Last day in Punta Arenas.......

Our time in Punta Arenas and Patagonia has been wonderful. Our hostel in Punta Arenas has probably been my favorite out of all the hostels in the world I´ve been. Lonely Planet gives it a somewhat drab description, which is very untrue. The place if very homey, nothing really modern except the big flat screen tv, but incredibly comfortable. The owner is extremely friendly and speaks good english. They provide a computer with free internet, and their kitchen is well stocked with lots of pots and pans and ample fridge space. You walk in and you feel at home to sit anywhere or touch anything. Our first night here we had a wonderful dinner with our new Dutch friends Fons (pronounced like the Fonze, only with an S, in his own words) and Margreet. Our dinner party also included a young british couple on a very long road trip. They bought a jeep in Santiago and drove it all the way down here at the end of the world. They had a pretty great story about a nasty rain storm in northern patagonia, the waterfalls next to the road flooded and created a small river making it near impossible to pass. They drove through anyhow and luckily made it despite water pouring in through their windows. There were locals on the other side of the ¨river´ taking photos of them the whole time. We stayed up late into the night drinking lots of wine and sharing stories. It was really nice to have some down time between the long flights and bumpy bus rides.

We left the following morning to catch a bus leading us to Puerto Natales where we would meet Brandon and Annie. We had a great introduction to the warm atmosphere the local people put off right when arrived at the bus terminal. Realizing that the little map we had in our guide book did not include the street our hotel was on, we knew we would have a small challenge on our hands finding the place. There were people at the bus station trying to hand you fliers to their hostel or buy a tour with them. We told them we had a hotel, and after giving them the name, one biggish taxi driver in a burgundy sweater vest offered to drive us there for free. He said he was a friend of the owners and was happy to do it, rad!

Our room was decent, it was great to have our own bathroom for a change. The place was a little far away from the main part of town but not too bad, probably helped prepare us for the long walks soon to come. Melanie and I went out to lunch and we were pretty hungry. It was a little late for lunch by Chile standards, and were lucky to find a nice looking place still open. I had heard of the King Crab down here being a specialty and was looking to sink my teeth into some. They brought out some really nice bread and butter which I scarfed down immediately while Melanie salivated (she doesn´t eat bread, pretty sure everybody knows but just in case). The big plate of crab was good, but really needed garlic butter to make it great, people down here love their mayo. The flavor was somewhat bitter, and lacked that smooth richness Alaskan crab has.

We made our way back to the hotel and meet up with B&A. It was great to see some familiar faces and knowing that more good times were ahead. We took a bus the following afternoon up to Parque Torres Del Paine. There was alot of headache trying to figure out what to do in this gigantic part, the headache coming in with too many options and not enough time. We talked to some people in PN and got some good advice on how to conquer the park in the short 3 day visit. It involved 8 hours of hiking per day, hitting the trail at 5am, needless to say we would be modifying that plan just a little bit. We would stop off at the Refugio (pronounced re-foo-he-o), where you could rent a bed or a campsite, along with the necessary gear. We had to take a catamaran to get there, it provided excellent views of giant mountains from a crystal blue lake (getting it´s color from the nearby glaciers), at a premium price. Being that the refugio was so remote, they jack up their prices for moderate accomodations, especially in the peak season which we are in. After a very long discussion, and Brandon accidentally asking the front desk woman if we could take her girlfriends back to our tent in spanish, we decided on renting two little domes to sleep in. We drank some box wine and dined on small sandwich fixings into the night. We never did see the front desk woman´s girlfriends.

We woke up the next day with rain clouds over our heads. Our plan was to leave most of our stuff with the refugio and take a day hike out to Glacier grey. We noticed that one of the other domes had completely blown over during the windy night, pretty lucky it didn´t happen to us. Suprisingly we didn´t hear anybody scream when that happened, that or we were too tired to care. We hit the trail at 10, and proceeded uphill to an extremely windy 20 kilometer hike. The further we hiked, the windier it got, breaking at times when the trail ran through a small amount of forest. Hiking along a ridge gave us incredible views over a lake and forests. Small amounts of glacier bits that had broken off upstream was lining the shore. Hopefully my blogging skills are improving, we reached the lookout, and this is what we saw.



After having a well deserved lunch of trail mix, dried fruit, and more avocado sanmich fixings, we headed back to the refugio. We were feeling somewhat taken by the inflated price at the refugio, didn´t want to risk the domes, and tried to decide what to do for the evening. We wanted to make our way north, over to the main refugio in the park, Hosteria Las Torres, were we could make a journey up to the granite towers. The only problem was that I heard through an email from the reservation person that the beds were all booked up and there was only camping available. The girls really wanted to sleep in beds, which was understandable since we had a hard day on the trail sucking on glaciers and being slapped around by the wind. We wanted to call and see if that was true but the refugio was saying they didn´t have a phone for us to use and was being rude about it. Brandon and Annie went back to Puerto Natales that night and Melanie and I went on to Las Torres to test our luck or get stuck in a rainy tent. After taking a boat, then a bus, then another bus that went over a bridge so narrow it had about 2 inches of clearance on either side, turns out Melanie´s enormous childhood collection of rabbits paws has finally paid off, they had a room with a bed for us. Well, ´bed´ might not be the right word, bunk beds in a room with a leaky ceiling and a bucket in the middle of the room to catch the rain drip is more like it. But hey, it was warm and we were tired.

The following morning we woke at sunrise to make the hike up to las torres. This was the busiest hike in the park and as it lacked in isolation, it exceeded in beauty. We were in the middle of an REI catalogue and the holes in ground from all the hiking poles were there to prove it. We heard numerous conversations about the different fabric certain outdoor clothing companies started to use and not all of their gear clothes were city worthy etc. Are we in Chile or Berkeley? The hike was pretty, we got snowed on briefly, and made it back to our base to catch the afternoon bus back to PN. Brandon and Annie had already made it to Punta Arenas so we caught the late bus to meet up with them, and dreamed about staying an extra night at our favorite hostel. Since we bought our tickets last minute, we couldn´t sit next to each other because all the other pre-assigned seats were taken. One of our seats was in the aisle at the very back of the bus, right next to the smelly bathroom. I let Melanie escape the stench and took my seat next to the lieu.

My travel mate/bus neighbor/mother/ and albino puppy owner took her seat next to me. I was a bit confused on how she was going to get away with bringing animals on the bus, along with her puppy. She positioned the half open corona box with her albino puppy in it on her lap, then her chubby 5 year old squeezed in front of her legs between the seat. She must have noticed the puzzled look on my face because she motioned for me to sit down. I knew immediately that it was not going to work out, and I grabbed the albino beer box puppy and set it on my lap. She rather appreciated my gesture, and for the rest of the ride offered me handfuls of junk food and sugary sweets when she could pry them from her kids dirt stained hands. I pretended to sleep most of the way as the child kept trying to make conversation with me, and when I couldn´t respond due to the lack of spanish, he would look at his mom as if I was crazy and probably had some sort of learning disability.

Made it back to Punta Arenas and have been feasting like kings. Melanie made a big pot of soup yesterday and it was great to have after doing alot of hiking and eating cold food for several days. Yesterday we took a boat to and island through the straights of Magellan, where we visited a penguin colony of over 100,000. The penguins are well, I told them you all said hi and they thanked you for the christmas card.

This morning we had a roasted red pepper frittata with chard and buckets of gruyere along with roasted taters. We were tired of lots of places claiming they have ´real¨ breakfast, when really its just bread, jam, and armpit flavored coffee. Brandon and Annie just left for Santiago, then they are taking the evening bus to Valpariso. Our flight is later this evening, we are getting picked up by a friend of our good friend Molly. Joce is kind enough to put us up for the night, and hopefully she will be joining us later in wine country and joining the Tony and Melanie army of friends.

Thats all from this end, just killing time in our hostal, El Fin Del Mundo. Some Australian bicycle tourists just showed up and are throwing their water proof totes everywhere. Gotta run before they start throwing punches, much love to everybody and we´ll give you the update when we can.


T&M inc.

Fresh from the Desert.....

Howdy gang, Melanie and I arrived in Punta Arenas, Patagonia several hours ago. We had a long day of traveling, two 4 hour flights from the top of the country to the bottom of the world. We just had dinner and drank a bottle of wine so bare with me on this post.

We just spent 5 days in San Pedro de Atacama (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Pedro_de_Atacama). Some of our plans didn´t work out as we thought, but was made up in other ways. Our little blue rental car was a blessing and curse, more of the former than the latter. More on that later.

We spent our first evening visiting valle de la luna, a national park a 10 minutes drive out of town. We started off hiking through some lava caves, although we didn´t know the caves were part of the trail and it was a good thing we had our head lamps. There was a group of young Chileans hiking throughout the cave, using their cell phones as lights. You could say we saved their lives, although I don´t think they thought of it that way.

We then drove out to a very old salt mine that sat behind a few boulders that were in the middle of the desert. The boulders were a main attraction of the park, we didn´t find out why until later, apparently they are 1,000,000 years old. The salt mines were nice, only I had to hold Melanie back from wanting to lick the ground and I wore out my arms from her determination.

We ended our time at the park climbing a giant sand dune and from there climbing out through a rocky mountain valley to watch the sunset. We could tell why the park was called Valley of the Moon, walking around the park had strong moon like qualities. The pictures don´t do it justice, the few I´ve posted here make them look tiny, trust us, they were HUGE!

We found out that there were some hot springs along with waterfalls and swimming pools 15 miles out of town. The following day we piled into the great blue clunker and headed northwest. Not far from town, the road was so incredibly riveted and bumpy that we couldn´t venture forward. Somewhat bummed to miss out on the hot springs, we heard of some man-made swimming pools south of town, Pozo 3 (not sure why the number 3 is here, it´s not like there were two others). It was pretty much a Chilean family picnic grounds that had a giant pool, 30ft deep in the adult section. It was a great way to beat the heat for a little while, the sun in this desert is a force to be reckoned with. I did mention it is considered the driest place in the world right? In town they have a stop light displaying the danger levels of solar rays. During the afternoon (code purple) it says that white folk like us shouldn´t be in the sun for more than 11 minutes at a time!

After swimming we decided to continue the drive since we were already out of town. We headed East towards the Andes, a slow and steady climb up to around 4,000 meters. There are several flamingo reservations around San Pedro, we wanted to find one of the few in high elevation. The drive was beautiful, crisp clear blue skies and a great view of a volcano in front of us as we ascended. The lonely road ran parallel to a giant canyon, giant boulders lining the walls. We saw a pack of wild alpacas grazing in the mountain range. Apparently the alpacas love it up there because they and see their predators (pumas) from miles around, not many places to hide in the desert range. I pulled over to take a few photos of the alpacas and the high elevation really hit me. I was totally fine in the car, but taking two steps left me faint of breathe and wanting to keel over. We decided it was enough high elevation for the day and figured we would let the flamingos play by themselves. We headed back to town for some dinner and sleep. Melanie got some mushroom risotto made with a fruit that only grows in the Atacama desert, Chañar. They made a sweet flavored Chañar reduction to top the risotto and it was lip smacking good.

We the had an appointment with a french astronomer to take a tour of the stars. Northern Chile is supposed to be one the best places in the world for some star gazing, they have some giant observatories here. You needed reservations a month in advance, we settled for the local tour. Our appointment was for 9pm and was going to be 2 hours long. We had dinner first at a restaurant down the street thinking we had plenty of time. We arrived at their door 5 minutes before 9 and waited around for someone to show. A few minutes after 9 we heard some voices inside their office and knocked on their wooden door. The people inside informed us that the tour left 20 minutes earlier, and as it turns out, our travel time piece is, well, it´s a piece of something that doesn´t involve time. We missed our tour and were really bummed, partially because it was the whole reason we rented a car in the first place. But, since we had the car, we figured we would go star gaze by ourselves. A 20 minute drive out of the tiny 3,5000 person village left a bright sky even brighter. The milky way was hovering over us so close we wanted to grab it with our hands.

Our last day in the desert we decided to give the high elevation another try, this time we were armed with some special tea that locals drink to help the blood get to their brain, making it easier to acclimate. Our destination was two alpine lakes that had breeding grounds for flamingos, what seemed just an hour from town on our map. Well, 45 minutes out of town it turned into a dirt road, and we were hoping it was better condition than the road to the hot springs. It was, for the first 45 minutes. The scenery was desolate and beautiful. As far as the eye could see was desert and mountains. The slow and steady climb with out little putt-putt car started to get more difficult as the road worsened. We were getting passed by speeding tour buses with 4 wheel drive. People would just stare at us like we ate the wrong end of a snake. We eventually made it after 2 hours on the road, Melanie´s back was killing her from the bumpy ride. Blah blah blah, more gorgeous mountains, pretty lakes, is this getting repetitive or what? They wouldn´t let us go down to the water as it is protected flamingo territory. I want to say we saw herds of flamingos, frolicking and fornicating, but I wouldn´t be telling the truth. We were in the wrong part of the season, and we only saw several lone flamingos, and they were so far away we could barely make out the lines of their thin bodies.

We drove back to town, rocking out to Chairmen of the Board on our little travel speakers (we didn´t have the cable for the auxillary input in our car and the local radio was terrible). We were pretty grateful for the rental car, it was difficult at times, but we saw some great stuff thanks to it. It was also much better than donig stuff on a tour.

We woke up at 5am the following day to catch our flight back to Santiago from the Shithole. After getting yelled at by a bus driver for driving down the wrong way on an unmarked one way street, we luckily navigated ourselves back to the airport just in time for our flight. Most of the 9 hours on a plane down to patagonia was uneventful, except for one of the coolest things we´ve ever seen in our lives. South of Puero Montt, we got to witness the legendary volcano Chaiten erupt from the sky on a clear blue day.

http://uk.reuters.com/article/scienceNewsMolt/idUKTRE51I77H20090220

see other cool Chaiten pix here, some amazing action last year with volcano battlin a lightening storm.

http://www.rumormillnews.com/cgi-bin/archive.cgi/noframes/read/124233



We are meeting up with our dear friends Brandon and Annie tomorrow, then we head off to Torres Del Paine national park.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torres_del_Paine_National_Park

That is all for this report, I cheated and finished this post the following day. It was too hard to stay up after the long day and wine. We met a great Dutch couple, and today we went to a maritime museum where they had pictures and artifacts from Sir Ernest Shackleton´s (one of my heroes) great voyage to the south pole in 1914. If any of you haven´t seen The Endurance, you need to rent it now. We are going to make some squash and musrhoom risotto tonight. The squash here are the size of horse heads. The mercados here cutt of 1/16 pieces for about a dollar. I also go some local scallops (at least I think they are scallops) that I´m going to cook in some chili and lime butter.

much luv to all of you back home

T$M

OI Vei! with a capital Ñ

Whew, what a whirlwind. Well, we´re here, despite a few bumps in the road. We got stuck in Lima by the international narcotics authority. They thought Melanie´s bag of unmarked vitamins were drugs. We got strip searched and vocally abused in several languages. They took our camera, passports, and credit cards then let us loose to survive and whatever means possible. JUST KIDDING! Sorry moms, had to mess with you a little bit.

We are now in San Pedro de Atacama, a small desert town in northern chile. Sorry we didn´t post earlier, this has been the first crack at the internet since we´ve been here. We arrived into Santiago on the morning of the 19th. We took a taxi to our hostel in the Provedencia region of Santiago. Our place was nice and quiet, exactly what we were looking for after traveling for 24 hours straight. The room was a little dark and had bunk beds in them. We had to go through another person´s room to get to ours, luckily it was the habitat of a very nice older Canadian Terry. Terry teaches English, and lives in South America 5 months out of the year to beat the cold in the great white north. He was a great resource to have so early in the trip. We unpacked our bags and took a good long, well deserved nap, me on top of the rickety bunk bed. I had a bookshelf a foot above me so every time I turned over my arm hit the thing. Luckily no serious bunk bed injuries transpired.

Woke up from our nap and desperately needed food and water. Terry told of us of a nearby grocery store and bank. We walked around the neighborhood that was bustling with young Chileans and business people alike. Santiago reminds me of a Latin Portland, lots of trees everywhere and the hipster youth factor was abundant. We were testing the waters of restaurants that meet Melanie´s inscrutable dietary restrictions. Nothing seemed of particular interest so out of sheer hunger we decided to cook our first meal here in Chile. Luckily I brought one of my Henckels cooking knives which is an invaluable possession to have while traveling. You never know when you will need to cook and it´s hard to rely on wonky hostel kitchen utensils. We cooked up some rice with zucchini, had a very fresh avocado and soft chilean cheese on top, delicious! Can´t believe we forgot Tapitio though.

We then took the metro and walked around the Bellavista area, lots of street art and is the hub of the night life in town. It was getting close to sunset and we got some great photos of the art. We decided to head back for some relax time and then to dinner. Dinner proved to be somewhat difficult and we put that down as strike number two in Melanie´s food quest. We went to an Italian restaurant (lots of Italian influence in this country) that was down the street from our hostel. We sat down and tried to get a menu, the waiter didn´t speak any english, I tried to ask for a menu and he was basically saying there was none. Not sure if it was some prejudice against us or there was some secret sign language for getting fed, either way we split and found an empty chinese place. Melanie had some plain veggies with rice and we had a hell of time trying to ask for hot sauce, which we were unsuccessful. We did get a small plate of pickled peppers which were good.

The following morning we woke with a big breakfast on our minds and getting back to the airport for our 4 hour flight up to northern Chile. We made a big breakfast of eggs and chard with the leftover avocado and great cheese. We bid farewell to Terry, wishing we had exchanged email addresses, but we´ll get back to that later in the story.

We took the busy subway to a bus stop, trying to keep ourselves from falling over with our heavy packs on our backs. Since we´re going to be in many types of climates, we had to have many clothes options. Anyhow, teetering tottering back and forth, we made it to the bus stop and luckily there was a bus just about to leave for the airport. When we checked in, we realised our brains were still fried from the jet lag and previous few days long journey to notice that we were an extra hour early for our flight up north. Could have used that sleep in a comfy bed! Oh well, no rest for the wicked.

The flight was serene, a glorious view of the andean mountain range the entire flight. Some of the mountains and volcanoes were higher than the plane was flying (around 20,000 feet!). There were great scenes of the desert turning into sand and ending into the deep blue ocean, just incredible. Wish we more time to explore the northern coast. The plane turned inland towards Calama, to quote our Lonely Planet guide book, it´s a shithole in the middle of the desert. A run down town that has survived off the surrounding copper minds. It´s the closest airport to our current residence in San Pedro. Our plan was to rent a car and drive to San Pedro. We didn´t have a reservation for the car, moving up the north bay right before leaving for the trip left us somewhat unprepared for certain destinations, not impossible to accomplish by any sense though. Most of the car rental agencies were totally out of cars. One place said they might have a car if we waited around for 20 minutes. A wonderful and interesting man Eric came to our rescue from the Budget rental agency. He spoke great english for Chilean standards, and had a very rich British accent, so rich it was kind of weird. He had one car left for us and was very helpful. He has lived his whole life up here in the desert, and is also fluent in German.

An hour later we were on our way to San Pedro. The challenge was getting through Calama. We were given vague instructions on how to get to the freeway towards San Pedro, and we ended up getting lost in nasty Calama for 45 minutes. At this time we were both starving and really needed water and did not want to stop in this town. The desert here is considered the driest place in the world. Within an hour of being here I could feel my hands and skin dry up (and I´m a guy, I normally don´t notice that sort of thing). The 100km drive was gorgeous. The sun was setting behind us and casting all sorts of orange and blue lights that slathered the snowy tips of the Andes with color. Too bad our camera was in the trunk, more focused on getting some food and water to pull over. We got 3 more nights here so I´m sure there will be alot of good photo opportunites.

We arrived in the very small village that was bustling with tourists on foot, along with a few cars and a horse. The dirt roads were bumpy and hard to navigate through the narrow streets. The need of food, water, and a place to leave our packs was overwhelming, and making it difficult to concentrate. We ended up turning down a road that was only supposed to be for people walking, we got yelled at by a big group of tribal native musicians and their crowds of fans. One nice guy who didn´t speak english helped us figure out how to get the hell out of there and where we could park.

After several confusing turns we found a place to park and set off on foot with our heavy packs, looking for a hostel first, as it was getting really late and we wanted to make sure we had a bed to sleep in. We got a dormitory room in a surprisingly clean hostel all to ourselves. We quickly found a restaurant that looked to have Melanie friendly food. The place was a really fancy, the outdoor dining patio had adobe walls and a thin wood awning with a nice fireplace in the middle. I scarfed down some bread served with a peanut-mint salsa that was delicious. I tried to serve melanie some cubes of butter, or a drink from the olive oil bottle but she declined. Our first real Chilean meal arrived and we were overjoyed. Melanie got a big bowl of a thick and dark quinoa with lots thinly sliced veggies and a tasty citrus sauce. I got a mint risotto that was combined with mashed potatoes, served with a heaping pile of shrimp, salmon, and the freshest calamari with a tomato cream sauce. Yup, it was tasty. We opted out on drinking wine this night, being too out of it to consume alcohol. We did have a small glass on the plane ride up north, which was surprisingly good for being plane ride wine.

Sleep was on our minds and hard to come by. There was some crazy loud thumpity thump music going on nearby with a super annoying MC. The music would stop for 5 minutes, we thought it was over, then it would just be the MC screaming in spanish, then music and screaming, then music, then silence, then music, then the MC etc. We fell asleep eventually and it was awesome.

Thats pretty much it for now. We´re going to try and see some flamingos this afternoon in a nearby national park. Tomorrow we have an appointment with an astronomer to give us a star tour. The stars here are indescribable. Hope everybody is well back home, please feel free to pass the blog along to anybody you think would find it interesting.

-t

P.S. bet you wondering when I would get back to Terry and his contact info. Well, on our way to the airport in SF, we stopped by REI and Melanie bought a new Marmot jacket that was the end all be all of jackets and especially great for this trip. Well, she accidentally left the soft shell (aka liner) of the jacket at our hostel in Santiago. Kind of a bummer, but I´m keeping the faith that we will be able to retrieve it with a lot of optimistic thoughts, and a serious amount of luck. Keep your pinkie toes cross for her por favor.

Kick Off baby!

Howdy folks, welcome to our new blog. We (Melanie and I) will be posting here during our upcoming travels to South America. We are a bit overwhelmed right now, leaving in 3 days! We just moved into our cozy new house in Cotati. We are living with our good friends Sabin, Xochitl (pronounced "so-chee"), and their 6 month old baby Yona. It's been a challenging move, and we couldn't have done it without the help from massive friendpower, and my Dad for storing most of our junk at his place in C-Dale. We can try to finalize the the things on our many "to-do" lists, hopefully we can get it done in the next three days.

We're starting off the first month in Chile. We arrive in Santiago and stay for just a few days before flying to the Atacama desert in the far north. There we have a reservation with a local french astronomer who will give us a guided tour of the stars close to the new moon. After that we fly to the opposite end of the country (kinda crazy distance wise), to Punta Arenas. There we are meeting up with our friends Brandon and Annie and checking out Patagonia for a week. After that some days in their wine country, and hopefully a good amount of beach time.

Much love going out to all of you, we hope t hear from you on our travels.

T&M