Ahora mas sabor!

Translation: now more flavor! (This title goes out to Mack and Jon, who have had to deal with just how bad I smell after 7 days without a shower)


Wow...I have not had nearly enough time to catch you all up on the trip thus far. Last time you caught up with me, I was sitting in an internet cafe in rainy Coyhaique. Quite a bit has happened since then, so I´ll try to fill you in on all the highlights.


Coyhaique to Entrada Baker



The bus trip from Coyhaique to the park didn´t look too far on the map, but the whole trip followed the Carretera Austral--a tiny little highway running through Patagonia. I use the term highway pretty loosely, because about an hour into the trip, the pavement disappeared and the road got sketchy. Think narrow dirt road twisting and turning through the mountains, often with precipitous drop offs on one side or the other. It took us 7 hours to arrive.


The Park


The bus dropped us off at a road junction in the absolute middle of nowhere. When you don´t speak Spanish and haven´t ever been to a place before, this can be a little disconcerting. Particularly when the nearest town is at least 18km away. Thankfully, shortly after we arrived someone from the park came to pick us up. On the ride in, we saw our first herd of guanacos and a baby skunk waddling alongside the road. He was pretty adorable, and probably smelled better than I do now.



Work

You can barely make out our camp in this picture.

Shortly after arriving, the park staff drove us further into the middle of nowhere to our first work camp. It was a quick turnaround, and I wish I had had more time to relax and decompress after arriving. The lack of decompression time was made up for by the fact that, as soon as we arrived at camp, the staff put on the first of what I hope will be many asados. For those of you that don´t know, an asado is a traditional Patagonia BBQ. In short, they build a big, smokey fire, and skewer a whole lamb carcass in front of it. The lamb slow cooks over several hours, and the result is absolutely DELICIOUS. You can see a picture on facebook.


Our camp was a grassy clearing in the middle of an open hardwood forest with an outhouse, the smokehouse, and a roughly 10´x30´shack, furnished with a cast iron stove. We carried water from the stream a few hundred yards away and cooked all of our food over the wood-fired stove. In short, it was Life, Little House on the Prairie style.


Work each day consisted of taking down and rolling up miles of fences. Taking them down isn´t the hard part; it´s rolling them up that kills you. Try rolling something, made out of heavy wire that doesn´t want to be rolled, over difficult terrain. I am going to have massive forearms by the end of this.


Highlights

First of all, it´s amazing to be in a place that is so far removed from humanity that you can´t hear cars or even airplanes. I struggled with the fact that I was in Patagonia at times, just because there were so few indicators to clue me in to that fact. The forest we were in looked remarkably like the northeast, the folks we were working with were mainly english speakers, and Mack was there (and Jon is here now). But then Mack and I went on an awesome day-long hike, and it became pretty clear that we were in Patagonia.

Other highlights: they have parrots here! Crazy green parrots that flew around our camp every morning, and foxes, skunks, and guanacos. And apparently that only scratches the surface of the area´s fauna. The group of 4 others that I worked with for the past week have been fantastic, and the food (albeit cooked over a cast iron stove) has been delicious.

Life is pretty darn good. I´m trying to figure out how to share the photos that I´ve posted on facebook--hopefully those will be up soon.

And thanks for leaving comments! It´s really great to hear from you all.

Be jealous.

After a 12 hour bus ride from Santiago, Mack and I arrived in Puerto Montt. The bus was significantly nicer than any public bus in the US--reclining seats, a showing of Iron Man, and breakfast. Yes, they serve food on buses here. They barely do that on US airlines!

Puerto Montt was a smallish city, with all that one could expect from such. It did have a very nice beach, which Mack and I sat on all afternoon drinking very good wine. Very good wine which cost about 2 bucks. I could definitely get used to this.

This morning we flew down to Coyhaique. It was only an hour-long flight, but it was seriously one of the most scenic flights I´ve ever been on. For just about the entire flight, we were right over the Andes, looking down on aquamarine lakes and huge snowfields. Then it opened up to high steppe, with a gorgeous earthy palette of browns and greens.

Took a bus from the airport (literally in the middle of nowhere, one runway) with a bunch of gringos and have spent the afternoon wandering around downtown Coyhaique. The central plaza here is shaped like a pentagon, which, for all you urban planners out there, is a novel but horrible idea. Think malfunction junction, but times 9.

We´re headed to the park tomorrow, and I can´t wait. It is absolutely gorgeous here. My kind of place.

In Santiago!

After what seems like the longest trip ever, I've finally arrived in Santiago.

 

The trip looked something like this:

6am Monday Wake up

8am Monday drive Evan to his placement/internship outside of Albany

Drive to Newark, try to find a place to eat

5:30pm Monday, finally board the plane

12am Tuesday, arrive Panama City

12:30am Tuesday, get through customs, realize that there is no comfortable place to wait out my 12 hour layover

1am Meet Phil, a Brit who was in the same predicament as myself.  Lay my sleeping pad down on the hard, hard floor.

3:30 am Realize that only the shittiest American music gets exported to the rest of the world (ie Celine Dion played on a wooden flute).

sleep fitfully for half hour increments.

6am Wake up fully

9am Check in, hang out

10:45am Tuesday Flight boards

8pm Chile time, arrive meet Mack, back to the hostel, food.

 

A long trip.  I'm exhausted.

 

Tomorrow we're going to look into take a bus to the park.  Were going to fly, but come to find out, the tickets are over $200, and we're cheap.  Plus, we'll be able to see more of the country on a nice long bus ride.

 

MIss you all!

Take that, Jay Shafer.

(Jay Shafer, for those of you that don't know, is a) the owner of Tumbleweed Tiny House Company, an awesome company that builds tiny houses, and b) the occupant of an 85 sq. ft. house)

My new house is even smaller.  

Okay, it's not really a house--I'll be living out of a tent for the next few months.  A Black Diamond Mirage, to be precise.  30 sq. ft. of highly-engineered aluminum and nylon and not a whole lot else.  The lap of luxury.  I sincerely hope it can stand up to the wind.

I'm actually really excited to have a two-person tent to myself.  Last time I did this, while traveling through Switzerland for 6 weeks in 2006, I lived out of the smallest freaking tent imaginable.  The thing was so small that I couldn't sit up while inside it, nor could I fit both myself and my backpack inside at the same time.  The few thunderstorms I weathered in that tent were some of the most terrifying and claustrophobic experiences of my life.  Schrodinger's cat: I know how you feel.

This tent feels ginormous in comparison.  I can actually sit up in it!  And if you're looking to get away to southern Chile for a bit, I might even have a little room to share!

Packing.

Only 5 more days until I leave! (Technically we'll probably be leaving on Sunday, so it's only 3-4 days.)  Craziness.

I won't bore you all with the details of the last week--mostly I've been making long lists and crossing out items like "eat breakfast" while leaving items like "register car in NY" unfinished. My typical m.o., really.  Thankfully, time is running short and I've become increasingly more productive by the day.

I spent most of the last two days staring at all of the stuff I own, trying to figure just how much of it I'm willing to carry for the next 3 months and, of that, how much I can actually fit in my pack.  It's a fascinating exercise, and one that I relish.  Ya see, I have this obsession with downsizing.  Every time I move, I ponder how great it would be if I could fit all of my stuff into one car--let alone one backpack!  The opportunity to go through my things and weigh the importance of every single item makes me realize just how much stuff I actually don't need.

So, without further ado, here it is.  Just about everything that I'll be taking with me for three months in South America (minus the laptop):

Yes, I'm a little OCD when it comes to packing.  You would be too if you had to fit all of this stuff (plus a sleeping bag and an extra pair of shoes) in a backpack.

Queasy.

I decided that before I head to South America, I'd better make a cursory effort to eat meat.  Many of you know (and many of you give me shit for the fact that) I've been a vegetarian for the past 2 years.  It's been a good life.  I really, really like vegetables now (my mother is still trying to understand how this happened).  The only downside is that my body is now completely unable to fend of the gustatory onslaught that is beef, lamb, or anything else with a protein chain longer than that of a kidney bean.  Past experimentation, as you would expect, has not been pretty.

I imagine one is supposed to make a gradual transition into carnivory, but I've never been one for gradual transitions.  I like to hit the ground running--dive right into that cold water.  

So I ate a burger.  A big, greasy, delicious burger.

Oh boy, was it good.  

Unfortunately, I now feel like I consumed a small mammal.  A tasmanian devil, perhaps.  I believe it is still alive.  Good food is decidedly un-Macchiavellian.

As if I hadn't given my intestinal track enough exercise, I have live typhoid sitting in little pills in my refrigerator, thanks to my trip to the travel clinic.  That was quite a trip--I spent most of the two hours that I was there waiting, thumbing through a lengthy article on the hazards of travel. 

Apparently driving a motorcycle without a helmet while drunk, stoned, and having sex with a 13 year old sex slave is a bad idea.  Who knew?

I jest.  The article (a literature review, really...and not a great one, given that their research methods included googling) was pretty interesting and further affirmed my belief that good urban planning can alleviate many of the issues that are confronting the developing (and developed) world today.  How to make that happen is a topic for another day...

Holy smokes.

It hit me when I woke up on New Year's Day: I just quit my job. I am home, lying in bed, with a year and a half of who-knows-what in front of me. I am going to South America in 18 days.

Oh. my. god.

It hadn't hit me until that moment. Between the last few days at work, the holidays, and the big move out of Ivy Lane, the idea that I was leaving Brattleboro--actually quitting my job, packing up, and leaving--had been batted around like a pinball. It had all been deliciously abstract up until that point. It was something I thought about when I was bored at work.

And then, there I was, looking up at January 1, 2009 thinking, "Oh. shit."

Thankfully, the excitement kicked in shortly after the initial rush of terror. Yes, I was giving up the stability of a job, health insurance, and a pay check, but I was giving it up for a chance of a lifetime. How often does one get the chance to go to one of the most beautiful places on earth with two good friends for two months? When else am I going to have the opportunity to walk away from a job (and all other responsibilities, really) to travel for a year and a half?

I haven't thought about it much since then, but I've been busy with the Bates family Christmas, cross-country skiing with my dad, and avoiding my brother, who is currently a vector for both a virus and strep throat. I'll be writing more about trip preparations in the next few days, as well as sharing some fond memories from my time in Brattleboro.