Soundtrack
The Weird Sisters
Lhasa
Bob Dylan... still
Coldplay
Pink Floyd
I arrived in Chile Chico after what I thought was a tu7multuous ferry ride 2 1/2 hours accross Gereal Carrera. In the open part 5 or 6 foot waves threw spray around, enough that water dripped in the van door! Jarek and I bought groceries, petrol, tried to phone a guy who was said to have gone down the river Jeinimeni but couldn´t locate him...
Maria at tha ample hospedaje mad us a big lunch and we chatted and relaxed for an hour or so. Then we started surveying. at 4:30 we left the Land cruiser and after scrambling up and down impossibly steep sandy pampa and negotiating nearcliffs and rocky riverbed we arrived back at the vehicle at 9pm in the dark, with one headlamp and a gps to guide us.
Next day I wait while Jarek sorts out his life, all his stuff. He essentially travels with everything he owns in his vehicle - paragliding, pacrafting trekking... for months. So at 1pm we finally get going and after parking the vehicle and having a quick lunch we continue surveying. For 7 hours we survey and at the end we have surveyed 20 km in total. We walk back to the vehicle but the last 3 km we hitch a ride in an estancia owners truck. Red and green cliffs drop down to the river far below, cleaving the dry pampa in two, Argentina on one side and Chile on the other. River below, with bizarre cliffs of mud and almost-sedimentary rock and to the left mars-like protrusions of red rock from the eery green pasture. And above, shadowy lenticular clouds sit like looming pacific tornados. And the wind is howling.
At times, as we slid down impossibly steep sandy banks I was reminded of my childhood at our grandparents cottage when Maura Stephan Monica and I would slide down the sandy banks off the dirt road from the cottage - they seemed so big then and it didn´t matter that we got so dirty.
We camped by the river and the next day set out at 11:30 to finish surveying, as the rest of the river runs right along the road, within one kilometer. This part we surveyed much more easily and by 5pm we reached Lago Jeinimeni in the park, among the red and green and rusty mountains. The road into the park would be absolutely impossible without a massive 4*4 vehicle - we cross rivers and its like a mountain not a road.
I had never been in a packraft so we ran the first 4-5 km of the river that evening to get me used to the feeling - the level was very low so we were hitting our asses on rocks alot especially so high up the river where no rivers have joined yet. As we sat by the fire drying our stuff two trucks pulled up full of American and Argentine fisherman. They turned out to be suuper nice and they ended up shuttling us back after day two. They found us on the dark road under the patagonian moon on the dark pampa, wet and tired after 8 hours of paddling down half the river. We bumbed our way down between the cliffs and scooted through canyons. As we passed more and more confluences, the water got bigger and bigger - more fun less bumping asses. After this day, I had sunstroke, a sore shoulder and was beat tired. We listened to Bob Dylan (at my request) in the truck with Taylor and Pedro under the dark sky on a black road winding through the immense pampa. There may have been one moment where we were all secretly singing "...and how does it feel to be onyour own..."
We ate in silence under the shadow of the dark mountains and we went to bed. The next day, after lots of laughter and some warm goodbyes we left, hitting the water where we had taken out the day before, at the late hour of2pm. A little 13 year old boy from the estancia where we parked the vehicle came down to watch us wet up and set out. Long day. Bigger water. Not as bumpy because of the bigger volume but sometimes a bit scary. I) had some close calls, got pinned on some boulders and filled with water but never flipped. Even at one point got pinned, filled with water and spun around backwards in some big stuff, but i recovered and got to shore via an eddy and emptied out!
Once the canyon opened up into an ample river valley things were more fun, it was like being at a water park!The last ten km was less turbulent. We reached the bridge just before the river empties into Lago General Carrera and we packed up at dark and hiked the 8km into town, wet, tired, with all our gear! At 200m from the hospedaje two vehicles pulled over... the fisherman!!! bad timing though it would have been better if we didn´t have to walk the 8 km! As we traversed the final 4 km into town invisible dogs barked and growled at us prompting us to pick up sticks and stones for security. One even appeard under the cloud and the pitch black and the one flickering street lamp to bark and menace in person at the queer sight that we were... but we were fine and arrived for a warm shower a huge meal and a comfortable bed!
The next morning I bought lunch and we left the hospedaje to hitch back to the car... who should go by us not 100m from the hostel but the fisherman going to fish for another hour before their return to Coihaique. We jumped in the back of the pickup with three dogs, two coolers and a ton of fishing gear and went halfway, before they decided they didn´t have time to fish and had to drop us. We walked 8km and then got a ride the last three or so to the car, ate and came back.
In the end it was the first time I had ever packrafted! We were the first people, as far as we know, to go down the Jeinimeni from ist source at Lago Jeinimeni all the way to the mouth at General Carrera. 60km of pure class III which is not hard but there were essentially no breaks so it was right tiring! Its not as crazy as it sounds but its probably alot more fun than it sounds! A BLAST!! and lots of great scenery and people as well as some really cold water and some intense surveying!
Yesterday I walked across the Chilean/Argentine border, only getting a ride the last three kilometers to Los Antiguos where I got a bus to Rio Gallegos and from there to Puerto Natales. I have begun the pilgrimage that 150,000 eco-blind tourists do each year. I am in the goretex mecca of south america and I will soon be in one of the most famous national parks in South America, Torres del Paine. Hopefully i can locate the beaten track, and get off it!!!
As I walked in the heat of the pampa I sang Lhasa de Sela´s "La Fronter" (The Border) in my head - a beautful song - look it up on Youtube!!!
Poetry.
A question for the wind
I ask the wind about those white bones
That scatter the sandy ground, and about
The sun that beats the neverending pampa
Till it goes red and green and mars-like;
I ask the wind about this canyon,
That cleaves deep into the green plateau
And about these forgotten sheep, mummified
And parched by the cracking heat and a red sunset
Creeping to the cliffs and falling down the mud;
I ask the wind about the golden grasses,
Sparkling each morning with dew like delicate eyelashes
Until they dry and become mirrors to the sun,
Tufts exploding from the sand and the low thistles;
I ask the wind about the permanent wind
And to all this it howls; it whispers; it coos
And it cries; it even screams sometimes in the rocks
But it never answers me
The Antioasis*
There is nothing out ther:
An endless string of white towers
And a universe of parched tufts of grass
All shades of burnt, where except for fence posts
That run the endless sleepy road, direction does not exist
Under a baby blue, a steel-speckled sky
Oh, and the rusting skulls of sheep
Forgoitten on the plateau unable to hid from the sun,
And the rotting carcasses of cars dead of old age,
A spot on the universe, a spot on this exhausted land.
* * *
When there is nothing everything is garbage
Because everything pollutes nothingness.
There there is a petroleum antioasis in the flat plateau
When lines of poplars and pines like weeds
Are the only break in the rusted corrugated metal
And sloppy red hollow bricks,
When a disorganized mess of rusty oil barrells
And containers mar the incomprehensibly human
Grid on a star gazing pampa and old toothless men
Bored, even of the bottle and burnt from the long sun
Pace 20m sections of stupid perfect sidewalk
Between bricks and garbage and a coke bottle
And when this antioasis is ringed and cordoned
By inhabited enclaves of junk and barbed wire
Where remnants of millions of plastic bags cling to its teeth
And suffocate this place so all you can do is
Watch the shimmering lights move slowly out like ants
To smaller oases on the infinite flat,
When all there is to wait for in the day is
The swirling dust, and a few dollars, you just
Numbly stare at the ass in front of you, even if its not
Beautiful - or a better thing would be to look for a street
At the right moment, that runs east-west
And watch the sunset in colours (the only colours out here)
And the rising paper moon - A real oasis
In the human zoo
*The antioiasis is not counterculture. It is just a metaphor - the worthless pollutes the priceless.
Rio Gallegos
Even with my caffeine vertigo
When I stumble like an uncertain sea
Over the highway bridge, the overpass
With the balance of a drunkard,
Even my wavering legs can see its flat and stretches
As far as the (yes) the I can see,
And the long morning sun casts my shadow forever on the pavement,
I can´t see the end of this Galician waterway
That seems to stretch north to North into
A gamut of dzzying directions that spin the board
Underneath old rolling cars and poplar trees and the fresh crisp sunrise air
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
Sunday, March 21, 2010
Trekking log - March 17 to 20 paraphrased.
We left our extra gear, what we did not need for the trek, unguarded in the driveway of the hostel we had stayed at in Coihaique...Patagonia Hostel, run by an amazing German couple. (the man spent 2 months on the northern icefield of patagonia and has decided that GoreTex is shit - his two month expedition which saw more than 6 meters of snowfall and at times winds of 300km per hour used no goretex at all - just light plastic waterproofs - he says goretex is for taking your dog for a walk - or I suppose for colder conditions - but pure wet... plastic is the way to go!!) With our gear we left a note saying we would return in 4-5days. After 3 stops to by high energy, light weight food we walke out of town and hitched the 95 Km to the trailhead in a pickup driven by a young couple who themselves had hitchhiked almost 1000km to Coihaique and only there had rented the pickup for better access to the area. We were dropped off in the middle of the highway, at the trailhead with a light rain. They wished us good luck and continued south. The first day was uneventful and untechnical - it was long, following a 4*4 trail, cows, 4 or 5 river crossings, mud, forest, rain and a few moments of confusion as to where the trail continued.
Day two when Olivia and I awoke we both contemplated seriously (and embarrassingly) turning back. It had rained all night and everything was wet. When you looked outside you could see nothing, just fog and clouds and the quiet green and black of the trees. We thought it would be all pain and no gain so we decided to leave the tent with our stuff in it and just take the necessaries for a day hike. 20 minutes into the hike the clouds parted to allow us a view from the riverbed of towering mountains of red and black, their peaks blanketed with snow, and the snowy red pass at 1300m that we were to cross. We changed our minds. We turned back, packed everything up and left at 11am - late. We climbed in the lenga forest until the trees ended giving way to rough big scree. the trail was marked by piles of rocks. Tough going in the rain, fog, and increasing cold. We reached the snowy pass and trudged further up craggy cavy crumbly peaks closed us in on two sides and clouds infront and behind... We stopped to eat at the top but a thick cloud began to close us in so we had to move. Descending the meltoff stream that at times ran underneath the permanent snow, we navigated down an extremely steep section of loose rocks. Finally stopping to eat we were greeted and welcomed by a sudden parting of clouds. Across from us, almost directly a massive glacier revealed itself. Blue, black, white. Sun shone off its surfaces and the shimmering water that flowed down the steep craggy rocks that gripped the glacier. Black clouds with a blue glacier and fiery white water on rock. Then below us, something I have never seen, with the rain that suddenly began to pound down, a brilliant rainbow - all is a gift!
At the end of the day Olivia fell in the river so we finished quickly and spent the rest of the day/night in the tent as the rain continued.
Day 3 we awoke to what we thought was a blue sky...not so! It began to rain as we started the hardest day of the trek, up, up, up through lenga forest again and into a rocky section. We met an israeli couple and did a small hike up to a sudden vista of spiky spires, a hanging glacier that melted away to aquamarine pools in the black rocks a few hundred metres directly below our feet. We came down and had to cross another river, this time it was my turn for a soaker... only two hours into the day!!! Again we climbed big rocks, scree, up, up, up over and around a turquoise lagoon. Across from us was yet another glacier, clinging apparently precariously from the rock face and flowing in cascades down to the lake below. To the right we could se clouds that whisped mysteriously and vaguely about the black spires of Cerro Castillo (literally Mount Castle) curling up the faces of the silouetted moutain sides and swirling through the massive river valley. Far far below you could see the snaking silvery river we had traced as well as the snowy 1300m pass from yesterday. Everything appeared and disappeared in moments. We climbed up straight past the huge glacier covered in snow on our way to over 1600m, chased by an ominous cloud, wet snow and strong wind. Rocks were getting slippery. Over the pass and into the flat section at 1600m, a sudden silence acosted our ears, indeed our beings. No rushing rivers running from the glaciers to fall on rock and water, no wind no snow, no rivers, no rumbling of avalanches... a deafening silence when all you can hear is the earie (sp?) sound of your breath heaving and your heart pounding. Past the precipice of black rocks, of red rocks, purple rocks, rusty rocks, green rocks, past our martian horizon black clouds. And to the right a stone spire pearcing the same clouds that covered and discovered it. As suddenly as the silence came it was cracked by a ferocious wind and an immediate cold. We had to go. We started the impossibly long (we couldn´t have known it then) descent of loose rock almost straight down the face at more than 45degrees. Then into a river bed with walls of earth on either side. Some dangerous, precipitous forays into the forest, more steep rock. More than anything it was mentally and emotionally exhausting because more than two hours before we reached a campable sight, we thought we were "almost there". There was one moment on the face of this rubbly mountainside that a cloud closed us in... this is a very earie feeling because you cannot tell where you are, there are no points of reference. All you see is fog/cloud and the rocks directly beneath your feet. Nothing else... up the mountain a few metres grey cloud, down the mountain and along the face ten metres of rocks and then pure fog.
The saving grace you might say was that the sun did accompany us the last few hours and dried wood enough so that after half an hour of trying we were able to start a fire. We hung up all our wet clothes and sleeping bags and boots even the tent fly to dry. At night the stars were amazing so we went to the nearby riverbed with our sleeping bags and just lay there infinitessimally (sp?) small.
Day four was uneventful. After a halfhour confusion of direction in which we almost went back up the mountain by another trail (our map was shit) we descended down the side of a canyon and into the Rio Ibañez valley where the trail meets another 4*4 trail of about 6km that brought us back to Villa Cerro Castillo on the Carretera Austral. In the middle of the road, outside the restaurant where we ate some wonderful sandwiches (this restaurant is two buses put together, painted with the colours of the rainbow and attended by a sunny woman named Sole.) In the middle of the Carretera Austral, lending creadence to the fact that not only is this road almost deserted but we are in offseason, was a dog, sleeping! In the restaurant we met a man, don´t know his name. He asked us where we were from... Canada and France we said. What part of Canada? Ottawa. NO??!! I lived there two years! and then he recited his address. He went to Brookfield highschool and then Rideau Highschool!!! He said ottawa and Canada were the best places he´d ever been!!!! Coincidences are crazy. In the middle of offseason in the middle of nowhere in the middle of Patagonia, in south of South america, a man whose father worked at the Chilean Embassy in Canada and went to a highschool that I played soccer against!!!! BIZARRE!
WE finished our sandwiches and hit the road, hoping to get back to Coihaique. The rain started. Up the road a pickup pulled over and four people got out and were watching us for a time. Then they whistled and motioned for us to come so we grabbed our bags and went over... who was it? None other than Felipe and Lorena, the couple that had dropped us off at the trailhead. It was like seeing old friends!!! A smile broke onto my dirty and tired face! we got in and they drove us to Rio Blanco, chatting joking, and even sleeping (not them, just me!) , where we almost immediatly got another ride with some builders right to the street where the hostel sits! We were welcomed with smiles and chatter, and tea and beautiful beds!!!
Now I´m waiting for Jarek to do some backcountry stuff in some unknown, relatively unvisited and remote national parks here in the south, weather permitting!!! WOOHOO PATAGONIA!!!
Thats it from me and you can see photos of ice climbing, glacier stuff and a few inadequate photos of the Cerro Castillo trek.
Until next time
Ciao
Day two when Olivia and I awoke we both contemplated seriously (and embarrassingly) turning back. It had rained all night and everything was wet. When you looked outside you could see nothing, just fog and clouds and the quiet green and black of the trees. We thought it would be all pain and no gain so we decided to leave the tent with our stuff in it and just take the necessaries for a day hike. 20 minutes into the hike the clouds parted to allow us a view from the riverbed of towering mountains of red and black, their peaks blanketed with snow, and the snowy red pass at 1300m that we were to cross. We changed our minds. We turned back, packed everything up and left at 11am - late. We climbed in the lenga forest until the trees ended giving way to rough big scree. the trail was marked by piles of rocks. Tough going in the rain, fog, and increasing cold. We reached the snowy pass and trudged further up craggy cavy crumbly peaks closed us in on two sides and clouds infront and behind... We stopped to eat at the top but a thick cloud began to close us in so we had to move. Descending the meltoff stream that at times ran underneath the permanent snow, we navigated down an extremely steep section of loose rocks. Finally stopping to eat we were greeted and welcomed by a sudden parting of clouds. Across from us, almost directly a massive glacier revealed itself. Blue, black, white. Sun shone off its surfaces and the shimmering water that flowed down the steep craggy rocks that gripped the glacier. Black clouds with a blue glacier and fiery white water on rock. Then below us, something I have never seen, with the rain that suddenly began to pound down, a brilliant rainbow - all is a gift!
At the end of the day Olivia fell in the river so we finished quickly and spent the rest of the day/night in the tent as the rain continued.
Day 3 we awoke to what we thought was a blue sky...not so! It began to rain as we started the hardest day of the trek, up, up, up through lenga forest again and into a rocky section. We met an israeli couple and did a small hike up to a sudden vista of spiky spires, a hanging glacier that melted away to aquamarine pools in the black rocks a few hundred metres directly below our feet. We came down and had to cross another river, this time it was my turn for a soaker... only two hours into the day!!! Again we climbed big rocks, scree, up, up, up over and around a turquoise lagoon. Across from us was yet another glacier, clinging apparently precariously from the rock face and flowing in cascades down to the lake below. To the right we could se clouds that whisped mysteriously and vaguely about the black spires of Cerro Castillo (literally Mount Castle) curling up the faces of the silouetted moutain sides and swirling through the massive river valley. Far far below you could see the snaking silvery river we had traced as well as the snowy 1300m pass from yesterday. Everything appeared and disappeared in moments. We climbed up straight past the huge glacier covered in snow on our way to over 1600m, chased by an ominous cloud, wet snow and strong wind. Rocks were getting slippery. Over the pass and into the flat section at 1600m, a sudden silence acosted our ears, indeed our beings. No rushing rivers running from the glaciers to fall on rock and water, no wind no snow, no rivers, no rumbling of avalanches... a deafening silence when all you can hear is the earie (sp?) sound of your breath heaving and your heart pounding. Past the precipice of black rocks, of red rocks, purple rocks, rusty rocks, green rocks, past our martian horizon black clouds. And to the right a stone spire pearcing the same clouds that covered and discovered it. As suddenly as the silence came it was cracked by a ferocious wind and an immediate cold. We had to go. We started the impossibly long (we couldn´t have known it then) descent of loose rock almost straight down the face at more than 45degrees. Then into a river bed with walls of earth on either side. Some dangerous, precipitous forays into the forest, more steep rock. More than anything it was mentally and emotionally exhausting because more than two hours before we reached a campable sight, we thought we were "almost there". There was one moment on the face of this rubbly mountainside that a cloud closed us in... this is a very earie feeling because you cannot tell where you are, there are no points of reference. All you see is fog/cloud and the rocks directly beneath your feet. Nothing else... up the mountain a few metres grey cloud, down the mountain and along the face ten metres of rocks and then pure fog.
The saving grace you might say was that the sun did accompany us the last few hours and dried wood enough so that after half an hour of trying we were able to start a fire. We hung up all our wet clothes and sleeping bags and boots even the tent fly to dry. At night the stars were amazing so we went to the nearby riverbed with our sleeping bags and just lay there infinitessimally (sp?) small.
Day four was uneventful. After a halfhour confusion of direction in which we almost went back up the mountain by another trail (our map was shit) we descended down the side of a canyon and into the Rio Ibañez valley where the trail meets another 4*4 trail of about 6km that brought us back to Villa Cerro Castillo on the Carretera Austral. In the middle of the road, outside the restaurant where we ate some wonderful sandwiches (this restaurant is two buses put together, painted with the colours of the rainbow and attended by a sunny woman named Sole.) In the middle of the Carretera Austral, lending creadence to the fact that not only is this road almost deserted but we are in offseason, was a dog, sleeping! In the restaurant we met a man, don´t know his name. He asked us where we were from... Canada and France we said. What part of Canada? Ottawa. NO??!! I lived there two years! and then he recited his address. He went to Brookfield highschool and then Rideau Highschool!!! He said ottawa and Canada were the best places he´d ever been!!!! Coincidences are crazy. In the middle of offseason in the middle of nowhere in the middle of Patagonia, in south of South america, a man whose father worked at the Chilean Embassy in Canada and went to a highschool that I played soccer against!!!! BIZARRE!
WE finished our sandwiches and hit the road, hoping to get back to Coihaique. The rain started. Up the road a pickup pulled over and four people got out and were watching us for a time. Then they whistled and motioned for us to come so we grabbed our bags and went over... who was it? None other than Felipe and Lorena, the couple that had dropped us off at the trailhead. It was like seeing old friends!!! A smile broke onto my dirty and tired face! we got in and they drove us to Rio Blanco, chatting joking, and even sleeping (not them, just me!) , where we almost immediatly got another ride with some builders right to the street where the hostel sits! We were welcomed with smiles and chatter, and tea and beautiful beds!!!
Now I´m waiting for Jarek to do some backcountry stuff in some unknown, relatively unvisited and remote national parks here in the south, weather permitting!!! WOOHOO PATAGONIA!!!
Thats it from me and you can see photos of ice climbing, glacier stuff and a few inadequate photos of the Cerro Castillo trek.
Until next time
Ciao
Monday, March 15, 2010
Angles on Futaleufu March 1 and 2
Night
Those were the streets he walked along. Those streets of white concrete, like a compound. Those were the streets that looked pale in the dark. Houses everywhere on the little trimmed grid that was tucked away inside the mountains - tucked away inside the black humps the giant sillouettes. Even here there were houses lit in the quiet settled darkness, houses that belonged to warm families, a warm family of welcome.
It could have been infinite. You could say that there a man, maybe young and foreign, maybe toothless and local, maybe both if its possible, if you think hard enough, had always wandered those streets, far away between rivers and colourless masses. But be assured that this man could not imagine what it all looked like without the vague pain in his tired feet that plodded breaking the night with a dull thud at every step, without the light of the almost full moon. He could only say that those streets semed not to sleep lightly as we do, when any noise could wake us from our dreams, but into a deep slumber from which only the sun could shake them. You should also know dear reader, that these are thoughts before the day breaks, absolutely untainted by the sun that floods, or , shall flood between the cracks of windows, beams, between the cleaved mountains and into the eyes of all who slept that night (and I needn´t remind you that they were many).
Day
Long gone are the ghosts, and the sleeping giantes have awaken, though they do not stir. A rooster calls, breaking the graveyard silence. Once, only once in the hour and from here to the other side of the town they can hear a car engine. Every sound, there a bee licks pollen from the heart of rose pedals, delicate pink that line the chalky road - every sound disturbs yet eerily adds to a picture. There are trees that dot corners and line the grid but everything is , fittingly, dwarfed by the giants. Small and quiet. The sun and the silence are pressing down hard and its difficult to hear.
It is difficult to contemplate complete quiet, utter silence of thie type with words - indeed, it is foolish so let us sit and listen to the quiet.
(Please just sit and be passively aware of the sounds around you, do not read on until you have let everything outside you come inside.)
...
A voice. The voice of a child. Words are unintelligible but they caress the mountainsides for a moment before they fall and drift back into the veins of this town - the necklace of turquoise rivers that from here they do not hear - but they feel. And from this open bowl they would not lie; they are four more sounds: the sound of a combustion engine cresciendos , peaks and decresciendos for full minutes - one engine. Thirty two minutes later there are three minutes orf intermitant barks, yelps from a small dog down the street behind the garden. They smash against the side of this bowl like glass bottles smashing on concrete. Then in the midday suffocation of the sun footsteps are put out by the weight, but not before they unconsciously drag bits of sand and gravel along the rasped surface of concrete... then silence... and the last sound is telling: the house across the road from my cafe creaks...twice...
I drop my fork and everything, for one instant, a moment shatters in the deafening clang... then I pick up my pen.
Sleep
I blinked and the voices started to spit about the room. In my mouth a campfire lingered but from theirs, unintelligible sounds shot out and into the black. Then there were flashes on the walls - white-blue. Through the slits in my eyes I saw heads like beacons moving hither-thither. I tried to comprehend the rude light and harsh noise molesting my senses but in vane. My head was foggy with fatigue.
Their hands fumbled about with plastic bags, ravaging my eardrums at this hour. I tried to be discreet so as not to offend anyone - after giving up on sleep in a timber drywall mess. So I gintgerly pulled back my covers and turned on, no not the light that would be suicide. I groped the ground until I found it. A black fabric case and I grabbed hold of the bulky mass and held it up to the moonlight. I opened the clasp, pulled out the black camera and turned it on...scroll. time: 5:31am. Dark. Discreet? Whit did it matter - to them it was day. The door with its metal clasp was opened and slammed, accompanying the flashing lamps and"outdoor voices". Then with a final flutter of bags - I was concious by this point - some flashing lights (no different from the preceding half hour eternity) and the slam of the door, I was left in darkness and a sudden unexpected silence. As quickly as the storm came it went. I began to feel war and heavy again - a familiar feeling...
Those were the streets he walked along. Those streets of white concrete, like a compound. Those were the streets that looked pale in the dark. Houses everywhere on the little trimmed grid that was tucked away inside the mountains - tucked away inside the black humps the giant sillouettes. Even here there were houses lit in the quiet settled darkness, houses that belonged to warm families, a warm family of welcome.
It could have been infinite. You could say that there a man, maybe young and foreign, maybe toothless and local, maybe both if its possible, if you think hard enough, had always wandered those streets, far away between rivers and colourless masses. But be assured that this man could not imagine what it all looked like without the vague pain in his tired feet that plodded breaking the night with a dull thud at every step, without the light of the almost full moon. He could only say that those streets semed not to sleep lightly as we do, when any noise could wake us from our dreams, but into a deep slumber from which only the sun could shake them. You should also know dear reader, that these are thoughts before the day breaks, absolutely untainted by the sun that floods, or , shall flood between the cracks of windows, beams, between the cleaved mountains and into the eyes of all who slept that night (and I needn´t remind you that they were many).
Day
Long gone are the ghosts, and the sleeping giantes have awaken, though they do not stir. A rooster calls, breaking the graveyard silence. Once, only once in the hour and from here to the other side of the town they can hear a car engine. Every sound, there a bee licks pollen from the heart of rose pedals, delicate pink that line the chalky road - every sound disturbs yet eerily adds to a picture. There are trees that dot corners and line the grid but everything is , fittingly, dwarfed by the giants. Small and quiet. The sun and the silence are pressing down hard and its difficult to hear.
It is difficult to contemplate complete quiet, utter silence of thie type with words - indeed, it is foolish so let us sit and listen to the quiet.
(Please just sit and be passively aware of the sounds around you, do not read on until you have let everything outside you come inside.)
...
A voice. The voice of a child. Words are unintelligible but they caress the mountainsides for a moment before they fall and drift back into the veins of this town - the necklace of turquoise rivers that from here they do not hear - but they feel. And from this open bowl they would not lie; they are four more sounds: the sound of a combustion engine cresciendos , peaks and decresciendos for full minutes - one engine. Thirty two minutes later there are three minutes orf intermitant barks, yelps from a small dog down the street behind the garden. They smash against the side of this bowl like glass bottles smashing on concrete. Then in the midday suffocation of the sun footsteps are put out by the weight, but not before they unconsciously drag bits of sand and gravel along the rasped surface of concrete... then silence... and the last sound is telling: the house across the road from my cafe creaks...twice...
I drop my fork and everything, for one instant, a moment shatters in the deafening clang... then I pick up my pen.
Sleep
I blinked and the voices started to spit about the room. In my mouth a campfire lingered but from theirs, unintelligible sounds shot out and into the black. Then there were flashes on the walls - white-blue. Through the slits in my eyes I saw heads like beacons moving hither-thither. I tried to comprehend the rude light and harsh noise molesting my senses but in vane. My head was foggy with fatigue.
Their hands fumbled about with plastic bags, ravaging my eardrums at this hour. I tried to be discreet so as not to offend anyone - after giving up on sleep in a timber drywall mess. So I gintgerly pulled back my covers and turned on, no not the light that would be suicide. I groped the ground until I found it. A black fabric case and I grabbed hold of the bulky mass and held it up to the moonlight. I opened the clasp, pulled out the black camera and turned it on...scroll. time: 5:31am. Dark. Discreet? Whit did it matter - to them it was day. The door with its metal clasp was opened and slammed, accompanying the flashing lamps and"outdoor voices". Then with a final flutter of bags - I was concious by this point - some flashing lights (no different from the preceding half hour eternity) and the slam of the door, I was left in darkness and a sudden unexpected silence. As quickly as the storm came it went. I began to feel war and heavy again - a familiar feeling...
The Next Day and two side notes.
We spent 10 hours at Jorge´s house yesterday. He bought tons of meat vegetables potatoes alcohol drinks...etc. and we ate and ate until we couldn´t... and then we ate dinner. We talked about Pinochet (of whom Jorge is a fan) about dams in patagonia, about sharing and the chilean culture of giving and sharing, we talked about european materialism, and we laughed and joked late into the night.
How did this happen? When he dropped us off near Valle Exploradores we hauled all our gear out of the truck and onto the ground and we invited him in for a visit. Then as he got in his truck to leave after hugs and photos he asked us if we had perhaps forgotten anything... no we hadn´t. No sooner had he left then we realized that we had taken his fleece jacket out of the truck by accident. Inside was a cheque for over $2500 OOPS !!! but thankfully the next day he contacted the hostal/camping area by radio (out here its the only way to communicate as there are no phones) and we arranged to bring it back to him after our icy adventures. When we phoned yesterday after arriving here he invited us to his house...
Now what I promised the new vegetarianism. I think most people can imagine why I am vegetarian if I haven´t told them straight up. It is a resource issue and a treatment issue. a) cows, pigs, chickens in canada and the states live in little boxes in their own shit b) they eat corn based products that they are not made to eat and make them sick so they are pumped full of steroids and drugs - unhealthy and painful for them, unhealthy for human beings c) all the corn that is grown takes up space that could be occupied with much more efficiency to feed human beings with fresh fruits and veggies d) the resource output for the growth and cultivation of corn and meat is astronomical - petroleum and water more than anything
So naturally I had always thought that free range was meat and hunted meat were ok because none of this applies. However as I descended into Valle del Diablo a week ago all this changed. Much of northern patagonia was colonized as late as the1930-1950. It was a land grab so the Chilean government gave land for free to anyone who could clear it for cattle. So large enclaves of chileans from around Santiago, as well as germans, french and belgians and yugoslavians colonized the area with their cattle. But how did they clear the old growth native rainforest? They set fire to it. And it burned. The fires raged for almost a decade and over 80% of the forest was burned. Stumps and trunks remain and sides of mountains are falling away due to erosion... and everywhere there are cows... These cows live happy and free but at the massive ecological and environmental expense! While practically I have not changed, I look at free range meat in a different way now, after having seen the direct and recent evidence of the work that is needed to MAKE pasture in the first place.
And now Israel. I like to be open minded. I like to be understanding. I like to love everything and everybody there is. I think this is the way to a better world. And it gives me hope.
Here in Chile and Argentina there are hundreds and thousands of Israelis. Indeed they say that there are no israelis between the age of 20 and 23 in the country because after their 2-3 years obligatory military service they travel. They dress in a certain way, they act in a certain way and lamentable they, like the brithish in spain and the australians in southeast asia, have made a bad reputation for themselves. This is of course a very delicate issue because while this has nothing to do with race or religion people are afraid to speak the truth and want to be politically correct so they think that this sort of talk is racist or antisemitic. It is not. Indeed it says more about the state of Israel and the army, the education system and the indoctrination than anything. My experience with Israelis has been largly negative but there have been some very notable exceptions. I got a ride with a bunch of israelis who had rented a van to do the Carretera Austral and we chatted about all sorts of things and they seemed very nice. But the topic of Palestine was only talked about briefly and superficially and they assured me that they did not "want to all the palestinians to die".
In the Refugio in Valle Exploradores I met three Israeli girls and we began to speak of the sort of diet that Israelis have, the sort of things they eat and so on. Then we got to mentioning the Shabat and how Israeli is completely secular. Then how multicultural it is. Then I went for it: "If neither religion nor origin unites you as israelis, what does?" the answer? suffering at the hands of the rest of the world, always and forever. Perpetual victims. This left me no other option but to speak of Palestine and to speak of others´suffering at the hands of the Israelis. It was like a hurricane. They began to yell at me (kindly, but lecturing) saying that having experienced it, the army, the military, the checkpoints the fear of rockets from the terrorists they knew. Israel is trying to help the Palestinians, they feel bad for them, they give them resources try to set up schools... it is a shame that the terrorists and Iran (YES the conspiracy the the Isreali intilligence tells its country is that Iran is behind everything) are the problem. And so my response was yes I agree they are a problem but they are angry for a reason and their poor behaviour, their violence does not require retaliation against children. They told me that anything that I see on television about Israelis killing civilians is a lie - they would know because they were in the army. It is all a conspiracy, the Iranian government and the terrorist organizations control western media and besides, it is the civilians faults for being killed by Israeli artillery because Israel sends a message to the houses that they are about to destroy to tell them to vacate their own homes, therefore it is their fault for getting killed.
At this point, speaking with apparently rational people, I lost hope completely. This issue will never be solved with this level of brainwashing and control. Indeed, at the end of our conversation one of the girls said "I think that if I had your knowledge - because you know a lot more than most people - and I didn´t live in Israel, I would think the same way as you." She admitted in effect, that she was brainwashed. This is a sad comment.
All we can do is continue to love people and maybe this will become contagious, because victimization, hate and deception do not seem to work.
How did this happen? When he dropped us off near Valle Exploradores we hauled all our gear out of the truck and onto the ground and we invited him in for a visit. Then as he got in his truck to leave after hugs and photos he asked us if we had perhaps forgotten anything... no we hadn´t. No sooner had he left then we realized that we had taken his fleece jacket out of the truck by accident. Inside was a cheque for over $2500 OOPS !!! but thankfully the next day he contacted the hostal/camping area by radio (out here its the only way to communicate as there are no phones) and we arranged to bring it back to him after our icy adventures. When we phoned yesterday after arriving here he invited us to his house...
Now what I promised the new vegetarianism. I think most people can imagine why I am vegetarian if I haven´t told them straight up. It is a resource issue and a treatment issue. a) cows, pigs, chickens in canada and the states live in little boxes in their own shit b) they eat corn based products that they are not made to eat and make them sick so they are pumped full of steroids and drugs - unhealthy and painful for them, unhealthy for human beings c) all the corn that is grown takes up space that could be occupied with much more efficiency to feed human beings with fresh fruits and veggies d) the resource output for the growth and cultivation of corn and meat is astronomical - petroleum and water more than anything
So naturally I had always thought that free range was meat and hunted meat were ok because none of this applies. However as I descended into Valle del Diablo a week ago all this changed. Much of northern patagonia was colonized as late as the1930-1950. It was a land grab so the Chilean government gave land for free to anyone who could clear it for cattle. So large enclaves of chileans from around Santiago, as well as germans, french and belgians and yugoslavians colonized the area with their cattle. But how did they clear the old growth native rainforest? They set fire to it. And it burned. The fires raged for almost a decade and over 80% of the forest was burned. Stumps and trunks remain and sides of mountains are falling away due to erosion... and everywhere there are cows... These cows live happy and free but at the massive ecological and environmental expense! While practically I have not changed, I look at free range meat in a different way now, after having seen the direct and recent evidence of the work that is needed to MAKE pasture in the first place.
And now Israel. I like to be open minded. I like to be understanding. I like to love everything and everybody there is. I think this is the way to a better world. And it gives me hope.
Here in Chile and Argentina there are hundreds and thousands of Israelis. Indeed they say that there are no israelis between the age of 20 and 23 in the country because after their 2-3 years obligatory military service they travel. They dress in a certain way, they act in a certain way and lamentable they, like the brithish in spain and the australians in southeast asia, have made a bad reputation for themselves. This is of course a very delicate issue because while this has nothing to do with race or religion people are afraid to speak the truth and want to be politically correct so they think that this sort of talk is racist or antisemitic. It is not. Indeed it says more about the state of Israel and the army, the education system and the indoctrination than anything. My experience with Israelis has been largly negative but there have been some very notable exceptions. I got a ride with a bunch of israelis who had rented a van to do the Carretera Austral and we chatted about all sorts of things and they seemed very nice. But the topic of Palestine was only talked about briefly and superficially and they assured me that they did not "want to all the palestinians to die".
In the Refugio in Valle Exploradores I met three Israeli girls and we began to speak of the sort of diet that Israelis have, the sort of things they eat and so on. Then we got to mentioning the Shabat and how Israeli is completely secular. Then how multicultural it is. Then I went for it: "If neither religion nor origin unites you as israelis, what does?" the answer? suffering at the hands of the rest of the world, always and forever. Perpetual victims. This left me no other option but to speak of Palestine and to speak of others´suffering at the hands of the Israelis. It was like a hurricane. They began to yell at me (kindly, but lecturing) saying that having experienced it, the army, the military, the checkpoints the fear of rockets from the terrorists they knew. Israel is trying to help the Palestinians, they feel bad for them, they give them resources try to set up schools... it is a shame that the terrorists and Iran (YES the conspiracy the the Isreali intilligence tells its country is that Iran is behind everything) are the problem. And so my response was yes I agree they are a problem but they are angry for a reason and their poor behaviour, their violence does not require retaliation against children. They told me that anything that I see on television about Israelis killing civilians is a lie - they would know because they were in the army. It is all a conspiracy, the Iranian government and the terrorist organizations control western media and besides, it is the civilians faults for being killed by Israeli artillery because Israel sends a message to the houses that they are about to destroy to tell them to vacate their own homes, therefore it is their fault for getting killed.
At this point, speaking with apparently rational people, I lost hope completely. This issue will never be solved with this level of brainwashing and control. Indeed, at the end of our conversation one of the girls said "I think that if I had your knowledge - because you know a lot more than most people - and I didn´t live in Israel, I would think the same way as you." She admitted in effect, that she was brainwashed. This is a sad comment.
All we can do is continue to love people and maybe this will become contagious, because victimization, hate and deception do not seem to work.
Sunday, March 14, 2010
Weeks paraphrased and a diary entry.
Soundtrack: internal and external:
Chilean cueco
Charlie Parker
Beethoven
Radiohead (old albums)
Bob Dylan
It is difficult to talk about such a long full period of time when much of it has already faded into obsurity in my own head... but as before I shall try. After the earthquake I left Futaleufu with a few dollars in my pocket (the quake messed up communication lines all around the country). I was able to get on the twelve hour bus on confidence that upon arriving in Coihaique I would find a bank and pay the steep $40 charge. And I did.
The girl I was travelling with, a belgian, was to my amazement a professional sailor. She trained (but eventually fell short on funding) for the Volvo Ocean Race and the mini Transat (round the world crewed and transatlantic single handed races). She got into this by simply responding to an add posted by a charter yacht looking for a chef - and then for ten years she sailed, chartered and raced professionally...WOW!
I spent two days in Coihaique sorting my self out and then on a windy afternoon I packed up and walked to the highway to hitch as far south as I could. On the way I met a german couple Eva and Christian and a french girl Olivia. I am still with them and we are now back in Coihaique!
We spent some tranquil nights camping in a deserted mountain town called Puerto Bertrand where we met a raft guide who we hung out with. We camped, hitched and bussed all the way south to a town called Caleta Tortel - a town sustained by the extraction of Cypress trees (given their extremely slow growth they are absolutely an unrenewable resource.) Until very recently this town was only accessible by boat, and still you ahve to park your car at the top of the hill and climb along wooden boardwalks to access the town - there are no roads or paths, just boardwalks of cypress.
Diary March 12
Now I am alone. I cannot begin to explain what I have experienced in the last week but I shall try. Here and there the sound of the roaring river is broken by the immense rumbling of thousands of tons of ice and snow tumbling down mountain sides or into rivers. At night in Valle Exploradores the stars eat up the earth in clouds until the edgte of the giant mountains draw a line past which you cannot see. Yesterday night before getting into Eva and Christians tent I went out to the gravel rad and lay in the middle where there are no trees and I travellid in space, everything was 3D. I just lay there on the gravel lost in the stars and the sound of water rushing by (water that hours ago was ice).
Shortly after the sun rose yesterday Olivia and I woke up, packed up our stuff and went to the refugio at the end of the road. there we met Mauricio our guid and we began the trek up the frontal moraine of the glacier up up, and down down the other side into what looks from afar like a gravel pit or a martian battle field. It is the dirty ice. From afar the glacier and and the residual rocks from its recession look like rolling hills - ripples, waves. But we entered the dirty ice to find mounds stories high of invisible ice topped with cottage size boulders, scree, rocks, pebbles... But the landscape changes every day - 10cm per day the glacier receeds. As we walked along scrambling over boulders and loose stones up up, down down... great holes opened up at our feet where you could see piles of rockes and evidence of ice. Over another 5 story hump past the meltoff river where turquise-white cliffs of pure ice rise in sheets from the murky water to dirty rocks, we reached clean ice, white ice blue ice.
There were blue lagoons on the glacier, blue blue, deep clear blue that you can see through and crevasses and cracks that disappear into the glacier, cleaving it in two massive parts - 20, 30, 40 metres down.
We reached a massive cave forced from the sun, from the water from the melting ice and there we dropped our gear. It was like a valley with little ice mountains and an ice bridge over our heads, as well as a windy cave that lead deep into the ice. Walls of ice, a little bridge liable to crash on our heads, a cave and the other side...? the black, white, blue mountains rising to the sky. We picked a spot and walked out of the valley arriving 20m above the valley we had been in - it looks higher from up here. We drove our ice screws into the ice, set up a top rope and rappelled into the "valley". Climbing the face a few times until the screws were loose from the sun, we picked up and began our search for a bigger wall. Across ice dunes, precipices that dropped 40m to more ice, along spines, over humps until we found a huge hole in the ice, almost 30m to the bottom where a river flowed blue over ice. Now it was midday and the ice at 200m above sea level melts and becomes soft and almost slushie so we had a few climbs no more and we had to halck half a foot of pourous ice before we could get to hard ice to drive the screws in. This time we dropped in over a precipice of overhung ice nearly 90feet above the ground. We all climbed it and then to get out we needed to set up a belay from above. As we only had one set of ice axes I was left in the pit alone, 20 to 30m of sheer ice on all sides 50 to 110degrees to the ground, nobody in view, just sun illuminating the edge of the ice and (was it a trick of the light?) an almost pink sky. The last one, I took out the protection tied myself in and climbed out. As you reach the top, flicking your axes into the soft ice and kicking double holes for your feet,(ice climbing on a glacier is very easy) slowly but surely the massive peaks that surround the valley and the glacier start to appear: they start to poke up almost shyly, avove your horizon of ice. More black, more blue, more white hanging glaciers from the steep peak of Monte San Valentin (Patagonias highest peak at slightly over 4000m). After packing up our stuff we headed back (Olivia stayed to camp on the glacier with my tent...a summer tent...it was cold!) The ice had now loosened rocks that had been locked in over night and so the descents of mounds of dirty ice were dangerous and slippery. I fell a few times.
This place is away from everything. 2 mountain guides live in a small refugion for 4 to 5 months a year off of a 52km of winding gravel road that starts at Puerto Rio Tranquilo a town whose children 20 years ago had never seen cars or trucks nor a telephone. The road is off the the already isolated gravel Carretera Austral and winds along the Rio Exploradores, Rio Tranquilo and Lago tranquilo in between rocky peaks and hanging blue glaciers as well as roaming cows.
Christian Eva, Olivia and I left Tortel by bus, camped in Cochrane and hitched out the next day catching a ride in the back of a speeding pickup that took us only 15 minutes. We then waited 5 hours in the sun where the Rio Baker (largest river in Chile) meets the Chacabuco. We met some cyclists and we played cards and drank mate. Then at 430 a man stopped in his pickup and took us all the way not to Rio Tranquilo but 44 km off of the road to a hostal at the foot of the glacier where we camped. He spoke with Olivia the whole time in French and I surprised myself by understanding almost all of it, but I had a headache by the end! Our conversations were very interesting (now this is not the diary entry) but I cannot talk about them now because I have to go to his house. We are back in Coihaique and he has invited us (as well as to do laundry and sleep) to have a big barbeque at his house, so I´m already late and he is being a military man, very punctual!)
Thats all for now. After this I am headed south again to do some backcountry tripping with a Polish guy I metin Tortel.
Next entry I shall speak of the new vegetarianism (vegetarianism revised) and my loss of hope on the issue of Israel. until then happy travels (both spacial and temporal!)
ciao
Chilean cueco
Charlie Parker
Beethoven
Radiohead (old albums)
Bob Dylan
It is difficult to talk about such a long full period of time when much of it has already faded into obsurity in my own head... but as before I shall try. After the earthquake I left Futaleufu with a few dollars in my pocket (the quake messed up communication lines all around the country). I was able to get on the twelve hour bus on confidence that upon arriving in Coihaique I would find a bank and pay the steep $40 charge. And I did.
The girl I was travelling with, a belgian, was to my amazement a professional sailor. She trained (but eventually fell short on funding) for the Volvo Ocean Race and the mini Transat (round the world crewed and transatlantic single handed races). She got into this by simply responding to an add posted by a charter yacht looking for a chef - and then for ten years she sailed, chartered and raced professionally...WOW!
I spent two days in Coihaique sorting my self out and then on a windy afternoon I packed up and walked to the highway to hitch as far south as I could. On the way I met a german couple Eva and Christian and a french girl Olivia. I am still with them and we are now back in Coihaique!
We spent some tranquil nights camping in a deserted mountain town called Puerto Bertrand where we met a raft guide who we hung out with. We camped, hitched and bussed all the way south to a town called Caleta Tortel - a town sustained by the extraction of Cypress trees (given their extremely slow growth they are absolutely an unrenewable resource.) Until very recently this town was only accessible by boat, and still you ahve to park your car at the top of the hill and climb along wooden boardwalks to access the town - there are no roads or paths, just boardwalks of cypress.
Diary March 12
Now I am alone. I cannot begin to explain what I have experienced in the last week but I shall try. Here and there the sound of the roaring river is broken by the immense rumbling of thousands of tons of ice and snow tumbling down mountain sides or into rivers. At night in Valle Exploradores the stars eat up the earth in clouds until the edgte of the giant mountains draw a line past which you cannot see. Yesterday night before getting into Eva and Christians tent I went out to the gravel rad and lay in the middle where there are no trees and I travellid in space, everything was 3D. I just lay there on the gravel lost in the stars and the sound of water rushing by (water that hours ago was ice).
Shortly after the sun rose yesterday Olivia and I woke up, packed up our stuff and went to the refugio at the end of the road. there we met Mauricio our guid and we began the trek up the frontal moraine of the glacier up up, and down down the other side into what looks from afar like a gravel pit or a martian battle field. It is the dirty ice. From afar the glacier and and the residual rocks from its recession look like rolling hills - ripples, waves. But we entered the dirty ice to find mounds stories high of invisible ice topped with cottage size boulders, scree, rocks, pebbles... But the landscape changes every day - 10cm per day the glacier receeds. As we walked along scrambling over boulders and loose stones up up, down down... great holes opened up at our feet where you could see piles of rockes and evidence of ice. Over another 5 story hump past the meltoff river where turquise-white cliffs of pure ice rise in sheets from the murky water to dirty rocks, we reached clean ice, white ice blue ice.
There were blue lagoons on the glacier, blue blue, deep clear blue that you can see through and crevasses and cracks that disappear into the glacier, cleaving it in two massive parts - 20, 30, 40 metres down.
We reached a massive cave forced from the sun, from the water from the melting ice and there we dropped our gear. It was like a valley with little ice mountains and an ice bridge over our heads, as well as a windy cave that lead deep into the ice. Walls of ice, a little bridge liable to crash on our heads, a cave and the other side...? the black, white, blue mountains rising to the sky. We picked a spot and walked out of the valley arriving 20m above the valley we had been in - it looks higher from up here. We drove our ice screws into the ice, set up a top rope and rappelled into the "valley". Climbing the face a few times until the screws were loose from the sun, we picked up and began our search for a bigger wall. Across ice dunes, precipices that dropped 40m to more ice, along spines, over humps until we found a huge hole in the ice, almost 30m to the bottom where a river flowed blue over ice. Now it was midday and the ice at 200m above sea level melts and becomes soft and almost slushie so we had a few climbs no more and we had to halck half a foot of pourous ice before we could get to hard ice to drive the screws in. This time we dropped in over a precipice of overhung ice nearly 90feet above the ground. We all climbed it and then to get out we needed to set up a belay from above. As we only had one set of ice axes I was left in the pit alone, 20 to 30m of sheer ice on all sides 50 to 110degrees to the ground, nobody in view, just sun illuminating the edge of the ice and (was it a trick of the light?) an almost pink sky. The last one, I took out the protection tied myself in and climbed out. As you reach the top, flicking your axes into the soft ice and kicking double holes for your feet,(ice climbing on a glacier is very easy) slowly but surely the massive peaks that surround the valley and the glacier start to appear: they start to poke up almost shyly, avove your horizon of ice. More black, more blue, more white hanging glaciers from the steep peak of Monte San Valentin (Patagonias highest peak at slightly over 4000m). After packing up our stuff we headed back (Olivia stayed to camp on the glacier with my tent...a summer tent...it was cold!) The ice had now loosened rocks that had been locked in over night and so the descents of mounds of dirty ice were dangerous and slippery. I fell a few times.
This place is away from everything. 2 mountain guides live in a small refugion for 4 to 5 months a year off of a 52km of winding gravel road that starts at Puerto Rio Tranquilo a town whose children 20 years ago had never seen cars or trucks nor a telephone. The road is off the the already isolated gravel Carretera Austral and winds along the Rio Exploradores, Rio Tranquilo and Lago tranquilo in between rocky peaks and hanging blue glaciers as well as roaming cows.
Christian Eva, Olivia and I left Tortel by bus, camped in Cochrane and hitched out the next day catching a ride in the back of a speeding pickup that took us only 15 minutes. We then waited 5 hours in the sun where the Rio Baker (largest river in Chile) meets the Chacabuco. We met some cyclists and we played cards and drank mate. Then at 430 a man stopped in his pickup and took us all the way not to Rio Tranquilo but 44 km off of the road to a hostal at the foot of the glacier where we camped. He spoke with Olivia the whole time in French and I surprised myself by understanding almost all of it, but I had a headache by the end! Our conversations were very interesting (now this is not the diary entry) but I cannot talk about them now because I have to go to his house. We are back in Coihaique and he has invited us (as well as to do laundry and sleep) to have a big barbeque at his house, so I´m already late and he is being a military man, very punctual!)
Thats all for now. After this I am headed south again to do some backcountry tripping with a Polish guy I metin Tortel.
Next entry I shall speak of the new vegetarianism (vegetarianism revised) and my loss of hope on the issue of Israel. until then happy travels (both spacial and temporal!)
ciao
Monday, March 1, 2010
Terremoto
Let me allay everyone´s fears. I was actually really touched at how many people were worried about me, but I am just fine. I was probably 1000km from the epicentre and the most that some could say was that at 3am (half hour before the tremors started to shake and shatter glas and stone and cement, opening holes big enough for cars to be lost in, and throwing massive bridges into the water) dogs howled in Futaleufu (the little border town that I was in).
To me this sounds like legend, and it likely is but it might be a way for people to feel connected to the suffering. It is bizzare how this works because really, I am no closer to the destruction that any of you. I see it on the tv and hear it on the radio and the closest I get to seeing real reverberations of the quake, are the long lineups at LAN Chile (the national airline).
I am actually poorly informed about the earthquake, in terms of human cost. I know that infractructure damage has ben masive but I think that (and the last thing that I want to do is downplay deaths) the death count is around 700.
Indeed, speaking of anything else seems cheap right now, when there is so much suffering and loss. But if this makes anyone feel better, this is not unheard of - Chile has no poisoness snakes, no tropical diseases, no civil wars, but it does have earthquakes and about every 25 years there is a big one. For many this is new and for all it is painful but it is not a surprise. The question was never if, but when and the clock is ticking again.
As for me my ankle is still swollen (especially after my 12 hour busride, which later I shall write about) and I spent two days with only a few dollars in my pocket and no way of getting money... indeed my bus was on trust that I would get money when we arrived in Coihaique. This area of the country, I think, is the most beautiful, it is the area that I most wanted to explore but lamentably I have to hold back. I could go out and hike but this will ruin my ankle so I am sitting around itching to move but being smart so as not to ruin my trip!
I was walking around Coihaique, a confusing town in the middle of absolutely nothing (for hundreds of kilometres of gravel road and ocean and ice and mountains in every direction there is nothing!!) looking for an internet cafe and there I saw, walking toward me Yani!! My friend from Santiago who bought a motorbike to go around south america like Che Guevara! I had not seen him since november!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Thats all the little news that I have and I will post something more later, until then stay safe, and I will too!
To me this sounds like legend, and it likely is but it might be a way for people to feel connected to the suffering. It is bizzare how this works because really, I am no closer to the destruction that any of you. I see it on the tv and hear it on the radio and the closest I get to seeing real reverberations of the quake, are the long lineups at LAN Chile (the national airline).
I am actually poorly informed about the earthquake, in terms of human cost. I know that infractructure damage has ben masive but I think that (and the last thing that I want to do is downplay deaths) the death count is around 700.
Indeed, speaking of anything else seems cheap right now, when there is so much suffering and loss. But if this makes anyone feel better, this is not unheard of - Chile has no poisoness snakes, no tropical diseases, no civil wars, but it does have earthquakes and about every 25 years there is a big one. For many this is new and for all it is painful but it is not a surprise. The question was never if, but when and the clock is ticking again.
As for me my ankle is still swollen (especially after my 12 hour busride, which later I shall write about) and I spent two days with only a few dollars in my pocket and no way of getting money... indeed my bus was on trust that I would get money when we arrived in Coihaique. This area of the country, I think, is the most beautiful, it is the area that I most wanted to explore but lamentably I have to hold back. I could go out and hike but this will ruin my ankle so I am sitting around itching to move but being smart so as not to ruin my trip!
I was walking around Coihaique, a confusing town in the middle of absolutely nothing (for hundreds of kilometres of gravel road and ocean and ice and mountains in every direction there is nothing!!) looking for an internet cafe and there I saw, walking toward me Yani!! My friend from Santiago who bought a motorbike to go around south america like Che Guevara! I had not seen him since november!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Thats all the little news that I have and I will post something more later, until then stay safe, and I will too!
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