Llamas Gordas

Torres del Paine

llamalovers — Wed, 5 Dec 2007 03:46:00 GMT

Patagonia as a region grips you--and never lets go. It enchants you. Captures your every glance. Tantilizes your senses! It is no wonder that men upon men have written of this wonderous place. This trip truly has been one through Patagonian terrain, and it is here that we have seen some of the world's most beautiful treasures, especially that of Torres del Paine.

The granite steeples of Torres del Paine grace the cover of almost every Chilean guidebook. It is revered as the most beautiful national park in South America, and equally as reknowned in the world. Within the park, one can reach glaciers, lakes of different blue hues, streams, calafate bushes (patagonian berries), and the Torres-granite peaks that stand so magically against the sky, that you can't help but imagine wizards conjuring the worlds energy within the towers. All that beauty is accessible by several hour hikes! No problem, right?

But a backpacking trip begins well before you start hiking. You need to buy food, check your gear, make sure you have enough stuff but not too much. You also need to make sure you are feeling well, because the physical demands of hiking for several hours with 40 or 50 pounds on your back can easily make a beautiful trip miserable. Meli and I hit the stores, stole some plastic bags from the fruit section, and bought a bunch of stuff for eating on the trail. We ditched our extra weight - who needs a Spanish dictionary and eye makeup when you are watching condors right - and took the bus up to the park, which in itself is spectacular. Along the way you are assaulted by the views of the park and entertained by herds of llama-like guanaco who can bound away at amazing speeds and leap to dizzying heights and are just damned cute.

We finally took the catamaran across milky green Lago Pehoe and made our way onto the trail (of course not without buying a Coke can for Meli that, with a little duct tape, would later be turned into a mug). After about 15 minutes, Meli started to feel the burn and I started to worry. The true physical demands that are made of a person during a backpacking trip can only be appreciated once you have been on one, and Meli was getting her first taste. It's friggin tough. But she kept on, and we reached a vista in about two hours that took both of our breath away. As we came up over a rise, we were able to see the full extent of the eerie blue Southern Ice Field - a glacial steppe that stretches as far as the eye can see and holds more freshwater than you can imagine. As we stood and marveled, two condors swooped down low over our heads from a hidden cliff. We were both on sensory overload. This is the payoff for the backbreaking work of backpacking.

We finally made camp later, exhausted, famished, and with one fatality - my left big toenail. We did some scenic hiking down to the glacier itself to touch and lick little growlers from off the glacier and marvel at the bergy bits floating in glacial milk. We set up camp for the night and began to make preparations for dinner. This was when we noticed the second fatality - the f$!¡ing stove! That's right - our piece of s$%& Whisperlite blew a gasket - literally. This problem was further exacerbated by the "let's use more force" tactics that I usually use to fix things, which then led to a break in the plastic and the total dehabilitation of the whole thing. So, the choices - starve, leave, or depend on the kindness of others. A beautiful Mormon couple who had hiked out to the glacier with their newborn strapped to her mommy made that choice easy. They tried to fix the stove and lent us theirs for the night and left it out to use in the morning.

So far so good right. Wrong - nightfall was a different story. As we sat outside chatting with a fantastic Brazilian couple, our core temperatures, worked up to toasty by the hike, had dipped to relfect the fact that we were camping next to a freaking glacier. This was not so much of a problem for me, since I have plenty of insulation to deal with such cold. Poor little Melo on the other hand froze her little bedonka off. Every thirty minutes or so I was roused with a frazzled "Are you cold?", not so much to see if I was OK, but more to see if she had a companion in her frozen misery. Needless to say, this was a sleepless night for both of us.

In the morning, I borrowed the stove again to heat up as much stuff as I could for the cold little Melo. Miserable, she crawled out of the tent, which is a tough act any morning after a cold night, and got right to her feet and started to pack up. I asked her if she wanted to quit and leave the park, but she said no, and that was the end of that discussion.

The hike back out from the glacier towards Campamento Italiano (no I did not name this myself!) was as beautiful as the day before, but unfortunately twice as long. Add to this the fact that Melo did not sleep a wink the night before, and you can imagine that this hike was a bear - an 8 hour, 12 mile hike, up and down and up and down and up and down. At one point Melissa sat down and stated, in the words of one of our students, "Leave me here to die". Fortunately, I don't always do what she says, and after the grueling 8 hours and crossing a rickety, wobbly bridge over the rushing river coming out of Valle de Frances, we made camp and set up shop. Meli made quick work of asking to borrow another stove and dove into her sleeping bag and her Nutella. We were joined later in the night by our Brazlian friends, who were really beginning to become friends. The night passed, warm and peaceful, being lulled to sleep by the sounds of the river rushing by and the occasional thundering of an avalance rioting down the valley.

In the morning, we were woken by a duet of disasters - yet another huge avalanche vibrating the trees, and a 70 year old Australian man, shouting god-knows-what and also vibrating the trees. The gregarious Argentines next to us did not help either, as they seem to want to yell all the time - it must be the Italian blood. Anyways, we hiked up into the valley with our stuff safely and un-ponderously left at camp, witnessed a few avalanches, and allowed our tired joints to rest a bit from the hike the day before. The view inside the valley was spectacular - the mountain was marbled with the eerie blue glacial ice, snow and rock, and the river gave the perfect soundtrack to the setting. After marveling and reflecting, we headed back to camp, met up with the Brazilians, and were approached by the sweet Mormon couple, who had found Melissa's hat on the trail. How did they know it was hers? In classic-but-odd Meli fashion, as the man who found it said, "How could you miss it?"

The hike that day was markedly different than the two the days before. My hiking style is bang-it-out, ala the trips I have taken with Team MC and Kev. Very American if you ask me - all business, let's screw around when we hit camp and earn the night kind of stuff. The Brazilians had another idea.

In typical Brazilian Bossa Nova tempo, the Brazilians changed the pace of our hike. Pedro and Claudia´s mantra for hiking: I am in no rush. No problem. So we were in no rush. We lackadasically walked through the various bosques (forests), sat down when tired, drank mate (pronounced Machi in Braz. Portuguese), talked of consumerism and threat to ecological systems (Pedro is a biologist), nibbled on trail mix - in a sense had a picnic. Understandably, when we arrived at Los Cuernos Camp, we were not tired!

And this was a good thing, because our next day´s hike was so so damn difficult, Melissa found herself cursing all the elements of nature: the cold, the mountain, the wind that whipped around every corner, everything. Our hike was not without any pleasure points though. At one point, Claudia shrieked something unintelligible, jumping and pointing to the sky to signal on oncoming condor only a few meters away. Approaching soon after was a fleet of condors, 12 all in a line, flying in unison, no doubt to a dead guanaco or possibly a dead hiker.

The rest of this hike could be characterized as an ascent. We started to notice that we were walking and walking up and up with not one descent in sight...I think it was here when Melissa started to blaspheme against nature!! I took the wimpy route and followed her - I just kept an eye on her boots and the ascent did not seem so bad. But Melis was at the lead most of the time (with the Brazilians in tow), so she could see that our ascending had no end. When we though we were finished the ascent, finally making it around the formidible peak of Almirante Nieto, we were greeted with an amazingly powerful sight, all the way up into the valley of proportions grander than any of us had ever seen. We were also greeted with more ascending. The beautiful, back-breaking hike led us into the valley, and about an hour in, all of that ascending had seemingly been for naught when we made it all the way down to the river. Weary, but with only one hour left, we decided to keep going to the final campsite. Well, this hour (estimated by faulty park maps) must be for fresh hikers with light packs, because it took three. Described in the guidebook as "knee-popping", this one was where I too started to curse the mountain and deem that nothing is worth this Bataan Death March stuff and so on. But Meli persevered, blazing the trail, at one point disappearing far ahead of the three of us and yelling from a point out of sight the very very last thing I wanted to hear at that point: "It just keeps going up!" We stumbled into camp frozen and weary, kind-hearted Pedro and Claudia made us dinner, and we slept soundly with plans of rising at 4:30 to attack the peak mirador for a sunrise show that is supposed to be spectacular.

Anticipating an amazing morning and eager to begin the hike, I roused at 2 AM to the starriest night I have ever seen. The weather was perfect - cold, but perfect - and I was dying to begin the hike. At 4:30, our designated meeting time to check the weather, I heard the first damned rain drop (or so I thought),turned over, and went to sleep.

We awoke to see the world blanketed in snow. It was if we had been placed in a snowglobe. Pedro and Claudia, overjoyed at the sight of snow, pratically skipped around camp. We all reveled in the snowfall, and we even hit Pedro with his first snowball! It was both a dream and a nightmare though. Not only could we not climb the mountain to see the Torres up close, but we also had to climb down and out in slippery snow and bitter cold. At this point Steve and I were both on a mission: Get the F&%$ out of Dogde! The next few hours entailed Steve sliding down a mountain in a trail-turned-mud-river from all the snow. It was ultra-glorious, ultra-empowering, and ultra-satisfying, especially because we knew at the end of this hike, there would be a nice asado dish (meat) awaiting our tired bones and empty bellies!

The feeling you get when you finish a backpacking trip is indesrcibable. Whether four days or four weeks, you have this sense of accomplishment that is so special because, all in all, you have been self sufficient. You get the feeling like "If society crumbles, I´ll be OK". You are sore all over, but the soreness is sweet in a way, because when you get to rest, you know you have earned it. You have never appreciated things like a shower, clean clothes, soap, or meat so much. It really is one of life's reset buttons - you feel ready to re-enter life the way you see fit, with all the vigor and energy you put into the mountain. And you end up prouder of the people you were with that you can imagine. Four days and 50 miles is more than I have done with heartier, bigger, hairier people. But I can say with conviction that Meli held her own, and at times, even more than the rest of us. Like I said, I was proud - and you all should be too!!!

What´s the Point?

llamalovers — Sun, 18 Nov 2007 19:01:00 GMT

OK - so here we are, thousands upon thousands of miles away from home, only hundreds of miles away from Antarctica, our senses dazzled by glaciers, condors, and impecccable Chilean vistas, and dulled by horrific Chilean food. We came down here almost on a whim with reasons such as "There´s an amazing national park down there" and "I think you can see glaciers" to "I want to get out of the rat race" and "Maybe we can learn some Spanish and lose a little weight". Personally, I have been ogling this trip since at least March 2004, when I wrote letters to every bishop in Sicily and Namibia (no exaggeration) begging for a room and a meal to do some volunteer work. Meli´s experience in Florence for 5 months a few years back has been calling her away again just the same. Our desire is common and echoed by many - just to be "there" and not "here" - well not all of it, but for the love of God, the romantic parts. I would read Zorba the Greek and dream of distant ports, fishermen with gnarled hands, roasting meat on the spit, valleys and mountains - the stuff that makes you click on travel deal emails when you know you have neither the time, money, nor desire to fly to Buffalo for $49 each way. So here - we left, all of our possessions on our back, and indeed have had distant ports, roasted meat, met fishermen and women who work in markets, realty agents, car salesmen, gas station attendants - beautiful people all of them. The lust to go finally (finally!) quenched, the experience had room to teach us some lessons.

Melissa and I came down here with several vague ideas - namely, to see enigmatic Patagonia, to meet people, to get out of the American mindset and mainstream, and to find a calmer, more beautiful, slower place to call home for a bit. In each city we traveled, it became evident to us that the last reason was the most important and most nagging, and there we had it - lesson 1, we want a home. In every place we visited (except Chiloe!) there was talk of "could you live here?", visits to realtors, the scouring of the local paper for a good rental property, and the talk of short term employment. But in the end, something wouldn´t work, and we would end up on another 10 hour bus ride, sometimes with broken hearts, to yet another place to look for a home. We would be in places with other backpackers - mainly rowdy Australians (no matter what age, these guys party ALL THE TIME) and haughty Europeans (not to generalize - we met some very nice Europeans too!) - and would try to distance ourselves from them as much as possible. We didn´t want to pass through, take what we could, and go home to tell stories. But without a home or source of employment, both of which tough to find while on the run, that is exactly what we were doing - and it didn´t jive with us. Lesson 2 - we are not backpackers by nature.

But the worst, harshest realization, the one that really clinched it for us, however came when we were leaving Punta Arenas and the dog shelter, broken hearted after yet another failed attempt at finding a home and lending a hand. Since we have been in Chile we have seen very little human poverty - it´s here for sure, but not like you see back home in the big cities, nor like you see back home in the indigenous communities. This "third world country", and I say that with the utmost sarcasm, as this country is by no stretch of anyone´s imagination "third world", seems to have its act together. In some places, the unemployment is less that 4%, good by any country´s standard. No, down here, what you see everywhere, is stray dogs. I am the first person to say that you have to help people before you help animals, but this is ridiculous. You see animals absolutely everywhere - EVERYWHERE! - with broken paws, gouged-out eyes, bleeding tumors, cold, sick, being hit by cars, mothers with 6 puppies, and they are all starving. The worst part about it is that these are dogs, and as we all know, dogs are as capable, if not more capable in many ways, as humans are to love. Passing through a place like this you need to say "It´s not my problem" and walk as fast as you can without making eye contact - kind of the same way we do back home when the guy on the train begs for money, but without the balm of excuses for not helping, since these animals only need food and love, and they bear no responsibility for their condition. Neither Melissa nor I are "it´s not my problem" kind of people - in many ways, we are both way too soft-skinned when it comes to suffering. And I know you find the same everywhere - some places with homelessness, some with environmental degradation, others with political corruption, still others with loss of native culture, war, sickness, refugeee crises, famines, destruction of the local farm economy through free-trade agreements (it happens!), drugs - you name it. Anywhere you go, once you scratch the gilded surface, you are faced with suffering. And there was lesson 3 - we can´t move through a place, see pain, and keep going with smiles on our faces.

So, naturally, being honest with ourselves, we had to make some decisions, especially with that beast, the desire to get out, sated and sleeping for the time being. First, we decided that we would never travel as backpackers again with no general plan to give back. That kind of aloofness is both selfish and naive. The example of Che Guevara on his quest through South America is a beautiful one, but only if you need your eyes opened to the plight of the people as he did before that trip. Once they are open, this kind of trip is mere indulgence. Second, we need to find a place where life moves with the environment, respects the environment, and above all, is surrounded by the beauty of nature. Third, travel for the sake of travel is cool, but when its just that, it needs to be in a place like Florence or the Virgin islands, where we go simply for the beauty of it all and maybe then, just for a week or two. Fourth, the next time we go to a place like South America again (Brazil, anyone!), it will be with some work lined up or with a crazy adventure planned (boat the Amazon, climb Aconcagua - Kev Meirose I´m lookin at you!) that can incorporate some community or ecology efforts. Fifth, if all we want is a place to stay, community with nature, a way to give back, and the simplicity of life outside the US mainstream, we need look no further than Melissa´s town in Portugal, where, oxala, we will be in the Spring and Summer. And last but not least, Chile is beautiful, Argentina´s Italian flare makes the food and the people more inviting, and Macchu Picchu is only a little ways away, but there is no place like home for the holidays. See all you bastards in mid-December!

much love

Steve and Meli

The Saint of Punta Arenas

llamalovers — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 23:41:00 GMT

I will begin this story with a quote from our blog ¨What´s the Point¨:

...down here, what you see everywhere, are stray dogs. I am the first person to say that you have to help people before you help animals, but this is ridiculous. You see animals absolutely everywhere - EVERYWHERE! - with broken paws, gouged-out eyes, bleeding tumors, cold, sick, being hit by cars, mothers with 6 puppies, and they are all starving.

Unfortunately, it is no different in the town of Punta Arenas. You could say that Punta Arenas is a town in the south of Chile, but the word south is an understatement for this place. The town is situated on the Strait of Magellan, the very extreme southern passage that the Portuguese (Melissa keep reminding me that Magellan´s name was actually Magalhaes) explorer was looking for to cut some time off of the Europe-Asia sea voyage. If that weren´t enough, PA is only 55 miles north of the physical southern end of the American land mass that stretches (if you discount the Panama Canal) unbroken from the tippy top of Alaska and Canada all the way down to Cabo Froward. Beyond Froward is legendary Tierra del Fuego, Cape Horn, and the Big Ice, Antarctica itself.

But what IS different in Punta Arenas is what brought us to Punta Arenas - Corporaccion de la Defensa y Derechos de los Animales - The corporation for the defense and the rights of animals, otherwise known in Punta Arenas as La Protectora. When we landed in Puerto Natales after a beautiful 4 day ferry trip through the uninhabited, pristine fjords of southern Chile, our plan was to head to Torres del Paine to tackle Patagonia´s most famous trek. But, as I waited outside Meli´s massage parlor (traveling is hard work, you know) I saw an article about a shelter in Punta Arenas that worked with the stray population down here. Combine our experience in Valpo with Vito, Meli´s love of anything huggable, and the sudden desire (which immediately turned into a lifelong dream) to see the Strait of Magellan and Tierra del Fuego, and we were on our way.

We arrived in Punta Arenas with only the plan to volunteer at the shelter. We had no idea where to stay or how to get there once we got into the town. After a four hour bus ride south, we ended up in Punta Arenas and made our way to the shelter. There, we waited outside for a bit with a few strays with what sounded like a thousand barking dogs inside. After about a half hour, a woman showed up, all smiles, and let us in. Were we the gringos that called, yes we were, come in come in...so we went into the office. Now, Meli and I are both used to animal shelters back home - sterile, clean places with pens for the forlorn dogs that sit in wait for someone to claim them or that other, more gruesome option. This is not the case at La Protectora. Here, in this donation dependent (the state offers little or no help), volunteer dependent, built-with-love institution, there are open pens. Many of the 150 - yes 150 - dogs live in the open with one another. The few pens they have are for dogs in heat, mothers with pups (sometimes), sick dogs, new arrivals, and a blind fellow who is just the most beautiful dog you have ever seen but is totally helpless. The open pens allow the dogs to run around, sniff one another in peace and be, well, dogs. This also means that a new visitor is greeted with the jumping, wagging, and licking of 50 or 60 dogs at a time, not to mention the salutations of an ill-tempered little fellow named Ritalin who is intent on landing a bite by any means necessary. The open pens also mean that the place is hard to clean and hard to keep clean, but more on that later.

After a little introduction to her pet project, the woman who runs the place (we will call her the Saint for the sake of privacy and because it´s just plain true) asked us if we would like to get a bite to eat before work. Famished for both food and hospitatlity, Meli and I readily accepted and we hopped in her car.

Now, a word on trust. A page out of the thinking of many people I know, ehhehmmm Mom, would read like this....

...oh my God, in her car! They don´t even know this woman! What if she wants to take them somewhere and hurt them - I hear South America is a dangerous place - what if she kidnaps them - can I pay the ransom? What if she is a terrorist - Al Qaeda - and - oh my God, brainwashes them and turns them into Taliban...what if....

Trust is a precious thing. Many of us have experiences in our life that make it so we don´t want to trust strangers. Many, many, many more of us have a friend who has an uncle that has a friend that knows a bartender who went to a place and was robbed and kidnapped but thankfully made it out safe. Still more of us watch the news, or Nancy Grace, or America´s Most Wanted and decide never to leave the house...ever. Unfortunately, if you want to get to know people, you need to leave yourself open to them, and that openness can lead to being hurt, usually more emotionally than physically. So we got in the freakin´car!

We went and stopped at a place to pick up some food, all the while chatting about the animal problem in Chile. The woman said she would be right back and left us in the car...with the car running. Talk about trust! She bought us some food and took us to her house...again, talk about trust! We went inside and a had along lunch, full of stories and all in Spanish (I am trying, really). The saint told us the story of how she opened La Protectora 17 years ago when her husband died. She is now 72 and her passion and dedication have allowed the place to stay open in the face of amazing difficulty. Both Meli and I were astonished and humbled by the example of this woman who had found passion even after being a wife and a mother and in the later years of her life. We were also amazed at the fact that she could lift more than me and was more physcially fit than pretty much anyone either of us knew. So, humbled, amazed, and full, we headed back to the shelter to earn our lunch.

Being understaffed, the daily tasks at La Protectora were plentiful. When we asked what we should do, the saint stated anything, anything, anything you do is of great help. And so we geared ourselves up: two makeshift pooper scoopers, and dingy overcoat, we entered the large dog pen. In an instant we were greeted with 30 barking, licking, excited, jumping, perritos. They gave us love immediately, each jumping higher than the other to attract some love its way. If you would walk away, some would cry, chase you down, stand by your side. In Meli´s words, "This is my idea of heaven." As much as Steve and I wanted to spend the hours petting and loving up these dogs, there was much work to do, and so we got to it. We spent hours simply cleaning up dog poop. We would meander around the fields to find scattered poop, sometimes discovering a poop mine, where we would remain for fifteen minutes. We got to know every type of poop there was by the time the day was through (you would be surpirsed how many), but not to worry, those plaintive eyes made it worth it. Every now and then, we would break to simply play with the pups - hold their faces in our hands, play chase with the big guys, pick them up and cradle them in our love. It made the scooping of pooping oh so worth it. That was the best part.

Once we cleaned up an area as best as we could, it was feeding time! What a voracious frenzy that was. Meals consisted of rice cooked with meat starting to turn rancid (dogs can handle the microbes, and La protectora, had us cook the meat down to kill excess bacteria). We would first count the dogs in each area, relay the information to the server, at which point she would plop some grub on steel pans and we would feed the little guys. Never was La Protectora so silent as during feeding time (kind of reminds us of home). Sometimes, dogs would travel to plate to plate, often being growled back to their original spot. Each dog had their own heaping serving. Each was accounted for. Each fell quickly into a food stupor once finished. How is La Protectora able to feed such a crowd? Much of the food is donated rancid meat that cannot be sold to the public. Seldom, people will stop by with a bag of dog food. Truth be told, this is not enough. After dinner, it's time to close up shelter for the night. We say our goodbyes and promise to come by the next day.

La Protectora is a beautiful endeavor that is not supported by the government and poorly supported by the local community. Worse yet, no vet pays a visit to offer their services to the shelter. If a dog is infirmed, the saint must scrounge up funds to take them to a vet. People will tie dogs to the exterior fence or dump them over the fence at night - and when this happens, the staff often arrives in the morning to find the new dog mauled by the ragtag pack that already resides there. In our time there, in just one day alone, three dogs were left at her footstep, one being a very pregnant mommy. La Protectora has reached her capacity of strays, but still does not turn away a helpless, homeless, or injured animal. The shelter after 17 years of use and made out of permeable wood is sordid with bacterica. There aren´t even enough homes for all of them. Of the 30 puppies that are brought there or are born there in a week or two, only the 1 or 2 strongest will survive the diseases, cold, and rain. Yet she is doing the best she can do. What we ask of you all who have read is donate an amount to La Protectora. She has a paypal account on her website posted below. Five dollars, ten, maybe even make a pledge to send 5/10 dollars (the equivalant of a starbucks coffee!) every month. If we all do it, we can possibly raise a few hundred a month for this amazing woman and those dogs. Then she can finally see the day where she has a proper facility to house these pooches, with an in house veternarian. Let´s band together for this one. Those dogs were so loving, maybe with our help they can be adopted and become the center of little child´s world!

Thanks so much everyone. Steve and I lamented so many a time that we could not export them home. We would really appreciate it if you could lend a helping wallet. =)

http://www.chileaustral.com/perros/ingles.shtml

Click on the donate button and give what you can! Choose US English at the top of the page. If you have a paypal account its even easier! By the way, go thru the photos and see if you can find us!

Love,

Steve and Melissa

Gallery: Torres del Paine-TDP

llamalovers — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 23:24:00 GMT

Gallery: Punta Arenas and Our Animal Adventure

llamalovers — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 23:23:00 GMT

Gallery: Ferry through Chilean Fjords

llamalovers — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 23:23:00 GMT

Gallery: Puerto Varas

llamalovers — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 23:17:00 GMT

Looked for Pudú, found some doodoo!

llamalovers — Mon, 29 Oct 2007 11:00:00 GMT

You know a trip is going to be crappy when the first thing you see when you get to your destination is a toilet full of crap! And that was the first thing Meli happened upon when we got to Chiloé.

Chiloé is a small island in the South of Chile. All the guidebooks we read talked about how magical, how enchanting, how frozen in time this beautiful island is. There are palafitos (see pic - houses built in the water on stilts), rolling pastures full of sheep and cows, more fresh seafood than you can possibly imagine, a temperate rainforest, and a population who has woven their native mythology into Christianity to create a unique syncretic religion not found anywhere else in the world. They even have a deer the size of a small dog - this is the illustrious, yet reclusive pudú that is so named in our title. What´s not to love? Well...we found exactly what we were looking for...

I am not one to judge the character of a city at night. In the dark everything seems ominous, dingy, and creepy, as if danger lurks around every corner. But the thing is, that when we awoke the next morning, nothing had changed. Let´s see-damp, dank, dismal, dumpy, dreary, that is Castro, Chiloé. The palafitos, once we found them in drizzling rain, were nothing but glorified houses on stilts-nothing to write home about.

But indeed, it is true that Chiloé is frozen time - in the 1970´s- which we all know was a bad time in every regard. From bad politics, to fashion, to music, to food, to movies, to gas prices, to coke addictions- even the 76 olympics were a disaster. And Chiloé has chosen this glorious epoch to be frozen into. Don´t believe us? There is wood paneling EVERYWHERE! The restaurants, offices, hotels - everywhere! Wood paneling should have been retired a long time ago! Can we just say depressing?

Oh and the temperate rainforest? There is a reason that there is a temperate rainforest there - it never, ever, ever stops raining. Even when, for a brief moment, the sun shines, it´s still raining! Worse yet, was that the rain permeated our beings! You should have seen the two of us, we were miserable, forlorn! You say that the animals might have made us happy? Well the cows and sheep wouldn´t let Meli anywhere near them. And the pudú - there´s a reason they say its reclusive - you can´t find one anywhere!

The seafood though, right? Well, we may have done this to ourselves- The seafood was bangin´. So fresh. The first night we had pulmay, a derivation of curanto- a shellfish dish with sausauge and potatoes, stewed underneath the ground! Pulmay was amazing-so amazing we ate it in 10 min-so amazing we ordered it for lunch the very next day. That night we ate another shellfish stew. The next day we ate another shellfish stew-to the point where Steve has put a indefinite moritorium on shellfish. The last night there we ate a dish full of potatoes and that was it. The mere mention of shellfish makes us both want to go anorexic.

And the lovely, unique religion? Well, have you ever been in a place and just felt like there was some bad juju goin on? Anguloeme anyone (anguleme was an equally soul scary town in France!)? This place was covered with that feeling. Even the cows looked at you funny. I mean, the people were nice, after the standard Chilean fashion, but somethin just...wasn´t right. It was kind of like The Shining.

It was all so terrible that we cut our trip of 4 days short to two, found a different town, and high-tailed it out of Castro, off of Chiloé, and onto the mainland.

And we didn´t even have to go to Cuba to be oppressed by Castro!

Happy out of Castro,

Melissa and Steve!

ps we will post more Chiloe pics, if you are at all interested to see them after this dismal story, after we get down to Puerto Natales

Reached Bavaria, Chile?

llamalovers — Fri, 26 Oct 2007 21:30:00 GMT

Pucon, Chile-it could possibly the adventurer´s dream. The small community itself is completely surrounded by verdant mountains that jut powerfully into the sky. More stunning however is Volcan Villarica that looms in the distance. It smokes daily, reminding everyone of its fire within. What is even more impressive is that in Pucon, you can ascend the volcano and peer into its red, super hot, center! Now we did not have the opportunity to do this simply because of time constraints - but the fun doesnt end there in Pucon. The hardest decisions to make in Pucon were what to do daily; there was just a plethora of outdoor activities!!! You could visit the termas (hot springs), raft, canopy, trekk, horseback ride, take a tour of the jam and chocolatier shops (that is what I´m talking about!!! Anyone for spooning in dollops of chocolate?). As you can see, what to do became a quandary of sorts, but we were undaunted! Every morning we would wake, eat our jammy toast, and drink our Nescafe (by the way the best instant coffee ever, it may just be your souvenir), and decide that day´s adventure.

Our first day, we walked the town early morn - the air constantly smelled of burning wood, now a prerequisite for any town I choose to settle in. We opted to check out Los Pozones, 5 natural rock pools that are heated by the volcano. The day was just perfect. But not just because of the grandeur of nature, but because of the beautiful human acts we witnessed.

Getting to Los Pozones required a 30 mintue drive from our tour agency. We climbed in the dusty van and joined a vivacious Brazilian mother and her son. The Portuguese connection was in effect. It was a short while before either Steve or I noticed that her son was a paraplegic. My heart instantly warmed towards this mother, not out of pity, but from the warm thought of knowing that despite his condition, despite his limitations, despite his justifable desire not to attempt back-country travel, here were the two of them, jostling with us in a rickety van across the Pucon hinterland. But our story doesn´t end there.

When we reached the Pozones we hit an impasse. Right before the leisurely walk to the hot springs, stopping the van in its tracks, was a formidble mound of granite rock. The driver, Steve and I got out surveyed the area, and with the mother deemed the route too treacherous for her son. The mother claimed that her son would get too nervous and that they would be best left there, beside the river, with the hot springs inaccesibly in the distance. Our hearts fell. We offered assistance, but seeing that there was nothing we could do, we moved along to the termas.

After hopping from one pool to the next deciding which temperature was best, we re-encountered the mother and her son. They had both made it to the Pozones! How?

Well our timid, gentle driver had a most loving soul, and he made this day magic. When we left, it turns out that our driver called in a bulldozer to knock down the rocks, in turn creating a manaegable road for the son. That day, he was able to spend 2 hours enjoying a respite that he deserves, that he is entitled to...basking in the Chilean sun, shootin´ the breeze with other guests, breathing in the crisp air...all because of the efforts of one man. It was beautiful.

Upon leaving, we entered yet another impasse-the manageable road turned into another pile of 200 pound piedras. And yet again, this was not a problem. Our driver simply called the bulldozer back, who dumped more rocks (we were all wondering how this was bettering the situation), smoothed out the road, and gave up the thumb´s up with a congenial smile, signling our ascent up the road would be a safe one. All the while, we were an hour over our travel time. Yet no one looked at their watch. No one was irriated that the trip was longer than expected, that they would return to our hotels later, eat dinner later, see family later. Neither the bulldozer nor the driver reacted with annoyance at having to do ¨more work¨-they just did good by humanity-and it was beautiful. It is in moments like these that you see the goodness of man, and it need not be rare. It is in moments like these that i am reminded how to act all the time!

love you guys and i miss you! hope you enjoy!

the marmelo-aka melissa

Gallery: Santiago de Chile

llamalovers — Fri, 26 Oct 2007 11:09:00 GMT

Gallery: The freaky island of Chiloè

llamalovers — Fri, 26 Oct 2007 11:07:00 GMT

Gallery: Adventures in Pucòn

llamalovers — Fri, 26 Oct 2007 11:06:00 GMT

Gallery: Valpo, the most beautiful city in the world, and Vito, the most beautiful dog!

llamalovers — Fri, 26 Oct 2007 11:06:00 GMT

Gallery: Florida

llamalovers — Fri, 26 Oct 2007 10:57:00 GMT

Before we headed to South America, we spent a week or so with Steve´s sister and her boyfriend and Meli´s Uncle´s family.

Nice tribes finish last - Part II

llamalovers — Fri, 26 Oct 2007 06:42:00 GMT

So anyways, in Pucòn, there is a ton of stuff to do. Despite how great it would have been to climb the smoking volcano, we opted to go for a horse trek. The Steve McQueen in me is obsessed with horses and Meli is pretty much down with any animal big enough to hug (honestly, she has tried to hug everything from sheep to dolphins on this trip). So we went to an adventure agency and chose a three hour horse trek. They had programs where you could go ahead and also visit some traditional Mapuche homes and whatnot, but neither of us wanted to participate in a "gringo go gawk at the natives" excursion so we opted for a simple ride. Our guide, Rodrigo showed up, we got in his car to drive out into the mountains, and Meli asked him if he was from Pucon. "Soy Mapuche", he said, indicating he was from the Mapuche town outside of Pucon, and not the Chilean city proper. Both of us got sick simultaneously, as somehow us gringos signed up for a "gawk at the natives" excursion after all.

After some pleasant small talk (all in Spanish of course - Meli's Spanish is getting us everywhere), we met our horses, crossed a small river, and hit the trail. The horses moved at a leisurely pace and we got to soak up the astounding beauty of the Mapuche lands. Nestled against some mountains about 10 miles outside of Pucon, across a rickety bridge (marked "Puente està mal estado" or something ominous like that), over the raging river Trancura, the Mapuche town is absolutely pristine. Small houses dot the landscape, there are sheep and cows and horses everywhere, people exchange small talk, and the river is the loudest thing you hear.

We had been riding about 15 minutes, and Meli's proficiency with the language and some small forays into different social issues allowed Rodrigo to tell us some about his people. He spoke with great pride about his culture, their ceremonies and customs, and the gains they had made in the years following the Pinochet dictatorship - a period of time sensitive to many Chileans, and not any less to the Mapuche. Neither of us had really wanted to ask questions and be invasive, but our guide was opening up a bit, so we took it for all it was worth. We asked about the ways that Pinochet had injured the Mapuche, asked about Mapuche food and custom, schooling, and anything else we could think of.

After some more talk, we rode on to a rushing river about 4 feet deep with a bed of stones and boulders. Rodrigo gave us a quick, nonchalant lesson on "what to do if the horse falls down" (you gotta be kidding me) and into the river we went. Jesus, how much you love your horse increases exponentially from one side of a river to the other! Needless to say, the heart was pounding. Then, if that wasn`t enough stress on the poor beast, we climbed high up a narrow pass into the mountains - well HE climbed, with my fat ass on his back. When we had cleared the pass, the three of us tethered our horses and Rodrigo took us on a hike even higher up, onto a rocky outcrop where the view of the landscape was just breathtaking. From there, not only could you see the full grandeur of smouldering Volcàn Villarica, but also Volcàn Lanin, which straddles the Argentinian border. Pucòn, Lake Villarica, and the Mapuche lands lay stretched out before us. And all you could hear were the birds and the River Trancura. Now this was paraìso!

Laying there up on the outcrop, we talked for a long while to Rodrigo. We told him about the US, teaching, and the stress of big city life. He listened and commented, invited us to his niece`s birthday party in November, and waxed poetic about the tranqulity, simplicity, and happiness of his land and his people. We told him that we loved Pucòn and thought about returning there to stay for a bit after our trip south, and he told us about a little stone house on his family`s land that was for rent if we were interested. Needless to say, we drooled.

We got our horses and made our way back down the mountain. On the way back to the house where the horses we kept, Rodrigo decided to chase an ornery dog pack with his horse. My horse got the fever too and took off. Now, before this moment, I had never done anything but MAYBE a slow trot on a horse, and this motherf%cker was galloping! All I have to say is, at least once in your life, get on a horse and let him take the f%ck off. Something buried deep in your genes, something from back before the time of cars and health insurance and big cities, will reawaken and make you feel more alive than you have ever felt.

I galloped on my horse a few more times and so did Meli, we tied our horses up, and left for Pucòn. The next morning, we took a 10 hour bus ride south, but I can tell you for sure, as much of ourselves as we left in Valpo, we left even more on those Mapuche lands outside of Pucòn.

Nice tribes finish last - Part I

llamalovers — Fri, 26 Oct 2007 06:05:00 GMT

OK - a quick history lesson.

The European colonization of South America began in much the same way that it did in North America - with Spanish expeditions. In South America, a 1495 Papal declaration ceded Brazil to Portugal and all lands west of Brazil to Spain (unbeknownst to the Incas and all other peoples who already lived here and thought that they, for some odd reason, had the right to the land themselves). The conquistadores arrived in small numbers, but their germs arrived by the zillions, effectively wiping out the majority of the natives. In some cases, as with the Mississipi cultures in North America, by the time the Spanish arrived, the germs had already cleared out the people, leaving eerie ghost towns behind. More or less, the fact that the Europeans had lived clustered together in filthy cities and kept many filthy animals within close range of their living quarters had, over the previous 8000 years, allowed them to build up a natural immunity to common diseases. The natives, having few large beasts available to domesticate and the privelege of a pristine wilderness, never built up these immunities and the germs had a field day.

Anyways, bringing us back to South America, a smallpox epidemic had made its way into the Inca empire, the dominant force around here in 1500, and wiped out a good number of Incas. The devastation of the disease sewed unrest and killed their king, they fought a small civil war, and by the time the Spanish arrived, the empire was fractured. The Spanish captured the Inca emporer Atahuallpa, promised to release him in return for gold, got the gold, killed him anyway, and then laid waste to the most of Peru. Once devastated, they setup the encomienda system which basically allowed them to own large tracts of land and keep native slaves, or serfs, to farm it.

With the Incas in Peru out of the way, the Spanish were also free to go and wreak havoc on the rest of the old Inca empire. They made their way South to the Rio Biobio in Chile, and it was there they met the Mapuche, the dominant native group in southern Chile and Argentina and the only group in the south to avoid colonization. Pedro de Valdivia, who founded Santiago in 1541, attempted another swift Spanish defeat of yet another native population for yet more encomienda slaves. The Mapuche annhilated his forces, killed him, and in a moment of historic poetic justice, stuffed his corpse with gold.

The Mapuche fiercely defended their homeland for another 300 plus years, first against the Spanish, and then against the Chilean government after independence in 1818. Only in the late 1800s did they begin to allow the Chileans to keep permanent settlements south of the Biobio - a trip into Patagonia before then often meant the settlers' lives. Fast forward about 100 years, the first incursions into Mapuche lands had turned into the purchase of large swaths of land by big business and the displacement of many native populations. A military dictatorship in 1973 (installed with CIA help - more on that in another post) was even more disastrous for them, as their language and culture was frowned upon and more lands were seized. After the peaceful ouster of the violent dictator in 1989, the Mapuche began to reassert their ancestral claims and have made a lot of headway in preserving their lands and culture.

Why is all this important - well check the next post!

Vamos al paraiso

llamalovers — Wed, 17 Oct 2007 17:00:00 GMT

Here we are, day number 6 in Chile. We left the capital of Santiago several days ago and arrived in Valparaiso (literally ¨"go to paradise") on Monday afternoon. This city is definitely a place everyone should see before they die. The city is a port on the Pacific responsible for a lot of Chile´s imports and exports, and was a major stopover in the route around Cape Horn before the Panama Canal was built. The city rises up from the bay at an alarming angle and is dotted with and ringed by huge hills. The vista of the city as you walk up the hills is breathtaking, both at night and in the morning. The houses in Valpo are all painted in bright colors - it reminds me of pictures of Greece that I have seen. And, just like in Santiago, there are stray dogs everywhere - but more on that later.

After receiving a not-so-warm-welcome in Santiago, we were starting to consider whether or not the famously insular Chile was the best choice for a journey to South America. Both of us wanted to take some time and stay in a place and get to know the people, and the reticent nature and crazy, choppy, lightning fast Spanish of the Chileans was frustrating that hope.

But Valpo has been much different thus far. The highlight of our day yesterday was our trip to the market by the bay, where we met some very friendly vendors who gave us advice on not getting mugged, then suggested some cooking methods for the two most beautiful artichokes we could find, then split their lunch and coffee, and finally took us up on to the deserted roof of the building for a spectacular view of the city (all thanks to Melissa´s Spanish I might add - my "es muy bueno!" only gets us so far).

Today we planned on taking a bus to Quintay, a little deserted beach south of the city where you have to hike through a pine forest and neglect "Do Not Enter" signs to bathe in seculded pools and hang out with otters. But on our way to the station, we had a run in with Vito. He was about as tall as me standing, understood no English, and had a warm tongue.

OK - so Vito is one of the many street dogs that roam the streets of Valpo and protect their turf. But there was something different about this guy - so much so that our conversation had chnaged from "The beach is going to be beautiful today" to "How much could we afford for rent per month" in a matter of 15 minutes. Honestly, we both fell in love and, like so many gringo travellers, had decided to stay with our beloved in Valpo. We made appointments with a realtor, checked out some houses, and found a vet. All we had to do was get Vito on the leash (or rope as it were) and take him down to the vet.

This proved more difficult than we first imagined. We encountered very little in the way of snags in the beginning - I even was the head of my own street dog pack for about a half hour (thank you Cesar Millan) - but Vito refused the leash and just would not follow us the mile across town to the vet. So we went into a retaurant, and Vito waited for about 15 minutes, and then chased some dogs around the corner and vanished - maybe for good, maybe not. But one thing is certain - that pup would rather be wild, stinky, and homeless than at the end of a leash.

We can relate!