ay voy

into the mountains of the araucania...

http://www.trafkuraexpediciones.cl

i'll be back soon

navi-GAG

yes, unfortunately, the navimag got me. as our dear chilean compadre on the boat so poetically expressed, the dormitories turned into vomitories on fine day at sea along the coast of chile. happy happy. joy joy.

we got off this navimag boat last night. after having nothing but good weather our whole trip trekking around the south, we had to get the bad weather on the freakin boat of all things. the patagonian channels seemed like they would have been spectacular, if we could see through the fog and withstand the intense wind that attacked you whenever you stepped foot on the upper decks. it rained pretty much the whole time, cooping up about 150 foreigners in the dining area/lounge. it was, at times, pretty hellish. at least they had lots of films to keep us occupied but there were barely enough seats to accomodate everyone....we ended up sprawling everywhere on the floor and people got pretty vicious over seat-saving.

we encountered the most americans we've seen the whole trip... several retired couples, a pack of alaskans, an obnoxious duo from california, and one very drunk connecticutian. he was the highlight for sure. sivan and i were already getting a little tired of the whole hostal foreigner scene and the daily dose of conversation ("so how long have you been travelling? where've you been? where you headed next? when you going home?") and the irritating competition over who is the more budget-savvy backpacker, or more hardcore trekker or has seen the most people. then we spent 4 days cooped up with nothing but this...i'm starting to want to stray from this type of travelling for a while....
we did however meet a sweet couple who were our bunkmates, an argentinan girl named paola and a hysterical california transplant eric. they met in calafate and were travelling together ever since...super cute and funny and we had a great time heckling drunk passengers with them. we now have a place to stay in buenos aires with paola if the need arises, woot!

on the second day of the boatride we were supposed to leave the patagonian channels and enter the pacific ocean for 14 hours of ocean time....they advised us to take a seasick pill, so we did, and then drugged up and drowsy, they announced a few hours later the weather was too intense and so we would anchor in the channels and wait for better weather. so we ended up staying the night anchored and then, without warning, they launched onto the high seas at about 6am. i awoke to anchory sounds and a sensation like being in an oversized cradle/tilt o whirl ride at the foster city fair. at first, it was kinda fun, then, without warning, el mareo hit me and i leapt off my bed and stumbled my way into the bathroom, slamming back and forth into walls teh whole way there. the loudspeaker lady calmly announced a bit later, "we are now sailing in the golfo de penas", and now i know why they named it such...pena being misery. me dio mucha pena, de verdad. i spent the next 12 hours in bed, ipod firmly implanted in my ears, clutching a plastic bag while my life swayed on in the distance. i've never been on a freakin boat, and i doubt i ever will again. so much for my future as a sailor...

luckily we had nice weather the last day so EVERYBODY was on the upper decks in the sun, after that day of misery. ugh. we arrived late in puerto montt and had the good fortune of meeting a lady at the station who offered us a private room for a good price...turns out she bakes this amazing wheat bread from scratch everyday (maiken! the germans left this influence behind!) so we had the best breakfast we've had in a while. sivan's a bit under the weather (i still feel like i'm on a freakin boat today too) so we'll stay here one more night before heading north again. yay lakes district and araucania!

scalped by torres del paine

i encountered/realized many things during our six days trekking in torres del paine...

= thirty plus pounds of mochila can be incredibly heavy when you are trekking up and down mountains six hours a day
= dehydrated soups and rice don't really feed you, they fill you with sodium
= i can sweat out more water than i consume
= there are so so so many stars in the universe
= when a map says a trail will take you 3.5 hours, that means six hours
= glacier lakes form a color that exists nowhere else (mikey will remember this color)
= hot showers can save your life
= there are some interesting characters that come from all over the world to torres; we met czechs, holandeses, mexicans, koreans, franceses, germans, brits, aussies, canadians, brazilians, españoles, italianos, chinos, and lots of israelis
= palta/aguacate/avocado is the food of the gods
= the wind lives in torres del paine and every night she runs laps around the moutains to amuse herself and to toss the tents around a bit
= to climb a moutnain, you need a mantra to make your pobrecito feet keep moving
= my feet and the earth are one and same
= don't think you can defeat mud, you can't
= the mochila can be your savior and your doom
= there is no water more quenching than glacier water
= in physical endurance you can find fuerza and a calming sort of peace

this has been the most physically challenging week of my life. i never ever ever thought in my wildest dreams that i would be able to do the things i did. sivan and i are amazed at our own strength...and i never would have done it without sivan. i would have wussed out for sure. sixty kilometers in total we trekked, alongside some hardcore trekkers. sivan's mochila tossed her in a stream and yet kept her from getting hurt. my mochila chucked me into mud, and managed to scalp me on a rock...i stood up and a small chunk of hair fell from my head. scalped by torres del paine, yup that's me.

wide open. todo bien.

glaciarrica

we arrived in el chaltén not really knowing what to expect...

el calafaté we had some idea of, being the gateway to a big glorious castle of ice, and oh did we get that. the perito moreno glacier was above and beyond what i ever expected...a true fortress of icey peaks and towers extending between a two mountain ranges that goes on for miles...i was gasping and hopping all the way down the platforms to get closer to the glacier goddess. i could have sat there for days, eyeing that mother as she rumbled like thunder and released pedacitos of herself into the lake surrounding her...there really are no words for her, but i am so very sure that she is one of the great mothers of this earth, for from glaciers come mountains and soil and lakes and all that is holy. you must come pay her some respect. please.

after spending the day courting the glaciers, there wasn't much left to calafaté except some bougey shops and pizza. so we went on a whim to el chaltén...four hours of unpaved road later, we arrived at the gateway to the true national park. all is completely free, park entrance, camping, all of it. so sivan and i, in honor of the día de la mujer, pulled up our mochilas and set out trekking the four hours to the campsite. it was intense, up and down rocky hills with 40lbs on your back...i felt the pain of the llamas and wondered why people do such things. but the view along the way, precioso. the campsite, lo maximo. how can you go wrong when you can see the glaciar looming above your heads as you camp. drinking water flowing fresh from the glacier. i found out why they call them sweatshirts, and i tell you, they hold sweat quite well. it was painful at times, but i can attest that we spend our día de la mujer showing what us womens got. fuerza. for sure.

and that was just the training course. we got back friday evening, cutting an hour off our time. damn straight. tomorrow is the real test, for we leave mañana en la mañana for torres del paine. we're planning 7 days of trekking, doin the "W", this fatty trek aroudn the park. we're planning 7 days so as to give us lots of time to hike without having to rush around with all those kilos of stuff. i can't wait really......

hmm...howabout some random amusing things:

- we continue with our quest to seek out and ride any seesaw we come across, seesaws being the best playground equipment ever invented. unfortunately, sivan got a little too excited on calafatés seesaw and managed to wrap her legs around it as she fell and clunk down hard on her shoulder. ay mujer. it was funny though...why is pain amusing?

- our busdriver to the glaciar perito moreno asked us what part of chile we're from. dammit.

- strangely enough, when we crossed the frontera back into chile, we felt more at ease, at home. argentina isn't our style...me miss all the sipo cachai huevadas. en serio, po. i don't get it either. oh and we missed the avocados. mmmm, so goood.

- today we were the translators for the torres del paine info session at our hostal here in puerto natales...the other atendees were from the czech republic and holland. i was amused by my translations, how my english comes out all choppy in spanish grammatical form.

all this glacier time has opened my head up wide and i feel more tranquila than i have in a long time...thanks for being patient with my lack of postings....my head was much too foggy at first to even express things to myself, let alone commit them to words for y'all to read.

pero, ahora sí. tomorrow the trekking begins...

barilo-CHE (get it?)

i know, i'm crap at writing.

we've left santiago, and we're headed south, that's right...hasta los glaciares. glaciers and llamas and lakes, that's the idea.

after a few days in valparaíso with our crazy friend russ ((he was on the same exchange program as us 2 years ago excpet he never left....he started a hostel in valpo and now he's making bank...he's put all kinds of crazy business ideas in our heads about chliean-startups)), we went back to santiago and spent a few days hanging out and finally feeling reaquainted with the city and the people. finally down with cachais and the slurring...my spanish finally reaquainted with my brain and mouth too.

but we're done with city. glacier time. we're in barliloche now...by pseudo-lake tahoe chillin with the argentine style. there's lots of argentine teenagers here, and since its the last weekend before school starts, there are gaggles of them roaming the streets, flaunting their flawless style and identical shaggy haircuts, mostly making us feel old. we thought about going to a club last night....then we realized all we have are camping clothes and if we were even to enter a club it would be considered an offense against minors. seriously.

we're ready to head on south...we tried to go to the national park here, only to find out you can only reach it via car or by taking a tour on the boat. so we walked along the road...very exciting. at least we found a really great secluded lookout over the lake after three hours of road-following. tomorrow we head for el calafate, where one of the biggest most active glaciers in the world is...perito moreno! woot! the only thing is, we're going to have to take a 28hour bus ride to get there...but knowing sivan and i, who seem to have no problem amusing ourselves with our own absurdity, it will go by quick.

i miss everybody... write me, let me know how things are going at home...this is my connection.

three weeks in, all is well on this continent.