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Twenty kilometers south of Puerto Montt, Steve Anderson runs a sizable camping ground, WWOOFing operation, and the Patagonia branch of The Santiago Times, Chile’s first English-language newspaper. His office is a small, many windowed tower at the top of his house, with an uninterrupted view of a sheltered, salty bay. Buoys [...] I set up my tent to a chorus of laughter. Chuckles turned to cackles, then built into contagious, breathless hilarity that shook the trees and rattled the windows of the houses around the lawn. It spread across the street, into the next yard, until the entire flock of black-winged jesters exploded from the tall pines, struggling [...] …make Jack Nicholson chase after his family with an axe through a topiary garden. Right? Santiago isn’t exactly in the running for the setting of “The Shining II”, but I was definitely beginning to feel twitchy and cooped up. No wonder, with this as my most frequent work space: Working through my pile of research in my [...] Today, without meaning to, I walked straight into the heart of the Chilean Patagonia. I found it at a bar, El Clinic, near the Belles Artes metro stop. It doesn’t live there, obviously, but that’s where we happened to meet. I’ve spent the past week in Santiago poring through various media, trying [...] 5:30 pm. I stood on the platform of the Santiago metro. No, not stood, sagged. Eyelids blinked in slow motion. Shoulders protested the weight of my bag. I was exhausted. The day’s interviews (two: one with a representative from Ecosistemas, and the second with a spokesman for Costa Carrera) and the wealth of information they’d provided [...] I landed in Santiago on Friday morning, jet-lagged, sticky, bleary-eyed, and with a stomach dancing about in what Syreena assures me is excitement, not fear. I broke down the things I needed to do into tiny steps. First, immigration and customs. I did NOT have to pay the silly $100 reciprocity fee (only because I paid it [...] They’re called the Teeth of Navarino. Better they should be called the Fangs. Vicious, merciless, and sharp, these rocks bite. El Circuito de Los Dientes de Navarino is the southernmost trek in the world, a five-days-plus mission into the exposed interior of the island that sits south of Ushuaia, between the water of the Beagle Channel [...] Have you ever read the Stephen King novel, Cujo? I haven’t, but I know it’s about a dog. And as it’s a novel by Stephen King, I imagine that the dog turns into a monster, or is a monster in disguise, or is some sort of portal by which monsters are able to enter our dimension [...] This is it – this is as far south as civilization gets until that big, white, cold continent. Puerto Williams is situated on the northern shore of Isla Navarino, across the Beagle Channel from Ushuaia, Argentina. Home to 2,200 inhabitants, it’s bigger than McMurdo Station in Antarctica, with more stray dogs and less to do. I left [...] The streets were slippery in the rain. My battered red sneakers slapped against the gray concrete in a steady rhythm, and I twisted my wet hair back behind my ears for the tenth time. Dawn was red this morning. The trees of the park outside the hostel’s front door blocked most of the sky, but from where I [...] |
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Copyright © 2012 Susan Munroe - All Rights Reserved |
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