November 18th-22.
We arrived at Pucon around 9 in the morning. We exchanged emails with these two women we met on the bus (Bridey and Katy) saying we would meet for dinner that night, and then we went in search of the cheapest hostel we could find. We found it just in time, coming in right when it started to rain outside (this became the prevalent weather on our trip throughout Chile).
After settling into our hostel, we headed out into the pouring rain to explore Pucon and make plans for our up coming days there. We did some window and food shopping, and walked along the beach of black sand (sorry, I forgot to take a picture because the weather was crappy the whole time we were there but the mountains that surrounded the lake that we could make out through the clouds were beautiful, lush and green). We were able to see Volcan Villarica the first morning we were there. It towered above the town with beauty and menace, just a short distance away. The rest of the time we were in town it was shrouded in cloud. We found out that the alarms that went off every day we were in Pucon were practice alarms for when the Volcano blew (so how do we know when the alarms are real? And what in the world do we do when it’s a real alarm?).
That night we met with Katy, Bridey, and Marcus (Katy’s new friend from her rafting trip that afternoon) for dinner. We ate at an Arabian café and Bridey got this weird Arabian dish with a variety of foods wrapped in different things. One of them was a lamb or duck intestine. She became strangely full when she finally reached that part of her dish. And after that we all headed to Mama Tapas for drinks.
Thursday, Tom and I rented mountain bikes (I learned very quick through the rattling and jarring of my arms that the shocks did not work at all, so it was more like riding a really heavy road bike) and went on a leisurely 33ish mile bike ride. Our fingers were crossed the whole time that it would not be a downpour on us. There were a number of close calls with light rain. We stopped for pictures and lunch at a beautiful waterfall, with the bluest water I had ever seen (up until I went to El Bolson). That night we went to the hot springs which lived up to their name if you went into the right pool (I was literall sweating when sitting in one), otherwise they were just warm. It was pretty nice after biking for several hours in freezing rain.
Wednesday, we signed up for canyoning at two in the afternoon, and so went to continue our multi-day planning of our climb of Villarica and for a short run on the beach.
The canyoning was fantastic, I’m sorry I don’t have pictures but I was afraid of getting the camera damaged. We were a little worried at first because they dropped us off at this random point along a small stream that was not in a canyon. But after walking for about 15 minutes we got to rappel down the first waterfall and by the second rappel, the real fun began. We were in a narrow canyon, gorgeously sculpted out by water, about 50 feet deep at points. The walls had huge bowl like chunks taken out where you can see the river once had a sharp bend. The directions and points of the bends changed at the different heights of the canyon as the river’s direction had changed over time, making it appear as though a wave traveled up the rock. Then there were more delicate looking etches in the sedimentary rock where you could see the swirl of the water marked on just the surface. Lush plant life grew over and down the edge of the canyon. We made our way slowly down the river, squeezing through very narrow points in the rock, down miniature waterfalls, through water that barely covered our feet or at other points it was up to my chest. At the end, the man who drove us to the canyon met us at a different point with hot coffee and cookies at the ready (fantastic for such a cold day).
The trip was great except for about halfway through, when Tom slipped and fell on a rock in the stream and hurt his hand. We got back into Pucon, and after an hour of Tom running around, still trying to plan our climb up the Volcano, I convinced him to go to the hospital. Within an hour of arriving at the hospital a doctor looked at his hand, had xrays done, a cast put on upon discovering that it was broken, and everything was paid for. We were out the door in no time.
The next day, instead of climbing Villarica, we explored Parque Nacional Huerquehue for the day which was gorgeous with its huge trees, pristine lakes and snow covered mountains. Upon returning from our eightish mile hike and hourish bus ride, we ate dinner, prepped for our big climb the next day, and ordered a taxi.
At 5 in the morning on Sunday, we were loading the taxi and on our way to Volcan Villarica. We were determined to beat the CONAF (chile’s rangers) to the top of the ski lifts at 7:30, otherwise they would demand to see papers or a guide. It was dark when we started but the sun began to rise as we began our trek up the snow on the Volcano (I know, it does seem rather odd to have snow on a Volcano that is one of the most active Volcanoes in Chile). The colors were beautiful, the ski was mostly clear and the view of the Andes was fantastic, becoming even better the further we hiked upward. We beat the CONAF with ease and were able to continue our trek to the summit. Taking our time as we went to take many pictures. We summated at about 10:30 am, spent a few minutes at the summit-not too many though for the sulfuric fumes coming from the crater were not that great smelling and were not really the best for us to inhale. I’m happy we decided to hike the volcano that day instead of Saturday, for the weather on Saturday didn’t really clear until afternoon, so our views would have been extremely limited.
We were back to Pucon by about three in the afternoon, by hitching a ride back with a nice family. We showered, sent our clothes to a laundry mat, and bought our bus tickets to Temuco for the first thing Monday morning. It was time to get out of there, and now that we finally were able to climb Villarica, the thrill of conquering a Volcano and really being in the Andes burned in our blood and our interest now turned to Volcan Lonquimay, two hours east of Temuco.
Thursday, December 31, 2009
In the Beginning…
Nov 14th-17th. Santiago and Around
I’ve come to the conclusion that probably the easiest thing to do for the journal entry is split them up by where we were, so not all the information is thrown you at once so that you have to suffer though a 10-page entry and you don’t have to have everything scattered in about 20-30 entries.
So in the beginning of my trip, Tom and I attempted to sleep on the floor at JFK outside the check baggage area (by the way, JFK does not have seating before the baggage check area, so if you arrive at midnight for a flight at five in the morning (check in at 3 am) as we did, you should probably bring a mattress with you, unless you can fall asleep standing up). At three in the morning we checked in for our flights and went through baggage check to find all the benches on the other side were already taken, so we found another “cozy” corner on the marble floor to catch an hour or 2 sleep.
Lets us breeze through the next 12 hours, for they were rather uneventful. We arrived in Santiago, Chile at about eight at night their time (6 o’clock our time). When we got to the subway system, we met two really friend men from the US who helped us find the subway stop we needed and gave us some tips on some adventures we should do, ie canyoning.
We were able to find our hostel easily enough. We dropped our stuff off, signed in and then went out to dinner to relax after the long day of travel. We ended up choosing a nice looking Italian restaurant where they didn’t speak a word of English and so our struggles with language that would follow and hinder us throughout our trip, began with the ordering of our meal and drinks.
Sunday the 15tth, we explored downtown Santiago. We walk around to a couple of museums that we walked through quickly since all the signs were in Spanish. We went through a metropolitan park, a cashier man in a convenience store spent about 10 minutes with us kindly trying to explain how to say the different types of Chilean change, and to the top of a small mountain with the Virgin Mary at top. There I discovered that Chileans do not have a taste for very spicy things but very sweet things. I bought a drink that I thought would be an ice-tea but it was actually a way too sweet syrupy drink. It was interesting though-it had this fluffy rice like substance on the bottom and whole apricots floating in it, looking like little brains.
After this little adventure we made our way to the bus station to buy tickets for Pucon for Tuesday night and then headed out to dinner at a place one of our hostel hosts recommended to us. Tom got a salmon dish, and the salmon was absolutely fantastic. Our meal was only eventful because of a crazy man walking by while meowing at us, and a young boy playing on a walking multi-drum set (I was pretty impressed, I would have gotten dizzy spinning around that fast and playing some good rhythms at the same time).
Monday started off on the completely wrong foot. The plan as to go to Cajon del Maipo, catch the bus there at 7:30 in the morning, hike there for a short while, maybe do some rafting or paragliding. Then in the evening catch the bus to El Morado, the National Monument, which is suppose to be an incredibly beautiful park. Then Tuesday head back around 6 to catch our bus at 11:00
That was the plan, this was the reality: Tom and I slept though all our alarms got up about 8:30, threw things together quickly, checked out of our rooms and put luggage in storage. With the metro, we went to one stop to find out is was the wrong one and had to take the metro again back in the direction we came and past it to get to the opposite side of Santiago. When we finally got to the right stop, we had to find where the bus station was exactly, food shop, communicate what we wanted and then we finally jumped on the bus to Cajon del Maipo at about 11:30. We went to San Gabriel first, the furthest town on that bus route and the closest to the park. We got to San Gabriel which according to the maps had hiking and camping. We get there, to find a very small town, with a cop station a few houses and this little food stand. We “talked” with the two kids at the food stand who couldn’t speak a word of English and us with our like 5 words of Spanish. They were so eager though to help us as best they could. We were able to convey that we wanted to hike and camp and needed a map. They gave us a map that wasn’t very useful (turns out good maps are hard to come by everywhere we went), said there wasn’t camping here but we could climb this mountain over there (the problem was there was fenced in property all around the base, so how do we get to it without trespassing?). We went to the cops next, they spoke no ingles as well. After an hour or two of struggling to understand each other, we found out there was no bus that day to the national monument, we would have to hitch hike (problem-not many cars heading that way or back) so we gave a futile attempt to that, before catching a bus back to San Alfonso, a town a few miles back where the cops said there is rafting, hiking and camping.
Turns out all the hiking, camping, and rafting in the area was all controlled by this resort place that way overpriced everything (even by US standards it was pricy). We didn’t want to have to pay to hike and since they controlled the mountains on the far side of the river we went to attempt to hike up a mountain on our side, which we may have had to go around a gate to get to (but it seemed like a gate to keep vehicles out, not people,e because you could walk around it and this woman who lived near it said we could go up that way. So we started this long, at points grueling trek up the mountain (not that it was long and steep, but very sandy-so every step we took we’d slide half a step back). Great views though. And we had picked up some hiking companions-5 random dogs, most I think were strays, one had a collar. They were adorable and friendly, but we were a little concerned that they might have flees (the strays in Santiago were infested with them). They followed on us our whole hike, they got a little sidetracked chasing some horses we went by, but they came right back. I couldn’t believe it because there was no water or food where we went. We camped out that night about halfway, down the mountain and the dogs all stayed by our tent throughout the night. Nice to have the protection, though they were a little nerve racking. One rather bug cuddly dog tried to push into my tent in the night, which was a little startling to wake up to with the dog’s head next to my face.
Tuesday, we hiked out a different way than we came in, and we eventually found ourselves at a fence across a dirt road that was definitely suppose to keep people out (though we were not sure if we were on the inside or outside of the fence). Well we didn’t really have much choice so we found a way through and walked down the dirt road to get to the road. Our companions stuck with us the whole way, we only lost them when we reached the road and the bus came by and we hopped onto it to head back to Santiago. We wondered for the next few days what happened to our little buds. Wondering if they were still waiting for us on the side of the road.
Upon our return to our hostel, we showered and then headed out, checked out this beautiful old fort Santa Lucia and then headed to an early dinner (since we had only eaten nuts and dried fruit since the morning before. Tom and I split a drink that in English means earthquake, which is made from about 3 glasses worth of wine, a couple of shots of vodka, and lemon sorbet-I’m sure you can now deduce the origin of its name.
We next headed to the cultural center, found ourselves in a free movie which was designed like an old one, which turned out to be really boring (I’m sure if we could understand what they were saying it would still be boring, for the long static filled silences drowned out any dialogue). After about 20 min of waiting for things to get interesting, we left to stop by the alpine club whose office was conveniently across the street from our hostel. We ended up meeting two very nice men, one named Fernando who I stayed in contact with for he gave us tips on climbing and hiking, and then this other guy who couldn’t speak a word of English but let us climb their outdoor wall and was entertained with watching us. We ended up spending about an hour there, before we headed back to the hostel and then to the bus station for a 10-hour ride to Pucon.
I’ve come to the conclusion that probably the easiest thing to do for the journal entry is split them up by where we were, so not all the information is thrown you at once so that you have to suffer though a 10-page entry and you don’t have to have everything scattered in about 20-30 entries.
So in the beginning of my trip, Tom and I attempted to sleep on the floor at JFK outside the check baggage area (by the way, JFK does not have seating before the baggage check area, so if you arrive at midnight for a flight at five in the morning (check in at 3 am) as we did, you should probably bring a mattress with you, unless you can fall asleep standing up). At three in the morning we checked in for our flights and went through baggage check to find all the benches on the other side were already taken, so we found another “cozy” corner on the marble floor to catch an hour or 2 sleep.
Lets us breeze through the next 12 hours, for they were rather uneventful. We arrived in Santiago, Chile at about eight at night their time (6 o’clock our time). When we got to the subway system, we met two really friend men from the US who helped us find the subway stop we needed and gave us some tips on some adventures we should do, ie canyoning.
We were able to find our hostel easily enough. We dropped our stuff off, signed in and then went out to dinner to relax after the long day of travel. We ended up choosing a nice looking Italian restaurant where they didn’t speak a word of English and so our struggles with language that would follow and hinder us throughout our trip, began with the ordering of our meal and drinks.
Sunday the 15tth, we explored downtown Santiago. We walk around to a couple of museums that we walked through quickly since all the signs were in Spanish. We went through a metropolitan park, a cashier man in a convenience store spent about 10 minutes with us kindly trying to explain how to say the different types of Chilean change, and to the top of a small mountain with the Virgin Mary at top. There I discovered that Chileans do not have a taste for very spicy things but very sweet things. I bought a drink that I thought would be an ice-tea but it was actually a way too sweet syrupy drink. It was interesting though-it had this fluffy rice like substance on the bottom and whole apricots floating in it, looking like little brains.
After this little adventure we made our way to the bus station to buy tickets for Pucon for Tuesday night and then headed out to dinner at a place one of our hostel hosts recommended to us. Tom got a salmon dish, and the salmon was absolutely fantastic. Our meal was only eventful because of a crazy man walking by while meowing at us, and a young boy playing on a walking multi-drum set (I was pretty impressed, I would have gotten dizzy spinning around that fast and playing some good rhythms at the same time).
Monday started off on the completely wrong foot. The plan as to go to Cajon del Maipo, catch the bus there at 7:30 in the morning, hike there for a short while, maybe do some rafting or paragliding. Then in the evening catch the bus to El Morado, the National Monument, which is suppose to be an incredibly beautiful park. Then Tuesday head back around 6 to catch our bus at 11:00
That was the plan, this was the reality: Tom and I slept though all our alarms got up about 8:30, threw things together quickly, checked out of our rooms and put luggage in storage. With the metro, we went to one stop to find out is was the wrong one and had to take the metro again back in the direction we came and past it to get to the opposite side of Santiago. When we finally got to the right stop, we had to find where the bus station was exactly, food shop, communicate what we wanted and then we finally jumped on the bus to Cajon del Maipo at about 11:30. We went to San Gabriel first, the furthest town on that bus route and the closest to the park. We got to San Gabriel which according to the maps had hiking and camping. We get there, to find a very small town, with a cop station a few houses and this little food stand. We “talked” with the two kids at the food stand who couldn’t speak a word of English and us with our like 5 words of Spanish. They were so eager though to help us as best they could. We were able to convey that we wanted to hike and camp and needed a map. They gave us a map that wasn’t very useful (turns out good maps are hard to come by everywhere we went), said there wasn’t camping here but we could climb this mountain over there (the problem was there was fenced in property all around the base, so how do we get to it without trespassing?). We went to the cops next, they spoke no ingles as well. After an hour or two of struggling to understand each other, we found out there was no bus that day to the national monument, we would have to hitch hike (problem-not many cars heading that way or back) so we gave a futile attempt to that, before catching a bus back to San Alfonso, a town a few miles back where the cops said there is rafting, hiking and camping.
Turns out all the hiking, camping, and rafting in the area was all controlled by this resort place that way overpriced everything (even by US standards it was pricy). We didn’t want to have to pay to hike and since they controlled the mountains on the far side of the river we went to attempt to hike up a mountain on our side, which we may have had to go around a gate to get to (but it seemed like a gate to keep vehicles out, not people,e because you could walk around it and this woman who lived near it said we could go up that way. So we started this long, at points grueling trek up the mountain (not that it was long and steep, but very sandy-so every step we took we’d slide half a step back). Great views though. And we had picked up some hiking companions-5 random dogs, most I think were strays, one had a collar. They were adorable and friendly, but we were a little concerned that they might have flees (the strays in Santiago were infested with them). They followed on us our whole hike, they got a little sidetracked chasing some horses we went by, but they came right back. I couldn’t believe it because there was no water or food where we went. We camped out that night about halfway, down the mountain and the dogs all stayed by our tent throughout the night. Nice to have the protection, though they were a little nerve racking. One rather bug cuddly dog tried to push into my tent in the night, which was a little startling to wake up to with the dog’s head next to my face.
Tuesday, we hiked out a different way than we came in, and we eventually found ourselves at a fence across a dirt road that was definitely suppose to keep people out (though we were not sure if we were on the inside or outside of the fence). Well we didn’t really have much choice so we found a way through and walked down the dirt road to get to the road. Our companions stuck with us the whole way, we only lost them when we reached the road and the bus came by and we hopped onto it to head back to Santiago. We wondered for the next few days what happened to our little buds. Wondering if they were still waiting for us on the side of the road.
Upon our return to our hostel, we showered and then headed out, checked out this beautiful old fort Santa Lucia and then headed to an early dinner (since we had only eaten nuts and dried fruit since the morning before. Tom and I split a drink that in English means earthquake, which is made from about 3 glasses worth of wine, a couple of shots of vodka, and lemon sorbet-I’m sure you can now deduce the origin of its name.
We next headed to the cultural center, found ourselves in a free movie which was designed like an old one, which turned out to be really boring (I’m sure if we could understand what they were saying it would still be boring, for the long static filled silences drowned out any dialogue). After about 20 min of waiting for things to get interesting, we left to stop by the alpine club whose office was conveniently across the street from our hostel. We ended up meeting two very nice men, one named Fernando who I stayed in contact with for he gave us tips on climbing and hiking, and then this other guy who couldn’t speak a word of English but let us climb their outdoor wall and was entertained with watching us. We ended up spending about an hour there, before we headed back to the hostel and then to the bus station for a 10-hour ride to Pucon.
Sunday, December 6, 2009
A ¨Brief¨ Overview of my life in South America.
Friday December 4, 2009
I have no idea where to start, I´m so far behind on the blog (though not my journal, I´ve been good! Well for the most part), and I don´t have time to go over everything because I have a Jazz festival to head to tonight and the internet cost pesos.
Ok so here´s what I´m gonna do. I´ll give a quick briefing of the trip, mentioning things that pop in my head at the moment, so you have a basic idea of what I´ve been up to, and then when I get home, I will try to write everything in more detail. Unless of course you all respond with disgust saying you don´t want to hear (or read) another word. Oh and just to let you know, if you are going to South America, knowing Spanish makes your life 100x´s easier (I thought it would be just 10X´s but after going in circles several times, I´ve discovered I underestimated).
The flight to Chile went smoothly, though it was long, and Copa Airlines definitely doesn´t have the most luxurious flights. And by the way, JFK doesn´t have places for people to sit comfortably before the bag check in-so if you´re planning on staying in the airport overnight for an early flight in the morning, bring a mattress.
Three days were spent in Santiago/Cajon Del Maipo. We explored some of the Museums and wondered around the city, ate at a few restaurants that were pricier than I expected but very good (by the way, if you´re ever in Chile, you have to have their salmon, it´s fantastic). We split (good thing too, we may have had trouble making our way back to the hostel if we each had our own) this drink whose Spanish name means earthquake (wine+vodka+lemon sorbet/sherbert). Oh and it is true-wine is very cheap here.
We headed out to Cajon del Maipo to spend a day there, and then hopefully the national park. Long story short, the bus to the park wasn´t running that day, we went back and forth in towns, lost in translation, hiked a random mountain with stray dogs, camped, hopped a fence, and dumped our 4 legged traveling partners on the road by catching the bus. Oh, we also explored this old fort called Santa Lucia which was very impressive. Then the night before we headed out, we stopped in the alpine club office, met 2 really nice gentlemen, one who couldn´t speak a word of English but let us climb their outdoor wall for free, and the other is potentially a really important connection for future climbing trips in South America.
We caught a sleeper bus to Pucon. Unlike Santiago which was hot and sunny, little Pucon was cold and quite wet. We waited around the town for 5 days for the chance to climb Volcan Villarica. In the mean time we explored this touristy town, went on a mountain bike ride, went canyoning and Tom broke his hand unfortunately. Oh and we ran along the beach of the lake there-it had black sand by the way, but unlike San Francisco, this sand is black from the Volcano. We finally climbed Villiarica (which organizing and doing was an adventure in itself-to be explained later) and the day was perfect for it. The photos from that explain to people better than words why I wanted to come to South America.
We then headed to Temuco and Mallechuelo to climb Lonquimay Volcan. We road several buses, some more than once, and finally ended up renting a car to climb this volcano. We waited a day or two for good weather. Climbed it in ok weather, had to turn back about 100 feet from the summit thanks to a white out and strong winds. But the views when they could be seen were fantastic. We then did this long drive on a dirt road that skirted the border of Argentina and looped back around to Temuco. It had some great views.
We then caught a bus to Valdivia, and relaxed there our last couple of days and of course the weather was beautiful when we´re not trying to climb a mountain. We walked through a garden or two, went on a boat ride to these neat little town next to the pacific, explored the town, saw some sea lions, and walked through the fish market a couple of times (right next to it is where I had the amazing salmon). Oh and I almost forgot! We went to a beer brewery, had these gigantic sandwiches that were delicious, some beer samplers, and explored the beer museum, unfortunately we couldn´t do the same for the brewery.
In Valdivia Tom and I separated and I headed for El Bolson. After a day of traveling almost 14 hours, I made it to my farm and have had a fantastic week, though not with farming. In fact, there isn´t really a farm yet, they´re still trying to build they´re homes and set up the garden. But working on a green home made of hay, clay, and wood is pretty neat. And I´m helping to build a fence for the future garden. The 3 brothers who own the farm are amazingly nice and laid back, one of the wives is a fantastic cook, and I´m usually in the dark as to what´s going on because people are usually speaking French or Spanish (most of the Woofers are from France). Oh and the farm is half way up a mountain and has amazing views.
Well it´s the weekend now and I´m in town for a night and a day and then hopefully going on a hike Sunday and maybe a horseback ride? Off to enjoy some jazz. Enjoy the pictures!
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