98vcr

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!

During this trip, I´ve often enjoyed one of my favorite vacation luxuries: having no idea what time or day it is. Saturday, March 11th is a day, however, that I will never forget. First of all, it´s my friend Brant´s birthday (happy belated birthday Brant.) And it was the first day of my much-anticipated riverrafting trip on the Futaleufu river of Patagonia. The Fu, as its called, is a big class five river and by all accounts from those who have gone on trips lead by Bio Bio Expeditions, class five fun as well. The riverrafting trip was the impetus for all of my travel in Chile, so needless to say I was excited about March 11th. And there´s no way I will forget the day now, given that on March 11th, the first night of my trip--and the only night we stayed in a hotel--the place burned to the ground.

But let me backtrack a bit before I get to the sordid smoky details. The Bio Bio group was scheduled to meet up for our first big dinner together at a nice restaurant in Puerto Varas, a picturesque little town set on a lake with snow-capped volcanos perched on the other side. There´s a strong German presence in the Chilean Lakes District that is impossible to miss between the gingerbread like architecture and the ubiquitous signs for "shops" (draft beer) and "kuchen" (cake) in restaurant windows.

I signed up for my riverrafting trip on my own but arrived to our first meal with one of my fellow travelers, Laura, who I met coincidentally the night before on the nearby island of Chiloe. I had just crawled into bed in the dormitorio room of my nice hostel when she returned from her day of travel and we discovered (in the dark) that we were not only both from Northern California but also on the same trip. So we arrived to the restaurant the next night, the last two to meet up with the group. My first impression of the group was shock that it was so big. Most Bio Bio groups are a maximum of 18 and we were 29, pretty much taking up the entire restaurant. My second impression was shock that everyone looked so nicely attired. I really hadn´t seen anything other than the standard hiking uniform since I began my travels--hiking pants that convert into shorts, smelly t-shirts and headlamps; not nice blouses and hair that clearly benefitted from a hairdryer, rather than wind. And my third impression was that the group seemed great--a wide range of ages, lots of couples, friends traveling together, a few other solos. Little did I realize how well I´d get to know everyone in the next 24 hours.

After our lovely meal, we all checked into the hotel. This was the first time BioBio has used this hotel--since we were such a large group they decided it might be fun to upgrade and booked the nicest hotel in the entire town. Hotels in Chile always offer a free welcome drink of pisco sour, so we all went to enjoy that and Kennedy, my wonderful twenty something veterinarian roommate from Alabama, and I stayed up late to chat and finish off the vino tinto left by the group. The next thing I remember is being woken from a sound sleep by banging on the door and Kennedy urgently telling me that we need to get out of our room (she had looked out the window and seen smoke. Unfortunately Chile doesn´t have american fire codes and even many of the nicest hotels have no smoke alarms.) I quickly threw on more clothes and grabbed my glasses. We hesitated for a second to debate whether we shuld try to bring more but decided it was time to bolt and just grabbed the little backpacks we had with our passports. I ran out without any shoes.

We made it down our one flight of stairs to find a village of pajama people. I especially remember one guy who wasn´t in our group who had run out with only boxers on. Kennedy and I were among the last to evacuate. But most of us thought that the situation would get under control. There was smoke pouring out of the building but no flames that we could see so we waited in hopes of getting back in at some point. But the smoke got worse and worse and soon we were seeing spiky flames as well. And suddenly I realized that I hadn´t seen Tom yet--our spry, solo 64 year old Vietnam veteran from Vallejo, California. It seemed a little disconcerting because even though we were a large group,I assumed he would be with at least someone from our group. I began to ask around but nobody recalled seeing him so I found Jorge (the riverrafting guide who was our leader for the first night and our soon to be much beloved, intrepid hero.) Jorge went into emergency mode and the next thing we both knew, Kennedy found us and said that he was hanging out of his fourth floor window. The whole situation seemed totally surreal, especially since the firemen´s ladder didn´t reach the fourth floor and it seemed like an eternity before they came up with a plan B. Eventually they rushed him out from the inside. The amazing thing is that Tom was fine and so calm in spite of it all. Chilean journalists were snapping pictures but after coughing a few times he was busy cracking jokes and assuring everyone that he was okay. Later we learned more details: like many Vietnam vets, his hearing isn´t great, he hadn´t heard the knocks on his door (unlike the rest of us, he had the room to himself) and only woke up when the smell of smoke interrupted his sleep. he saw so much smoke when he opened the door that he packed his bags in the dark, threw them out the window, and ran to the window to get some air and help. We joke now that he ended up better off than most of us--not only did he get all of his possessions, but they were dry.

In the end, noone was hurt (thank goodness) and we moved to another hotel up the hill, where we could see the flames continue to consume our hotel throughout the night. It felt like we were witnessig a live version of Turner´s painting of the Houses of Parliaments ablaze. Needless to say, it was very hard to sleep in the two hours we had left of the morning--the fire was still raging.

The next morning, our sleep-deproved group split into half; those of us who had lost belongings stayed behind to make a trip to the mall a town away to buy new clothes. Some of us were shoeless, a few were blind, and everyone was tired. Before hitting the mall, we made a little detour to the hotel to see if anything was recovered. It seemed futile to hope that anything could have been salvaged since what was left of the hotel looked like it was going to collapse at any minute. Miraculously though, many of us on the 2nd floor (including yours truly) recovered a few things--cameras were ruined, stuff was missing, and clothes were sopping wet and smelly but I was thrilled at the prospect of not having to buy clothes for my remaining 4 weeks of travel in one hour at a Chilean mall.

The trip to the mall was, in hindsight, somewhat hilarious. We had three hours to replace our earthly possessions. It felt a little like we were reality show contestants for a reality that none of us had signed up for. Not to mention how silly we all looked roaming the mall in pajamas, borrowed clothing, and unbrushed hair and teeth. Kennedy and I headed first for the bra shop and thoroughly amused the two women working there when we asked to wear our purchases out the store. Ditto for the shoe place since I had no shoes. Adding to the hindsight humor was our poor Spanish. Aside from a small handful of people, my Spanish was among the best in our particular group. That tells you how dire things were. At one point Kennedy and I went to buy dramamine for Susan and Sarah since they get seasick and we had a catamaran ride the next day since we had missed our planes. All I could muster to the pharmacist was ¨necessito¨(I need) and ¨barca¨(boat). Amazingly enough, our choppy, desperate Spanish haikus seemed to work pretty effectively.

But it was easier for us to find humor in the afternoon since we hadn´t lost as much stuff as some people. The wonderful, but initally totally shellshocked 19-year-old Sarah from Minnesota had lost everything and as the youngest person on the trip, and a particularly fashion savvy college student, I am not sure how enjoyable it was to have to buy whatever she could find vaguely near her size, and cheap. I think she was more horrified by the baggy red sweatpants she had to wear all week than she was about the fire itself. The fact that she and her mom had matching clothes clearly didn't help. And then there was Don from DC who owns a fashion boutique and managed to lose 8 thousand dollars worth of clothes. I have no idea how anyone who is just going on a rafting trip and sleeping in tents could have 8 thousand dollars worth of clothes, but the one shirt left on his back was one of the nicest shirts I have ever seen on a man, so I guess it is possible.

But once we actually arrived in the town of Chaiten and were on our way to base camp, we were all starting to come out of shock. It wasn´t long before we were all calling our fire survivor ¨Toasty Tom¨ and cracking jokes about not having to worry abut the 35 pound luggage weight limit for the little plane we were supposed to have taken to Chaiten. And we couldn´t resist referring to ourselves the way the local newspaper had: ¨Touristas sin Ropa" (Tourists without clothes.) That got a lot of mileage and laughs.

There were many good things that came out of our crazy ordeal. After spending 24 sleepless hours together and surviving a fire, we were an incredibly tight group at a point in the trip where we should have still been learning each other´s names. And generosity came out in full force. The entire trip consisted of so much clothing and money lending that it was hard to remember what was who´s by the end of the trip, especially since half the lent items were unfamiliar purchases. (I particularly enjoyed seeing all the guys on our trip use the heart-shaped carabiners I couldn´t resist at the mall.) And we savored our trip, the river, and each other´s company to the fullest. Being grateful to be alive led to some VERY serious partying. And Jorge, the wonderful Costa Rican white water champion who was our fearless leader during the fire, found himself one much appreciated and beloved river guide. At least five times a day we would spontaneously erupt into song: ¨Jorge Jorge Jorge Jorge! That dude is hot, hot, hot. (2 second pause) That dude is hot, hot, hot." God bless Peter (aka Knappy) from Philadelphia for the anthem, and for keeping us all laughing all week.

As the week progressed, I felt like I was on the adventure trip of a lifetime, enjoying one of the most beautiful rivers in one of the most beautiful places...and sharing the experience with Jon Stewart (aka Knappy), many amazing new friends, a male Chilean Alice Waters as our chef (we love you Christian), and with some of the sweetest and hottest riverguides you can image at the helm. (Dad, if you are reading this aloud to grandma now, you can say ´most handsome.´)

Salud!

8 marzio 2006
Saludos desde Pucon, the adventure capital of the Lakes district! I'm writing from a hostel in Pucon I have spent the past few days in (and am thoroughly smitten with) called Ecole. For 16 dollars a night, you get a really comfy bed, sleep above their fantastic vegetarian restaurant (you have no idea what a feat it is to have a good spinach salad in Chile), and spend many evenings with fellow travelers enjoying vino tinto and conversation about everything from Pinochet to glaciers and the movie Old School.

Today was another rainy day in Pucon. For most of the travelers here, that translated to another day that the volcano couldn't be ascended (Pucon's star attraction is a live volcano you can spend the day climbing to enjoy its constantly spewing bubbly brew.) Fortunately rainy days provide a great excuse for other kinds of excursions--in my case, a sorely needed trip to the laundromat, and a 2 hour day trip to Temuco, the biggest city in the Lakes region. Temuco is not really a popular tourist destination--and for good reason. It's pretty much a relatively boring medium-sized town, not terribly pretty or impressive. But it caught my fancy because it is known for its Mapuche markets and crafts. The Mapuche are Chile's largest indigenous population (Microsoft released a Mapudungun version of Windows in 2004), known for successfully resisting the Spanish conquistadors. They are also known for their beautiful crafts, especially their textiles and silver jewelry they made from Spanish coins. Some of the techniques were actually adopted based on knowledge they gleaned from Spanish prisoners.

In the little travel i have done in my life, I have enjoyed seeking out local craft traditions. One of the higlights of my Habitat trip to Warsaw last summer was traveling to a teeny tiny town with my friend, Barbara Measelle, in pursuit of a small museum dedicated to Polish paper cut-outs and traditional clothes that blew us both away.

When I arrived in Temuco at around 2, I headed to a small shop run by a collective of Mapuche women. Although it should have been open according to every guidebook I consulted, metal shutters indicated otherwise. I ventured towards the university area where there was purportedly a great small market dedicated to Mapuche crafts. After being passed by a stream of kids in uniform being let out of school, I came upon the right address. All I found, alas, was a guard who said something to me in Spanish that I mostly didn't understand but the part about being closed forever came through. Ditto for my luck with the local museum (under restoration, of course.) At this point, it was nearing 4 pm and I was beginning to think that I really didn't need to have spent four hours on a bus in order to have some good empanadas.

My last hope was foundation I had read about just outside the city. (Foundation Chol-Chol; www.chochol.org) I hailed a cab, prayed he would know where it was and that I wouldn't pay an arm and a leg to visit yet another "cerrado" sign. It was in his taxi, with a blue and yellow Patagonia flag dangling from the mirror, that my luck started to change. Romeo not only knew where the foundation was, but called it to make sure it was open, and seemed tickled that a San Franciscan would want to pay it a visit. He rattled off questions about my impressions of Chile the whole ride there (fortunately I have learned the verb gustar and could string a few basic sentences together, like "I like the meat." "I like the nature." "I like the Torres del Paine National Park." I didn't catch half of what he told me but I did catch that he loves Patagonia, and particularly Punta Arenas (the penguin city), he doesn't love Temuco but prefers it to the fast pace of Santiago. And he definitely is a big fan of the new president, Michelle Bachelet.

When we arrived at the foundation, Romeo offered to wait as long as I needed to bring me back and i decided to take him up on his offer. A woman came out of the main office who was about my age to escort me to a building fillled with all the textiles. Lucky for me, it turned out that she was French (from Nantes) so we spent the next 15 minutes talking in French. Serendipity, because I could actually ask questions other than, "you like--yes or no?" or "what price?" She told me that she was a volunteers at the foundation, had just moved to Temuco, didn't love the city but loved the people she has met here. She told me that she had been to SF for a fe months and couldn't get over that I grew up there. She also said that individuals rarely visit the Foundation, and especially not foreigners. Most of their business comes from selling at local markets and group visits. I also learned that they do a lot more than sell beautiful crafts. They have started a literacy program and have many initiatives that encourage personal and entrepreneurial skills, particularly among local indigenous women.

I enlisted her help picking out Mapuche earrings to give as presents to friends with imminent birthdays. She got a kick out of the name Hilary (I guess its not common in Spanish or French.) The textiles were absolutely amazing and really not expensive when you consider the time spent making them and their quality. I suspect that I actually found much nicer things than I would have found in all the shops that were closed. Sometimes rainy days and cerrado signs are a good thing afterall.

February 2006
Air travel is really so astonishing. I woke up Friday morning and headed to LAX via Highway 1(and my gracious chauffeurs, Catherine and Nick.) A few airplane meals and interesting conversations with fellow aisle-seated travelers later, I was in Patagonia. Before I could even register which continent I was on, I headed down the block to the local travel agency and boarded a bus to see penguins on the Straits of Magellan. I was worried that I might miss them, once they return to sea after molting and raising their young, the penguin island pretty much turns into a pretty island with a lighthouse. But clearly I needn't have worried. After a two hour ride (which I slept through entirely) I looked through my binoculars and realized that all the specks in the distance were penguins. We're talking about roughly 150 thousand of them. Yes, you read that right! And while I didn't meet all of them personally, I met enough of them to be thoroughlly smitten.

Magdalena Island was actually visited by Sir Francis Drake. But you needn't know this history to appreciate the waddling, flirting, honking creatures we encountered. When we stepped off our boat, the penguins initially seemed a bit shy and sort of hurredly waddled away. there were thin ropes separating us from them and after a while, I felt a bit more like we humans were the zoo, especially since they looked at us with what seemed like the same curiosity that we were directing at them. And in the hour or so that we were on the island, they got increasinly comfortable--honking more and more in our presence, crossing the road with reckless waddling abandon. it was a loud, smelly, deliriously wonderful affair. and watching chilean kids take it in was all the more fantastic (although one particularly cute 3 or 4 year old boy decided to imitate their honking the entire 2 hour boat ride home.)

And while the penguins provided a more than memorable first day to my journey, the day turned out to be all the lovelier when I met Laura, a wonderful woman from Bristol. As one does when travelling, we became instant friends and spent the next few meals together. She's a fascinating person--she designs sets in London and decided that since she has really not traveled very much in her life, she needed to see more of the world. When I met her, she was on the start of a 8 month journey by herself (impressive!). In addition to our mutual obsession over penguins, we chatted about traveling solo. She made a passing observation that its really only in this generation that so many women are traveling solo--the comment has really stayed with me. So few of our parents (male or female really) spent their twenties and early thirties exploring other countries on their own, but its particularly with our generation that you find so many women going solo. I already felt grateful enough to have seen penguins, but that made me even more grateful.

At the moment, however, I am feeling gratitude and sleepiness in equal measure so its time to sign off and head to bed. I hope this email finds all of you well. Pictures of penguins to come!

Love,
Veronica

1 March 2006

You know the saying that eskimos have about 20 different words for snow? Well, Patagonia should have at least 10 names for wind. There is the wind that keeps the condors soaring high above the park, in a corridor of sky that is entirely their own. There is the wind that provided all the electricity and power at the wonderful, eco friendly Cascada base camp. There is also the wind that defies the capacity of all earplugs. I think Bruce Chatwin (author of In Patagonia describes the wind in Patagonia best when he says that it sounds like a fully loaded bus crossing a very old bridge. All the guidebooks warn you about preparing for it. But nothing can possibly prepare you for it. And for all of its astonishing power, it does lead to some very sleepless nights. I worried about being cold and having enough bug repellant. Little did I know.

On day two of my trekking trip in Torres del Paine, we arrived at one of the many refugios in the park that people hike between (picture a ski lodge but much smaller, with meals provided, bunk beds, and plenty of pisco sour.) I crawled into my upper bunk at an early hour, all set for a blissful night of sleep like the first night of sleep I had in the park. No such luck. The wind started to howl like you could not possibly imagine. Visions of Dorothy's house in the Wizard of Oz replayed all night long in my head, only our Wicked Witch of the East was a wind coming somewhere from Antartica (plus an Argentinian tour guide named Gustavo whose snore was as mighty as anything Mother Nature could possibly produce.) And all of this the night before our biggest hike. And to make it worse, I am pretty sure I boasted to our group that I could sleep through a hurricane. One night of Patagonia wind put me in my place.

The next morning, I think I finally woke up at around mile 4 of our journey (it helped that mile 1-3 were entirely uphill.) We ascended what is known as the French Valley and it wouldn't be Patagonia if we didn't encounter every element in the book--rain, sun, clouds, and of course, the fiercest wind imaginable. At one point, the wind was so overpowering, our entire group (including our Chilean guide) ducked for cover as if it were a bomb raid. Martin's glasses flew off his face and would have made it to Argentina if a calafate bush hand't been so kind as to intercept them first.

But what a day. 15 miles of hard core hiking and breathtaking landscapes. We're all struck by how varied Patagonia is. We spent our first day hiking through desert like terrain. Condors were constantly flying overhead, there were songbirds chirping, views of lakes in shades of blue i had no idea existed....and then today, we were running on no sleep, scrambling uphill on rocks half the time, constantly taking layers off and on, secretly wondering when we would ever be finished. But it really was worth it when we saw craggy spires of granite, passed through lush forests of lenga trees, crossed rushing creeks, admired landscapes with waterfalls and the majestic silhouettes of old, wind-eroded trees. The day also reminded me how much we are all capable of. As some of you know, I usually can't run in the morning without coffee first. In Patagonia, we walked 15 miles all on some tea (Chile's biggest downfall, I will say, is its instant-only coffee) and managed to cover spectacular (and spectacularly challenging) ground. In only a day, I went from all the what if's and nervous question marks of starting a trip to the exclamation points that come from awe and exhiliration.

That's it for now. This happy camper needs to enjoy her wind-free night of sleep. Love to you all,
Veronica