Sunday, December 26, 2010

The Beginning of a Long Series of Fortuitous Successes

The End of the World is far, far away. And it is cold, even during this supposed summer. Tierra del Fuego (Land of Fire) was so named because of the explorer, Magellan, who sailed on over from Portugal in 1520 and saw the campfires of the Yaghan native people (now pretty much extinct) dotting the coastline. It is a beautiful, yet testing region. The climate, which is described as ´inhospitable´, is unpredictable, with biting winds that suddenly surrender to warmth of the sun, only to disappear again around the next corner.

My brotherman, Jason, and I landed in Ushuaia, the world´s southern-most city, on December 14th and headed straight for el Parque Nacional de Tierra del Fuego. After some initial hurdles (i.e. arriving to the airport two days early), as soon as we found our first campsite (see photo), things seemed to be looking up. We were greeted by a pair of native geese (they stay with the same mate for life) and a bunch of wild bunnies, and we set up the tent next to winding river carrying glacial melt. It took a while just to decide which way to face the tent, as there are no shortage of beautiful views in all directions.

That first night, exhausted from the trip from Buenos Aires, we sat in the tent, sheltered from the unrelenting cold and wind, waiting for some sign of bedtime, only to realize it was already 9pm, and we still had to cook dinner. We went to sleep an hour later with no sign of approaching darkness. This is, afterall, the bottom of the world in summertime. Another night we dined with a view of the harbor at 11pm, watching the glowing pinks and purples of an eternal sunset.

After a few days of hiking around the park, we caught a bus heading north. The road hugs the Atlantic coastline, and we left the lush, jagged hills for a more arid landscape teeming with guanacos (like llamas), and crossed over into Chile´s Patagonia. Patagonia lives up to its reputation of having some of the most beautiful scenery in the world. We stayed two nights in the small town of Puerto Natales to stock up on supplies for a week-long backpacking trip in the national park of Torres del Paine.

The first day we walked 20km to the first campsite, a meadow covered in daisies and nestled up against snow-littered mountains. But even these huge mountains were no respite from the fickle winds. The weather in general here is unpredictable, to say the least. Locals laugh when asked about the forecast. They look up at the sky and say something like, ¨Well, it´s raining now.¨ Now is all we can really know.

Our route was a circuit that guided us over ridges and through valleys, circling huge enormous granite towers, which are the park´s centerpiece. Walking towards them in the sun that first day, they looked majestic and grand—the Emerald City tured brown. But the winds change around every ridge. One minute it´s hot and sunny, and the next the rain spits and the wind threatens to blow you off the trail and down the ravine into the iceberg-ridden lake below. When the fog lifts enough to see the towers, they look evil an morbid, resembling the residence of the Wicked Witch of the West.

The winds started up the first night, pushing the tent down on top of us. I lay in my sleeping bag, not sleeping, listening to the wildness outside,and finally getting up the nerve to go pee. The nearly-full moon was behind a cloud, but still lighting up the sky and making the daisies glow earily.

The next morning we packed up our bags in the rain and walked 19km in a continuous downpour. When we finally arrived and set up the tent, I found that ´waterproof´ does not really exist, and that everything—icluding the tent and my sleeping—was soaked. Very luckily, at that location there happened to be a refugio, a little cabin with a woodstove and bunkbeds for a fee. After chatting with a Spanish woman who was victim to the same, wet fate, I decided to stay in the cabin that night, instead of toughing it out in the tent, like Jason. I sat around the woodstove with fellow hikers from the US, England, New Zealand, Spain, Italy, and Chile. We formed a good little group, leapfrogging each other on the trail the entire week.

I received a wonderful gift of two garbage bags, in which I placed all my belongings before putting them inside my pack. We headed out anew that Solstice morning, with mostly-clear skies and the longest day of the year (and probably my life) ahead of us. When we climbed above the treeline, the wind was unbelievable; Jason guessed it was blowing about 80mph. I would steady myself and my pack against it, and then all of a sudden it would gust up and literally knock me down. During these gusts all I could do was surrender to it and remain on the ground long enough to catch my breath.

The next few days took us trudging up steep, snowy slopes and crossing a peak to finally give us a view of Glacier Grey, an enormous mass of ice that, during this warmer season, drops house-size chunks of itself into the crystal, blue lake below. We trudged through the mud, frolicked through fields of wildflowers, and hopped on rocks across frigid streams. At one of our last campsites we looked up from setting up the tent to see an avalanche screaming down the mountain on the other side of the river from us. Glaciers and avalanches exist on the news or in National Geographic; I never imagined I would actually see (and hear) them.

We spent Christmas Eve huddled inside the tent, feasting on instant mashed potatoes and Ramen noodles, and decided that we deserved a real Christmas meal. So, despite aching muscles and blistered feet (my toes and heals were covered in duct tape), we woke up early, completed the park circuit, and caught a bus back into civilization for some well-deserved skyping, ice-cream, wine, salmon, and dancing (in that order).

We just dropped off 7 kilos of dirty laundry at the laundromat in preparation for the continued journey north. Tuesday we head to the Fitz Roy Mountains in the southern Andes for some day hikes. To the North!

Friday, December 10, 2010

A New Era

Lounging poolside with a view of the Sierra Mountains rising up 60 degrees around me and Mendoza's finely-tended grapes are pushing Paraguay further and further away. This is a rare vacation in which my mind is empty of responsibility.

This is truly the beginning of a brand-new era. I finally have the outer tranquility to rewind back to my time in Paraguay and replay the last few months there. I feel like I was an outsider watching myself take part in this life, while I merely commented on the outcomes. Between finishing up my projects in site, passing on my knowledge to fresh-off-the-plane volunteers, and finding as many excuses as possible to celebrate, I found little will to record or share.

That has been a theme in Paraguay. An avid journaler for most of my life, my little moleskin notebook sat on my shelf, collecting red dirt and spiderwebs. I've been too busy living, taking advantage of the time I had left in my community. A few highlights:

-organizing a five-day field practice for volunteers in training.

-thanksgiving with jason's bunny (i.e. mustard-crusted rabbit in white wine sauce, stuffed squash, and peach pie. This really deserves an entire entry).





Next step: Tierra del Fuego. More on that later.