Safely in Punta Arenas, Chile, for our flight out tomorrow
at 140 pm.
Rode on a 12 hour bus ride from Ushuaia, Argentina today,
which left at 5 am.
We´ll be home soon, and we´re both a bit nervous about so
much flying. Oh well. We bought chocolate.
=vicki
...y a more comfortable 60 deg. F
Note: we´re actually 2 hrs ahead of Eastern time. so 2 am eastern is 4 am chilean.
Today doesn´t even feel like today. First of all, it´s dusk right now. It also happens to be 10 pm. So bewildering! We also happen to be super=tired, even though we did very little today. Well, we did only get 4 hrs sleep last night and get up at 630 am to walk to the bus station in Valpo, take a 1.5 hr bus to Santiago Bajaritos bus to catch the 20 minute ride to the Santiago Airport. We waited there for 1.5 hrs, got a bite to eat, and at 1145 got on plane numero uno to Puerto Montt. At 145 we took off from Puerto Montt for Punta Arenas, cruising at 37000 ft. above (eventually) some HUGE peaks poking through the clouds and mostly snow covered and rather massive. All of our baggage made it including my poles which they took off and checked individually (there was no plane change, so that helped). The tourist info woman helped us get a place in Puerto Natales since the famed Erratic Rock hostel there said they were full tonight, so we made the decision to go straight to Puerto Natales (we were going to stay in Punta Arenas via help from Claudio until we found out our flight got in at 1600, not 1900, and it was totally feasible to make it to Natales before dark).
Anyways, so one more 3 hrs bus ride from Punta Arenas to puerto Natales. Though some crazy landscape. I can´´t tell you too much about it, as I slept through the first 2 hrs. But the last one was kinda crazy, a mix of desolate and bizarre, with lots of deceased, grayed tree trunks either all over the ground or standing up. I felt like it would´ve fit into Lord of the Rings if I knew anything about that other than seeing 20 mintues of one of the movies. Luckily though it was sunny, and not foggy or creepy, and the snowcapped peaks slowly came more and more into view as we progressed. We´re staying at Hostal Melissa, probably to relocate within Natales tomorrow. 1. because a Hostal is like a hotel, whereas a Hostel (el) is like a hostel style as we know it. er as we know it to be in Europe (shoutout to Laura for experiencing the American hostel system with me!!!!). This allows us to deal with somehow accumulating 10 days worth of food that fits in our packs tomorrow. it´s also election day tomorrow so some things may be closed, we have no idea its kinda confusing and its a sunday so we think its reasonable to not push ourselves to go further. That being said, if we´re ready at 1 pm tomorrow, we´lll head on out to Parque Nacional Torres del Paine to trek The Circuit (starting by camping at the trailhead sunday night).
SO that´s where we are, where we´ll be, and approximately when. Though I´ve been fairly into experiencing where I am, especialy in that bizarre desolation of dead skinny trees among the braod grassy plains with large mountains in the background, I´ve wondered what I myself (and maybe anyone else, foreigner, is doing here....and how the heck Chileans wound up here too! But then again, I surely don´t blame them). As for espanol, i´m kinda proud of how i´m doing and how much vocab I remember from lots of Bingo in 5th and 6th grade. Anne is quick on my heels though, trying to learn proper sentence construction and the actual language.
Oh, and shoutout to those who helped me pack==I like walking around with Moosilauke plastered across my chest :)
Anne and Kristen and I reached Chile safely, and have had
a whirlwindy day full of Ultimate, BBQ, awesome locals
plus expats (cant say american as south americans are
americans!) here. they have good advice about our upcoming
trip southward. we are excited to see penguins. and hike.
but tomorrow is a well deserved semi rest day.
thinking of everyone up north in the 70 deg. sun here. its
hot!
=vicki
To write something important that I need to read in Chile:
yitood at gmail.com
To write something interesting I might want to read in Chile (or tell me there's something important in my inbox):
reply to a recent post in this blog
To write something unimportant for me to read when I get back:
normal dartmouth email
In Santiago:
With Dan Perell '05: phone number (from the US) is 56 08 759 4760 and from within Chile just 08 759 4760.
In Case of Emergency:
My mother's cell: 202 then 841 then 3666
Home: same then 333 then 8345
