After a four hour flight to Mexico City, I hopped in a cab
to Zocalo Square, the only landmark I knew in DF. Only after passing police
pickup trucks armed with mounted machine guns, did I finally get a sense of how
dangerous Mexico is.
When I arrived in Mexico I was excited for my 14 hour
layover; I would have plenty of time to see the city, and even go out of the
city to see some ruins. It might have been the fact that I was exhausted and my
back was killing me from sleeping on the airplane, but Mexico city was the
first and so far only city I didn't like in my gap year. Everything was
disgustingly dirty, despite the fact that there were hoards of "city
cleaners" everywhere. Feral dogs roamed the city in the droves, and everything
just felt depressing. Almost all the building were either falling down, or had
already fell down. I returned to the airport after only 4 hours.
After arriving in Santiago, Chile I was promptly escorted to
a desk where they informed me that because I was American I would have to pay
an entry fee of $140. If would have been $0 if I hadn't left my Irish passport
at home. I met Jorge and his girlfriend, dropped my bags off at his house and
went to the country club.
The next day we did some last minute shopping, and headed
down to Jorge's beach house in Santo Domingo. The next three days were relaxing
ones filled with lots of delicious food, bike rides, and hanging out at the
beach. Back in Santiago we met up with Hugo, Jorge's friend that would be
accompanying us on our journey down south.
You many be wondering how I ended up in Chile instead of
Costa Rica. A short backstory; on one of the rare days my Internet connection
was working in San Jose, CR, I was talking to Jorge Rivas who told me he was
going down south to Patagonia. Patagonia happened to be number one on my places
I wanted to visit, so I told Jorge I was going to come with him, quit my job
and bought my plane ticket.
For the first day we drove five hours south to Jorge's
grandfather's farm. With plenty of daylight left we went for a hike through
corn and soy fields, and attempted to catch cattle. Just before sunset, the
"yeso" (horseman) showed up and I went for an amazing horseback ride
though the golden corn fields just as the sun was setting below the distant
mountains. I had ridden horses before, but always with tour companies that have
trained their horses not too fast. But this horse was a ranch horse, and when
he smelled the barn door, he broke out into a full out gallop. I pulled as hard
as I could on the reins but he was having none of it so I hung out for dear
life as I felt my hat fly off followed quickly by my sunglasses. Just before
running into the house, the horse came to a sudden stop and I felt myself
sliding off the saddle as I desperately hung on to the horse's neck. As I was
falling, I kicked my feet out of the stirrups and managed to get the underneath
me just in time. A graceful dismount.
The next 10 days we spent traveling from city to city,
sleeping in camping sites along the way. In Europe I had thought we were
traveling on a budget, rarely eating out and looking for the cheapest hostel.
But in Chile, this was a whole new level; camping sites cost an average of $5 a
person compared to $25 for hostels. My standard for a decent bathroom now only
requires that it have a lid to the seat and not too much water on the ground to
seep through your shoes. A hot shower is a plus, but don't expect it. If there
is no shower, you go to a river and find a waterfall. It sounds amazing, but if
the water is 40 degrees and by the time you get out you can't feel your feet,
it's not so great. Meals were cut from 3 a day to barely one and a half. For
brunch you have a little bit of bread with jam and then for dinner you cook up
a huge feast, remembering how much you used to be able to eat when you were
this hungry, but halfway through the meal you find yourself stuffed because
your stomach has shrunk so much. By the time you go to bed your hungry again
but when you wake up the hunger has mysteriously vanished.
At the beginning of trip, I wore all my clothes once or
twice and then I put them separated them into "dirty" and "not
so dirty" piles. After going through my "not so dirty" pile, I
reinvestigated my dirt pile until everything became "wearable" again.
The only requisite being that it didn't smell awful, and soon that was thrown
out too. Since everything was so dirty, it soon didn't matter whether I changed
clothes or not, so I would wake up and put on the same clothes as yesterday,
often for 3, 4, 5 days in a row. Shoes became the most difficult to manage, it
was often raining so they took days to dry if they got wet, and they inevitably
did during hikes through creeks and waterfalls. Hikes often started with damp
shoes only to end with soaking shoes.
Before I had left for Chile I had began to feel a little
homesick. But homesick isn't the exactly the right word. After traveling for
nearly 6 months, everything began to go numb. After visiting hundreds of town
squares, monuments, markets, museums, and parks, I just didn't care anymore.
Yeah that mountain is stunning, or this market is awesome, but it's nothing I
didn't see 10 or 20 cities back. So after traveling to Pucon, Frutillar, and
Puerto Varas, we finally arrived in Puerto Montt where I immediately looked for
transportation routes to Torres del Paine. For an example of how remote Torres
del Paine is and why it is often considered the edge of the world consider
this: after driving 1000km south from Santiago to Puerto Montt, it's still
another 2000km south to Torres del Paine. And to get there you have to take a
32 hour bus ride to from Puerto Montt to Punta Arenas and then another 2 hour
bus ride to Puerto Natales and from there a bus to Torres del Paine Park.
Despite all my attempts to persuade my two companions, they did not want to
venture further south than Puerto Montt. Without them I didn't have all the
necessary gear to go hiking so I was stuck in the cities.
From Puerto Montt we headed further south to Cochemo and Rio
Pueblo. The road, although in poor condition, was one of the most scenic and
beautiful roads I've been on, with the view of the sea dotted with islands and
long fjords extending almost into Argentina. We stayed in Cochemo for three
days and got some good hikes in when it wasn't pouring rain. After Chochemo we
headed to Rio Pueblo and found a camping place right next to the river with a
stunning view of Volcan Hornopident. It would be probably be expensive, but
worth it we thought. 12 bucks for the three of us. We took a hike along a road
that lead deep into the Andes Mountains and while we were walking passed a
house where a lady came running outside to say hi. We walked over to her and
after talking for a while, she invited us inside to take a look at her homemade
socks and hats. Five minutes later I walked out with a wool hat and Jorge with
a pair of socks.
The next day we headed back up north and only after taking a
ferry across the fjord did we think about where we actually wanted to end up
that night. After driving for a while we chose Valdivia, a city about 5 hours
away. When we got there we found out that it was the week of the dead and we
were just in time to see the last 3 days of celebration. We found the only
camping site in town for an astronomical $28 a night. We spent three days and
nights there and on the last night we went into town to watch the fireworks and
celebrations. We sat down on a hill where we thought the fireworks would be and
after a three hour wait we heard the telltale booms and saw flashes of light
but the fireworks were further down the river and everyone got up as the entire
hill stampeded down to get a view of the fireworks.
Places traveled: Pucon, Frutillar, Puerto Varas, Puerto
Mont, Cochemo, Rio Puelo, Valdivia
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