On the first day, it snowed uphill.  It fell down one side of the valley and the wind blew it back up the other, into my path, blinding and horizontal.  That night, camping at Laguna Salto, I lay in my tent listening to the wind.  It would begin as a low rumbling, somewhere behind the hills, and build steadily into a locomotive of rushing air and frightening sound until it was on top of me, flattening the windward side of my tent until it flapped around my ears where I lay.  I curled up in my sleeping bag and jacket, hearing the elements thrash it out, feeling small and powerless.  On the second day the sunshine coaxed me out of my down cocoon.  Peaks bright with morning light caught my eyes and stirred me into action, up the hill, across the approach to Paso Australia.  I achieved the pass but the celebratory dance was cut off abruptly as the wind slammed into me with the force of an 18-wheeler, pushing me off my feet until I sat, just below the pass, with my back and pack to the wind and my heels dug into the scree against being thrown all the way to the lake at the bottom.  The wind was spinning miniature tornadoes across the lake surface in all directions.  It was even worse at the bottom of the second pass.  I was walking across a deep glacial trough, alongside a lake.  Jagged slices of granite surrounded me on all sides.  The sky was still bright and blue above me, but I was wearing gloves and a hat and jacket, moving into the wind, gritting my teeth and screaming back at it when it blew hard enough to stop me in my tracks.  I found shelter behind a tall rock and stopped to catch my breath.  The wind was like a living thing, ripping down from the peaks, over rocks and through the thin tufts of grass growing next to the lake.  It snapped, like a plastic tarp being torn off a woodpile and shredded.  By the end of the day, I was exhausted of wind, blown raw.  Even after I’d found a sheltered campsite for the night, the sound of the breeze being dispersed among the trees made me flinch.  Why am I here, I wondered, and for a brief moment, wished I was elsewhere.  The wind scared me.

On day three, I woke with silence ringing in my ears.  Stillness greeted me as I climbed out of my tent, and I cooked breakfast outside, without needing to build a wind-break.  I walked on tip-toe the entire day, holding my breath as I summitted Monte Bettinelli in sunshine and calm air and reached the rustic hut on the shores of Lago Windhond.  Day four, the same.  Not a breath of wind to impede me.  I retraced my steps over Monte Bettinelli, marveling for the second day in a row at the panorama that lay spread before me.  To the south, the islands of Cape Horn, dark blue and misty, but visible.  Westward gleamed the white steep peaks of the Cordillera Darwin, and between here and there, the rough spine of the Dientes themselves, the soggy yellowish lowlands of Navarino, and countless lagoons and beaver ponds, sapphires in a gold setting.  Superlatives rolled through my head, but not through my heart.  For the first time in many solo hiking missions, I was not content.  Something had changed.  I’d shot myself up with my usual fix, but failed to reach the same high.  The wind had stripped away my confidence, my courage, and pressed  an acute awareness of my mortality into my skin.  Alone on the top of Monte Bettinelli, I felt no awe, no wonder or magic at the landscape.  I felt alone.  This was what I’d wanted: to be on my own at the end of the world, fighting the elements, testing myself.  And now I felt only a desire to be safely on the other side of the hills, finished, and back among people.

see the rest of my photos from the island

This blog, I sometimes feel, has become that hungry beast.

It began innocently enough – I could whip off a light, informative entry in about fifteen minutes, a half an hour if I was being thoughtful, an hour at the absolute maximum if I’d been slack in reporting on my travels.  You all read it, and wrote wonderfully encouraging comments.  Once stroked, my ego began to purr, and I started putting a bit more thought into each entry.  Themes emerged, and I got excited about organizing my updates around ideas instead of events.  Reader reviews (bless you all) were positive, and the beast began to grow.  Once informed that I had something good, I wanted it to be better.  And better.  I needed substance, depth, details!  Internet sessions became longer and more expensive, and entries came fewer and farther between.  The pressure began to build.  Weeks now pass between entries as I struggle to find the time and energy to tend to the beast which will no longer be satisfied with quick updates.  This creates both a backlog of events on which to report (with feeling and wit) and a certain sense of suspense among you all, faithful readers.  “Where are you?  What’s happening?” you ask.  I’ve begun to avoid my email account guiltily, but I can still hear the blog-beast as it paces, testing the hinges, ready to break out.

The following, therefore, is the hiss of the safety valve as it vents a jet of steam, relieving some of the pressure.  Quick and artless, but effective.  I’m letting the beast out the back for a run.  Apologies if it eats any of your kids.

So, back to the place where I fell off the track…
There was the curanto.
Then the Navimag.

Then the Parque Nacional de Los Torres del Paine, the jewel of Chilean Patagonia.  I hiked for the first three days with Angus and with Clementine, Ben, and Jerome from the Navimag, then went my own hardcore way.  I trekked for ten days in all, in the hottest, clearest weather in Patagonian history, then came back into civilization (Puerto Natales) and took the job at the erratic rock hostel.

The job at the rock led to a trip to Cabo Froward, the southernmost tip of the American mainland – visited by the Pope in the early 90s – accessible only by boat or by a two-and-a-half day hike along slippery beaches and through vicious, sucking turbal (peat bogs) and across freezing, chest-deep rivers.  There were eleven of us, all self-sufficient and keen trekkers, but despite our high spirits and determination, were turned back a half-day from our destination because of dangerously high rivers.  Instead of succumbing to disappointment, we spent an evening drying our underwear on sticks over the campfire and bonding as “Team Toasted Panties”.

Another month of work at the erratic rock followed before I could start counting down to the Circuito de Los Dientes de Navarino – the Teeth of Navarino.  It’s the southernmost trek in the world, and it’s the only thing I knew about in Patagonia before arriving.  I arrived in Puerto Williams (the tiny town you’ll recall from my last entry), made a stir as the crazy gringa, then disappeared into the wilds for eight days.  The hiking was rough, the weather rougher, and I emerged on the other side of the eight days with a whole new respect for the word “remote”.  I do have a proper update in the works with details of the trip.  It’s three-quarters written, and it’s a story I don’t want to skip.  It’ll get here…eventually.  Photos exist as well.  Stay tuned.

After the Dientes, I crossed the border into Argentina and spent two weeks between El Calafate and El Chaltén, two dusty frontier towns built up for the sole purpose of serving the tourists who descend in droves to either 1) visit the Perito Moreno glacier or 2) hike in the Parque Nacional Los Glaciares.  I did both.  I spent a week and a half in El Chaltén, a town still under construction (est. 1985), sleeping in my tent and going on day hikes, seeking out new and exciting vistas of Cerro Torre and Monte Fitzroy (the two showpieces of the park).  Winter arrived about the same time that I did, and for the last five days of my stay I was hiking and camping in the snow.  Beautiful, but I think it’s time I moved on from Patagonia.  I’ve been in South America for nearly four months, and three of them in the deep south.  Time to check out some new places.  Therefore – I’m off to Peru.  I fly from Puerto Natales to Santiago tomorrow, then get a 26-hour bus to the Chile-Peru border, then through another series of buses and towns will arrive in Cusco, Peru on the 16th or 17th.  It’s going to be epic.  When I get to Cusco, I’m going to be tired.

Hope this fills in the gaps.  In the meantime, here’s this piece of unrelated news: the film “Ice People” (documentary about life in Antarctica filmed while I was working at McMurdo) will be premiering at the 2008 San Francisco International Film Festival, April 24 to May 8.  If you’re in the Bay area, check it out!  If you’re not, but still crave a taste of the cold, you can still enjoy the trailer.

After such a show, Puerto Williams was only going to be anticlimactic.  My arrival coincided with the afternoon siesta.  I got a ride from the airport with a father and son in a blue flatbed truck who were picking up packages and supplies from the plane to deliver in town.  They dropped me off in the centro commercial, a muddy square smaller than a city block, boxed in by a series of diminutive shops and restaurants, all closed.  A ten minute walking tour let me drop my backpack at my hostel and showed me all the town had to offer.  The town’s most interesting attraction is the prow of the ship Yelcho, amputated from the rest of its body and planted in a small plot of grass in front of the naval barracks.  This is the prow of the Chilean naval vessel that rescued Shackleton’s men from Elephant Island in 1916.  I sat in the grass next to the monument and ate a cream pastry I’d bought at the (only) bakery.  I tried to imagine the gray steel ship breaking through the ice-clogged water, appearing like a beacon of hope to the men who’d been stranded for months, but the sun and the sound of the navy men doing calisthenics in the gymnasium behind me were distracting.  It’s hard to appreciate history when it’s 1) decapitated and 2) surrounded by a white picket fence.

The shops began to open again at 2:30, and I made the rounds, hunting for gas cannisters for my stove.  Two hours and six stores later, I now possess the only four cannisters that exist on the island.  They’re all half empty, but they’re all I have.  I am also now officially recognized on the street as “that crazy gringa who’s going to hike the Dientes Circuit – ALONE (¡dios mios!)”.  After I registered my hiking intentions with the local carabiñeros (police), I was stopped twice by uniformed officers, asking if I wasn’t afraid to be hiking by myself, and didn’t I want an official escort?  Word spreads fast in a small island town, and today, the crazy gringa and her search for “¿gas para camping? is the most interesting thing happening.  I extended my plane ticket yesterday to allow myself an extra two days in town after I finish the circuit (7-8 days), thinking that I’d want time to explore the urban Isla Navarino in addition to its wilds.  Little did I know.  Ah well – the mountains await.

(so you see – this is what i’ve been doing and why i’ve been so behind on the blogging. i’ll do my best to catch up soon.)

This was the Navimag, not a luxury cruise. This was a four-day ferry ride with beds and a bar. Our meals were uninspiring, but filling, and were served on blue trays in the small cafeteria. My bed was a cozy upper berth within the labyrinthine lower cabin, with a soft, narrow mattress and curtains that could be drawn closed. The public address system crackled and popped with announcements throughout the day: movies, informative lectures on history, flora, and fauna of the Patagonian channels, and approaching points of interest along the way. The staff member in charge of announcements was a young German woman, and her careful delivery of messages in first Spanish, then English, then German became a subject of hilarious imitation. I’d been skeptical of taking the trip at the start. Though not fancy, this definitely wasn’t the sort of thing I’d normally do – it was expensive, and it was touristy. The Patagonian coastline is remote, inaccessible by road: the Navimag is the only option for those wanting to explore the 1500km stretch between Puerto Montt and Puerto Natales. Touristy or not, I wanted to see the Patagonian waterways, so Angus and I shelled out the cash and set sail.

In spite of the two hundred other people making the journey with me, I felt an incredible sense of intimacy with the environment.  Other than one tiny settlement that we passed on day three, we were the only people for miles and miles and miles.  No Carnival cruise ships rock these waters.  No commercial fishermen ply their trade, no pleasure yachts offer three-hour dinner cruises.  We saw one or two private fishing boats, and a lone yacht under sail. The channels and their treasures seemed to exist only for us. The weather changed, grew colder as we pressed further and further south into the uninhabited heart of Patagonia. On the afternoon that we passed the Pio XI glacier, the skies were the color of steel, and the wind tasted of ice. The third largest glacier in the world, Pio XI is eight kilometers of ice flowing slowly from the mountains to the sheltered waters of the channels, massive, mind-blowing. I stood on the deck with the rest of the passengers, and listened to the deep, rumbling voice of the ice as it settled and cracked and flowed. Huge white-blue icebergs floated on the still water, small only in comparison to the massive glacier face. Elbow to elbow, my fellow travelers and I were awed, all whispers and smiles. Marc leaned close to speak in my ear. “Everyone is so quiet.” I shook my head. “What is there to say, what can I possibly say in the face of all this?”

Later that evening, the glacier growing smaller in our wake, Angus, Clementine, Jerome, Marc, Ben and I drank pisco sours with glacier ice. Even in our glasses, the ice retained its voice; it cracked and popped and snapped and hissed until it sounded like we were drinking rice krispies. The sound of the ancient ice mingled with our chatter, our French and Spanish and English and our laughter. And the tourist ship rolled on through the night, a tiny floating hive of humanity, a speck in the sea, southward bound.

More pictures of the curanto, the cruise, and a photographic preview of blog entries to come…

Angus and I arrived in Puerto Montt on the Sunday morning bus, and chose Casa Perla at random out of the guidebook.  Perla herself met us at the front door of the homestay, urging us to hurry up, come in, drop our stuff, and ¡vamos!  She spoke too rapidly for me to catch what, exactly, the hurry was, or where we were going, but there was a small cluster of people at the door, clearly waiting for us to join up and get on with it.  “It’s a curanto (coo-RAhn-to),” Trina (a Kiwi woman about my age and fellow guest at Casa Perla) explained as we trooped down the hill toward the waterfront.  “But I’m not really sure what that means.  It’s a traditional Chileno meal, and we have to go to this island, where there’s this woman cooking it.  And that’s all I know.”  Lunch on an island in Chile.  Okay.

At the bottom of the hill, we waited for a bus.  We stood next to the Sunday market, and the scent of fish was overpowering in the 80F sun.  Standing room only on the bus; I found myself pressed up next to Clementine, a Frenchwoman who spoke better Spanish than English.  We communicated between languages, using words and hand gestures and facial expressions.  Closer to the front, Angus met the perfect mate to play Cheech to his Chong.  He and Stace, a sixty-year-old English/Dutch yoga instructor, had somehow grabbed seats and were cracking open their cans of beer, the hoppy odor adding to the sticky air inside the bus.  Stace had a frizzy silver-and-ginger beard and long, thin hair pulled into a tight knot on the top of his head.  Small wisps of light red hair ringed his forehead, ears, and neck.  Off the bus and down a long cement ramp to the edge of the water, where a small, brightly-painted boat waited to ferry us the ten minutes across the sound to Isla Tengla, then another ten minutes walking to the opposite side of the island to the farm where the mysterious curanto was meant to take place.

The farm was small, sheltered, and consisted of a few small buildings: a house, a barn with attached animal pens, and a round, open-ceilinged structure with long tables set for the meal.  Scruffy dogs bickered in the grassy space between the buildings, and older, dark-skinned men stood silently in the doorway of the barn.  Meanwhile a plump, soft-looking matron in a long skirt and lavender apron moved busily from barn to house, house to dining area.  I smiled at the men, asked if I could take photos, and suddenly I had an escort.  Pedro led me through a green arborway into the garden, and to the edge of the stone wall that separates the farm from the beach.  It was low tide, and the beach was huge and wet.  I took a few pictures, and then stood talking to Pedro, doing my best to understand his rapid Chileno speech and trying to respond with the right words when he paused.  He was perhaps seventy, and short, with a heavily lined face, a thick grey mustache, and dark eyes.  My comprehension was not 100%, but it was enough.  He told me about his life, about his travels: he worked in a factory in Connecticut, and later (or perhaps at the same time?) served in the Chilean air force, flying a route that took him through Toronto, Detroit, St. Louis, Dallas, San Antonio, Huston, Mexico and Central America on countless occasions.  It was from him that I learned that GW Bush was on a tour of the Middle East, and that Hillary Clinton had won out over Obama in NH.  He’d like to see Hillary take the general election in November, but agreed with me that change is important.  This feels like someone else’s life, like something I might read about.  And yet, this is real.  This is where I am.

Finally, we were called into the barn to watch them “open” the curanto.  In the floor of the barn was a poured cement hole, perhaps a foot deep and a meter square.  Perla, our expedition leader, stood next to me and explained the process in heavily-accented English.  To build a curanto: first, a fire is built in the bottom of the hole, on top of a layer of round stones.  The stones bake in the fire, and when they’re red hot, the cooks begin constructing the layers of food.  Several layers of huge wet leaves cover the rocks, and on top of that they lay alternating layers of shellfish, leaves, meat, potatoes, vegetables, leaves, more shellfish, more meat, and then on the very top, two kinds of heavy, rich potato bread.  The whole lot is covered with more leaves, then several burlap sacks.  For two hours, the food sits and steams and the fat and juice and flavors from the various ingredients drip and mingle and cook.  The smell, as Pedro and two others peel back each layer, is exotic and mouthwatering.

The shells clack and clatter against one another as the matron forks them out in their red net bags.  Two shy cats hide under the benches around the curanto, eyeing the fish and the people, and the dogs creep closer and closer to the hole until someone notices them and shouts them back outside.  The food, once served, fills the long tables to capacity.  There is a watery salsa to spoon over the potatoes and the mussels; bottles of cool white wine are passed while the pile of discarded shells grows on a tray at the end of the tables.  Jo the dog sits at my feet, licking my knee occasionally in hopes of a pork bone.  By the end, my fingers are greasy and my stomach groaning.  This is cuisine.

There is a siesta on the beach after the meal.  I sit with Angus, Stace, Trina, Ant (Trina’s partner), and Clementine, not talking, each of us in our own private digestive stupor.  There’s no need for words, no need to play the “getting-to-know-you” game.  The six of us, we’ve discovered, are going to be together for another whole week as we travel south to Puerto Natales on the Navimag Ferry.  It’s a four-day boat trip through the Patagonian Channels, and it’s the only way see Chile’s Pacific coast.  We will have plenty of time to talk in the coming days.  For the moment, I am easy.  I’m humming along with the universe, in the exact right place at the exact right time.

In the morning, the sound of the cabaña roof being irrigated woke me, and I stepped outside to see shimmering green grass and steep green hills, misty behind the spray of the water.  Volcán Villarrica was bright white against the sky, and the other local volcanoes, Llaima and Quetrepillan, looked jagged and prominent further along the horizon.  Chris came round with the 4-wheeler (imported from NZ) and hauled Angus and me to the worksheds where his Mapuche (Chile’s indigenious tribe) workers waited with the tractor and a trailer full of hay.  “We’re going up the top,” he told us.  “Hang on.”  It took about twenty minutes to get half way up before the tractor ran out of gas, and Angus and I were obliged to walk the rest of the way while Chris and the workers went back down to top up the tank.  I was wearing long pants.  Chris had told me earlier, “My workers aren’t used to seeing women show their legs.  If you wear pants it’ll keep them from falling off the tractor.”  The track was steep and dusty, and it wasn’t long before the long pants were sticking to my legs.  The plus side was that they kept the tábanos off my skin.  These were huge, Jurassic Park bugs, flies, black and orange and persistent.  Their bite, Chris said, is quite painful, but it takes them so long between landing and biting that they make easy targets for killing.  Angus and I slapped and swore our way up the hill, finally reaching the top, out of breath and sweaty and covered in bruises from where we’d administered countless tábano death blows.  It was worth it.  We could see all three volcanoes, the farm, and the lake from the top paddock.  “This is just like New Zealand…it’s almost a bit disappointing,” Angus said.  “I know,” I replied.  “That’s why I like it.”

We spent a week relaxing and exploring the farm, the lake, the town, and the surrounding mountains.  Pucón is the Queenstown of Chile: touristy, trendy, and expensive.  Chileans as well as Europeans flock to the Región de Los Lagos during the months of January and February to go white water rafting, to hike Volcán Villarrica, to soak in natural thermal pools, and to spend money along the manicured main street of the town.  Chris’s farm is well-located in that it’s far enough away to feel secluded and peaceful, but close enough for him and Dagmar to do good business selling their venison to local restaurants, where it’s served as a regional delicacy.  Angus taught me to windsurf on the lake in front of the main house, and Dagmar helped both of us plan some of our trip south to Patagonia.  We learned how to navigate the local bus routes and spent time wandering both in town and around the closest national park, Huerquehue.  One day hike took us up into araucaria territory – the monkey puzzle tree.  Its bark is a jigsaw of odd shapes and rough edges, while its branches are long, slender and uplifted, like the tail of a tree-hugging mammal.  On another day, we rode with Dagmar for three hours to Valdivia, a coastal university town, sooty and run down and more authentic-feeling than either of the cities Angus and I had seen so far.  We discovered the contemporary art museum, located in the remains of an old brewery.  The building was deliciously industrial and rich with character; the exhibits paled in comparison.  The long drive between Pucón and Valdivia also provided time to listen to Dagmar’s yarns of being a sailor and sail-maker, an outspoken, direct German woman in a man’s field.  Her trade has brought her to Antarctica, the Carribean islands, and beyond, and her straightforward, talkative method of storytelling, punctuated with long bursts of laughter, made the miles pass quickly.

The weather changed at the end of the week: from hot, stifling days to 50F (10C) with rain and wind.  The volanoes have fresh snow on their summits.  Summer seems to have fled early.  “Extremely unusual!” Dagmar told us, shaking her head.  Angus and I are on the move as well, from Pucón to Puerto Varas.  We’re heading south to Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego.  Yesterday we rode the bus for an easy-as-pie five hours, and will explore Puerto Varas a bit in between the raindrops before boarding a ferry in Puerto Montt and sailing for four days along the Patagonian coast to Puerto Natales.  Here’s hoping for sunshine!

You’ve seen this phenomenon in movies.  There’s some powerful, unconventional, emotional performance.  The audience is quiet, stunned, uncertain of how to respond, until one person stirs, putting his hands together once…twice…and then a little bit faster and a little bit faster as others begin to join him.  Slowly at first, but steadily, until the entire audience is on its feet, clapping, cheering, united in their adulation and enthusiasm for the performers.  It’s become a bit of a cliché, but after sitting in a bus on the side of the Pan-American highway for an hour, waiting for the six passengers that the bus driver forgot at the last station, the slow-clap seemed the only appropriate response.  As the bus shifted into gear and lurched into traffic, finally, I grinned at Angus and put my hands together once…twice…and then listened with glee as the entire bus erupted into cheers and hollers and laughter.

It was meant to be an eleven-hour bus ride from Santigao, south to Pucón, to Angus’s uncle’s farm.  First the bus was late.  Then it broke down.  Then it had to wait for the passengers it had left behind.  At first Angus and I were nervous, then incredulous, and then it just became entertaining.  We took turns at the window, watching the countryside roll past.  The hills around Santiago were brown and dry, but as we moved south they became greener, lusher, larger.  From hills to mountains to volcanoes.  We listened to our MP3 players and communicated in signs (Charades, rather than English or Spanish has become our first language.  As I struggle with the Spanish, I’m losing command of the English.  Inarticulateness is a new experience for me.).  Angus, the artist, drew himself an elaborate tattoo and I befriended the old Chilean woman across the aisle who wore a pale flowered dress and waved a black lace fan back and forth in front of her face.  She drew my attention to the recently-erupted Volcán Llaima as we drove past: a smoking black cone ringed with ashy clouds.

This was day four in Chile, and despite the monotony of the road, probably the most relaxing.  The first three days, in Santiago, I was in a daze.  Not four hours after landing, I was sitting at a table with a Chilean family, eating corn, tomatoes, and barbequed meat, struggling to speak Spanish, struggling to accept that this was reality.  Raquel, Raúl, and their children (José, 17, and Juan Pablo, 20) were helpful, welcoming, and patient, but it all seemed too far out.  Angus and I lazed through the scorching summer days (85-90F, easily) next to the family’s pool, ate what was put in front of us, and tried to follow the conversations that rolled around us like a hot Spanish wind.

Raúl took us on a walking tour of downtown Santiago (el Centro), where we saw La Moneda, the house of La Presidente, and had our picture taken with the carabineros in front of the mansion.  They wore sharp white uniforms and carried thin, jeweled swords.

For New Year’s Eve, the family ate a late meal, then took to the streets at midnight for the fireworks (fuegos artificiales) display.  People choked the streets, flinging confetti, kissing and hugging and wishing each other “¡Felíz año nuevo!”  Children ran and shreiked, champagne was poured, and when the fireworks ended, the party really got started.  Angus and I rode with José and Juan Pablo to an outdoor event stadium, and from 2 AM to 8 AM we danced, drank, and tried not to get lost in the crush of the 6,000 other young (16-20 year olds) revelers.  Raúl picked us up at the front gate of the arena at about 9 AM, just as the heat of the sun began to be unbearable, and we spent the rest of the day passed out by the pool.  The whole celebration might have been a hallucination; it still surprises me to realize that it’s 2008.

The timing of this place is disorienting.  The days begin late.  Breakfast is light, and the biggest meal of the day is at 1 PM.  There’s a snack around 5 PM, a light dinner at 10 PM, and then off to the discos when they open at 1 AM.  The keyboards in the internet cafés are different.  For the first time I can correctly apply accent marks and upside-down question marks without needing to consult Microsoft Word Help.  Supermarkets are overwhelming, and as I can’t understand numbers when they’re spoken to me, paying for things is a trial.  The young boys who bag my groceries get tips.  Taxi drivers do not.  Stray dogs are everywhere.  There is so much that is different, my eyes got tired, and my head hurt from trying to translate and absorb.  It was a relief, therefore, to get onto a bus and to have thirteen hours of nothing-time in which to work on assimilating the past days’ barrage of information and newness.

Not to say that the strangeness and unreality has disappeared.  Living on Angus’s uncle’s farm is like being in NZ.  We’ve been here for five days, hiking and exploring the countryside and enjoying being able to speak English.  I keep forgetting that I’m in Chile.  Still, there are new things to learn and plenty to keep us occupied, and there will be stories to follow.

In the meantime, ¡felíz año nuevo a todos!  Check out the photos: http://community.webshots.com/user/susanm483 and check back again soon!  Ciao for now…

Arrived at 9:30 this morning after two uneventful flights, met Angus, my partner in poor-Spanish, at the airport, and was whisked away amid a flurry of “hola – buenas dias – ¡vamos!” to the house of Raul and Raquel (friends of friends of friends…).

I’ve been here less than two hours and I’m already sitting barefoot by the pool, showing Raul where NH is on the map, and wishing that I’d remembered to bring my bathing suit.  It’s about 75 degrees and the skies are blue – summer in South America!  Somebody pinch me!

More soon.