Aventuras Patagonicas

The word "Patagonia" has held a mystique for me since the day I first developed an unaffordable obsession with performance clothing. In fact, my vision of Patagonia the landscape matched my attachment to the windblock, moisture-wicking baselayers made by Patagonia the company: I wanted to experience something so gorgeous and outdoorsy that I would instantly become a more hard-core, rustically attractive version of myself. I pictured myself hopping briskly up rugged cliffs, my climbing gear in my weight-efficient day pack. And now here I was, ready to board my flight to Punta Arenas, my backpack stuffed with application paraphernalia, a sorely underused copy of Spanish for Dummies, and a box of oatmeal. Ready or not, here I come, Patagonia.

We started to get a taste for the scenery to come on the plane flight, which offered us some unexpectedly clear views of the mountains and glaciers below:


After spending a couple days in Puerto Natales repacking our bags, stocking up on trail food, and (yes) sending our GRE scores to graduate schools, we boarded the bus for the Torres del Paine National Park. We were layered for warmth and hungry for adventure.
 

Early morning in Puerto Natales

First view of Torres del Paine


The Torres reflected in a gratuitously gorgeous lake

From our first glimpse of the Torres and the Cuernos, I was like putty in Patagonia's craggy hands. The busdriver, seeing our ridiculous grins, jovially pointed out the picturesque views and commanded us to "take a picture of this," and "get a photo of that." Ah...las gringas felices. We arrived on the east side of the park, set up camp in the Torres campground, and headed out for our first hike. We were sans packs and feeling optimistic, but this first day ended up providing both our most scenic weather and our most challenging climb. We tackled a steep hike with jackets around our waists and sunburns blossoming on our faces, but were more than amply rewarded by the view from the Mirador de las Torres.

Our day two spirits were high from the spectacular scenery and warm weather we'd had for the Torres. We breathed a sigh of relief knowing that we had at least seen one section of the park at its best, and crossed our fingers that those photos wouldn't be the last beautiful ones we took. The day started cool and cloudy, but with patches of friendly sun and some wonderful lake views.

Toward the end of the hike, our faces started to feel the first gusts of the famously strong Torres del Paine winds. We would hear the low roar approaching from across the lake, feel the first wobbles of lost balance, and then have to find a rock or tree to cling to as the wind whipped us sideways and kicked up clouds of swirling mist over the lake.

Oh yes...it's all fun and games when you're trying not to fall on your back like a top-heavy turtle because the wind has turned your pack cover into a sail. But there were darker times to come. We arrived at Refugio los Cuernos, where we decided to set up camp so that we could have dinner indoors away from the increasingly threatening winds. Yours truly began to experience a familiar, helicopter-parent-type anxiety about my tent, and unfortunately the mischievous imp of unforeseen complications that has followed our steps so closely on this trip decided to make another appearance. The second time we went out to our site to check on the tent, just ten minutes after I had made my first paranoid inspection, the strong winds had snapped one of my tent poles and sent the broken shaft through the rain fly. Devastation. I felt like I had accidentally dropped something heavy on my puppy. We had to disentangle the tent, pack up our stuff, and hobble back to the refugio, where I instantly dissolved into tears and broken Spanish.

But in the end, karma gave us a very wonderful consolation prize. The managers of the refugio - no doubt alarmed by my crying, nose-blowing, and incorrect verb conjugations - gave us two beds inside for the price of one. What's more, they gave us an unused tent to borrow for the rest of the trip so that we could finish the hike as planned. I still spent the night mourning for my damaged tent, but we also passed an evening grateful for the incredible generosity of strangers.

The next day we set out into the extremely blustery conditions of the night before. After sweating through all our clothes on the first day, we were now hiking through blowing snow, and ended up having to pass over the French Valley section of the hike because of low visibility and even lower temperatures. But by the afternoon the skies had started to clear and we had wonderful views going into our next refugio.

That night we met up again with three Chilean chicas we'd seen at almost every step of the trail. We had found out the night before that they actually spoke excellent English and were glad to find them again at Refugio Paine Grande. We shared some chips and mini bottles of wine, made dinner together, and ended the night by singing the yodelling song from The Sound of Music. Truly, the start to a fabulous friendship.

We decided to camp the next night with them as well and in the morning packed up for Refugio Gray, which sits right by the park's biggest glacier. The hike is normally a relatively easy three and a half hours, but it ended up being a little bit more challenging with the unbelievably strong winds we met as soon as we crested the ridge and arrived at Lake Gray. We had to plant ourselves almost at 45-degree angles to make progess along the trail, and at one point almost lost my pack cover, Brianne's hat, and one of our water bottles trying to snap a photo from a windy viewpoint. But we did see some great views of the glacier and it's little hoarde of icebergs, and arrived at Refugio Gray very ready for the warmth, rest, and free hot beverages.

That night we made smores over the woodstove with our Chilean chicas, Elaine, Pamela, and Manola. We shared them with the staff at the refugio, who of course gave them the thumbs up. Who could dislike a smore? The guys then stayed and chatted for a while, sharing stories about the park and giving Brianne and I a chance to practice our "understanding, understanding, understanding, COMPLETELY LOST," Spanish comprehension game. We spent a good last night in the tent and then packed up for an early morning hike to the glacier and then back to the boat to head out of the park.

Our legs were exhausted. Our stomachs were begging for something non-rehydrated. But we were incredibly grateful for five days of no grad school, no trip planning or budget crunching, nothing to do but enjoy a place we've always dreamed of going. I may not be the outdoor warrior I thought I would be when I tackled Patagonia, but I definitely have an amateur's little-sibling love for being dirty, tired, and totally satisfied with just a few glimpses of life's beautiful places.

Happy, sleepy, and very ready for a shower

WWOOFing Chiloe, or Things Found While Weeding in the Jungle

When we first read the description of our farm in Chiloe, we felt like just the right people for the job. Homemade, communal vegetarian meals? Yes, please. Yoga and meditation? Sign me up. Growing gardens by the sea? I thought you'd never ask. We felt sure we had everything it took to reap the best of this experience.

We were mostly correct, I think, and did indeed find a lot of the beauty we expected. But we also discovered that we had undertaken our WWOOFing experience with some preconceived notions that would soon encounter challenges on the farm.

(1) We speak some Spanish.
(2) Pulling weeds is kind of fun.
(3) Humans cannot perform photosynthesis.

The first two assumptions quickly failed the tests of, respectively, (1) producing grammatically complete sentences in Spanish and  (2) extracting root structures the size of the New York subway system. The third - despite a very earnest anecdote from our far-out hosts about a man who has lived in Argentina for seventeen years without food or water simply by staring intensely at the sun for a couple of hours a day - we're still going to stick to. Brianne and I do not usually end up on the skeptical side of a conversation, but in the case of human photosynthesis we're going to remain repsectfully agnostic.

At the end of the day, however, we had the unbelievable patience of Nelson and Venecia to give us practice understanding 75% of an incredibly complex Spanish conversation and then answering with a three-word fragment or just "Si, claro." We had the friendship of Tatiana, a great traveler and incredible artist,  who taught us the etiquette of mate-drinking and helped us with this sun mosaic, our artistic project for the volunteer's cabin:

We also had the companionship of Celti and Gata, this adorable duo:

And even after tackling weeding jobs that made us feel like we were scalping the earth trying to pull out Jurassic-age plants (see evidence of our efforts above), we still got to call this place home:

We gave our new panchos a workout in the unseasonably cold Chiloe spring. We acquired yet more artisinal wool to worry Chilean customs officials at a market in Dalcahue. We got enough dirt under our finger nails to pot a geranium. And most importantly we had a week and a half to unpack our bags, our memories of the first month in South America, and our hopes for the rest of the trip. Though our backs may be aching, and our bank accounts might be making feeble protests, our spirits are feeling much better rested for all the adventure left ahead of us. Next step: the very obvious combination of backcountry Patagonia trekking and crafting graduate school writing samples. A match made in heaven.

When in doubt, go to Argentina

There's a strange suspension of reason that starts to take over when you're traveling. Passing fancies that you would ordinarily dismiss as impulsive and borderline delusional - say, for instance, "we've got a few days with nothing to do...why not go to Argentina?" - start to sound like good, carpe-diem common sense. Brianne and I have apparently reached that level of vagabond whimsy, because after our WWOOFing experience in Metri fell through, we decided that what our hearts most desired were the mountains and lakes of Bariloche, the chocolate capital of Argentina.

We took another spectacular bus ride across the Andes and arrived in the windy, ashy ski town of Bariloche. Our hostel left some character to be desired, and their promise of a free "vegetarian-friendly" dinner yielded a questionable plate of white rice in cream sauce (i.e. cream) with vegetables (i.e. three sliced chives). But the workers at the front desk were very helpful, and ended up giving us the use of their partner hostel, now closed for the low season, to work on our neverending graduate school applications. So we spent a day plowing through internet forms here:

With the occasional chocolate break at Rapa Nui, which is pretty much the Argentinian answer to Willy Wonka.

Having satisfied ourselves that Bariloche's cacoa reputation was well-deserved, we decided to follow another travel hunch and explore the mountain town of El Bolson, known as Argentina's hippie mecca. Since our aborted WWOOFing stay had tightened the belts on our budgets, we had written ahead to the owners of the family-run hostel Hospedaje Peheunia to see if they had any work we could do in exchange for a room discount. They had responded enthusiastically but vaguely, and so it came as something of a surprise when we showed up and they asked us in rapid-fire Spanish if we would run the hostel for them for four days while they went out of town. Que? We ended up politely declining, but did agree to man the helm for a day while they did some shopping in town. And we fared pretty well, all things considered, with only the small adventure of giving an Argentinian travel agent a tour of the property in toddler-level Spanish. The rest of the time in El Bolson was spent walking the hills with Canadians, wandering the artesan market, and making foolish purchases of pack-heavy, slow-dry knit panchos.

While we were there we also heard back from a WWOOF farm in Chiloe, Chile. This was actually the first farm that caught our eye, with an emphasis on communal living and vegetarian/vegan cooking. When we first wrote them they were full up for the fall, but thanks to some cancellations they had space for us, and we were very excited to have another chance at the South American farming experience. We boarded a bus back to Bariloche, where we not only spent a night in a much better hostel with a much better view (see photos below), but also accidentally took out too many Argentinian pesos and were "forced" to spend the excess on more chocolate and wine.

Now we're back in Puerto Montt for the night, and headed to Chiloe tomorrow for WWOOF Chile take two. We're not sure what the internet situation is going to be on the island, and so blog posts may take a brief hiatus as we (hopefully) dive into vegetables and meditation. If our trip so far is any indication, there will be plenty of surprises in store.

(Mis)adventures in Metri

The day ended with us making soup in the rustic kitchen of a family home. Just not the home we expected.

The story of how we didn't end up WWOOFing in the Bay of Metri shares many themes with the whole of our trip so far. Don't plan on things working out neatly. Be courageous and flexible in the face of difficulties. And be prepared to stick out even more than you think you will.

After a thirteen-hour night bus from Santiago, we arrived in Puerto Montt on Friday morning. "Chiloe?" a security guard asked us as we left the bus, concluding that Chiloe, the nearby tourist-friendly, hostel-rich island, was obviously the only logical destination for two American backpackers. Interestingly, no. We were headed for the fishing village (and village here is used generously) of Metri. The guard directed us to the rural terminal, where we boarded a mini-bus packed with locals come into town to get groceries and pick up packages. Stops were unmarked, but after repeating "treinta" to the bus driver several times, I eventually communicated that we wanted to be let off at the bridge at kilometer thirty of the highway. He dropped us there, looking more than a little bemused, and we alighted in the Bay of Metri.

Now confident in our ability to navigate rural Chilean highways, we started trying to follow Matthias Doggenweiler's remarkably vague directions to his farm. "Cross the bridge to a hill with some houses," he had said, "and keep going 200 meters until a black inner gate with WWOOF on it." We crossed and recrossed the bridge in both directions. We went up and down several hills. We tried calling Matthias, but couldn't get the call through on our cell phone. We finally asked directions from a kind man across the across the street and were directed back up the steep hill we'd already climbed twice: arriba arriba, he said, just keep climbing until the end.

Finally we found the black gate with the WWOOFing sign and thought we were home free. Oh no, my friend. We walked for some time along a dirt path through the woods, which eventually diverged into several unpromising-looking nooks and crannies, but wherever we searched, we could find neither people nor inhabitable buildings. We did turn up several shabby huts, a small herd of cats and dogs, and some rather run-down fields. We were starting to get a strange vibe. Even if we came across the owners at this point, we were not sure this was the kind of place we wanted to stay.

After searching for a while, we decided to bag it. The property didn't look cared for and our patience had been worn thin by Matthias' laissez-faire directions. We hiked a kilometer up the road, sweat some more, and finally found a little "store" (a room in someone's house) to buy a coke and some potato chips and recover our spirits.

Next we boarded an even more crowded mini-bus back into town, took a taxi to a "guesthouse" (another room in someone's house), where we spent the night, as we had hoped, in all the comfort of a rustic grandmother's cottage. Except with Perla and her half-Swiss grandchildren instead of with our farm hosts. Here we also found out that WWOOFers at Matthias' farm actually stay in one of the shabby huts we saw. There's no heat in the building, possibly no electricity, and no food except what's in the greenhouse (which right now is nothing). So all things considered, we're glad we walked away.

We are now, yet again, in a position to regroup and redeploy. Lessons in flexibility have not been in short supply on this trip, but luckily we are feeling limber. Although, as the photos demonstrate, our appearance became increasingly haggard in the course of the day, our spirits stayed surprisingly high. As we plot our next steps we are thankful to be warm, dry, and happy in the luxury of a free night at the Holiday Inn Express (thank you to my incredible father for letting us use his travel points!). And we are hopeful that in a couple of weeks we will look back and think, "Thank goodness that farm turned out to be a sketchy abandoned field. Now we had the chance to ______." Just follow the clues, as a terrific fellow traveler Ross Ballinger would say. And embrace the unwritten conclusions of your fragile plans.

Of Malbecs and Mendoza

It's a fairly obvious truism in travel to say that every experience ends up being more mixed than you anticipate. Our time in Mendoza has been no exception. While most of the week brought the sunny-and-75 weather we hoped for, we also experienced several days of the "zondas": a strong wind off the mountains that once or twice a year blows cold air and a cloud of unbelievable dust into the city. Schools were closed for the day, and spirits at the Chilean independence festival next door were considerably dampened by the 50% of your lungs that filled with particles the moment you walked outside. (Although that didn't stop them from dyeing a fountain Koolaid-red and singing songs of freedom all night long.) And while our hostel has brought all the relaxation, comfort, and privacy that we desired for application productivity, a highly unfortunate accident involving a patio chair, a snagged charge cord, and Brianne's computer making abrupt contact with a slate floor left us in this situation:

Bottom: Brianne's netbook, completely dismantled. Not pictured: Us, completely freaking out. Top: Max, our friendly hostel worker, who also happens to come from a family of computer technicians. After the dismantle didn't solve the problem, Max eventually called his uncle, who gave me the opportunity to use the word "tio," took away Brianne's netbook, replaced the hard drive, and - because our situation wasn't pathetically comical enough - installed a Spanish-language version of Windows XP. The whole ordeal felt a little like this:

We decided to console ourselves for the lost productivity by compounding it with a six-hour-long wine tasting, followed by a two-hour-long siesta. And I have to say that where wine and olives are concerned, Mendoza has entirely lived up to our expectations. We sampled wines at three very different wineries, ranging from fabulously wealthy to family-run organic. We tried two completely new varieties of wine (Bonarda and Moscatel de Alejandria), learned that your first sip of wine should be to adjust the acidity in your mouth and not to taste, and took far too many pictures of wine bottles. I've included just a few (relatively speaking), as well as a final photo of our lunch spread at the end of the day.

It was a gorgeous end to our time in Mendoza, and though we're not as far along with our graduate applications as we hoped, we're making peace with taking them along for the next step of the trip. Tomorrow we board a bus back to Chile, the beginning of a long adventure down south to an organic farm on the Bay of Metri, where we'll be WWOOFing for the next couple of weeks. In light of our week in Argentina, I'm trying not to draw too many advance conclusions from the local weather report of month-long rain and highs in the mid-50s. Mary Oliver says you should always leave room for the unimaginable, and from smashed laptops to spectacular vistas, this trip has already had a fair amount of the surprising about it. I'll leave you with a couple of photos from the bus ride to Mendoza, which will hopefully be repeated on our ride tomorrow. Wish us luck.