Torres del Paine

Unexpected internet!

I'm going to try to sum up my trip to Torres del Paine in one post... so there will be a lot left unsaid. A brief intro: Abby and I flew south from La Serena to Punta Arenas, from where we traveled the three hours to Puerto Natales and met Will, the other boy on the Midd program in La Serena. The next day our journey began.

Here's the schedule we followed:

This map was fun to annotate.

Los Torres del Paine

At the park entrance we were lucky enough to be able to view the Torres del Paine clearly, albeit from a distance.








Day 1: Refugio Paine Grande -> Refugio Grey
We arrived by catamaran to Refugio Paine Grande, where we ate lunch.

view from the catamaran

We then hiked to Refugio Grey. The hike was a fair amount of uphill hiking and unfortunately my head started to bother me, but thankfully after some short breaks the headaches went away. Unfortunately my camera battery died shortly into the hike.

The views, however, were unbelievable. I had never seen a glacier before - I'd assumed Glacier Grey would be white or gray (as the name suggests), but instead was astounded by the interplay of different shades of blue, gray, and white. The various colors beautifully complemented the folding texture of the glacier.

Day 2: Refugio Grey -> glacier lookout -> Refugio Paine Grande

We heard that beyond the refugio there was a good mirador (lookout) that offered a closer view of Glacier Grey, so before heading back to Refugio Paine Grey, we decided to go in the opposite direction for one hour or so, until we reached the mirador. The hike to the lookout was mostly uphill, roughly following the shore of the lake that the glacier borders. When the trail popped out of the forest or turned more rocky, we could get a view of the glacier. When we were at the mirador I finally got a closer look at the glacier. The blue hues confounded me... So I did research and discovered that, according to NASA, "The coloring is due to the ice’s absorption of red wavelengths of light and scattering of blue wavelengths of light as it is transmitted through the ice." More information here - that site is worth checking out, if only to see the aerial view of the glacier.

On our way to Refugio Paine Grande we got to appreciate de nuevo the beautiful views of Lago Grey and the striking mountains on the opposite side of the trail. Forested sides quickly gave way on the steep slopes to snow-capped peaks.

Day 3: Refugio Paine Grande -> Mirador Francés -> Refugio Los Cuernos
We made excellent time as we passed by the impossibly blue Lago Skottsberg. Weather was perfect, which allowed Will to somehow spot two huge birds (condors?) flying around the peaks of los Cuernos del Paine ("Horns of Paine") FAR off in the distance.

We arrived at a campsite and dropped off the packs there, taking only a smaller backpack to go eat lunch in Valle Francés, the middle "prong" of the W. It was mostly uphill - and therefore tiring - on the way there, but absolutely beautiful. At first we walked along a river of glacial runoff, so the roaring of rushing water accompanied us along the trail. We walked for about an hour into the valley, until we were far above the river. We heard incredible, echoing booms as enormous chunks of snow and ice fell from the heights of the mountains in the valley, encountering glacial ice and rocks on their descent. Every once in a while we heard a particularly deafening one, and the heads of everybody at the lookout would turn in unison to watch the huge chunks fall gracefully into a cloud of snow and finally disappear.

Panorama of Valle del Francés, looking north

Panorama of Valle del Francés, looking south

After lunching we headed back to the campsite and worked our way to our next destination, Refugio Los Cuernos. En route we stopped by Lago Nordenskjöld for a break to enjoy the view, since we were making such good time. Its shore was entirely rocks and Will wanted to try skipping some.

Lago Nordenskjöld

Day 4: Refugio Los Cuernos -> Refugio Chileno -> Mirador Los Torres -> Refugio Chileno


This day started out a bit rainy, which only served to emphasize the beautiful greens of the scenic hillsides. Will and I decided that the hills with amazing color alterations between bright and dark shades of green looked like they belonged in Norway... despite the fact that neither of us have ever been to Norway.

When we got to Refugio Chileno, we discovered that we had shaved at least two hours off of the estimated 6 or 6.5 hour journey. After resting for around an hour, Will and I decided to do the hike to el mirador de los Torres to see if we could get a glimpse of the elusive Torres del Paine. Abby's knees were causing her a lot of pain so she wisely decided not to join us.

The Torres are often viewed as the culmination of the W circuit... but are usually shrouded in clouds. Though exhausted, I found a reserve of energy because I knew I would beat myself up later if I didn't go. On the way up if it's clear you can supposedly get a glimpse of los torres. I couldn't because they were swimming in clouds. But at the top, by some stroke of luck (maybe it was the 10+ four-leaf clovers Abby and I found on the trail...) there was a gap in the clouds when I arrived at the top, through which I had a relatively unobstructed view of the famed peaks. I hadn't expected to see them so close - they were more imposing than I had imagined, which was a humbling experience in person. A bit below the mirador was another one of those lovely lakes. It seemed perfectly natural that it should have its home among the boulders, too, though I originally thought it looked out of place. We only enjoyed the rare view of los torres for about fifteen minutes  - fog returned quickly to claim its territory.

Here's the evolution of the Torres as I saw it. After 20 minutes or so, you couldn't even see the lake.

 

 

Day 5: Refugio Chileno -> Hostería Torres
We hiked down from Refugio Chileno to Hostería Torres as the final stretch of our W circuit. Unfortunately, the hike to the mirador the day before really messed up one of my knees, so I limped the entire way down. Thankfully, it was our easiest day.

At Hostería Torres we took the shuttle to the park entrance and then headed back to Puerto Natales.

People
We ran into a ton of really cool people on our trip, ranging from Dan the Man to somebody who knew a professor from Bowdoin and the professor's parents. Some German patent lawyers urged Abby and Will to patent some of the ideas they are utilizing in Middlebury's Solar Decathalon entry; we played hearts with a fellow Midd student in Abby and Will's year; an Australian woman gifted us a book, two oranges, and an apple; we found a lot of people who we would have invited to play cards with us; etc.

Everybody was incredibly friendly, too - you said hello to basically everybody you passed. Sometimes Abby, Will, and I decided to say hi in different languages rather than the standard English and español (by the end of the trip we covered at least five others, I think). Other people also got creative: we went by one group of 7 guys going in the other direction who said their holas in ascending notes, forming a nice scale.

We came across travelers from Germany, France, Australia, Holland, Japan, Korea, Brasil, Israel, Argentina, India, and more.

Fire
There was a big fire in the park about one year ago (read about it here), and the evidence is still easy to spot. Charred trees dominated some of the landscapes we hiked through, and we passed dozens of "zonas en recuperación."

Quick post

Hello dear readers!

I'm currently all packed to begin my travels. Abby is here with me in La Serena and we leave tomorrow morning to go to Patagonia.

I've had an excellent time during her quick visit. We went to the beach to hang out with friends and play a informal game of frisbee one day.

Today we went to the Japanese Garden in La Serena, then later went for a day trip with some friends to Valle del Elqui. It was a wonderful day.

I probably won't have internet for a couple/few weeks, but on my return I will post more!

So I will wish you all an early Merry Christmas and an on-time Happy Hanukkah.

Chileno

How to Speak Chilean

Use Palabras y frases Chilenas
You have to change a bunch of words, as such:
frijoles -->  porotos
aguacate --> palta
novio/a --> pololo/a
prometido/a--> novio/a
cacahuetes --> maní
to party --> carretear
a party --> carrete
maíz --> choclo
aretes --> aros
cometa --> volantín
bebe --> guagua (pronunciado "WAH-wah")
camiseta --> polera
hoodie --> polerón
estómago --> guatita (pronunciado "wah-TEE-tah")
fresa --> frutilla
etc

... and there are some words unique to the country/region:
weón
po
cachai (cachar)
flaite
al tiro
bacán
etc

Aspirate esses.

take out syllables.
para --> pa'
nada--> na'
etc

Add diminutives. For example, though I may say in this blog that I have "té" with my family, that's never true. We actually have "tecito." Agua? Nope, aguita. In your math class you may say punto (point) but in mine we say puntito. You may think your face is a cara but it's actually a carita. If a mom is addressing her daughter, she often says "mijita" (from "mi hijita," which comes from "mi hija" - my daughter). You get the picture.

I decided not to post swear words, but I could have a post dedicated to them.

And, of course, there's a lot more - I might edit this to add more.

El Cerro Grande

The first week I got to La Serena I decided that I wanted to climb el Cerro Grande (big hill) that overlooks La Serena. You can tell that it would offer an excellent view - the ocean and city to the west, inland mountains to the east. Will and I tried to make plans to do it multiple times, but it never worked out for some reason.

I've also found it somewhat hard to come across Chileans who are interested in doing that sort of thing. Some of my friends expressed interest in going, but we never arranged it. So when another friend mentioned that he been up el cerro recently and I mentioned that I wanted to climb it before I left, we made plans to do so.

Imagine: Though the summit has a lot of electrical towers and antennae, you can just walk around them so they don't mar the view. You can see the entirety of La Serena - both the main part of the city and the neighborhoods that are on the outskirts. Everything looks so small; it feels odd to be standing on the top of the hill looking down when the opposite is usually true. Far in the distance you can make out Cruz del Tercer Milenio in Coquimbo, but it blends into the horizon. The haze that comes with such distance blurs the shoreline a bit, and the immensity of the ocean blends with the sky. When you walk around the electrical towers to look down upon the other side of the scenery, you see Valle del Elqui spreading out before you. Fields of crops are just blocks of greens and browns; they slowly give way to the surrounding hills and mountains that loom above the valley.

Beautiful, no?

Unfortunately, that imaginary scenario is just that for me: imaginary. Although the sky was perfectly clear on the walk to the foot of el cerro grande, halfway through the trek up, clouds started rolling in... and by the time we got to the top, we couldn't see anything. But I think that's what it would look like.


Anyway, here are the pictures I took:

beautiful day!

Then the clouds arrived. 

:(

I had mostly wanted to do the hike for the view, but I enjoyed it nonetheless.

Every week multiple people tell me that my Spanish is quite good. The problem with their comments is that people generally ask me the same standard questions: what are you studying? What classes are you taking? How do you like Chile? Why did you choose to study in Chile? I meet a lot of new people every week - friends of friends, friends of the family, classmates, etc. So although I don't have a script for these answers, I've navigated the territory many times before and I'm comfortable in what I say when I answer them. I don't need to hesitate to think something through or wonder if my grammar is right as I explain that although I study neuroscience and math in the US, I mostly just have random classes here.

I hiked with my friend Sebastian, from my Climatology class. Sebastian and I became friends because we live near each other and some days we'd find ourselves walking the 20 minutes home, so we'd walk and chat. Sometime in October we realized that we both headed home at the same time on Fridays, so we arranged to wait for each other at the university and walk home together. After weeks of those conversations, we had covered those basic grounds and were able to talk about more interesting things - whether music, writing, hiking, or something else.

The total time for the outing to el Cerro Grande was about 5 hours - ample time for many conversation themes. We ended up talking about existentialism, God, Chilean culture, US culture, school systems, and more.... my Spanish has clearly improved, though even still I often had trouble expressing what I wanted to say. But it was very nice to have an extended time to talk about more than just basic topics. It gave me a chance to learn new vocabulary and actually practice my conversational Spanish.

Valle

This past Saturday morning I went to Valle del Elqui with Will, Nelly, Leyla, Kathy, and the two Chilean girls'  boyfriends. (side note: we were planning on leaving at 9:00, and I got there a bit late at ~9:10. Didn't matter because people function on Chilean time. The people who lived there were still waking up, and the others didn't get there 'til about 10. We ended up leaving at about 10:30.) It's a pretty drive of just over an hour, but I was tired after a late night and slept through a fair amount of it.

We arrived at the cabaña, nestled in a small valley between two big hills and about five minutes by car away from the main town of Vicuña.

It was HOT in Valle del Elqui - probably in the mid eighties, maybe up to the nineties. Since it's farther removed from the coast than La Serena, I suppose it heats up a lot more. I was able to wear my jorts for the first time in months, which felt pretty awesome. There was  a pool as a part of the little complex of cabañas, which I had planned on swimming on Saturday but didn't get around to it.

... I was too busy reading on a lounge chair in the sun.

I exhausted my supply of four books written in English a week or two after arriving in Chile, so I was reading in Spanish this time around. I've been making slow progress on Harry Potter y el misterio del príncipe (Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince). I had a sheet of paper and a pen with me to write down vocabulary words - from Saturday to Sunday I wrote down over 400 just from reading.

We went to Vicuña to pick up some food items we hadn't brought with us - including ice cream. The ice cream there was phenomenal. We got four flavors: canela (cinnamon), coco (coconut), vainilla (you can figure that one out), and mango (passionfruit. kidding. mango, obviously). I had a lovely moment where I mentioned that I didn't like coca ice cream. Which means: "I don't like cocaine ice cream."
... oops! Everyone laughed and then someone corrected me. Could have been worse.

Saturday evening Will and I walked up one of the nearby hills to get some pictures of the sunset, which wasn't as stunning as we had hoped but the view itself that the vantage point afforded was well worth it. Quite spectacular.

You could see the moon! 

I loved the double gradient in this scene - the sky and the mountains.

We went down the hill before it was too dark and enjoyed barbecued food that David was making. It was an early night for me - I ended up getting 10 or 11 hours of sleep, which hadn't happened in a long time!

I woke up feeling well rested. Hopped in the pool, read some more, and overall just relaxed. We had leftovers from the asado for lunch and then packed up and drove home. A lovely weekend!

Día de Acción de Gracias

(a week late! sorry!)

Last Thursday, unlike all of the students in the US, I had class. Three classes, actually. Somewhat of a bummer. But after finishing up at 4, I went over to Will's house and we made a pumpkin squash pie. The local market and the supermarket didn't have any pumpkins, so we made do with a European squash.

Cuttin' Squash

Mashin' squash

Mixin' squash

Pourin' squash
 

We had bought a crust from the grocery store, but it was quite shallow, so we ended up keeping the outer shell to add more space. Some leaked out the bottom... But it worked. We removed it when we took the pie out of the oven and it worked perfectly - the pie held its shape (towering over the tiny crust).

Will prepared the turkey, and his host mom prepared a salad and mashed potatoes. Somehow Will even managed to find (good!) cranberry sauce at the supermarket. It was a tasty meal.

the set-up

We ate the cena a la gringo (... American dinner) with Will's host family - his host tía, Nelly, and the two other Chilean students staying there, Leyla and Kathy - as well as Kathy's boyfriend and a friend of Leyla's.

Eatin' squash

It was a delicious meal and the company was excellent, but I did miss being home with my family.

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday of the year because it combines some of the things I love most - family, friends, and good food. This is the first year I can remember that we haven't hosted Thanksgiving at our house in CT. My favorite tradition (though discontinued at this point) was always Thanksgiving hockey. At home, Abby and I would usually make pies the day before Thanksgiving, and hopefully get a game of frisbee in with our friends. Then on Thanksgiving Day I looked forward to when people started arriving - when enough cousins and friends were there, the hockey would commence.

There's something perfect about warming up while playing hockey on a brisk, November day, then going inside to be tempted by the smells wafting out from the kitchen. But inevitably you end up waiting for hours more than expected to try the food...  Even if we say we're going to eat at 4:30, it usually ends up being 6:30 at the earliest before we can taste the delectable creations.

So to all my U.S. readers: I hope you enjoyed your Thanksgivings!

(And now we can all start listening to Christmas carols without feeling guilty. ♩ ♪ ♫ ♬)

La Rabia

This past weekend a stray dog bit me. I was walking down the street, minding my own business, when el callejero crossed the street, followed me a few steps, then bit my thigh. The dog unclamped its jaws, barked a couple times, then trotted back across the street.

I was perplexed, to say the least. I'd never heard of callejeros biting anyone. They sometimes follow people to beg for food, but this behavior was definitely odd - especially considering that it was completely unprovoked. The circumstances were sketchy enough that I couldn't rule rabies out, despite the fact that the bite didn't break my skin. There have been cases, though few, of people contracting rabies just from infected saliva.

I talked to Middlebury program employees, then the program director, then with my parents, who talked with a doctor back home... And said I should get vaccinated. So last night after returning from my internship I sheepishly approached my host mom and said that I had been bitten by a dog... and would she please drive me to the clinic?

The clinic was packed. We waited a long time just to "sign in" and talk to a secretary, who then told us that it would be hours before I could be seen. Instead of waiting through all that, early this morning I went to the university health center to see if they could give me the vaccinations. Also, the there doctor reiterated (as have most people here, including my host mother, the secretary at the clinic, and the secretary at the ULS health center) that it was probably not necessary to get the vaccination because the bite hadn't broken my skin, but conceded it might be best to do the treatment just in case.

The ULS departamento de salud estudiantil (student health center) couldn't administer the shots, but gave me the prescription/doctor's order necessary and directed me to the hospital. In the emergency room I had to wait an hour and a half to get treated there, but eventually did get the first dose.

My hospital room:

Attention!!! Don't throw up in the sink - use the trash can.

Though it's very unlikely that I did get rabies from the dog, my theory was better safe than sorry.
Or, Más vale prevenir que curar.
(which literally translates to: better to prevent than need to cure. The best English equivalent is "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.")

The spanish dicho (saying) is an interesting analogy. It doesn't quite suggest the same thing as "better safe than sorry" because it implies that you CAN get cured even if you don't take preventative measures. Whereas with rabies, if you decide to confirm you have rabies by waiting until symptoms appear... well, you're out of luck. If symptoms appear, it's fatal and there's nothing you can do about it. So preventative is really the only way to go. Más vale prevenir que morir!

Más dichos:
In Spanish there's a saying: "El perro que ladra no muerda," the English equivalent being: "A barking dog seldom bites." I thought that made this situation kind of funny, since the dog both bit and barked. (I suppose in English the expression says 'seldom' instead of 'never' for a reason...)

Anyway, this Saturday I'll be going for my next dosage, and then again a week from now, two weeks from now, and four weeks from now.