Vero's Adventures in Chile and Argentina

Just getting around to writing this now since Lysa and I both were having too much fun to write in a journal or get on a computer. Sadly, she is back in Boston now but what a week we had! While all of Lysa´s architecture grad school classmates toiled over structural problems or worked on job applications, Lysa had the brilliant foresight to predict that a week in Buenos Aires and Patagonia might be a better way to spend her spring break. Not surprisingly, we were both instantly enamored with Buenos Aires. Lysa arrived on an overnight flight and without stopping for a breath or a nap, we headed out of the wonderful Art Hotel in the treelined Recoleta neighborhood to savor every second of our all too brief two days in the-city-that-never-sleeps. We started by having lunch at a restaurant in the Recoleta (called Oviedo) recommended by the great staff at the hotel. (Ironically, we were seated at a table underneath a framed poster from a Whitney Museum exhibition--an auspicious sign?)Although we lived off of empanadas and ham and cheese sandwiches the rest of the week, for this one day, we dined like royalty. A spectacular four course meal with wine at a fancy restaurant set us back about 30 dollars total.

Afterwards, we ventured into the famed Recoleta cemetery, where Evita is buried alongside many other important Argentinian figures I really should know more about. I have never been to a cemetery and never really had any desire to visit one. But this cemetery is not like any others. Picture a miniature city of tombs laid out a bit like Rome. And the different decorative embellishments are dizzying...beautiful art nouveau metal doors, fancy gold inscriptions, statues of melancholic angels, cobwebs, narrow streets filled with cats. Its as unbelievable as it sounds. The skyline is equally dazzling...ornate funerial spires, crosses of every shape and size, and modern neighborhood buildings coexist in this strange but wonderful cacophany.

And then a funny thing happened. We both noticed this super tall blond guy bending over to take a photo and I felt sure I knew him from somewhere. I have a miserable sense of direction, lose things constantly, yet for some reason have a strange knack for recognizing anyone within a 5 mile radius who has ever been in a movie or even a car commercial. So it was killing me that I couldn´t remember this guy´s name. I knew he wasn´t super famous and just had this fuzzy sense that he had been in a movie about an interracial romance (random, right?). I never approach celebrities when I see them but I vowed to Lysa that if, on the improbable chance, we saw him again in the city, that I would find out who he was. And sure enough we practically ran into him 15 minutes later. Knowing it was a strange and tacky question, I nevertheless said, ¨I´m sorry to bother you but you wouldn´t happen to have been in an American movie about an interracial romance?¨ To which he said ¨yes,Zebrahead¨ in the thickest NY accent you could imagine. He then proceeded to chat with us and tell us about all his favorite meals in BA. He couldn´t have been nicer. And we couldn´t resist googling him (Michael Rappaport) later that night. Turns out Zebrahead was his first movie and his recent credits included playing Phoebe´s fireman boyfriend on Friends. Perhaps not such an interesting story to share but when we saw Marisa Tomei the next day and Marisa Tomei´s assistant told Lysa how great she looked in a coat she was trying on, we began to wonder if George Clooney would be hiking in Patagonia when we were.

For our first dinner, Lysa and I headed to the Puerto Madero area for a steak feast at Cabana las Lilas. I had made an 8 pm reservation, figuring that Lysa would be exhausted from traveling all night. We quickly realized that this meant being seated in the all-American section (no self-respecting Porteno eats before 9 pm.) We were too busy getting excited about what we were about to eat, though, to care. Given how enormous the portions were in Chile and what I had heard about the steak sizes at this restaurant, I suggested that Lysa and I split a steak and order a few parillas (grilled meats)....A hilariously misguided idea, as it turned out. Two waiters came over to our table with this huge tray and grill still going only to deliver us each one tiny little sausage...it was delicious but looked rather pathetic all alone on our large plates. The waiters had given us a strange look when I ordered--I think they assumed we were on a tight budget! We laughed and quickly ordered more. Many chorizos and half a steak later, we had both reached carne nirvana. As we were leaving the restaurant, I asked Lysa to pose in front of the open kitchen where you could watch the cooks grilling meat. One of the waiters started gesturing frantically to us and I thought i had committed a horrible tourist faux pas, but before we even knew what was happening, we found ourselves summoned into the kitchen, chef hats appeared on our heads and the flash went off. We ran out of the restaurant laughing.

But there was one last thing we wanted to do on this rainy Sunday night in Puerto Madero. We both really wanted to see the Puente de La Mujer, a bridge designed by Santiago Calatrava. At night, its all white form glows. It´s a hard bridge to describe but picture a diagonal beam jutting out into the sky with harp-like bands of thin steel cable connecting this dramatic form to the other side of the river. People say that it looks (abstractly) like a couple doing the tango...perhaps a raised leg or a woman who is plunging back? I thought it also looked a little like 1950s Eero Saarinen (the guy who did JFK airport and stuff that reminds me of the children´s cartoon, the Jetsons.) And then, even though we were in the city that never sleeps, we decided to break the rules and went to bed. After all, one needs to be well rested to shop!

How to sum up my experiences in this amazingly varied country? I think my feet can sum it up better than I can (not to mention that I am in Pablo Nerudo country so a poem, even if delivered by my feet, seems fitting.)

During this trip, my feet have

...ascended a live volcano

...tiptoed along the ridge of a sand dune at sunset in the Valley of the Moon of the Atacama Desert

...kicked hard to get ashore after capsizing in the glacial waters of the Rio Azul (brrr!)

...helped me keep my balance while scrambling up boulders leading to the glacier carved spires that give Torres del Paine their name

...fled, shoeless, from a burning building in Puerto Varas

...been put to the test by 50+ miles of trekking in Patagonia´s Torres del Paine (no small feat for my feet)

...gratefully received their first official massage at a national park in Chile

...helped me wiggle my toes during yoga classes during my indulgent river rafting trip

...thanked me for putting them in a hot tub overlooking the mighty green river of the Futaleufu (in the aforementioned indulgent river rafting trip)

...danced like they have never danced before on the wood platform of a bar in Patagonia (rivaled only by the dancefloor at Adam and Leonora´s wedding and senior dinner dance at Williams)

...stayed on their designated path during an unforgettable visit to an island in the Strait of Magellan where they carried one very happy penguin admirer

...have racked up 12,000 frequent flyer miles (and counting!)

...have attended other people´s honeymoons (thank you Marlo and Evan!)

...floated in a salty desert lake in the Atacama

...been instructed to wear flip flops so that when they walked across crackled, salt encrusted desert plains, only 5 dollar flip flops would be ruined

...let´s face it, have smelled really bad (what´s poetry without a little reality, and what´s great hiking without smelly feet?)

...shockingly, have not received a single blister yet, and more importantly,

...are eagerly awaiting to see where they will take me next.

Vamos a Argentina!
Veronica

Although petroglyphs appear on virtually every T-shirt sold in the town of San Pedro, I had no idea that actual petroglyphs existed before I came here. None of the guidebooks mention them and only 1 of the 10,000 tourist agencies offers them as a destination. So when I saw pictures of these carved ancient artworks on the walls of Maximus Experience, my heart jumped. I immediately wanted to go. Alas, every agency in town has a four person minimum and even with the new friends that come with travel, I couldn´t think of anyone I knew sufficiently well that I could bully into the trip.

So every day I went into the little Maximus office on the main, dusty drag of San Pedro, and every day Evelyn would kindly greet me and then apologetically tell me that no one had expressed any interest besides me.

But on my last day in the desert, Evelyn had good news. Apparently my persistent nagging paid off and the owner of Maximus, Saturnino (que nombre!) relented. As it turns out, he loves them too and thinks more people should study them.

Although the petroglyphs are located not far from town (just off the main road to Calama) we encountered virtually noone for the entire morning. What we did encounter is a valley where surely dinosaurs once roamed. What I remember most about Valle del Arcoiris (Valley of the Rainbow), aside from the petroglyphs of course, is the green hillsides. They are the strangest shade of green, as if dyed wwith cryptonite. And as always, just when you think you have seen every possible result of erosion in the desert, there were strange new rock formations to blow me away.

The only person, aside Saturnino, that I saw all day was a man tending goats who crossed our path. Apparently the population of this valley was nonexistent until a few years ago, and now numbers a whopping 10. Prior to this surge in population, the only ones I know of are those of many thousands of years ago who carved their legacy directly into the desert´s rocks. We saw vicunas, llamas, flamingoes, foxes, and men sitting in ritualistic positions with strange hats or lines coming out of their heads that reminded me of Egyptian friezes. After seeing vicunas, flamingoes, llamas, and guanacos in the desert, I have to say that seeing images of them made thousands of years earlier felt like a powerful connection to the past. And what´s great about ancient art is that it depicts, very often, animals so as an art historian you need to be able to tell your llamas from your vicunas (I knew my budding camelid expertise would be good for something!) Actually I can´t really tell them all apart on the rocks, but that´s a good excuse to read up and come back to this magical place.

Time for bed. Besos,
Veronica

Hola amigos,
I am going to keep this brief since email shuts down here shortly and the most important thing that happened today (or yesterday given the time difference?) is that my dear friends Catherine and Nick gave birth to a healthy, gorgeous little girl named Josephine! What a happy happy day.

Meanwhile, after hiking through the lunar landscapes of San Pedro de Atacama (Chile´s desert) yesterday, today I felt like I visited the Dead Sea. I had signed up for a tour at one of the 10 thousand local agencies in town (picking it, Maximum Experience, because it takes you off the beaten path.) Boy were we off the beaten path. The desert I saw today looks nothing like the desert I saw yesterday! I knew there were lakes in the Atacama. Afterall, I chose to come here in part because I wanted to see the flamingoes, but seeing the lakes was still surreal. After driving through miles of low shrublike vegetation typical of any desert, we came upon our first one--Laguna de Saja. To give you an idea of how in the middle of nowhere these lakes are, I should mention that right before we arrived, our driver pointed to a tree and said this is how he knows where to find it. Picture the Sahara with one lone tree in the middle. Yep, if that arbol were ever to die, I think these lakes might go with it.

But soon we came upon a gorgeous little lake with very high salt content. One of the young women in our 5 person group (Jillian) was, ironically, a synchronized swimmer from Canada. We quickly dubbed her the Atacama Synchronized Swimming Champion. Heck, we all looked like synchronized swimming champions. I could have stayed there all day.

But there were more lakes to see so our guide promptly doused us all in water. After a few minutes, I understood why. Parts of my back turned solid white and the parts of the body that weren´t splashed looked like they were peeling. And my hair currently feels so stiff, I feel like it has the amount of hairspray one would find in the tresses of a Texas beauty pageant queen.

After visiting several lakes, we concluded the afternoon with a sunset in one of the most remarkable landscapes I have ever seen--picture a flat hard sea of salt for miles, with mountains and volcanoes and the background and occasional pools of water poking through.

But one of the best parts of the whole day was the fact that our guide, Juan Carlos, didn´t speak a word of English. And the Canadians didn´t speak a word of Spanish. I probably wouldn´t have signed up for the tour had I known, but it was a blessing in disguise. To practice one´s Spanish and swim in the desert-now that´s a well spent day.

More manana! Besos.
Veronica

First, just a little note that I am uploading these blogs out of order so you may want to scroll down and see where you last left off, or look at the dates (I am entering the dates when the experiences took place, not when I got around to transcribing them!)

Saludos desde the Atacama Desert! After being deluged with rain in Patagonia during the riverrafting trip, I was excited to be spending four days in the driest desert in the world. Given that one part of this desert hasn´t seen rain in over 300 years, I figured my sunshine odds were pretty good. And pacha mama has come through so far.

The town of San Pedro de Atacama (the gringo base for all travel here) is a funny one. The road from Calama, where the nearest airport is, seems like it couldn´t possibly lead to any kind of human life. But after an hour, small adobe structures and whitewashed churches began to appear. The town is full of character and charm, although many of the locals look like Chilean versions of the grungy teenagers that hang out on Haight Street in SF--the number of stray dogs (as in all of Chile) only adds to this unfavorable connection. Bur you don´t come to the Atacama Desert to spend your time in San Pedro buying tshirts.

I began my first full day in the desert with a visit to the tourist office in the hopes that the book of visitor feedback would help me wade through the 100 travel agencies here. Some of the comments were hilarious (guide was drunk the whole time, hadn´t planned on spending night in the desert, etc.) I decided to take a trip with Cactus Tours because Martin (lovely Brit on my Torres del Paine trek) recommended them and all the feedback seemed to agree. what´s nice about them is that they don´t just show up at a place and join the 14 seater nondescript minivan brigade that shows up at all the popular spots. Instead they head out early so that people can walk for a few hours first.

The hike was utterly spectacular. We walked through canyons of clay and salt with every texture imaginable--a true geological paradise. There were areas of rocky erosion that looked like miniature Gaudi pinnacles from La Sagrada Familia. And after tour hours of oohing and aahing, we reached our natural mecca for the day: Valle de La Luna, as otherworldly a landscape as I have ever seen. It looks like different ecosystems have been put together in Photoshop by someone who didn´t know how to make the edges blend. Dark sand dunes end abruptly and clay hills take over. My favorite part was a landscape that looked like an expanse of pinched dough but silvery blue in color as the sun set.

That´s my short recap of uno dia fantastico. More landscapes to explore tomorrow!