energetically in Hebrew with their friends across the
aisle. Out the window, there is an
expanse of emptiness: flat land that stretches on and on and on, until finally
the golden grasses collide with the horizon. There, I imagine, is the end of the world. I feel very, very alone.</div>
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<b>Puerto Natales<o:p></o:p></b></div>
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The next morning I wake up to Bill, the owner of the Erratic
Rock Hostel<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8448043117653522250#_ftn1" name="_ftnref1" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference">*</span></a>, bellowing “Last call
for breakfast!” I tumble out of
the top bunk and stumble downstairs to the kitchen, where Bill makes me an
omelet and I drink real (non-Nescafe) coffee. Sitting across the table from me is Jannis, a German who has
been traveling South America for the last three months, and he tells me about
his adventures trekking in Argentina while we drink cup after cup of
coffee. He is also, it turns out,
traveling alone, also planning on hiking the circuit in Torres del Paine, and
also hoping to start the trek within the next few days. He met two other travelers in
Argentina, he tells me, two Britts also planning to trek in the Park, and
they’re all meeting up at the three o’clock talk the hostel talk. Why don’t I meet them there? </div>
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Everything, I realize a few hours later while I wander
around Puerto Natales looking for a fleece and a camping knife and other
necessities, is pretty much going according to plan. </div>
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At the three o’clock “Talk at the Rock” Jannis introduces me
to Ben and Kate, and after hearing about the different options we decide that
we want to do the complete circuit in seven days (although Kate will have to
leave on the third day to catch a flight to Buenos Aires) following a
counter-clockwise route. We spend
the next day, Sunday, buying supplies and food, packing and re-packing our
bags, and enjoying our last real meal—Patagonian lamb—before a week of hiking
food (oatmeal, crackers, instant soup and polenta… can you say
delicious?). Early Monday morning,
we leave for the park.</div>
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At the <i>Parilla Don Jorge </i>in Puerto Natales</div>
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<b>Day One: Puerto Natales – Guardería Pudeto – Lago Pehoé –
Los Cuernos </b>(24.1 km)<o:p></o:p></div>
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A bus takes us from Puerto Natales to the park, where we pay
the entrance fee and then wait for another bus, which takes us to Lake Pehoé
where we board a ferry that takes us to the trailhead. It is 1pm by the time we finally start
the trek.</div>
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For the first hour of the trek we can see the effects of the
massive fire that swept through the park in December, burning over 70,000
hectars and turning swaths of what had been trees and brush into charred
skeletons, strokes of black against the landscape. The wind is strong, and I am unsteady on my feet as I try to
get used to the weight of my backpack.</div>
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After two hours we reach the French Valley, where we drop
our packs at the ranger’s house and hike the two hours up to the end of the
valley. It’s hard to decide where
to look—a snow-covered mountain rises at the end of the valley, it’s peak
obscured by the clouds, and every so often a cracking sound tumbles down the
valley as chucks of ice fall from the side of the mountain, sending small
avalanches sliding down the face.
Looking down the valley in the other direction, we see a wide, turquoise
lake, and even from so high above it we can see the wind whipping the water up
into small cyclones that spin across the surface of the lake. <o:p></o:p></div>
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By the time we reach the end of the valley, two hours later,
the wind has grown stronger and the clouds thicker, and I am freezing despite
the fact that I am wearing a long-sleeved underarmor t-shirt, a fleece, and my
rain jacket. Kate is wearing only
a t-shirt and seems to be quite warm.
<o:p></o:p></div>
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I’m tired by the time we get back to the ranger’s house, but
we have another two hours of trekking before we reach Los Cuernos, where we
will be camping for the night. We
pick up our packs and trudge onwards.<o:p></o:p></div>
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These are by far the longest two hours of the day: it’s
getting late and the wind is strong, so strong I almost fall over a few times
as it grabs at my pack and I struggle to find my footing. It isn’t raining at first, but when the
trail curves down by the edge of the lake the wind is so fierce that it picks
the water up off the lake and tosses it onto us. I start to think that maybe I won’t survive these seven days
in Torres del Paine, that if the wind doesn’t knock me over or the lake swallow
me whole, the cold very well might kill me. It’s here, when buckets of freezing water from the lake are
being thrown into my face, that I start to wonder if Laura is right, if I need
to reconsider my idea of “fun.”<o:p></o:p></div>
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By the time we arrive at the campsite it’s raining—standard,
miserable, vertical rain—and the campsite is packed and muddy. It’s high season for tourists in Torres
del Paine, and this is one of the easiest campsites to get to, meaning that
there are tents pitched every few feet and you have to step nimbly around guy
lines while at the same time avoiding patches of mud.<o:p></o:p></div>
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We have two tents for the four of us, but we huddle in one
to create more heat, cooking dinner—polenta and instant soup—by lighting the
stoves just outside the door of the tent, leaning out the door to stir so that
we don’t have to sit in the rain.
We are all slightly miserable and delirious, and we can’t stop
laughing. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Fire damage along Lake Pehoé</div>
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Looking down the French Valley</div>
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View up the French Valley</div>
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<b>Day Two: Los Cuernos – Campamento Torres </b>(14.9 km)<o:p></o:p></div>
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The campsite seems to be caught under a constant drizzle, so
we leave as quickly as we can in the morning, rolling up wet tents and trying
to keep our packs as dry as possible.
As we set off on the trail Kate and Jannis race ahead, hiking at a speed
that I would have before thought impossible. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Ben and I stick to a reasonable pace, marveling at the way
the landscape and the weather changes over the course of the day: we see snow
covered mountains, wide smooth lakes, rivers that curve through valleys. It rains for a while, the sun shines
for a glorious half hour, it rains again and then the rain turns to sleet, the
wind comes and goes, there is sun for another few moments and then, as we climb
closer to Campamento Torres it begins to snow. <o:p></o:p></div>
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When Ben and I make it to the campsite Jannis and Kate are
huddled in the cooking shelter, a three-walled wooden structure that is no
warmer than being outside but a huge improvement over trying to cook from
inside a tent. They have just
gotten the water to a boil, and we make hot chocolates spiked with whiskey and
warm our hands over the tiny cooking stove fire. <o:p></o:p></div>
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About an hour later, we are still in the shelter when the
sky clears, letting sunlight filter through the trees into the campsite. After a quick discussion, we decide we
have to hike up to the Torres, the most famous part of the park, while the sky
is clear. The weather is always
unpredictable in Torres del Paine, and if we wait until the next day to hike to
the Towers we might not be able to see them.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Despite the fact that we have already hiked for eight hours
that day, I am surprised to find that I’m excited to get going again, looking
forward to moving and warming my body and feeling the ground beneath my
feet. Halfway up the trail, the
clouds roll in again, and we almost turn back. We decide to go all the way up anyway, just in case, and
just as we reach the end of the trail the clouds begin to clear, revealing the
Towers of Paine, three huge columns of granite that push up into the sky. The towers are solid, heavy granite,
but they are constantly changing: as the clouds drift overhead the sunlight
skimming the stone dims and then grows bright again, shadows grow and shift and
the rock seems almost alive. We
stay at the rocks at the base of the towers, watching, until it becomes too
cold.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The group!</div>
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Los Torres</div>
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<b>Day Three: Campamento Torres – Hosteria Las Torres –
Campamento Serón </b>(13.9 km)<o:p></o:p></div>
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We hike down from Campamento Torres to Hotel Las Torres a
huge, beautiful old hotel that sits on the open plains below the
mountains. Here we have a picnic
in the sun while we wait for the bus that will take Kate away, taking off our
hiking boots and laying in the grass in front of the hotel.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Later, as we leave the hotel and start off towards the
Campamento Serón, a pack of horses run across the field in front of us,
unbridled and free, tossing their heads and letting the sun shimmer over their
manes. We stand and watch, too
stunned to even pull out our cameras.<o:p></o:p></div>
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As we leave sight of the hotel, the trail widens and takes
us uphill gently, and we walk at a good pace for a few hours, debating
political theories and the benefits of the word <i>cookie </i>verses <i>biscuit</i>, <i>pants</i> verses <i>trousers. <o:p></o:p></i></div>
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We take a snack break before we begin the descent into a
wide, flat valley where a river meanders from one side to the other and the
wind is warm. As we start up
again, Jannis’ leg seizes up and all of a sudden, despite the fact that he had
been perfectly fine only moments before, he can hardly walk. He tries stretching his leg, and
resting it, but nothing seems to make a difference and it is getting late. Finally, we decide that Ben and I will
take Jannis’ pack and walk ahead of him, so that we can get to the campsite and
set up the tents before it gets dark.
Without his pack, Jannis can at least walk slowly, and the campsite, we
figure, can’t be very far away.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The valley is beautiful. The grasses on either side of the trail are tall and
slender, and they wave and bend in the wind. Scattered throughout are bright yellow flowers, shining like
wishes.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The valley is also impossibly long. Ben and I expect to see the campsite
behind every cluster of trees, but instead all we see is another expanse of
open grasses, another bend in the river to pick our way over, another patch of
trees that this time <i>must </i>be right in
front of the campsite. We go
slowly, trading Jannis’ pack (although Ben carries it much longer than I do),
resting frequently. Finally, just
when we are at the point of despair, we reach the campsite. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Jannis, it turns out, was not very far behind us, and he
arrives just after we have set up the tents. Soon after, the sun begins to set, and we watch it slide
while we make dinner. The clouds
in the valley are incredible, shapes that have been stretched out long and then
folded over each other, layered in yellow and peach. That night, for the first time, I am warm.<o:p></o:p></div>
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View along the trail</div>
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View from the Hosteria Las Torres</div>
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Jannis and Ben asleep while we wait for our absurdly expensive coffees</div>
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Incredible clouds above Campamento Serón</div>
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<b>Day Four: Campamento Serón – Refugio Dixon </b>(19 km)<o:p></o:p></div>
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We have a slow, lazy morning, knowing that the hike that day
will be mostly flat and easier than what we’ve experienced before. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Easy, of course, has a different meaning in Patagonia than
in most of the world, and midway through the day the trail turns, bringing us
into a new valley, and we are suddenly hit by the most ferocious winds I have
ever experienced. The trail is
high in the valley, a narrow stretch of flat ground between the hill that
climbs sharply to our left and the land that slopes quickly to our right, land
covered by a scattering of bushes that tumble down towards the lake at the
valley bottom. Jannis is only a
few feet in front of me, yelling into the wind, loving its force, but I don’t
know what he’s saying, I don’t even know if he’s yelling in English or in
German because I can’t hear him, can’t hear a single thing over the sound of
the wind screaming past my ears.<o:p></o:p></div>
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It’s exhilarating, the wind, the way it pounds against my
skin, beating it back to life, but it’s also terrifying. With every step, every time I lift one
foot of the ground, I fear that it’s going to take hold of me and throw me into
the blue water at the bottom of the valley. It does push me around, enough so that for a good few
minutes I’m not even walking on the trail at all, but am planting my feet, one
after the other, on the slanted rock face to my left, somehow held up by my
hiking poles and the wind. I
almost laugh at the absurdity of it until a sudden, stronger gust flings itself
up the trail, catching me and tearing my feet from the ground, sending me
spinning into back into Ben and knocking us both into the rock face on the side
of the trail. We sit for a minute,
a little shocked, tallying ripped shirts and skin. For a few moments I think that I won’t be able to stand up,
that the wind will keep me pinned against the rock forever, but in a moment of
almost-calm I pull myself and my pack up off the ground and we continue, step
by step towards the campsite at Refugio Dixon.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Just before we turned into the windy valley</div>
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Beautiful </div>
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The best view in the world--the campsite! (Dixon)</div>
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<b>Day 5: Refugio Dixon – Campamento Los Perros </b>(9 km)<o:p></o:p></div>
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Today is the day we have been looking forward to, the short
day, and we wake up late to sun in the campsite, a view of mountains sparkling
with snow, a glimpse of a glacier.
When we start hiking we get, as promised, a pleasant, easy hike that begins
with a hot sun-drenched ascent but then leads us down a flat, shady trail
through the last of the ancient forests in the park. The trees are tall but slender, covered in green mosses, and
through their branches we catch glimpses of the mountains, of waterfalls
cascading from unbelievable heights.
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When the trail breaks out of the forest we climb to the
viewpoint that looks out over the hanging glacier. There, leaning casually against a rock, our Israeli friend
Asaf has set up his stove and is making coffee. He offers us a cup and we accept, it’s deep smell too good
to resist (they would never, he tells me, drink Nescafe in Israel. It sounds like a wonderful
country). <o:p></o:p></div>
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When the coffee cup has been finished and we have grown
tired of watching the glacier melt, ancient drop by ancient drop, we walk the
last half a kilometer to the campsite.
It is still sunny and there are hours left in the day; we celebrate with
cold beers bought from the campsite kiosk, Cerveza Austral that we enjoy in the
sun. I rinse my clothes in the
pristine water and hang them from the trees to dry, take a nap in the warm
rocks that have been baking all day in the sun, and I am completely,
blissfully, happy.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Refugio Dixon in the morning</div>
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View from the trail</div>
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The hanging glacier near Los Perros</div>
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Only half a kilometer until the campsite!</div>
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<b>Day 6: Campamento Los Perros – Refugio Grey </b>(22 km)<o:p></o:p></div>
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This is the day I have been dreading, the day that we have
been warned will be very, very difficult, the day that we have to hike up over
the John Garner pass (which can’t be done if it’s snowing or raining too hard)
and then descend two thousand meters.
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We start early, knowing we have a long day ahead of us, and
although the trail shows the effects of recent rain (huge puddles of mud that
have to be avoided by stepping from tree root to tree root, one of which I slip
into and find not just my boot, but my entire calf submerged in mud) and the
sky threatens a downpour, the air is mostly dry as we start our way up the
pass.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The trail—at time distinguished only by rocks splattered
with orange paint—is hard, but not impossible as we climb higher and higher,
watching as the valley below us shrinks.
The map tells us the ascent will take four hours, but two hours after we
left camp we are pulling up over the top of the pass, the huge glacier below us
breaking into view, and we run and yell and throw our hiking poles into the
air. I can hardly believe that we
have already made it, that we have conquered the pass, that we are standing at
the highest point in the park and I don’t feel exhausted, I don’t feel okay, I
feel <i>amazing</i>. <o:p></o:p></div>
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The descent is tough, steep, and long—at times I feel like
I’m jumping from tree to tree, grabbing hold of skinny trunks, rather than
walking downhill. We have to keep
stopping, time and time again, to take photos of Glacier Grey.<o:p></o:p></div>
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I have seen many glaciers at this point, glaciers hanging
and melting and growing, speckled by sun and shrouded by clouds, but I have
never seen anything like this glacier.
It is huge, filling the entire valley and pushing it’s way out towards
the mountains as far as I can see.
It is blue and white and gray all at once, changing where it catches the
light, holding the sun somewhere deep below it’s surface. We hike and we hike and we hike, the
kilometers falling beneath our feet, and somehow we are still alongside the
glacier. <o:p></o:p></div>
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We camp that night at Refugio Grey and here once again the
campsite is packed. We are back to
the crowded side of the park, the part that can be easily reached by a day hike
from the ferry, and it is strange to be around so many people again. I feel accomplished, too, as we talk to
hikers who are just starting or who are turning back after only a day or two—<i>it’s
our sixth day hiking, yeah, we just came over the pass—what do you mean you
don’t have time? You have to </i>make<i> time for the circuit!</i> We try
to convince everyone that the circuit is the way to go, that the shorter “W”
trail isn’t worth it, but of course everyone smiles and no one changes their
plans. We drink whiskey and hot
chocolate in the Refugio with our Israeli friends, and then, for the last time,
fall into an exhausted sleep in our tents.<o:p></o:p></div>
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At the top of the pass!<br /></div>
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View of Glacier Grey from the top of the pass</div>
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It just keeps going</div>
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I have a thousand pictures of this glacier</div>
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Ben and Asaf</div>
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I love you, hiking poles!</div>
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<b>Day Seven: Refugio Grey – Lago Pehoé </b>(11 km)<o:p></o:p></div>
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Our last day brings a short, fairly easy hike, but there’s a
pressure we haven’t experienced before, a deadline. We <i>have to</i> get to the
end of the trail before 2:00 in order to catch the ferry that takes us to the
bus to Puerto Natales. <o:p></o:p></div>
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There is not much to say about this hike. It was beautiful, of course, but the
day was gray, the clouds still heavy with rain from the night before, and we
put our heads down and hike and hike, merely wanting to <i>get there</i>. The
last two hours we hike through fire damage again, glad that the rain has left
the ashes moist and that the wind isn’t strong enough to pull them from the
ground. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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And then, we are at the end of the trail, at the ferry port,
and we eat our last trail lunch in view of the turquoise water and the Horns of
Paine, and then the ferry comes. I
am giddy on the ride back across the lake, loving the cold wind, the smell of
the water, the not-quite realization that we did it, we completed the circuit,
I am still alive—more alive then I’ve ever been, in fact, aware of the life in
every inch of my skin and every breath of air that moves through my lungs. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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I watch behind the ferry as the end of the trail falls out
of sight and I am exhilarated, amazed that we finished, craving a real meal,
and terribly, terribly sad that it’s over. <i>You just have to let it go</i>, Jannis will tell me later when I ask him how he does it, how he
travels and meets so many people and sees so many places and then leaves them
all, each and every one, no matter how incredible. <i>You have to learn how to let go</i>, he says, but I don’t know how.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The ferry</div>
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We made it!</div>
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Los Cuernos de Paine - Cerveza Austral, anyone?</div>
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<div>
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<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8448043117653522250#_ftnref1" name="_ftn1" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference">*</span></a> To anyone
who is traveling to Puerto Natales, I strongly and wholeheartedly recommend the
Erratic Rock Hostel. It is exactly
the kind of place you want to stay in before and after a visit to the park;
it’s cozy—warm and busy and full of movies and blankets and books—the breakfast
is delicious, the coffee is real, and the staff will tell you everything you
need to know about trekking in the park.
Bill, the owner, is an Oregonian who is loud and friendly and will
remind you of all the things you love about America. </div>
</div>
</div>
<!--EndFragment-->Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17880747940366409418noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8448043117653522250.post-76955111709687795472012-03-05T11:21:00.000-08:002012-03-11T19:05:39.058-07:00Chiloé<br />
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I'm back in Santiago now and already back to work, but there are still a lot of summer travels that need to be written about--starting with Chiloé, my first stop after the Carretera Austral.</div>
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<b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Chiloé</span></b></div>
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<br /></div>
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Chiloé is a small island off the coast of Chile known for
penguins, rain, and tradition. The
ferry from the mainland to Chiloé takes less than an hour, but if you step off
the bus in anywhere except the main city of Castro, you’ll feel like you’ve
traveled years instead of kilometers.
They say that on the island, life is as it used to be—abuelas knit
woolen socks, their husbands call goats in from the field, and they say that
there is a legend hidden in every cave, explaining every curve of the
coastline.</div>
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<br /></div>
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Life is slow, certain.
Even the rain seems to adhere to some ancient schedule, falling in mists
and then in sheets and then slipping away, moving back out into the ocean to
let the sun shimmer on the damp ground.
Moments before you really feel dry, the mist envelops you again.</div>
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<br /></div>
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After spending the first night in Castro, Laura and I take a
bus to Cucao, a town on the western coast of the island, because a guidebook
said is was the “center of mythical Chiloé,” the man sitting next to me on the
bus said it couldn’t be missed, and the map shows it lying right on the edge of
the national park. </div>
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<br /></div>
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The bus driver asks us where in Cucao we are going, and we
tell him the center.</div>
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“El centro?” he asks, a strange look on his face.</div>
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“Si, si, el centro,” we confirm, not understanding his
confusion. Don’t most of the
passengers get off in the center of town, at the bus terminal or the main
square?<br />
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As the bus pulls out of Castro, he asks us if we know where
we’re staying. We don’t, and he
offers to call ahead and book us a room in a hospedaje, saying he knows a good
place. We shrug and agree,
figuring he’s trying to help out an uncle or a cousin, but thinking that since
we’ll be getting in after dark it will be good to have a reservation. </div>
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<br /></div>
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Two hours later, the bus pulls to a stop in the middle of a
narrow bridge. Laura and I are the
only passengers left, and the rain is pouring so heavily that even after I wipe
the fog from my window I can hardly see a thing. The bus driver catches my eye in the rearview mirror and
tells me that we’re here.</div>
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<br /></div>
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“Aca?” I ask, not believing him.</div>
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“Si.”</div>
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“El centro?”<br />
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“Si,” he says, and I understand the puzzled look he gave us
earlier: there is one street extending straight from the bridge, boasting six
or seven houses, and to the right there is another small street of homes. There is a river, a bay, and a soccer
field with sagging goals nestled at the intersection of the two. There is a Coca-Cola flag drooping
above one of the houses along the river, suggesting that it doubles as a general
store. Mostly, there is rain. </div>
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<br /></div>
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The bus driver points us towards the hospedaje he has
reserved for us, a house at the end of the street. We thank him, pull up our hoods, and step out into the rain.</div>
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<br /></div>
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We have already seen half of the town by the time we reach
the hospedaje, and despite our raincoats we’re soaked. The señora is waiting for us when we
arrive, and she opens the door and ushers us inside, where a wooden stove warms
the kitchen/dining/TV room. We
hang our wet clothes up above the stove and she shows us our room—wooden floor,
a small window, the ceiling sloping down over the bed. We sit there for a minute, listening to
the rain battering against the small window, and then we head back down to the
kitchen and the warmth of the stove.
</div>
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It is a strange, slow night. Not boring, just slow—no one rushes to do anything, there is
never any need to hurry. The
señora watches TV, the rain lets up.
Laura and I walk to the house with the Coca-Cola flag, which is in fact
a store, and then we walk back, having officially explored all of Cucao. We watch the señora make break,
kneading it with her knuckles, rolling it back and fourth over the table,
beating it into circular disks.
Her husband and son, who had been setting fishing nets in the river, come
back and hang their wet clothes above the stove next to ours. It starts to rain. They watch TV, a Chilean game show in
which the participants have to do nonsensical tasks such as move ping pong
balls from one table to another with their hands tied behind their backs. We make small talk with the family, but
they seemed more interested in the ping pong balls scattering across the floor
on TV. We open a box of wine and
sit closer to the stove. The rain
comes down harder, and the volume of the TV is turned up. We slip into English, falling into our
own little world on one side of the kitchen, and we stay there until it’s time
to go to bed.</div>
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With my feet tucked up underneath me, avoiding the chill of
the wooden floor, I watch the family watch TV and wondered what they think us,
the tourists who roll in and out of their home, fascinated by the constantly
shifting weather and the homemade bread.
I wondered if they think about us at all, or if our English words slicing
through the kitchen are just as constant and unremarkable as the rain;
something that comes and goes, grows louder and then softer—sometimes you have
to turn up the volume in order to hear the TV over it, and sometimes you don’t. </div>
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<br /></div>
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The next morning we wake up early to walk down to the river with
the men and watch them pull in their fishing nets. To be honest, the whole process seems almost too easy: they
row out into the river in their little yellow boat, the son keeps the boat
steady while his father pulls in the nets, and then they row back to shore,
where we watch them pull fish out of the net and put them in a large plastic
bag. That’s it. I can’t think of a polite way to ask
what else they do with their time, if putting in the nets takes twenty minutes
in the evening and pulling out the fish a half hour every morning, and so I
don’t. Instead, we all walk back
to the house and eat freshly baked bread for breakfast and watch church on TV.</div>
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<br /></div>
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Later that morning Laura and I go for a hike in the national
park (first discovering that on the other side of the bridge there is a whole
other row of houses, two hostels, <i>and</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> a
restaurant—Cucao is huge!) and then stand on the side of road with our thumbs
out, hoping to catch a ride across the island back to Castro or onto
Achao. It’s only a few minutes
before a pickup truck pulls over and we jump in the back, bouncing over the
dirt road and loving the feeling of the wind on our faces, sitting on top of
our bags when the truck slows again and three locals join us in the back. It’s only after the drivers reach their
destination, a small shack along the water, that we realize we’ve gone four
kilometers in the wrong direction.
We shrug, walk to the other side of the road, and stick our thumbs out
again. </span></div>
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<br /></div>
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It doesn’t take us long to get a ride back in the other
direction, and when the driver drops us off he points us in the direction we
need to go to get back to Castro.
Now a whole five minute walk from where we originally started, we throw
our bags back onto the ground and wave away the bus that stops to pick us up,
determined to hitchhike. After
about twenty minutes it starts to rain again, and then it starts to pour, and
we huddle behind the roadside kiosk selling Kuchen and Super Ocho candy bars. The few cars that drive past us are
full, and the rain begins to come down harder, and so when the next bus to
Castro turns onto the road we wave it down. We have no reason to hurry, no idea of where we’re going
next, but it’s nice, at least for the moment, to be dry. </div>
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The palafitos, famous houses on stilts in Castro<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 20px;">.</span></span></div>
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Watching the fishing</div>
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Laura happy to be hitchhiking!</div>
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Beautiful sunny moment in Chiloé</div>
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We spent the next to nights in Achao, and mid-sized town on a smaller island off of Chiloé</div>
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<br /></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17880747940366409418noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8448043117653522250.post-15574550966565086892012-02-02T15:39:00.000-08:002012-03-21T21:14:50.109-07:00Patagonia! Road Trip Carretera AustralDisclaimer: I've included a few pictures, but will add more as soon as I
get them uploaded. They're nice, but they don't do Patagonia justice.
Also, my laptop is far away in Santiago, and so I am writing this from
an internet cafe in Puerto Varas. This computer believes that every
non-Spanish word I type is spelled incorrectly, and so every word is
underlined by that red squiggle we all know too well while at the same
time the ñ key hovers near my pinky finger, begging to be touched.
You'll have to excuse the spelling errors that I imagined are littered
all throughout this post, beacuse until this very moment I have never
had to imagine a world without spellchecker, much less live it!<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b>La Carretera Austral</b></span><br />
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First things first: this is going to be a long post. I want to tell you about everything, about every beautiful kilometer we covered over twelve long days, but of course I can´t. Still, it´s going to be long, so make your cup of Nescafé before you keep reading, take the time to heat up the milk. When you're ready, sit down, relax, and let me tell you about paraidse.<br />
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<b>Day 1: Santiago to Puerto Montt</b><br />
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The eight of us meet in the Unimark parking lot near Tobalaba in the early hours of the morning, when the light is still gray. As we pack and repack the bags into the two cars, I wonder what this trip is going to be like--we are a strange mix, two Chileans, one Brit, a Scot, and four Americans; we are a range of ages, and we don´t know each other. We all brought hiking boots and backpacks, and Carlos, who planned the entire trip, brought enough gear to see us through any kind of situation: stackable pots and pans, a tiny hiking stove, enough hiking poles for an army, an emergency flood light, a GPS tracker to record all of our hikes, a GPS for the car, a watch with a GPS function, an ipad, a headlamp, extra tents and straw matts for rolling sushi. If we can only fit everything into the cars, we will never be unprepared.<br />
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When the cars are packed we set off, driving south to Puerto Montt. We drive, and we sleep, and when we stop for lunch at a waterfall (if only we knew how unimpressive this small, crowded, beautiful waterfall would later seem) the smog of Santiago is nothing more than a memory. We drive, we sleep, and I lose an earring somewhere in the car. In Puerto Montt, we eat at a restaurant and laugh the way people who are getting to know each other laugh. I am starting to feel at home.<br />
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The first of many, many waterfalls.</div>
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<b>Day 2: Puerto Montt to Parque Pumalin</b><br />
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We take three different ferries, two short ones and one long, four hour trip. The air smells of salt and the tips of the waves are white, but we are not on open ocean; instead, we sail through a passageway between dark green forrested mountains, the land climbing up steeply from the water. The clouds hang low, at times obscuring the mountain peaks, and I can´t help but wonder if those forests climb up towards the sky forever. It´s chilly in the wind from the ferry, but the sun feels good against my skin. After 100 degree weather in Mendoza and the sticky heat of the metro in Santiago, chilly feels good.<br />
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That night, we camp in Cascadas Escondidas, a campsite in the gigantic Parque Pumalin. Brandon makes chicken curry, balancing the wok on the delicate fingers of the cooking stove, while Carlos tries to shove his queen-sized inflatable mattress into his one-man tent. <i>By the end of this trip, I am going to be a true camper!</i> He tells us, and we laugh while he bends and folds the mattress until he somehow makes it fit, although the sides of his tent now push upwards towards the sky, begging to float away. <br />
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After dinner we open wine, a bottle and a box, and Laura and I teach the group how to play <i>Cheers Governor</i>, a counting and drinking game that Barbara cannot grasp, a fact that keeps the rest of us laughing and drinking and yelling at Carlos for cheating. Once!<br />
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View from the ferry </div>
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The ferry was sold out! Luckily, Carlos had bought our tickets weeks in advance. </div>
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Laura is happy to be on the ferry! </div>
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<b>Day 3: Parque Pumalin to Quelat</b><br />
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In the morning we hike <i>Cascadas Escondidas</i>, a trail we rename <i>Escaleras Escondidas</i> because although the path winds around waterfalls that spill out from the rocks and into deep pools, the trail is a mesmerizing tangle of ladders and stairs, the wood moist and shining from the spray of the waterfalls. I have been on very few trails that are so well maintained--wooden bridges skirted over muddy patches or narrow drops, the ladders were sturdy and the stairs never missed a step. <br />
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Parque Pumalin is a pretty incredible place: 3,250 square kilometers (according to Wikipedia) of land, rivers and lakes and temperate rainforest, privately owned but permitting public access. The park is owned by Douglas Tompkins, an American who started and owns both The North Face and ESPIRIT. It´s strange to think that an American owns so much land so far south, so far from home, and that he has the goodwill to own it only to preserve it and keep it open to the public. It's one of those facts that gives you a nice feeling when you learn it, that makes me appreciate even more the carefully placed ladders and walkways.<br />
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After the hike we pack up camp and head to Parque Nacional Queulat, to a campground where we can see the <i>Ventisquero Colgante</i>, the Hanging Glacier. Carlos is ecstatic that we have arrived in time--and with the luck--to see the glaicer in the sun. And it is something to see, the glacier hanging between the peaks of two montains, shining in the last of the day´s light.<br />
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That night after dinner Barbara gets up to wash dishes and trip over the rocks of the fire pit, twisting her ankle as she falls. We don´t know it then, but it will be the last night that we are 8: later, after she sees a doctor in Coihaique and gets an x-ray in Santiago, we learn that she has fractured her ankle in four places and will have to take it easy for a long time. We miss her, and I walk more carefully for the rest of the trip, lacing my boots tightly and prodding rocks with my toes, testing their stability before I jump.<br />
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Una cascada escondida</div>
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<b>Day Four: Queulat to Mañihuales </b><br />
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Ximena and Anthea take Barbara to the doctor (and later to the airport) in Coihauque, the largest town in the area, and the remaining five of us hike to a closer view of the hangining glacier. It´s beautiful, the white-blue ice melting into a waterfall and trickling down the flat face of the rock into wide, still lake with water that´s an incredible soft green. <br />
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Even better than the hike is when we walk to the lake itself and dive from the wooden dock into water that is colder and fresher and sweeter than anything I had ever felt, water that makes my breath short and shocks my skin. The water is brand new, just melted, but ancient at the same time--I can see the glacier it has melted from as I swim, the glacier where it has been waiting, frozen, for longer than I can understand. Only now is it finally free, escaping into a waterfall and then into a frantic river, flowing into this green lake where I swim and swim, where I dive under the water and kick back up to the surface, where I gasp for air and for warmth and feel so alive.<br />
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Somehow, the day continues getting better. We drive further south and hike <i>El Bosque Encantado</i>, the Enchanted Forest. The forest is dense, the trees covered in soft moss, and the light that filters down through their leaves is golden. It feels truly enchanted as I wind uphill, ducking under low branches and stepping over streams. I lose the group when I follow a bird that hops though the undergrowth, calling me, but I only catch a glimpse of orange before it´s gone. I find a patch of honeysuckle growing around a cluster of trees, the flowers intertwined with the moss. The petals are an unbelievable color of red, the inner bud fuscia, and it releases into my fingers easily. The honey is sweet on my tongue, the same delicate taste as the yellow honeysuckles we though were our secret, growing at the base of a palm tree on Victoria. I wonder if this forrest really is enchanted, if the ferries will hold me here forever for that stolen drop of honey. I pull another flower from the vine, just to be sure.<br />
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The path winds further upwards, the forest continues, and I start to wonder if I am lost when the trail breaks out of the trees into a valley. The mountains at the far end are covered in snow, snow that is melting into waterfalls and flying into the sun flooded valley. There are waterfalls on either side of the valley, cascading into the sunlight and gathering into the river that slides through the base of the valley, slipping around rocks and jumping from shallow patches to deep pools. The rocks are warm, baking in the sun, and I plunge into the freezing water all over again, loving the way my skin tingles. There will be no falling asleep on this adventure, I tell my stunned and shaking body, there will be no forgetting. The water feels delicious.<br />
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The hanging glacier--seen in the sun!</div>
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View of the hanging glacier from the lake we swam in. Here, the water looks milky, but there it was purely green. </div>
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Enchanted honeysuckle.</div>
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<b>Day Five: Mañihuales to Cerro Castillo</b><br />
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We drive for a long time, covering fewer kilometers as the pavement falls away into dirt road. The cars leave a trail of dust floating in the air, as if to remind us of the way home, but I only want to look forward. The view out the windows is incredible, snow-capped mountains pushing up into the blue sky, wide swaths of green grass and yellow flowers, and when we roll down the windows the air is fresh, so fresh. Cerro Castillo finally comes into view, a mountain that really does resemble a castle in the way its peaks come to a point, towers trying to puncture the sky. Although we drive with it in sight for a distance, arching around it as if we are caught in its orbit, we can't find the hiking trail we are looking for, the one that is supposed to bring us closer to those towers, and it is getting late. Finally, after driving through two streams and passing a campsite with a sign demanding that we "DOES NOT INSIST" (do not insist? doesn't exist?), the drivers (and car owners) balk at a third water crossing, where the water looks deeper and the rocks bigger.<br />
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We park the cars on the side of the road and trek down a trail headed by one of the least informative maps I have ever seen, a line carved into a wooden sign, squiggling around other markings with no key. We climb upwards with Cerro Castillo in sight, but we don't get much closer. I could describe the hike to you, the view of the mountains, the shade of the forrest, the open fields of yellow flowers in the sun, but you're going to get bored of me soon. When I talk about swimming again, about the cold clear water tugging at my skin, you're going to tell me that you've heard it all before, that it sounds exactly the same. All I can tell you is that it wasn't--it was beautiful, and what we saw the days before was beautiful, too, but somehow all of it was different, incredibly distinct. I stood on the edge of the hill, taking in the view, asking myself <i>what is this life I am living?</i> I could see the world spread out before me, but it seemed like it couldn't be real. It does not insist.<br />
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That night we camp with a view of Cerro Castillo and the Chilean word of the day is <i>festin</i>, feast, because we grill an asado of meat and vegetables and potatoes and we eat it as the sun sets, as soft gray clouds fold onto the horizon. When the stars come out, their light is brighte enough to guide me back to my tent.<br />
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View near Cerro Castillo</div>
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Cerro Castillo!</div>
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Loving the freezing water (the view's not bad either).</div>
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<b>Day Six: Cerro Castillo to Puerto Tranquilo, and a Glacial Exploration!</b><br />
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In the morning, I brush my teeth while a lamb sniffs my foot. I think that it's going to lick the exposed part of my foot, the pale slice of skin between my jeans and my shoes, but it doesn't. My feet, it seems, don't smell lickable.<b> </b><br />
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This is the day Carlos has been waiting for, the day that we drive into the<i> Valle Exploradores </i>and take a guided hike onto the glacier. His excitement may be due to the fact that at the base camp they give us more gear--waterproof gaiters and spikes that will be secured to our hiking boots when we get out onto the actual glacier.<br />
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The first part of the hike is my favorite kind of hiking, where we hop and jump from rock to rock, first alongside a lagoon and then through a sea of rocks they call the <i>morrena</i>, rocks that become smaller and harder to walk on the further we get, until below my feet there aren't rocks anymore but pebbles encased in ice, and then we have to stop to eat our sandwiches and strap the spikes onto our boots, because the glacier has cast the rocks aside and reigns supreme, huge and white, rising in hills and falling into valleys, as though the water was frozen in an instant, frozen in waves.<br />
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Hiking on the glacier is unlike any other kind of hiking I've ever done: you have to pull your feet a little higher when you walk, free your spikes from the ice, and to climb a steep hill you kick your toes into the ice face, trusting the spikes to hold your weight, trusting the ice to support you as you pull the other foot out from the ground and kick it into the ice futher up. To descend you have to lean back, relaxing your arms and sinking almost into a sitting position, and I can't stop myself from laughing while I pound my heels into the ice.<br />
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That night <i>estamos raja</i>, exhausted, and we sit in the living room of the cabaña (hot showers!!!) while Carlos does magic tricks, promising to find the five of clubs that has been drawn from the deck. I'm tired but happy, and looking around me I realize that somewhere between the Unimark parking lot and here, Puerto Tranquillo, a small town on the edge of a huge lake, we've become a family. I never find out if the five of clubs is found (although I'd put money on yes) because I fall asleep right there in the living room, curled up in a chair.<br />
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The Group!</div>
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Me, Anthea, Carlos, Brandon, Laura, Ximena, Brendan</div>
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I like my red wine chilled. </div>
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Climbing down, learning how to use the spikes under my boots. <br />
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<b>Day Seven: Puerto Tranquillo</b><br />
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No driving today! We are staying in the same cabaña for another night, and instead of hiking we take a boat out into the lake, <i>Lago General Carrera</i>, a lake so huge it extends into Argentina, changing its name as it crosses the border. The boat slices accross the water, its motor humming, until we reach the <i>Catedrales de Marmol</i>, the Marble Cathedral. The guide steers our boat carefully into the caves, caves carved from the huge blocks of marble that stretch alongside the water, masquerading as normal rocks. It doesn't look quite like the marble you're thinking of, the marble used for pillars in old churches and countertops in fancy kitchens, because its not polished, but the stone is still incredible--a beautiful dark gray, cut by lines of black and swaths of white. If it wasn't already beautiful enough, the stone catches the incredible blue-green color of the water, that delicate torquoise that seems to shimmer with the understanding of its own beauty. I can't decide what I want to look at, the cuve of the stone or the shine of the water.<br />
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Brendan jumps into the water and swims over to another set of caves, while Anthea and I wait for the other boats of tourists to leave, aching to do the same. When we realize that we're never really going to be alone we give up, peeling off our clothes and jumping into the cold water in our underwear. Ximena and Laura follow us, despite the fact that the tourists in the other boats are taking photos of us, but we ignore them and climb into the caves, feeling the smooth stone under our feet, the curve of the walls under our palms.<br />
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View of Lago General Carrera</div>
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Close up of the Marble</div>
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Marble Cathedral</div>
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<b>Day Eight: Puerto Tranquillo to Cochrane</b><br />
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<b> </b>The color blue was born in Chile. I know I have written more than enough about the color of the water here, about the way it shines and sparkles, but the water in the river Cochrane must have been blue before there was such a thing as torquise, before color could be copied or mimiced. It is a blue so deep Crayola hasn't found a way to put it into a crayon, a blue so pure that the sky itself must be copying the color, sending it out to the world so that every river and lake and ocean can only dream of reaching back to this original shade.<br />
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It´s so blue that I can barely wait a mnute before diving in, even though it shocks my lungs and sends my heart racing. Anthea and Brendan and I swim to the other side of the river and lay on the large rocks there, resting until the sun begins to burn at our skin. We swim back to have an impromptu picnic in the grass outside the car, and then later, while most of the group sleeps and tries to avoid the fierce glare of the sun, Ximena and I follow the trail that climbs up the hills above the river, keeping the water in its sight until it dips down to a small dock shaded by a grove of tall trees. We swim again and then lie on the dock and listen to the wind in the leaves and watch as tiny silver fish jump up from the water only a few feet away from the dock, shining for just a moment in the sun before they splash back into the water.<br />
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We hike back in the perfect hour of the day, when the sun begins to grow tired and starts to tip towards the horizon. When the wind blows warm and the birds come out, chirping and whistling and darting in and out of sight. This is the time of day, Ximena tells me, when everything that lives and grows stops to <i>amanecer el mundo.</i> This is the hour to worship the world. We pull dandelions from the side of the trail and close our eyes, blowing wishes into the wind.<br />
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One lone fisherman in the middle of the river.</div>
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<b>Day Nine: Cochrane to Caleta Tortel to Puerto Tranquillo</b><br />
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We don't like Caleta Tortel. The town is built where two rivers meet the ocean, and there are no cars because the streets are built of wood, perched above the water on stilts. It seems like it would be a cool place to visit, but it is a long dusty drive from Cochrane and when we finally get to Tortel there is nothing to do. We want to eat lunch, but there is no food: the kiosk that sells empanadas only has five <i>papas rellenos</i> left. No one else is selling empanadas (which makes me start to wonder if we are really in Chile at all), the man who hides behind the sign promising<i> helados</i> doesn't know if he has any ice creams left and doesn't seem to know how to check, and the only grocery store, a small shadowy market, ran out of beer on Wednesday. It was hot this week, they explain, and when I ask what kind of cheese they have the woman behind the counter looks at me as though I have asked her to name the capitals of each US state. <i>En lamina</i>, she tells me finally. Sliced. <br />
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There is no turkey or bread to be found (again, definitely not Chile), and so we eat cheese and crackers while we walk back to the car, wanting to get out of that strange town as soon as we can, away from the stares of the men who all wear the same black berets, from the women who seem to look right past you when you smile at them.<br />
<br />
We stop at Cochrane only to pack up our campsite and jump once more into the water before pushing further north. It´s a hard day, a long day, and it feels like we´ve lost something as we turn back north, as the trip begins to end. We camp in Puerto Tranquillo, on the shores of <i>Lago General Carrera</i>.<br />
<br />
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This picture was taken before we realized that there were no empanadas, ice cream, or joy in Caleta Tortel.</div>
<br />
<b>Day Ten: Puerto Tranquillo to Coihaique</b><br />
<br />
Coihaique is proving to be a very dangerous town: we lose Anthea to the same airport that took Barbara as she catches a plane back to Santiago so she can make a conference at the end of the week. It feels strange being only six when we set up camp near <i>Laguna Verde</i>, setting up only the one big tent beside Carlos' one-man tent, which is now staked on <i>top</i> of his queen sized mattress to save time and hassle. Camping, Carlos reminds me, is a state of mind.<br />
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Trees on the hike.</div>
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Laura and I keeping warm by the fire, listening to Brendan play the guitar.<br />
<br /></div>
<br />
<b>Day Eleven: Coihaique to Termas El Amarillo</b><br />
<br />
Today we drive, and drive, and drive some more. Most of the day is great: we are driving through incredible scenery, past lakes that haven't lost their sparkle and mountains that haven't shrunk just because we've seen them before, and we listen to Laura's ipod, spending at least 2 hours singing along to the best 90s playlist ever made. Ximena makes certain that we pick up only the cute hitchhikers, shooting Laura looks as we pull over to the side of the road to let a Brittish guy with an impossibly tiny backpack into the car (it turns out his stuff was stored in Puyuhuapi, where we drop him off). Later, after too many hours of dirt roads I almost kill Carlos and Brandon when they escape with the GPS and drive fifty kilometers further than planned, leaving the four of us in the second car to wonder where they are, to check to make sure our cell phones still don't have signal and listen to the empty static of the walky-talky.<br />
<br />
We camp at the <i>termas</i>, the natural hot springs, but I can't bear the thought of sitting for another second and so I go for a run, following a road thick with white volcano dust. I run for an hour, listening to reggeaton and winding up through the thick woods, and only see one car. The dust from the volcano is so deep that when I turn around and run back I can follow my own footprints, the pattern on the bottom of shoes reflected down to the smallest detail. When I get back, I shower outside under the fountain that releases the water from the hot springs back into the ground. I must have stood there for half an hour, watching my skin grow red, unable to leave its warmth for the chill of the night air. I don't want this trip to end.<br />
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Field near the termas. Not sure why that airplane was there, but it looked cool.</div>
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<br />
<b>Day Twelve: Termas el Amarillo to Puerto Varas</b><br />
<br />
Somehow we are already back here, back to the day of three ferries, only now instead of taking photos from every side of the boat, instead of trying to capture the mountains and the sky and water all at once, I look at the impossible size of it all and think, <i>hmm, that's nice.</i> We're jaded, Laura says, we've seen too many incredible things and I have to agree with her, I'm in some ways worried that this trip has ruined me forever. That I'll find myself peering over the rim of the Grand Canyon and thinking, <i>hmm, that's nice. </i><br />
<br />
We play cards and drink rum and cokes on the long ferry, and sometime after the third hour I run up along the high walkway of the ferry barefoot, and before I can skip back<i> </i>down the steps the wind catches my hair and the light on the water catches my eyes and I am filled again with that sense of wonder, with that full feeling in my chest. I want to laugh and cry and sing and smile all at once, but instead I just breathe. I have forgotten what smog smells like, and that is wonderful. I am jaded, but I am not ruined.<br />
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Always time for one more photo, even if we´ve seen it before.</div>
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<br />
<b>Day Thirteen: Puerto Varas and Lago Todos de Los Santos</b><br />
<br />
When I come back from my run in the morning Brandon, Brendan, and Ximena are packing up the car, dividing up the leftover food and checking to make sure they have all of their shoes. We stand in a circle looking at each other, the six of us, talking about our favorite parts of the trip and trying not to say goodbye. I think I'm going to cry. <br />
<b> </b><br />
And then just like that they leave, driving away as if it´s just another day, and now we are three: Laura, Carlos, and I. Laura and Carlos go to do laundry and I stand alone, barefoot in the grass in the sun and I really do think I'm going to cry. I hate endings, I hate goodbyes, and what I hate most of all is when you don't know how to do them right. When you knew it was coming but you never really believed it.<br />
<br />
But then Laura and Carlos come back, and I remeber that we still have things to see today, and that tomorrow Laura and I are going to Chiloe, and that after that I'm going all the way down to Punta Arenas to see Torres del Paine, and that really the adventure isn't ending at all, it's just picking up speed, starting up all over again.<br />
<br />
And so we hike alongside Lago Todos Los Santos, I swim in the warmest water I´ve felt yet, and we eat seafood in Angelmo (dinner is, to use Laura's words, <i>divine</i>). While we eat Carlos, who introduces us to everyone as his neices and who we tell the waitress is our <i>tio</i>, gives us advice on life and love and white wine. <i>I love, I love my life!</i> he tells us, and I believe him.<br />
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<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17880747940366409418noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8448043117653522250.post-68252679887628875872012-01-13T22:29:00.000-08:002012-01-13T22:29:05.704-08:00CouchSurfing in Mendoza<!--StartFragment-->
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
I’m sitting outside the bus terminal in Mendoza, Argentina,
waiting for someone I don’t know to pick me up.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This is set to be my first CouchSurfing experience,
something I’ve heard a lot about but never been brave enough to try.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The idea is simple: people who have a spare couch or bed and
who want to show other travelers around their city create a profile on the
CouchSurfing website, describing themselves and what they like to do, the kind
of people they get along with.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Travelers who are looking for a place to stay and who want to meet
locals make their own profiles, and then group 2 searches from members of group
1 (who have usually been members of group 2 sometime in the past) in the city
they want to visit, send a couch request, and then if dates and times work
out—BING! a new friendship is born.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
That’s the idea, anyway.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I have a few friends who have traveled this way, jumping
from couch to couch across the continent, and they have all good things to say
about it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The website, too, is
pretty convincing, explaining that CouchSurfing is not about finding a free
place to stay but is <i>a whole knew way of traveling.</i><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I was
excited.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It wasn’t until I was waiting outside the bus terminal,
watching the taxis filter past and looking for someone I didn’t know, that I
started to get nervous.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I was in a
country I had never been to, waiting for someone I had met on the <i>internet</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> to pick me up in his car and take me to his
house.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Hadn’t I seen this story in
more then a few movies, movies that end with the girl kidnapped or dead or
never seen again? </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
When Jonathon (Jonathan! That’s not even an Argentinean
name! This must be a SCAM!!!!) pulled past the taxis in his small white pickup
truck I knew it was him—he looked vaguely like the photos he posted on
CouchSurfing (read: brown hair, sunglasses) and by the way his truck slowed I
could tell he was looking for someone.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
He caught my eye, waved, and then jumped out of drivers seat
to kiss me on the cheek South American style.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We talked as he helped me throw my backpack into the bed of
the truck, and right away I began to relax.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This is the part of the movie where the music would slow,
the air grow tense, but as we drove out of the through the tree lined city
center, windows rolled down to entice the breeze, I could tell that he was <i>buena
honda</i><span style="font-style: normal;">.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I got good vibes.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
My gringa friends and I have talked a lot about how it’s
hard to make friends in Chile—where do you start?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You have to <i>meet</i><span style="font-style: normal;">
people somewhere, for one, and then there’s the whole </span><i>language</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> thing—but while I sat next to the pool with Johnny
and two of his friends, it seemed easy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
As the day began to fade, the temperature dropping
dramatically from extremely hot to a mere kind of hot, we left the pool and
Johnny showed me the area on his ATV.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>He lives in the hills up above Mendoza, about ten minutes outside the
city center, but as we tore across the dirt roads, kicking up dust and leaning
into curves, it felt like I was in another world.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was nothing like Santiago, and nothing like the Mendoza I
had imagined, either—a small, shady city crawling with grape vines and
tourists.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was just fun.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Johnny tried to get me to drive the ATV, but after I caused
a small traffic jam because I <i>wasn’t going fast enough</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> we pulled into the landing field of the Paragliding
club—</span><i>el club de vuelo libre—</i><span style="font-style: normal;">to
rest.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The tall hill up the road
from his house is the jumping point for paragliders, </span><i>parapentistas</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> in Spanish, and we sat in the grass of the open
field and watched them land, some drifting slowly to the ground and others spiraling
rapidly to their finish.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s an
incredible thing to watch, </span><i>parapente</i><span style="font-style: normal;">,
the blue and red and yellow sails filled with air arching over the tiny bodies
of the pilots.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It looks quiet, as
if nothing from the ground could touch you.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
From the air, Johhny says, the city of Mendoza seems
insignificant, a glimmer that looks like it might, at any moment, be swallowed
whole by the gigantic swathes of nothing that stretch in green and brown
stripes from the other side of the mountain.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i>La nada</i><span style="font-style: normal;">, he calls it,
and although there is grass beneath my fingers I am aching to fly.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
From the air, another <i>parapentista</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> will tell me later, everything seems
insignificant.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s a peaceful
sport, but a dangerous one too: reacting too slowly to a gust of wind or
pulling the sail in the wrong direction at the wrong time could send the pilot
freefalling towards the ground.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>It’s a sport that could easily kill you, but that’s part of the
addiction, he tells me: you have your own life in your hands, and there is
nothing anyone else can do to help or to hurt you.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Up in the air, there’s nothing but you and the sky. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
There’s so much I could tell you about Mendoza: about the
huge park at the base of the hills, about the way they call a pool a <i>pileta </i><span style="font-style: normal;">instead of a </span><i>piscina</i><span style="font-style: normal;">, about the open-air disco where we danced until five
in the morning (and were some of the first people to leave), about sleeping up
on the roof in the warm night air, falling asleep with the stars and waking up
to the sun.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I could write for
pages about all of that, but there are two things that have really stuck with
me: the </span><i>parapentistas</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> drifting
just below the clouds and the way this past week I haven’t felt like a tourist
at all, but like someone visiting friends in a new city.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Johnny and his friends treated me like we’d been friends
forever, like it was about time I came to see Mendoza, and they made sure I saw
it—not just the center of the city or the bodegas where the tourists flock, but
the discos they like and the pools that they know of and the beers that are
good on that side of the Andes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I
was a little nervous about traveling on my own, but I hardly spent any time
alone—there were too many people trying to make sure I had a good time.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And in five days, I didn’t speak a word
of English.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Right now, riding on the high of an incredible trip, I feel
the way the <i>parapentistas</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> must feel on
their first flights, when the air has pulled their feet up from the ground and
spread the earth before them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He
realized, one of the pilots told me as we watched his friends spiraling in the
air, his body nothing more than a dark shadow against the sky, that the world
is at once so much bigger and so much smaller than he had ever imagined.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<!--EndFragment-->Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17880747940366409418noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8448043117653522250.post-2615886469330123452012-01-08T22:14:00.000-08:002012-01-13T22:16:49.565-08:00Moving Backwards<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
Where do I start?
It’s been a while since I lasted posted, so I think I’ll go backwards.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>New Years Eve</b><span style="font-weight: normal;"> the
whole country (it seems) makes it’s way to Valparaiso or one of the nearby
beach cities—Algarrobo, Con-con, or Viña del Mar—and in the half hour before
midnight there is a rush of people flooding the streets, pulled down the
painted hills of Valparaiso towards the beach, as if finally, after 364 days of
resisting, they have given in to the pull of gravity.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The beach is already packed by the time the six of us—three
chilenos, two gringas and one aussie—pull off our shoes and slide our feet into
the sand. It’s delightfully cool
under my toes, but there’s no time to linger—we barely have time to find a good
space on the beach and pull our Caronas from Ashley’s backpack before the
fireworks begin. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It was the first time I’ve celebrated New Years without a
countdown to midnight; there was no ten… nine… eight… or even tres… dos… uno…
but instead a mounting feeling of anticipation, a chattering buzz in the air,
and then, right when I started to think that I could stop craning my neck
upwards, an explosion.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I’ve seen plenty of fireworks in my life—on Fourth of Julys,
at Dodger’s Games, on other New Year’s Eves—but I have never seen fireworks
like these. Directly above me the
sky burst with green and blue and white and yellow, and to my left and right,
all the way up and down the coast, there was color raining down over the water. It looked as if the fireworks extended
forever, stretched along all 295,258 miles of Chilean coastlines, celebrating
the fact that the whole country would begin the New Year together. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The fireworks flew for more than twenty minutes, exploding
into every type you could image—sparkling, swirling, spinning—there were even
some that shot up into the air and fell halfway down towards the water, only to
climb back up into the sky all over again. They were all beautiful, but my favorites were the ones that
sparkled yellow and white and fell slowly, hovering mid-sky: when you saw them
from further down the coast they looked less like fireworks and more like an
extension of the glimmering lights of the city, as if the hills of Valparaiso
themselves were growing. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>We looked like aliens. </b><span style="font-weight: normal;">It was the last week of
December and I was with my family in the south of Chile, canyoning in a valley
near Puerto Varas. I had never
heard of canyoning, but it involves hiking (or trekking, as they call it here),
down into the small canyons cut by streams, where you climb along the rocks, jump
into deep water, and slide down smooth natural waterslides that have been cut
by the stream. The water—clear and
clean enough to drink cupped in your hands, no filter needed—is the cold of
water just recently freed from a glacier.
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Because the water is so cold, we are all wearing full
wetsuits—socks, pants, and jackets with hoods <i>(more than ten millimeters of
neoprene!</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> our guide had told us
enthusiastically while we tried to pull the thick material over our bodies at
the hot base camp. </span><i>It’s
supposed to be tight!</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> he said whenever anyone asked for a
bigger size). </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Because the jumps were high and the slides carved from rock,
not plastic, we had bright red helmets strapped firmly on our heads (on top of
the neoprene wetsuit hoods, of course) and clipped securely under our
chins. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
If you could have seen us—an American family of five, a
German man and his twelve year old son, and two Chilean guides—all dressed head
to toe in thick black wetsuits topped with red helmets, lumbering across the
rocks in the river (it’s harder than you think to walk in a wetsuit, and even
harder when your neoprene socks are too big and your shoes too small)—you would
have agreed that we looked like aliens.
You would also have noted right away that my father, with his camera
strapped to the top of his helmet, would be the first to be abducted.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
We didn’t look like we fit into the landscape, but we
enjoyed it. There is nothing like
jumping off a rocky ledge into a pool of deep, cold water; nothing like
paddling with the gentle current until you can slip yourself between the rocks
where the stream leaves the pool and slide, twisting and bumping with the water
until you drop into the next clear pool.
Once you’re in the water, it doesn’t feel alien at all.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>On Christmas Eve<i>, </i></b><span style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal;">I was with my family in Valparaiso. It’s hard to describe what it feels
like to be with your family on Christmas after you’ve been living in another
hemisphere for the past half a year, waking up in a different season. The closest explanation is that it feels
like being with your family on Christmas after you haven’t seen them in far too
long: perfect. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In Chile, Santa Clause doesn’t come tumbling through your
chimney or munch on Christmas cookies after leaving presents under the tree;
instead, sometime before midnight the children go outside to look for Papa
Noel, and in that short time he enters their homes and leaves presents, using
North-pole magic that will never be explained. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
A little before midnight, we left our apartment and climbed
up our hill, Cerro Bellavista, hoping the botilleria wouldn’t be closed so that
we could buy a few more bottles of wine.
We had to walk up a few steep blocks, but the night air was fresh and
the botilleria was not only open, it was busy, with a small crowd of people
passing their pesos through the gates that are locked around the liquor stores
at night. The owner’s son, who
couldn’t have been more than ten years old, stood perched on a wobbly-looking
stool, pulling bottles of <i>vino tinto</i><span style="font-style: normal;">
down from the high shelves and passing them to his father—</span><i>Carménère, Pinot Noir, un Cabernet de Concha y Torra!
Tres mil quinientos, feliz navidad! <o:p></o:p></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
On our way back down to our
apartment we passed children wandering the hills in search of Santa Clause,
urging their mothers and fathers and older brothers to go faster. As we grew closer to home I heard the sound
of a bell ringing, far away at first and then closer, louder, but among the
twisting, hilly streets I couldn’t find the source. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It wasn’t until we were climbing
down the alley of stairs that led to our apartment that I saw him, riding in
the back of a pickup truck, ringing a brass hand-held bell as the truck zoomed
up the steep and winding street opposite our stairs. It was a summer night in a beachside city, too warm a night
for the thick red and white suit he was wearing, but with one hand holding onto
the back of the truck and the wind in his thick white beard, Santa Clause
didn’t seem to care.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
You try trekking across this in a wetsuit</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #222222;"><br /></span></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17880747940366409418noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8448043117653522250.post-4909750336666862382011-10-25T20:22:00.000-07:002011-10-25T20:22:47.094-07:00Teachers, Zombies, and Running in the Park<!--StartFragment-->
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
I’ve been slacking.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s been a while since my last post,
even though so many things have happened and I wanted to write about them
all.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I wanted to write about <i>Dia
del Professor</i><span style="font-style: normal;">, when the kids of 5B
blindfolded me and Miss Cecelia, their head teacher, led us to the classroom
and then threw confetti and popped balloons.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>About how after we all ate cake, and they didn’t believe me
when I told them that we don’t have teacher’s day in the US, or student’s day
either, or no, not even </span><i>Dia del Nino</i><span style="font-style: normal;">
(which is essentially mother’s day for kids).</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
I wanted to write about how to the
school celebrated Teacher’s Day with a lunch for all the teachers in the
eleven-school network, about how we took a bus with plush seats an hour south
of Santiago and the teachers danced in the aisles until one of the inspectors,
the one who always makes announcements at breakfast, told them to sit down and
be quiet.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The restaurant was
beautiful, a low-sitting, ranch-style building that opened into a wide green
lawn.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The meal began with pisco
sours and salad, and their there was the main course while they called names
for a raffle and then dessert, but the real fun began when the raffle was over
and the wine opened and everyone who wasn’t outside smoking was dancing, the
old teachers and the younger ones, the <i>media </i><span style="font-style: normal;">teachers and the ones who teach </span><i>basico</i><span style="font-style: normal;">, Chemistry and literature and computer sciences and,
of course, English.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We danced
until one of the other inspectors, the woman with the dark curly hair who all
the students are afraid of, tripped on the stage and fell.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Her glasses bounced from her face and
swung, tethered to her body by the beaded safety chain.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Someone helped her up and she put her
glasses back on her nose and continued dancing, and everyone else went back to
dancing too, and we danced until the band left, heading for their own bus, and
for a moment I thought we were going to keep dancing, bouncing between the
empty speakers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We didn’t, of
course.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We went to Bellavista for
beer.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
I wanted to write about last
Sunday, when I took Gala, my roommate’s golden retriever, out for a walk.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was a beautiful, sunny day, and the
fountain in the plaza in front of my apartment building sparkled.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I hadn’t even made it out of the plaza
when I saw them, the crowd coming down Arturo Prat.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was a perfect day for a walk, but now there would be
carabineros and tear gas and smoke bombs, and I looked more gringa than ever
walking a blond dog.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I was about
to head back inside when I noticed that the crowd wasn’t normal, that they
weren’t banging pots with heavy spoons but that instead they were staggering,
walking down the street with wild, uneven gaits.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I
paused, stepping back towards the fountain so that I could watch them pass and
still be close enough into run to my building if I needed to.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I waited, peering at the slow moving
figures down the street, and it wasn’t until they were only a few yards from me
that I realized what they were.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Hundreds of people dressed as zombies.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Wearing ripped clothes, covered in fake blood, staggering
like zombies.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>While I stood by the
fountain, a few of them tried to climb the gates in front of the huge church
that sits across from my plaza.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Gala, as well trained as ever, sat down and sniffed at the air, looking
bored.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The zombies groaned and banged
on the metal and probably got fake blood on the stairs, but they didn’t ever
really get close to scaling the fences.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I don’t really think they were trying.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Apparently
a “zombie walk” is a fairly normal thing—at least, it’s something that happens
in cities all over the world.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I
didn’t know this, and so spent at least ten minutes watching the zombies
stagger by my plaza, trying to figure out how this could relate to the student
protests.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There had to be some
connection between the undead and those denied education, between life and
university, right?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Later, I read
in the newspaper that although 2,500 people had participated in the zombie
walk, it didn’t have an organized political message.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>After
about fifteen minutes Gala and I left, walking away from the zombies and then
turning north.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Of course, when we
got to Alameda, no more than ten minutes into our walk, the street was
closed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This time, I stood behind
the carabineros who were redirecting traffic and watched the humongous crowd
wave flags that exclaimed <i>La Alegría de Ser Catolico!</i><span style="font-style: normal;">—The Joy of Being Catholic!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The same newspaper said that almost 40,000 Catholics
participated in this event, and it could easily be true; all I know is that
wide Alameda was swollen from sidewalk to sidewalk, and that when I watched
carefully I could see a few lost zombies, staggering and stumbling through the
crowd.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
But since this a blog, I feel like
I should be talking about things that happened recently—today! Yesterday! Or,
at least, this week.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So I’m going
to tell you about the run I went for on Sunday, sticking to the shady side of
Santa Isabel until I hit Vicunna Mackenna, turning left to run through Parque
Bustamante.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>It
was a perfect day.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Warm, but not
hot.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The sunlight sparkled, the
shade was dappled.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
breeze, light and warm, kissed my cheeks as it slid by, carrying tiny white
flower petals with it, just-bloomed springtime petals that had jumped into the
wind and now floated, dancing their way down through the air.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There was a ferria at the south end of
the park, the vendors spreading their secondhand clothes and hand-made jewelry
across colorful cloths, and their wares seemed to sparkle, the same cheap rings
they sell in every part of the city now shining brilliantly.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I ran past, glad I hadn’t brought any
money with me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>In
the center of the park is a library/café, a building with tall windows and a
wide, open terrace looking out onto a long pool.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I don’t think you’re supposed to swim in the pool—it’s long
and shallow, more of a fountain really—but it was full of kids, splashing and
jumping and yelling to each other.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>There were a few dogs in the pool too, probably strays, panting happily
in the shaded corner.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The
city should build more of these pools for the dogs, because as I kept running I
noticed that the strays that are everywhere, sleeping in the parks and on the
sidewalks and chasing cars on the side of the road, looked cleaner than normal,
and happier too.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And usually I
hate pigeons, but on a bench at the north end of the park a homeless man sat
cradling one in his hands, cooing to it softly, and as the bird sat quietly and
let him it was almost cute.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
I reached the end of the park and
turned around, running back south, when the man with the bicycle cart fell in
beside me, slowly pedaling the heavy weight of the piles of snack bars and
cookies, chips and soft drinks.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I
stopped to let him pass, and that was when I realized that it was a day when
everything was beautiful.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Not just
the trees and the sky and the long shallow pool, but everything.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The bags of lays potato chips hanging
from the bicycle cart swung slowly back in forth, moving to the beat of the
man’s pedal strokes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They
glimmered, those plastic bags of <i>papas fritas</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> swaying in the sun, as if they were something special.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-style: normal;"><br /></span></div>
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Msl-BjtfPAY/Tqd8iXPeQWI/AAAAAAAAAC4/v8nPZx_--Fs/s1600/IMG_0745.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Msl-BjtfPAY/Tqd8iXPeQWI/AAAAAAAAAC4/v8nPZx_--Fs/s320/IMG_0745.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
The plaza pre-Zombie invasion</div>
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<br /></div>
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<br /></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
One week later, the church still looks exactly the same</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-style: normal;"><br /></span></div>
<!--EndFragment-->Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17880747940366409418noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8448043117653522250.post-2976609126915258942011-10-15T10:22:00.000-07:002011-10-25T20:23:36.342-07:00Lacrimogenas<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
I was walking up Arturo Prat towards Alameda, making my way
towards the Universidad de Chile metro station, minding my own business. The walk from my apartment to the metro
takes me somewhere between seven and ten minutes, depending on how far I
stretch my steps, but since it was a holiday and I wasn’t in a rush I ambled,
slowing down to enjoy the stretch of sun between the perpetually closed <i>Mall
Chino! </i><span style="font-style: normal;">and </span><i>Muebles Mundo</i><span style="font-style: normal;">, the furniture store that collides with the sidewalk
as end tables and TV cabinets and long wooden benches spill out its doors. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I was listening to my ipod and I was happy, and I didn’t pay
much to the small fire burning in the middle of the street a block or two south
of Alameda. After all, there’s
always a fire burning in the middle of the street somewhere nearby—I’ve gotten
so used to it that the smell, that peculiar mix of smoking cardboard and singed
asphalt, no longer gives me reason to pause.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I was half a block away from Alameda, less than a minute
from the metro, when the carabineros’ van flew past me, racing towards Alameda
with its siren whining. <i>Really?</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> I thought.
After all, it was Columbus Day, a national </span><i>feriado</i><span style="font-style: normal;">—no one had work or school, and here it isn’t a
holiday controversial enough to protest.
It would have been a good day for an </span><i>asado</i><span style="font-style: normal;">.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
When they’re managing riots, the “vans” the carabineros
drive are more of a mix between tour buses and tanks, dark green and splattered
with paint, heavy grates over the headlights. You can’t see in through the windshields, and missile-shaped
devices for spraying tear gas and chemical-laden water over the crowds swivel
on the roofs. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The van-bus-tank flew around the corner, and moments later
they came running from the opposite direction, twenty or so students with their
scarves tied over their mouths.
They paused halfway down the street, right in front of me, turning to
confront the van-bus-tank that had followed them and sending glass <i>coke
light </i><span style="font-style: normal;">and </span><i>Cristal </i><span style="font-style: normal;">bottles</span><i> </i><span style="font-style: normal;">smashing
into the grated windows. I ran
past them to the cluster of non-students behind the newsstand that was steps
from the corner. There were six of
us non-students: me, the man who owned the newsstand, two younger men eating </span><i>completos</i><span style="font-style: normal;">, avocado and mayonnaise laden hotdogs, a dark haired
woman who clutched her daughter’s hand tightly, and a middle aged woman arguing
with the newsstand owner over a chocolate bar. “No,” she said, pushing the candy back into his hands, “no
Super Ocho normal—Super Ocho </span><i>con mani</i><span style="font-style: normal;">.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
We all jumped at the <i>pop</i><span style="font-style: normal;">
of a smoke bomb exploding. Then,
for almost a minute, it was quiet.
The van-bus-tank took off down Alameda and left the students lingering
in the middle of Arturo Prat, looking almost disappointed. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“El metro esta abierto?” I asked the woman with the
chocolate bar—the kind with peanuts—if the subway was open.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Por supuesta,” she said. <i>Of course</i><span style="font-style: normal;">. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It was only steps away, just across tiny Arturo Prat, but as
soon as I reached the steps that descend underground I saw the gates that had
been pulled across them, closing off the entrance, and in that same moment that
whine of the carabineros’ siren sounded again, and the van-bus-tank came
barreling down the middle of Alameda, and the students rushed towards it, which
also happened to be towards me, and they threw their bottles and burning juice
boxes and I didn’t want to be mistaken for a student but I was already running
when the carabineros began to spray the chemical water, and looking up I could
see it arching right over me, gleaming in the sun. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I ran all the way to the next metro station. It’s only three blocks away, and I
could hear the water hitting the sidewalk as I hurried underground, feel my
heart beating in my legs. My eyes
burned just a little, stung by an edge of tear gas.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Later that night, when he walked me home from the metro I
told him about my brush with riots, using my arms to trace the arc of the water
that had danced above my head. He
could tell that I was just as excited as I was scared and so he laughed,
pointing at the piles of burnt juice boxes and charred soda cans and asking me
why I hadn’t expected something. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Because there’s always a fire or two in the middle of the
street,” I said, and he laughed again as if it wasn’t true. As if by now I should know better than
to leave my apartment without a scarf to tie around my mouth, just in
case. As if I should always keep a
lemon in my purse, pre-sliced and sealed in a ziplock bag. Maybe I should.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-H1_ak7qS0pw/TpnAkcnEmhI/AAAAAAAAACs/p8IevKjGAqg/s1600/IMG_1004.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-H1_ak7qS0pw/TpnAkcnEmhI/AAAAAAAAACs/p8IevKjGAqg/s320/IMG_1004.JPG" width="240" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
"Democracy smells like tear gas"</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
Found this in Valparaiso, and I'm starting to think it's true.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17880747940366409418noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8448043117653522250.post-53084334579307971112011-10-10T21:05:00.000-07:002011-10-12T21:05:50.284-07:00Valparaiso<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
Here, the city buses are called micros. We had ridden one almost twenty minutes
past our stop, past the port and up into next cluster of hills, until the
driver realized we were lost and flagged a micro going in the other
direction. Now we were backtracking,
flying down the narrow winding roads while the new bus driver talked and
talked, turning back to look at us and wave his hands so that we understood
that his daughter really did live in New York City, and his niece and nephew
too, and he laughed at the story he was telling while we barreled around
another blind curve at a speed that could not have been legal (but seemed to be
the standard for micros in Valparaiso, in the same way that the micros in
Santiago can’t help but tailgate each other), somehow sliding past the car
speeding up in the other direction without hitting it. Since the bus driver didn’t seem to be
doing it, I kept my eyes on the road, trying to ignore his gesturing hands and
the bouncing Chilean flags attached my springs to the dashboard. </div>
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<br /></div>
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Up in the hills, we didn’t see a single bus stop; just
people waiting on the side of the dusty roads, holding out an arm as if they
were hailing a cab. At the sight
of their hands the bus driver would pull to a sudden stop, nearly throwing us
from our seats. The doors would
pop open and the potential passengers would tell him where they were going, and
he would yell yes or no, he didn’t go there, and the ones who had found the
right micro would step on as the bus started moving again, and half the time
the doors would still be open while we bounced around the next curve at full
speed, the new additions to our bus standing at the front counting their
monedas while I held onto the seat in front of me and tried to stop myself from
sliding out into the aisle. </div>
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<br /></div>
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When I wasn’t falling out of my seat or wishing I could warn
the driver that another sharper, steeper curve was coming, the hills were
beautiful. The roads were dusty
but the hills themselves covered in green and bursting with yellow flowers, mixing
with the brightly colored houses that were everywhere, pink and blue and
orange, pale and bright, on the top of the hills and down in the narrow
valleys, colorful houses with colorful laundry hanging from the windows, jeans
and t-shirts blowing in the breeze.
When we rolled over the crest of a hill or barreled past a wide
viewpoint I could see the ocean, dark blue and sparkling in the sunlight. </div>
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<br /></div>
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After we finally found our stop and checked into our hostel,
we spent the first day wandering around the city, following the narrow curving
roads down to the flatter, busier part of the city and then back up into the
hills, admiring the murals and graffiti on the walls and the paintings that
were sold everywhere you could see the ocean.</div>
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<br /></div>
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The second day we boarded a crowded micro that took us out
to the beach where one of the parades for the festival of <i>mil tambores</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> (a thousand drums) was being assembled. On the rocky beach the drummers were
gathering, small groups circling and beating out a rhythm.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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Closer to the water there was body painting, and men and
woman stood topless while painters covered their bare skin in color, sometimes
using sponges to make bold strokes but often using brushes to create careful
designs. Some of the paintings
were abstract patterns that crawled up legs and twisted out over backs, but I
saw other canvases holding pictures in their hands for the painter to copy, and
we watched in amazement as faces and landscapes that had once been flat
changed, curving with the shape of a body, so that a tree which had been just a
tree now rolled up a woman’s stomach and between her breasts, coming to life as
its leaves grabbed at her collarbones.
</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Hannah and sat on the rocks in the sun watching all of this
happen, spreading sunscreen over our arms and faces as if it were paint that
just wouldn’t stick. Now, thinking
back, I realize that although we were only a few feet from the ocean, I never
heard the waves. Only the sound of
the drums getting louder and louder and louder, as more drummers came down to
the beach and their circles grew larger, until the rhythms being pounded out by
the different groups began to merge together, a beat that I could feel in my
skin, drumming in my fingers and my feet, my head and my hips, telling me that
if my life was nothing but drums and paint and the sun on the ocean, I would be
happy. </div>
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<br /></div>
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The drumming grew faster, and louder, and faster again as
the painters finished up their final strokes, encircling wrists or smearing
color up necks, until finally, although no announcement was made or bell rung,
they all began to move up from the beach, climbing the stairs into the wide
street. The parade began.</div>
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-xc3cpR9ZEh8/TpZg9DENLxI/AAAAAAAAABs/26rIgdlQCeE/s1600/IMG_0786.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-xc3cpR9ZEh8/TpZg9DENLxI/AAAAAAAAABs/26rIgdlQCeE/s320/IMG_0786.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
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Paintings for sale in Valpo</div>
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-BwCn-osONig/TpZhJ_Ni3tI/AAAAAAAAAB0/Tx7EdLsPDXg/s1600/IMG_0902.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-BwCn-osONig/TpZhJ_Ni3tI/AAAAAAAAAB0/Tx7EdLsPDXg/s320/IMG_0902.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
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One of the amazing murals that are all over the city</div>
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<br /></div>
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-fXz6dOojF2k/TpZhWA_KDrI/AAAAAAAAAB8/Bcbhe4Caaz0/s1600/IMG_0955.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-fXz6dOojF2k/TpZhWA_KDrI/AAAAAAAAAB8/Bcbhe4Caaz0/s320/IMG_0955.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
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We ran into a tiny traffic jam--this car was having trouble</div>
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backing up while another (more modern and less interesting-</div>
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looking) car tried to pass it in the other direction. The whole </div>
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neighborhood--or at least the elderly couple in the window--</div>
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was watching</div>
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<br /></div>
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-J4SqRUZa6dE/TpZhkTgUzwI/AAAAAAAAACE/KPAFLsg3TV8/s1600/IMG_1019.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-J4SqRUZa6dE/TpZhkTgUzwI/AAAAAAAAACE/KPAFLsg3TV8/s320/IMG_1019.JPG" width="240" /></a></div>
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Body painting on the beach</div>
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-jO2BDfvaUPM/TpZhyorp3UI/AAAAAAAAACM/30b6tG2lB08/s1600/IMG_1022.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-jO2BDfvaUPM/TpZhyorp3UI/AAAAAAAAACM/30b6tG2lB08/s320/IMG_1022.JPG" width="240" /></a></div>
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More painting--this was one of my favorites</div>
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<br /></div>
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Xwt_OFjz3jo/TpZh83caMJI/AAAAAAAAACU/H7frZz5OoBU/s1600/IMG_1026.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Xwt_OFjz3jo/TpZh83caMJI/AAAAAAAAACU/H7frZz5OoBU/s320/IMG_1026.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
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Another really beautiful example of the body painting</div>
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<br /></div>
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-QHxa2lkQEfM/TpZiIvcQwzI/AAAAAAAAACc/jbCtYIMzgYA/s1600/IMG_1065.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-QHxa2lkQEfM/TpZiIvcQwzI/AAAAAAAAACc/jbCtYIMzgYA/s320/IMG_1065.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
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Drum circle complete with dancer</div>
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-jRMDWTVC-qY/TpZiSmeShRI/AAAAAAAAACk/7jtFitkJRSU/s1600/IMG_1092.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-jRMDWTVC-qY/TpZiSmeShRI/AAAAAAAAACk/7jtFitkJRSU/s320/IMG_1092.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
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On cue, everyone picked up and headed towards the street</div>
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<br /></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17880747940366409418noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8448043117653522250.post-45150580312432726702011-09-29T14:11:00.000-07:002011-09-29T14:11:25.206-07:00<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px;">Loretta uses her thumb to
wipe the smear of chocolate off Cristobal’s cheek</span>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There are
only a few minutes left of recreo, and as soon as she has finished he races off
to rejoin the game of <i>throw-the-tennis-ball-as-far-as-you-can-and-then-everyone-run-after-it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></i><span style="font-style: normal;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“His mother told me to look after him,” she says, shaking
her head as if she has spent decades keeping little faces clean.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Loretta is in third grade and just
barely taller than my hip.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Is Cristobal your brother?”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I ask.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
She shakes her head again, sending the blue baubles attached
to her hair ties wobbling.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“He’s
just my friend.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
The bell rings, signaling the end of recreo.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Some of the students are lining up, but the boys chasing the
tennis ball run past Loretta and me in a flurry of dust, still intent on their
game.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When the ball comes back our
way again Loretta catches it, gives her classmates a look of exasperation, and
then marches off towards the classroom with her pigtails bobbing behind her.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The group of boys, sweat on their
foreheads and dust on their navy uniformed sweaters, make their way over to the
line outside the classroom door.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Cristobal, at least, has clean cheeks.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The music starts up as the file into the classroom, first
the line of girls and then the boys.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The celebration of the 18<sup>th</sup> of September continues for the
entire month, long past the actual day of independence, and the school is
preparing for the celebratory dance showcase that is happening on Saturday,
when every class will perform a traditional Chilean dance as well as a piece
from another country, and their parents and tios and abuelitos will come to
watch them and eat empanadas.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The music is especially loud here in 3A, close to the center
courtyard where the stage is being built and the dances practiced.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The PE teacher is using a microphone to
call instructions to the dancing students, and he is either holding it too
close to his face or playing the volume too loudly, because his words are
distorted as they bounce into the classroom.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I’m positive that we’ll never get anything done, but I close
the door and Miss Cecilia writes the date on the board, and even though it
sounds like there is a football match or a trivia night going on outside the
students get out their books and stretch their hands up to answer
questions.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Juan Pablo, sitting in
the back against the window, looks out longingly towards the music.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We can’t really see the dancers from
the classroom—just the occasionally teasing flick of a white handkerchief—but
he leans out the open window anyway.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Surprisingly, he is one of the few students who can’t seem to ignore the
music—Javiera, sitting next to him, is dying to tell me that <i>camels have big
flat feet and store water in their humps</i><span style="font-style: normal;">
(we’re reading a book called Wonderful Wild Animals—can you guess what it’s
about?)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The teachers cannot wait for Saturday, because after
Saturday the dance practices will stop and they won’t have to yell over
traditional music from any country.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The students are excited for Saturday because they have been practicing for
weeks and they will finally get to wear their costumes, the long skirts and
wide-brimmed hats.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’m looking
forward to Saturday because everyone tells me it is the best event of the
school year.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The classroom is decorated with red, white, and blue streamers,
and a large Chilean flag hangs on the back wall, the bottom edge draping over
the row of backpacks on hooks.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Loretta is the first to finish the exercise, copying sentences down from
the board and correctly using “there are” versus “there is.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Somehow, even with the sound of the
music and the PE teacher calling out names and steps, almost everyone behaves,
so at the end of class we give out stickers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
All in all, not a bad way to spend an hour.<i><o:p></o:p></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<!--EndFragment-->
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17880747940366409418noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8448043117653522250.post-87706222699382971682011-09-24T11:47:00.000-07:002011-09-24T11:47:30.352-07:00The Dunes of Ritoque<!--StartFragment--> <br />
<div class="MsoNormal">I spent last weekend in Ritoque, a beach about two and a half hours from Santiago and a few kilometers outside the nearby town of Quintero.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If you walk from the bus terminal in town to the hostel on the beach, you’ll see horses crossing the street freely, pausing in their journey from one field to the next to sniff the flowers on the side of the road.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">The hostel is perched above the shore, three small buildings climbing up the hill, and as we ducked through the wooden fence that separates the dirt road from the beach my bare toes drank in the warmth of the sand.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The hostel dogs, Rainbow and Paltita, followed us, and before we had made it to the water’s edge a third dog had joined—a flea-bitten, short-legged mutt we named Groupie for the way he panted after the others.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">The seven of us—four people and three dogs—followed the gentle curve of the coast, keeping far enough away from the water to avoid the frigid sting of the waves but close enough to hear the crunch of shells under our feet.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We walked for a while before we saw the path Angie had described, cutting through the small sand dunes that bordered the beach.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">It grew quiet as we walked past the first row of dunes, the ocean silenced by sand.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>On this side of the world, where the sun didn’t have to compete with the wind, it was hotter, burning a little between my toes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The sand at the water’s edge had been interrupted only by seashells, but here the ground was covered by squat dark green plants.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A set of railroad tracks, looking almost too old to be useable, ran alongside the dunes, its two dark metal rails reaching out towards the horizon.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We walked along the tracks, stepping from one wooden tie to the next, and the unnatural size of each step reminded me for a moment of Pennsylvania, where we used to do the same—shortening our steps from tie to tie, stretching our legs further to bridge the gap when a board was missing.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">We turned left again at the next path, leaving the railroad tracks and cutting deeper into the dunes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The dogs were still with us, scampering around the low-lying bushes and returning to the path every few minutes to check up on our ankles.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As we walked, the plants grew scarce and the path dissolved into dunes much bigger than the first ones we had passed through, steep hills of sand rolling up into the sky.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">We climbed up towards that sky, blue and cloudless, running when the sand was too hot for our feet to stand.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At the top the wind was strong again, kicking sand up against out legs, but we let it beat at us while we stood and watched the world.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Behind us, the dunes seemed to stretch on endlessly.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The Pacific opened in the other direction, and from where we stood the waves that crashed on the shoreline and the bobbing shapes of the surfers waiting to catch them seemed tiny, nothing but specks of color bordering the endless blue.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Standing there at the top, my skin growing red from the joint assault of the wind and the sun, it seemed like there was nothing else: only wind and sun, dunes and ocean.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The sand rolling out from one horizon while the waves spilled out from the other.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Paltita raced down the dune, a cloud of shining black fur and sand, and then collapsed on the side of the next hill, panting happily.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They were flying kites down on the beach, a few shaped like birds or airplanes but most of them the red white and blue of the Chilean flag, the strings that anchored them to the world almost invisible.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I sat down, burying my legs in the warm sand, and Paltita raced back up the side of the dune and then flung her exhausted body down next to me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We watched the kites on the beach below us, Chilean stars tugging towards the sky.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-bn5hzX8bCNw/Tn4lg3hgdQI/AAAAAAAAABo/j2PktDneTOs/s1600/IMG_0715.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-bn5hzX8bCNw/Tn4lg3hgdQI/AAAAAAAAABo/j2PktDneTOs/s320/IMG_0715.JPG" width="240" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">View of the beach from out balcony in the hostel.</div><!--EndFragment-->Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17880747940366409418noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8448043117653522250.post-15696321143058349472011-09-12T16:38:00.000-07:002011-09-12T16:38:03.605-07:00Spring is here, and it sounds like the Cueca!<!--StartFragment--> <br />
<div class="MsoNormal">This coming Monday is the 18<sup>th</sup> of September, Chile’s Independence Day, and the country has been preparing since long before we ripped August from the calendar.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There are Chilean flags hanging on every building and being sold on every corner, and the windows of bakeries are plastered with hand-made signs reminding you to order you empanadas in advance.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In collegio, the students have been practicing the cueca, Chile’s national dance, during the periods normally reserved for both PE and music.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Today, my collegio hosted a Cueca competition that was attended by all the collegios in the EduCA network (there are currently eleven such collegios in Santiago).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Although the competition started early in the morning and lasted the entire day, classes continued as normal for the students who weren’t actively dancing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As normal as you can get, at least, where there is Cueca music pulsing across the yard and pouring into the classrooms, so overwhelming that I found myself trying to explain grammar in tempo.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In sixth grade, Gonzalo slid the wide glass window back open no matter how many times I closed it, flooding the classroom with music while he leaned out to look at the dancers twirling their handkerchiefs under the wide white tent, spinning around and around each other but never quite making contact.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">I can’t blame them for ignoring their workbooks, not when there was so much color outside.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Spring has come with September, with warm winds and a stronger sun, and I was almost hot when I stood on the edges of the tent during my break and watched the dancers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The most fascinating part is the clothing; boys wear cowboy hats, flannel ponchos, and boots with gleaming, sharp-looking spurs while the girls wear bright-colored country dresses that are tied tightly at the waist by a white apron and then open out like bells into wide skirts.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>No one dances without a white handkerchief.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">The older dancers I saw in the afternoon were beautiful, their steps precise, but my favorite to watch were the young dancers who had finished in the morning and spent the afternoon playing in their bright clothing, the boys kicking up dust with their jingling spurs and the girls running after them with their full skirts bouncing, their carefully twisted hair coming undone.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Tia!” one of the boys yelled as he nearly ran into me, handing me a small branch of tiny white flowers, the kind that are blooming in the trees near the kindergarten classroom.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The flowers were slightly crushed, and a little dirty, and before I could thank him he had run off.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The bell rang, signaling the start of the next class, just as a new set of dancers took the floor and the music surged forward again.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I turned and went to class, where I knew the windows would be wide open.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-cFQg1rQCoMs/Tm6XiwUPfqI/AAAAAAAAABY/DZcaMClBLRw/s1600/IMG_0615.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-cFQg1rQCoMs/Tm6XiwUPfqI/AAAAAAAAABY/DZcaMClBLRw/s320/IMG_0615.JPG" width="240" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"> The giant Chilean flag outside La Moneda</div><!--EndFragment-->Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17880747940366409418noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8448043117653522250.post-28302027213117150422011-09-02T21:23:00.000-07:002011-09-12T16:40:19.541-07:00I Like<div class="MsoNormal" style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-indent: 36pt;"><span lang="EN-US">Yesterday, in Primero Basico (first grade), we practiced <i>I like</i> and <i>I don’t like</i>. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-indent: 36pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-indent: 36pt;"><span lang="EN-US">“What do you like?” I ask the class, and both hands and students leap into the air.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-indent: 36pt;"><span lang="EN-US">“Tomatoes! Tomatoes!” Juan Pablo yells as he jumps out of his seat. “I tomatoes!” he is bouncing up and down on the balls of his feet now, ignoring my attempt at a stern look and gripping the edge of his desk so he can jump higher.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-indent: 36pt;"><span lang="EN-US">“Javiera?” I ask, turning to the tiny girl whose right hand is straining towards the ceiling. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-indent: 36pt;"><span lang="EN-US">“I,” she says the first word exploding out of her mouth. Then she pauses, thinking. I squat down next to her desk so that I can hear her better.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-indent: 36pt;"><span lang="EN-US">“I like,” she says, pushing the <i>k</i> sound out of her mouth with effort.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-indent: 36pt;"><span lang="EN-US">I nod.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-indent: 36pt;"><span lang="EN-US">“I like cheese!” she says finally, and although her tongue trips a little on the harsh <i>s</i> at the end of cheese she is smiling.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-indent: 36pt;"><span lang="EN-US">“Good job!” I say, standing back up to address the dozen tiny hands still waving in the air. I ask and they answer for the next few minutes, until Juan Pablo has settled back into his seat and we have discovered that nearly everybody likes ice cream. Miss Yvonne, the head English teacher, is taping flashcards to the whiteboard when I hear Javiera.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-indent: 36pt;"><span lang="EN-US">“Miss!” she is calling, waving her arm in the air. “Miss!”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-indent: 36pt;"><span lang="EN-US">“Yes?” I ask, sitting down on my heels so that the rest of the students can see over me.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-indent: 36pt;"><span lang="EN-US">“What does, ¨ she says, and then stops, her forehead furrowing with concentration. ¨What do you like?” she asks.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-indent: 36pt;"><span lang="EN-US">I think.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-indent: 36pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-indent: 36pt;"><span lang="EN-US">I like when my train leaves the Vicente Valdés metro station, barreling up from underground and out into the morning. It’s early, and only the edges of the sun spill over the mountains, spreading a soft light across the city. I like the fresh smell of outside, a smell of cold and wide open space that pours through the open windows and flushes out the thick scent of the tunnels. I like the sound of the train, the hum it makes as it slides along the tracks in a path that mirrors the curve of the mountains. Most of all I like the mountains that stand steadily in the east, their white peaks pushing up into the sky. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-indent: 36pt;"><span lang="EN-US">Sometimes, the clouds are so low and thick that its hard to tell where cloud ends and mountain begins, what is snow and what is condensation. I like it more when the sky is clear and the sunrise colors the peaks pink, a shade of soft rose that fades slowly into tangerine. By the time I get off at my stop, Las Mercedes, and come out from the station, the sun has pulled itself out into the sky and the mountain tops are white again. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-indent: 36pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-indent: 36pt;"><span lang="EN-US">I turn to look at the board, but there are no flashcards depicting mountains or trains or the smell of a tunnel. Yet I can’t complain, because there are plenty of options—ice cream, cheese, tomatoes, bread, and ham. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-indent: 36pt;"><span lang="EN-US">“Miss?” Javiera asks again.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-indent: 36pt;"><span lang="EN-US">“I like cheese too,” I say, and it’s true.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-indent: 36pt;"><span lang="EN-US"><br />
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</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-indent: 36pt;">View of Santiago from Cerro Santa Lucia, a hill in the center of the city.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-indent: 36pt;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Ar6FR887Xo4/TmGrO9thOyI/AAAAAAAAABM/eVI2qVK774E/s1600/IMG_0459.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Ar6FR887Xo4/TmGrO9thOyI/AAAAAAAAABM/eVI2qVK774E/s320/IMG_0459.JPG" width="240" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
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</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">I also like: fresh fruits and veggies from La Vega!</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-XlOPyKhhDpg/Tm6YHM2P_7I/AAAAAAAAABc/5p75_jamrjQ/s1600/IMG_0500.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-XlOPyKhhDpg/Tm6YHM2P_7I/AAAAAAAAABc/5p75_jamrjQ/s320/IMG_0500.JPG" width="240" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
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</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">Sunrise from Line 4 (the photo doesn't do it justice)</div><br />
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</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17880747940366409418noreply@blogger.com0