Patagonia! Road Trip Carretera Austral

Disclaimer: 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!

La Carretera Austral


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.

Day 1: Santiago to Puerto Montt


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.

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.

 The first of many, many waterfalls.

Day 2: Puerto Montt to Parque Pumalin


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.

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.  By the end of this trip, I am going to be a true camper!  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.

After dinner we open wine, a bottle and a box, and Laura and I teach the group how to play Cheers Governor, 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!

View from the ferry

 The ferry was sold out! Luckily, Carlos had bought our tickets weeks in advance.

 Laura is happy to be on the ferry!

Day 3: Parque Pumalin to Quelat


In the morning we hike Cascadas Escondidas, a trail we rename Escaleras Escondidas 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.

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.

After the hike we pack up camp and head to Parque Nacional Queulat, to a campground where we can see the Ventisquero Colgante, 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.

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.

 Una cascada escondida

Day Four: Queulat to Mañihuales 

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.

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.

Somehow, the day continues getting better.  We drive further south and hike El Bosque Encantado, 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.

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.

The hanging glacier--seen in the sun!

View of the hanging glacier from the lake we swam in.  Here, the water looks milky, but there it was purely green.

Enchanted honeysuckle.

Day Five: Mañihuales to Cerro Castillo

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.

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 what is this life I am living?  I  could see the world spread out before me, but it seemed like it couldn't be real.  It does not insist.

That night we camp with a view of Cerro Castillo and the Chilean word of the day is festin, 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.

View near Cerro Castillo

Cerro Castillo!

Loving the freezing water (the view's not bad either).

Day Six: Cerro Castillo to Puerto Tranquilo, and a Glacial Exploration!

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.


This is the day Carlos has been waiting for, the day that we drive into the Valle Exploradores 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.

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 morrena, 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.

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.

That night estamos raja, 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.

The Group!

Me, Anthea, Carlos, Brandon, Laura, Ximena, Brendan

I like my red wine chilled.

Climbing down, learning how to use the spikes under my boots.

Day Seven: Puerto Tranquillo

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, Lago General Carrera, 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 Catedrales de Marmol, 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.

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.

View of Lago General Carrera

Close up of the Marble

Marble Cathedral

Day Eight: Puerto Tranquillo to Cochrane

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.

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.

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 amanecer el mundo.  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.

One lone fisherman in the middle of the river.

Day Nine: Cochrane to Caleta Tortel to Puerto Tranquillo

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 papas rellenos 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 helados 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.  En lamina, she tells me finally.  Sliced.

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.

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 Lago General Carrera.

 This picture was taken before we realized that there were no empanadas, ice cream, or joy in Caleta Tortel.

Day Ten: Puerto Tranquillo to Coihaique

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 Laguna Verde, setting up only the one big tent beside Carlos' one-man tent, which is now staked on top of his queen sized mattress to save time and hassle.  Camping, Carlos reminds me, is a state of mind.

Trees on the hike.

 Laura and I keeping warm by the fire, listening to Brendan play the guitar.

Day Eleven: Coihaique to Termas El Amarillo

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.

We camp at the termas, 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.

Field near the termas.  Not sure why that airplane was there, but it looked cool.

Day Twelve: Termas el Amarillo to Puerto Varas

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, hmm, that's nice.  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, hmm, that's nice.  

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 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.

Always time for one more photo, even if we´ve seen it before.

Day Thirteen: Puerto Varas and Lago Todos de Los Santos

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.

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.

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.

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, divine).  While we eat Carlos, who introduces us to everyone as his neices and who we tell the waitress is our tio, gives us advice on life and love and white wine.  I love, I love my life!  he tells us, and I believe him.

CouchSurfing in Mendoza

I’m sitting outside the bus terminal in Mendoza, Argentina, waiting for someone I don’t know to pick me up.  This is set to be my first CouchSurfing experience, something I’ve heard a lot about but never been brave enough to try.

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.  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. 

That’s the idea, anyway.  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.  The website, too, is pretty convincing, explaining that CouchSurfing is not about finding a free place to stay but is a whole knew way of traveling.  I was excited.

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.  I was in a country I had never been to, waiting for someone I had met on the internet to pick me up in his car and take me to his house.  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?

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.

He caught my eye, waved, and then jumped out of drivers seat to kiss me on the cheek South American style.  We talked as he helped me throw my backpack into the bed of the truck, and right away I began to relax.  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 buena honda.  I got good vibes.

My gringa friends and I have talked a lot about how it’s hard to make friends in Chile—where do you start?  You have to meet people somewhere, for one, and then there’s the whole language thing—but while I sat next to the pool with Johnny and two of his friends, it seemed easy. 

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.  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.  It was nothing like Santiago, and nothing like the Mendoza I had imagined, either—a small, shady city crawling with grape vines and tourists.  It was just fun.

Johnny tried to get me to drive the ATV, but after I caused a small traffic jam because I wasn’t going fast enough we pulled into the landing field of the Paragliding club—el club de vuelo libre—to rest.  The tall hill up the road from his house is the jumping point for paragliders, parapentistas 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.  It’s an incredible thing to watch, parapente, the blue and red and yellow sails filled with air arching over the tiny bodies of the pilots.  It looks quiet, as if nothing from the ground could touch you.

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.  La nada, he calls it, and although there is grass beneath my fingers I am aching to fly.

From the air, another parapentista will tell me later, everything seems insignificant.  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.  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.  Up in the air, there’s nothing but you and the sky.

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 pileta instead of a piscina, 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.  I could write for pages about all of that, but there are two things that have really stuck with me: the parapentistas 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.

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.  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.  And in five days, I didn’t speak a word of English.

Right now, riding on the high of an incredible trip, I feel the way the parapentistas must feel on their first flights, when the air has pulled their feet up from the ground and spread the earth before them.  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. 

Moving Backwards

Where do I start?  It’s been a while since I lasted posted, so I think I’ll go backwards.

New Years Eve 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.

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. 

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.

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. 

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. 

We looked like aliens.  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. 

Because the water is so cold, we are all wearing full wetsuits—socks, pants, and jackets with hoods (more than ten millimeters of neoprene! our guide had told us enthusiastically while we tried to pull the thick material over our bodies at the hot base camp.  It’s supposed to be tight!  he said whenever anyone asked for a bigger size). 

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. 

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.

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.

On Christmas Eve, 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. 

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. 

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 vino tinto down from the high shelves and passing them to his father—Carménère, Pinot Noir, un Cabernet de Concha y Torra! Tres mil quinientos, feliz navidad!

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. 

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.

You try trekking across this in a wetsuit

Teachers, Zombies, and Running in the Park

I’ve been slacking.  It’s been a while since my last post, even though so many things have happened and I wanted to write about them all.  I wanted to write about Dia del Professor, 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.  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 Dia del Nino (which is essentially mother’s day for kids).

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.  The restaurant was beautiful, a low-sitting, ranch-style building that opened into a wide green lawn.  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 media teachers and the ones who teach basico, Chemistry and literature and computer sciences and, of course, English.  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.  Her glasses bounced from her face and swung, tethered to her body by the beaded safety chain.  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.  We didn’t, of course.  We went to Bellavista for beer.

I wanted to write about last Sunday, when I took Gala, my roommate’s golden retriever, out for a walk.  It was a beautiful, sunny day, and the fountain in the plaza in front of my apartment building sparkled.  I hadn’t even made it out of the plaza when I saw them, the crowd coming down Arturo Prat.  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.  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. 

            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.  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.  Hundreds of people dressed as zombies.  Wearing ripped clothes, covered in fake blood, staggering like zombies.  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.  Gala, as well trained as ever, sat down and sniffed at the air, looking bored.  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.  I don’t really think they were trying. 

            Apparently a “zombie walk” is a fairly normal thing—at least, it’s something that happens in cities all over the world.  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.  There had to be some connection between the undead and those denied education, between life and university, right?  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. 

            After about fifteen minutes Gala and I left, walking away from the zombies and then turning north.  Of course, when we got to Alameda, no more than ten minutes into our walk, the street was closed.  This time, I stood behind the carabineros who were redirecting traffic and watched the humongous crowd wave flags that exclaimed La Alegría de Ser Catolico!—The Joy of Being Catholic!  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. 

But since this a blog, I feel like I should be talking about things that happened recently—today! Yesterday! Or, at least, this week.  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.

            It was a perfect day.  Warm, but not hot.  The sunlight sparkled, the shade was dappled.   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.  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.  I ran past, glad I hadn’t brought any money with me.  

            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.  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.  There were a few dogs in the pool too, probably strays, panting happily in the shaded corner. 

            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.  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. 

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.  I stopped to let him pass, and that was when I realized that it was a day when everything was beautiful.  Not just the trees and the sky and the long shallow pool, but everything.  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.  They glimmered, those plastic bags of papas fritas swaying in the sun, as if they were something special.

The plaza pre-Zombie invasion

One week later, the church still looks exactly the same

Lacrimogenas

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 Mall Chino! and Muebles Mundo, the furniture store that collides with the sidewalk as end tables and TV cabinets and long wooden benches spill out its doors. 

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.

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.  Really? I thought.  After all, it was Columbus Day, a national feriado—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 asado.

 

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. 

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 coke light and Cristal bottles 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 completos, 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 con mani.”

We all jumped at the pop 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. 

“El metro esta abierto?” I asked the woman with the chocolate bar—the kind with peanuts—if the subway was open.

“Por supuesta,” she said.  Of course.

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. 

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.

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. 

“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.

"Democracy smells like tear gas"

Found this in Valparaiso, and I'm starting to think it's true.

Valparaiso

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. 

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.  

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. 

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.

The second day we boarded a crowded micro that took us out to the beach where one of the parades for the festival of mil tambores (a thousand drums) was being assembled.  On the rocky beach the drummers were gathering, small groups circling and beating out a rhythm.

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. 

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. 

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.

Paintings for sale in Valpo

One of the amazing murals that are all over the city

We ran into a tiny traffic jam--this car was having trouble

backing up while another (more modern and less interesting-

looking) car tried to pass it in the other direction.  The whole 

neighborhood--or at least the elderly couple in the window--

was watching

Body painting on the beach

More painting--this was one of my favorites

Another really beautiful example of the body painting

Drum circle complete with dancer

On cue, everyone picked up and headed towards the street

Loretta uses her thumb to wipe the smear of chocolate off Cristobal’s cheek.  There are only a few minutes left of recreo, and as soon as she has finished he races off to rejoin the game of throw-the-tennis-ball-as-far-as-you-can-and-then-everyone-run-after-it. 

“His mother told me to look after him,” she says, shaking her head as if she has spent decades keeping little faces clean.  Loretta is in third grade and just barely taller than my hip.

“Is Cristobal your brother?”  I ask.

She shakes her head again, sending the blue baubles attached to her hair ties wobbling.  “He’s just my friend.”

The bell rings, signaling the end of recreo.  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.  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.  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.  Cristobal, at least, has clean cheeks.

The music starts up as the file into the classroom, first the line of girls and then the boys.  The celebration of the 18^th 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. 

The music is especially loud here in 3A, close to the center courtyard where the stage is being built and the dances practiced.  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.

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.  Juan Pablo, sitting in the back against the window, looks out longingly towards the music.  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.  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 camels have big flat feet and store water in their humps (we’re reading a book called Wonderful Wild Animals—can you guess what it’s about?)

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.  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.  I’m looking forward to Saturday because everyone tells me it is the best event of the school year. 

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.  Loretta is the first to finish the exercise, copying sentences down from the board and correctly using “there are” versus “there is.”  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. 

All in all, not a bad way to spend an hour.