Payne in Paine today

I went to Torres del Paine today. The highlight was to see floating blue (icey blue) iceburgs of various shapes (like ships or Barney the dinosaur). One particular piece was about the size of a dinghy and was banging up against the shore which was cool to see. Cool because of the movement of this big block of ice the size of a canoe, bashing around like an ice cube in an oversize drink.

The glacier lakes and rivers were interesting because they were of different shapes and different colours depending on which part of the glacier was feeding them.

We also went to a huge oversized cave carved out from a lake, as well as a bunch of snow peaked mountains.

I saw the tour with 8 others. A father and two sons and 2 young couples from Puerto Arenas. I mostly talked with Jaime and Carol one of the couples as well as the father. Tomorrow I am going with the father and two kids to El Cafate in Argentina tomorrow.

in puerto natales

It´s exciting to be travelling again, seeing things for the first time, reflection on how I´ve popped onto a different part of the map. What I mean is I imagine how the world looks in the normal 2d way and I´m now on the very bottom left, where usually - for my whole life - I´ve been on the top half.

Puerto Natalas is super windy and a bit chilly. Like how I imagine Nova scotia might be in winter assuming no rain or snow, just wind and a chill and dark because of the low clouds. Or maybe how Alaska might be like, barren and windy. The room I´m typing this in reminds me of the portable class rooms we had in school... But smells of gasoline or oil because of the heater. On top of the monitor of the computer next to me is a cat sleeping.

Went to Vina Del mar. Tomorrow fly to Puento Arenas

Today I went to Vina Del Mar which is a pretty beach city. The big surprise there was the fresh air, which I guess I had forgotten about... Santiago being smoggy of course.

Vina has tons of connected beaches, ramparts to walk along with lots of drink, food and trinket vendors. I eventually took up the courage and got an in chair massage because my low back has been giving me some issues lately. ¿Estoy viejo! There are also lots of casinos here. It´s a party town I think.

Despues de la masaje yo sentio mehor y compra una corta de pelo y vuelto a Santiago. A mi, la campa parace Espanya - tiene mucho cerros secos. Pero, los Cerros tienen ´cactus´, y no puede recordar si yo vistolo en Espanya.

It was a nice day and was nice to get out of Santiago and do some exploring. Tomorrow I am getting up around 6 to take a transfer bus to the airport and when I land in Punto Arenas I will take a bus up to Puerto Natales. Not sure exactly what happens after that but I´ll do something in Torres del Paine for sure. For glaciars, people in the hostel tell me to that El Calafate has Perito Moreno which is one of the most stunning glaciers.

Nunchucks in la calle

Last night after salsa there was a fight between a guy with nunchucks and another guy. Then two guys came behind the guy with the nunchucks and knocked him out in the middle of the street and hastened away. We were on the other side of the street, not knowing who was in the right or whatever but it was a surreal scene. I think the guy knocked out might have been a food vendor but I don´t know it was across the other side of the pio nono bridge so I actually don´t know what went wrong.

still in Santiago

Well that planning thing didn´t work. Jorge had to cancel the weekend up north because there were only 3 people including me who signed up. Because it is a three day trip it is difficult to fill because it means people have to skip class.

So instead last night I went to a cool restaurant. Or possibly touristy. But I still enjoyed it restaurant called Los Muchachos. All the table had a view of the stage and they did different dances for the different parts of Chile. Also what I liked was I got to try an asado which is a barbeque stacked full of meat for each table. Sorry Mom.

Now I am back in the hostel I started in and went to the pool today. Jorge went to the Morado Glacier which I have already seen. Tomorrow I may go to Valpariso or Vina del Mar.

Tuesday I am flying to punto arenas which is super south in Chile and is on the Magellan straight

do I like Santiago

Yes, I like Santiago alot. The city isn´t crazy overcrowded, the traffic from what I can tell is reasonable, the weather is good and the people are nice too. It is a modern european style city ... I say european because the sidewalks are so wide. You could drive two cars parallel down the sidewalks.

I would actually be ok just hanging around Santiago for a few more weeks. There is lots to do and can be done easily. The neighbourhood I am living in is super nice (Providencia cerca de la estacion Los Leones). Lots of green trees, small stores jam packed open from about 10 am to 9pm every day.

School wise I am losing my focus as my classes end. Some sort of immersion would be necessary for me to improve or get to the level of fluency I would like. I don´t see that happening though as I expect that when I do the hikes, inevitably english will be used. But whatever. Travel or visiting a place is never as immersive say as living there and I can´t morph lives anytime I get off a plane. Do what I can, and not fret.

Fret Fret....

tonight might be last night in santiago

Tomorrow is my last day at school and possibly my last night here. I´ve been thinking what to do next as I only have 3 weeks before flying out of Buenos Aires. Chili is long. Like as long as Canada is wide. Argentina is bigger, Brazil is like two thirds the size of the US. Not to mention Bolivia and Peru. So anyway, I suppose my point is I can´t see everything.

So what I´ve deided to see or do is to switch to more of a backpacky trip and do some camping and backpacking for the next few weeks. Possibly I´ll go camping this weekend with Jorge who is organizing a trip up north to see some penguins and dolphins. Then I´ll fly down to Torres del Paine which is supposedly spectacular and has either 4 day or 6 day hikes. I don´t want to hike on my own so I´ll fly to Puentos Natales and see if I can get an accoplice.

Funny thing is that I didn´t bring camping gear. I trapsed around europe with a sleeping bag and never used it so figured I´d travel lighter. So I just bought one today. I´ll look for a mat and shoes as I get closer.

But what is cool about this is that it sets me up for hiking to Macchu Picchu in Peru and possibly other places in the Argentinian Pategonia.

What I´m not seeing so far is Atacama which is supposedly a cool salt desert. And probably Mendoza which is argentinian wine country-city. But I guess I could go on and on about what I´m not seeing. Like Bolivia. But I´m not talking about that anymore.

So tonight there is a get together for an íntercabio with the other students. I´m not drinking very much and then tomorrow I decide my next move. I think I´m having dinner with the family that I have been living with for the last three weeks. Three weeks that have blown by super fast.

Una carrette con las brazileanos

La ultima noche, yo salgo con mi amigos de la esquela: Hay los brazilianos - Karina, Carolina, Mirena, la hermana de Mirena y su novio, Julia de Allemane, Ignacio de Chile, y yo.

Bebia desmaciado cervezas y una bebida que llama terromoto - con vino y helado. Entonces por este manana, yo tenia una resaca y era tarde por mis classes.

Cordilla of the Andes

On Saturday, went with Jorge (http://www.jorgeexcursiones.cl/) and some school mates to thermal pools and a hike in the Andes (http://www.jorgeexcursiones.cl/ingles/excursiones.php?excursion=termas_plomo). Yesterday it was snowing in the mountains so there was a dusting of snow on the mountains which is a rare sight to see here in February.

The ride in the bus was killer as it took over 3 hours each way and it was pretty cramped. When we finally got to the termal pools, we thought that that was it, or maybe a stroll, but Jorge had other plans for us. Ended up hiking up a small mountain to get to a lagoon that was feeding a waterfall. It was a cool and pretty experience to be walking up and through other mountains in the Andes. The temperature range was a of an experience to as we are used to 25-30 degree celicius days and we were in maybe 5-10 degree weather for most of the trip. At the peak of our trip, the lagoon, it was whipping hail.

The other interesting part was adjusting to the thinner air. I´m not sure if I´ve hiked in high altitudes before (we were at 3000 metres), but boy did I feel sleepy, tired and dizzy to start for the first hour.

Friday

Friday, didn´t do much. Day started off weird as it was raining and the wind caught one of the windows in the apartment swinging it wide and smashing it on the side of the building.

It was the last day at school for Wendy and Tjeerd so we went to lunch together. It was raining which is a weird thing for it to be doing at this time of the year in Chile. Some worries by Chileans about the grape season. I was also worried that tomorrow I was supposed to go on a hike in the mountains.

attempted pickpocketing and knife flashing

So on the way to go to the ´interactive museum´ there was a guy with super short hair, short and super skinny. Anyway he had a jacket folded over his arm and we were on a packed metro.

I was travelling with Jorge our guide and 3 brazilian students from the school. Anyway this guy was brushing against me and I am always suspicious but not particularily suspicious as I couldn´t feel anything. My wallet and keys are in my lower right zipped pocket in my shorts. I pushed my bag between us an my right leg and he sorta moved away a bit. But then I knew. My zipper was open about an inch and half. But I could feel my wallet and hopefully my key in there.
Thing is I wasn´t 100% sure my key was there to start. Nor 100% sure that the guy opened it... maybe I didn´t close it all the way. But my gut said he was doing it and then he was with with two other short stocky.

But I did signal to Jorge with a pincher sort of hand motion and pointed to the guy and Jorge acnowledged my signal. But you can´t do much. It´s a packed train and I´m not that fluent in Spanish to be very communicative. By now the pickpocket had moved around towards one of the other students. So I kept my eye on him.

And eventually he moved with his back against the exit doors. At the next station.

He stayed on. But moved from his right pocket to his left pocket a 5 or so inch silver coloured switchblade knife. In my mind, I´m mostly just watching like a hawk. Wondering what I should do and looking for an opportunity to defend or attack. But it was a stalemate.

On the next stop, he and the two others left the train. Jorge assured me that he was a pick pocket. The other students had no clue but had seen the knife.

So from this I notice that it´s a bit of a numbers game and a bit of chess. Three guys possibly with knives moving quietly is a hard to fight threat. Was I willing to risk a knife in the stomach to punch or push a guy? No, unless I had 2 other guys ready to pounce I was at a disadvantage.

Also, it wasn´t a big deal. what I mean is the threat and possibly the description is worse than the whole event. It´s not in his interest to act randomly and say stab me for just watching him. So it´s a game of being careful and defensive. To do it again, I just won´t let anyone near that pocket. And when I have my packpack, put it in it´s internal p0cket.

embarrasing or bad valentines day

on my way to school there was a sprinkler. Well there are lots of sprinklers in the parks along the rio that Mileana and I walk along. So I dodged to avoid one and whacked my head on an iron sign. I don´t know what the sign said but I really hit it hard and had some blood on my hand.

How embarrassing. Well not embarrasing. Hopping fury of anger, then embarasment. How can I go to school with a bleeding head. Anyway, Milena didn´t think it was too bad or a scratch so I didn´t worry about it.

Half way through my class though, Wendy got up and left the room and returned with some paper towels. Wendy is a nurse from Holland who noticed my head was bleeding again. So I spent at least half an hour pressing a towel to my head.

Anyway, it´s just a scratch.

But on the way home I stepped in dog poo. Which is embarassing too. Like what´s that smell? and then the embarrasment that my right shoe stepped in something. There are lots of stray dogs here and the attitude is a benevant or tolerant one towards them. People feed them and it is not uncommon to see them waiting for the right chance to cross big highways. But I guess the poo in places too and I must have found out where. Though I don´t remember exactly where.

Some students tried to to go to free salsa lessons, but we got there when they were supposed to start and they didn´t want to start the lessons unless everyone bought a drink first. Thing is is that it came across the wrong way and we weren´t really keen on this forced polite purchase. Figuring if the salsa was good, people would buy just in good faith. So anyway we quit early.

Also I ordered a cheese empanada and got a beef and cheese one. But that wasn´t a big deal.

santiago transit

Last saturday, Santiago transit switched over to a new bus and pass system. So right now there is alot of chaos in the news as overnight all of the busses are on new routes and there is a new payment card system that hasn´t been sorted out yet (you now use a Bip card that bips when you get on the bus). So lots of pictures in the newspapers of people hanging onto the outsides of busses in certain areas.

Busses are free until everyone learns the new system, but that is making things worse by having more than normal volumes on the busses

weekend part 2 sunday

Studied in the morning. Trying to learn complemento directos and complemento indirectos so you can say and understand things like.

John took the book to Mary. John took it to her. or... John to her it he took.

Juan trae el libro a Mary. Juan se lo trae.

Still studing that stuff a day later. In the afternoon I met with some school friends and went to the Belles Artes museum where we or I could point at objects and test out my spanish. Afterwards we walked back to bario Bella Vista for some litres of beer.

weekend in Santiago

Went to El Morado (I thought it was Dorado) on Saturday. Morado means purple because the rocks are purple. (Dorado means goldish). Went with a bunch of people with school and their main tour guide Jorge (pronounced hore hay).

10 of us took the van down south to the mountain-glacier: Jorge, a woman from Switzerland who is working in a vineyard, Karina and Carolina two brazilian engineers on vacation, Melanie an Aussie on a one year round-the-world trip, Kristian a german student who lived in new york so has a new york accent, Julia an international studies student from germany, Ken an american escaping his divorce and a guy from spain, and one Canadian me made up the expedition.

It was a simple but long trek as it was up a valley left by a glacier, ie it was a semi straight not-not-too steep walk up to a valley, for which at the top was the melting glacier. It took about 3 hours to ascend and 1-2 hours to descend as the party sort of split up. I was sorta in the middle.

The highlight was to see the glacier because I didn´t realize where the glacier was... What I mean is you look at a mountain and see the ice and think there it is, but it´s more than that as there are tons and tons under the parts that don´t have ice on top. For example the main goal of the trip was to get to the cave which is an ice cave, with a thin - say half a meter layer of rocks that lay on top, but within are 2-100 metre thick layers of ice.

Mi family insist that I buy a long sleeve shirt and get or borrow a hat to avoid getting sun burnt. Both were good ideas as I didn´t get burnt at all. I can´t remember the last time I was in that much sun - no shade in the valley - for over 8 hours.

So I´ve now been in Santiago for a week.

Saturday.
Went horseback riding in a park called cascada des animales http://www.cascadadelasanimas.cl/bienvenidos.shtml. Alize a girl from Boston that worked in the hostel works on the farm near there on the weekends so I went with her to get there, then hung around till 3.30 waiting for the ride. At 330 a japanese family (mom, dad, jr) showed up and they and I were the group. Turns out they have been living in Santiago for 10 years and so were fluent in spanish and the father could speak english so I talked to him for the ride. My horse was called ´setenta´which means 70 which is how much he cost (70,000 pesos - about 140 US). Anyway this was the best horse I´d ever ridden except for going down hill. He didn´t like it at all because it was sandy and slippery. Towards the end of the tour he refused to go down, so I switched horses with the guide who was more persuasive than I with Setenta.

Sunday.
First day moving in with a Chilean family. Maria, Mario, and Javiera are my host family. They are very friendly and talkative. Even though I understand little about what they are saying.. day by day I hope to understand better though I find my understanding comes in wave - when I have no energy then I find it hard to think in English ... so the Spanish doesn´t improve.

Speaking about the weather it´s hot and humid here. 30 degress celcius mas or menus every day with the sun rising around 7 and setting around 9 pm. Also there is a hole in the ozone down here so I have some burns on my forearms. Weird burns too in that usually when I get burns there is more of a spread to them.. Imagine a straight one inch stripe that goes from my elbow down to my wrist (on both sides).

I went with Javiera to a movie about ´Violetta Perra´ who is a famous Chilean artist that was talented in many different arts - painting, textiles and singing. I could stay focussed for about 5 minutes then sorta spaced out until the french bits came (she lived in france so they were interviewing some people there) and I could follow that a bit better. Anyway Violetta Perra is the name of my school as well and last night I was at a bar with some school mates and ran into her husband´s daughter who is working on a book. I thought she and her friends might have been part of the class. They thought I was suspicious for saying I was from the ´Violetta Parra´school.

Monday
speaking of the school. Went to school on Monday. Davio is my instructor and my classmates are Tjeerd and Wendy from Holland, Dirk from Germany who is living here now, Ingvard who is from Norway and Damikatsu who is a high school student from South Africa. Daimakatsu told us what her name means - I think something like -brings unexpected things. Everyone in the class were together the previous week with a different instructor.

The class went well. I´m in the second week of the class (so the month two years ago in spain translated into a 1 week advancement) but (that´s not how to look at it) as repetition is important and I´m happy as long as I´m learning and can keep up and I am doing both so far.

Tuesday
We. I didn´t get around to mentioning yet - that also there is a Milanea who is also staying in the school so usually we go to school together in the morning. She is from Brasil and is some sort of book reviewer. She doesn´t speak English (or is awefully good at hiding her English) so it is a bit of a challenge to communicate at home as no one is really that fluent. Mario is pretty good at some English.

Anyway the point or I guess the day is Tuesday and I had a different idea about how to get to school instead of walking on the Providencia avenue for 45 minutes we could try and go up and around the base of St. Cristobal hill (Cerro St. Cristobal).

Haha. Well we ended up walking for a bit on the highway for a bit but the good news is that most of the trip was in more of a forest-park setting instead of in what has to be the centre urban spine of santiago (Providencia). Providencia is a wide street and there are a few highways and or other streets that cross it. From the Baquedano rail station to cross it to get to the Bella Vista Barrio you have to cross about 4 full traffic lights with maybe about 6 lanes of traffic between each (no real breaks). So you cross like 24 lanes of traffic and can maybe get through the set in 2 or three stops.

But that´s all a distraction. We found a better way to walk to school which is much more park like.

Wednesday.
Had school in the morning, walked home took a nap, walked back and went to a presentation on a couple activities for the weekend (a walk in El Dorado park or a weekend trip to the Elke valley). I´m going to the El Dorado Park on saturday. It´s expensive but I think it´s good to try and do some school activities. After those presentations I did an inter cabio.

The idea of an intercambio is to meet other people who speak the language you are trying to learn and vice versa. So me and a guy from Poland met two chilean people. It was pretty rough for me because conversation is difficult and we haven´t done future or past tenses so that doesn´t make anything easier. Anyway I ended up pairing with Sergio who is a government employee working on computers (PHP, HTML with SQL Server for some inventory thing). His english is really good. I understand his spanish really well.

For me the concept of an intercambio is - well I don´t know yet. The benefit is that you have an instant translation back into your language for any word you don´t know.

One last thing in the intercabio meeting. Before we broke out seperately the Polish guy (who has shocking white-blond hair) was talking about how he was robbed in Santiago. Basically two young guys grabbed him and a third took his fanny pack (or mini packpack or whatever). Also on the same weekend he went to Argentina and had to pay a $40 bribe to get in because they didn´t like his passport. So he didn´t tiene bone suerte that weekend.

Thursday
School in the morning. Went to buy a swim suit and while walking around saw a small robbery. Well I think it was a small robbery. I saw a guy grab at a girl´s throat then run and take off. He was like about 2 or 3 meters away. Actually I know he was trying to rob her I just don´t know if he succeeded or not. Maybe he grabbed her necklass and took off with that or failed to grab her bag. Anyway it was a bit shocking to see and made me think about it bit.

So the guy looked maybe 18, black hair and pretty fast. I´ve been looking out for him but there are lots of people that look like that. Turns out this kind of petty theft is super common here it´s like a game for young kids. Apparently they have the seperate juvinile-adult court system here so the consequences for them is minor.

Sergio from my intercambio explained that they are usually in a group. There is one guy watching and coordinating, there is one runner and there is someone with a backpack to hold any booty they snatch. If you attack or fight back apparently they may as a group beat you up.

Anywhoo, about a couple hours later I saw a scuffle with a bunch of boys while going for dinner. 3 versus 1. I don´t know what that was.

Finally on Thursday, Milena and I went to a school event at a local bar to intercabio with other students (supposedly the same idea where there are people wanting to learn english and vice versa). I didn´t run into anyone wanting to learn to speak english. Just people from the spanish-wanting-to-learn student side of things. Alot of people were just speaking english (not to learn - just cause it´s the most common language between europeans) which I did for awhile, but also spent time speaking with some brazilians in spanish to practice and because they didn´t speak english so were kind of locked out. I think there was a table of people speaking German too. Well anyway this is a boring paragraph, but drinking and chatting was funner than this. Sorry.

Oh by the way in spanish they don´t say sorry. Or at least I mean they have two words. Our sorry has lots of meanings. The main one is Disculpe which is the main one which is when you wrong someone and know it and can respond right away. Also you can use discuple to get attention like ´disculpe, can you help me with something´. The other sorry is the ´lo siento´which according to Mario is a kind of sorry you only use later when you didn´t realize at the time and then do recognize.

Friday
I was grumpy for school this morning. Mileana wanted to take the metro-subway so she could sleep in a bit more, which seemed like an ok idea at the time, but in actual fact it takes about 30min to get to school by subway (because of all the street crossings mentioned above) and 40 min to walk. I prefer to start my class early and on time so I´m on top of things because inevitably and possibly hopefully at the end of class I am or want to be overwhelmed. I bought a couple shirts and was going to find a hat, but couldn´t find one I liked (mario said he would lend me one).

Turns out sombrero means hat. That´s it. To me sombrero means fancy hat. But here it just means hat.

in Chile

Arrived in Santiago this morning. Flight took the whole night. I asked the clerk to see if I could upgrade to business class, thinking that it was over night so it might be worth a hundred dollars or something. But he said it was thousands and thousands. So instead I asked for the exit door seat which has lots of leg room and got that for free.

Lots of different travellers going to Chile say vs going from seattle to atlanta: lots of goretex and fancy hiking shoes. A mix of japanese, americans, chileans and others.

The guy sitting next to me on the flight lives in Argentina where he lives with his wife. He is originally from Atlanta and flies often so knows exactly how much the business class would cost ($6300).

Anyway, Santiago is warm and sunny. It´s getting close to 9pm here and it is still light out though starting to become dusky. Santiago is a very big city with wide, modern roads and lots of traffic and smog - so in a way reminds me of california - but not that modern - some bits are quite modern, others more third worldy. But overall more modern than - Mexico say -

I´m staying at a Hostel and spent some time walking around the city with an Australian called Ritchie. His Spanish is worse than mine - though it seems like everyone is learning Spanish here.