Susan Munroe » Patagonia

teething: march 12 – 20

Susan Munroe — Sat, 19 Apr 2008 17:45:00 +0000

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 and the wind of Cape Horn. I’d read about the trek before I ever left the US, planned it while I was working at the erratic rock, dreamed about it while I traveled south, first by bus and then by airplane to Puerto Williams, the starting point of the trail. I knew it was going to be tough; I knew it was dangerous to go alone, but the peaks called to me, compelled me to test myself and maybe break myself against their gorgeous, unsympathetic faces: to kneel at their scree altars and pray. For what? For enlightenment? What was I proving, I wonder, and to whom?

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.

And then I met the Dutch. Daniel and Robert were both my age, both tall and lanky, one blonde, one brown. They were lounging in front of their tent on the edge of Laguna Escondida, passing a bag of granola back and forth when I stumbled upon their camp. They invited me to sit and share their thermos of tea, and I did. Suddenly it was as though I was back at the hostel, meeting new friends, trading information and travel stories. My fears of the days before quietly sputtered and died out, but even as I drew a deep breath of relief, I felt like I’d given up on something, like I’d failed somehow by needing their company.

I camped alone that night; the area around the lake was big enough to comfortably hide several parties, and I never even saw the Dutch. It was a clear night, but the morning was a repeat of day one: sleet, wind and a long hard trail in front of me. This time I was determined to be prudent, and turned around. The Dutch weren’t far behind me, as determined to press on as I was to turn back. Their smiles and the sudden reappearance of the sun convinced me to change my mind, and I set off behind the Dutch, struggling to match their pace. Comfort in numbers, I theorized. Until we got lost. We tried to rationalize and make educated stabs in the dark as to location of the trail. Our maps were pathetic, little more than squiggly lines with small labels and arrows. Two days later, when we were safely on track once more, Daniel told me that my first mistake had been agreeing to hike with Dutchmen. “We don’t have mountains in Holland! We don’t know how to find the trail.” The interior of the island is a labyrinth of beaver ponds, dams, marshes, downed trees and lakes with rock faces for shoreline. We climbed one ridge after the other, in between hail and sunshine, always expecting to see a cairn over the next rise, until suddenly daylight was waning and the snow clouds were inhaling for another big blow and we retreated to the lake where our morning had begun. I should have been annoyed, but it had been a fun day, and more entertaining than if I’d stayed holed up in my tent all day. It’d been nice to have someone else leading the way (poorly notwithstanding), someone to joke with and to appreciate the adventure.

A gray dawn revealed a heavy dusting of white precipitation on the ground and our tents, and I had to break a skin of ice on the pond next to our site in order to wash my pot after breakfast. Bone-gnawing cold and questionable skies finally gave way to a sunshine and zero clouds, and this time, I went ahead of the guys to scout the trail. It meant they had to walk slower, but as we warmed up and moved closer to our goal, we were able to laugh at ourselves. It was just as well we’d been lost the day before. The trail to the pass was steep and muddy enough without the extra precipitation, and the view from the top would have been completely obscured. If I felt any twinges of disappointment about not being alone as I stood on top of Paso Virginia, the last of eight passes and summits of my trip, they were overwhelmed by the high-fives and wide grins I shared with the Dutchmen. We completed the Dientes Circuit! We did it! I found that I saying “we” felt just as good as saying “I”.Our victory photo, on the beach outside of town, and our pizza-beer-pastries-fire-cable TV celebration felt like victory, felt like a celebration. And dammit, alone or not, it was still hard core.

see the rest of my photos from the island

secrets i’ve been keeping

Susan Munroe — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 22:18:00 +0000

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 and begin to wreak havoc in subtle yet devastating ways among the inhabitants of a small town in Maine. Probably Castle Rock. I envision a red-eyed beast with lips curled and a snarl rolling in its throat. It’s hungry. It’s always hungry, and the more you feed it, the more its appetite grows.

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.

Puerto Williams

Susan Munroe — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 21:58:00 +0000

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 Punta Arenas at 10 this morning on a 20-seater twin otter airplane. The interior decoration of the plane looked like it had been dragged, cruelly, from the set of a 1970s tv sitcom. Brown shag carpeting and all. At first, I was excited to have the frontmost window seat. I could see directly into the cockpit, and read all the labels on the dials, switches, levers and buttons. They were all in English. I looked at the pilot (the co-pilot was hidden behind the fake-wood-paneled wall in front of me. Of him, all I could see was an arm in a brown leather flight jacket, and heard an occasional muttered word). He was definitely Chilean. Could he read English? I sincerely hoped so. The pilot flipped a switch, pulled a lever, and suddenly the propellers were spinning, shaking the plane from side to side. We rolled slowly toward the runway, the pilot and co-pilot still twisting dials and testing the engines and wingflaps. The engines revved several times, and a green light blinked on the panel: ”SUP-PNEUMATIC OVER”. Over? What does that mean? Too much of something? I wondered if lights on the dashboard of a plane are things to worry about like lights on a car’s instrument panel. Suddenly, I decided that I didn’t like being able to see the pilot. I was watching every move he made, every fine adjustment, waiting for my cue to start panicking. I wished he’d slide the door shut between the cockpit and the passenger area, though considering that I had been allowed to pass through security with a Swiss Army Knife AND a full bottle of water, the flimsy wood-paneled door might not be enough. Who knew what intentions and weapons my fellow passengers might have been harboring? Lift off was fast and smooth and totally unnerving. Once airborne, however, the altimeter spun steadily, the lights on the panel stopped blinking, and I was able to relax and watch the plane’s tiny shadow progress on the clouds beneath us. For the first half hour, the view was of clouds and golden, sun-drenched water. For our viewing pleasure during the second half hour, Aerovias DAP was pleased to present: the Darwin Range. We watched from 9,000 feet: high enough to get a sense of scale, but low enough to be overwhelmed. These were mountains, snowy and rocky, and glaciers, long blue and gray and white snakes, curving and cascading from the peaks. Below the peaks, green and red peat bogs bordered gray blue winding rivers. Incredible.

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.

on the rocks

Susan Munroe — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 13:25:00 +0000

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 sat in the window seat I could still see the purple and red furrowed clouds through the branches. Red sky in the morning, sailors take warning, I’d murmured to myself, and now, three hours later, the colorful sky had faded to the same gray as the streets on which I ran. I followed the road that wound along Puerto Natales’s dingy waterfront, passing beached wooden fishing boats and elaborate shrines painted in white, some erected in memory of Natalinos passed on, others in honor of saints and heroes of local folklore. Beyond the boats was the rocky beach and beyond that, the water of the Ultima Esperanza Fiord. To my left, colorful houses made of corrugated metal, scrap wood, and wire blurred and blended together in the soft morning light. It was about 9AM and only the street dogs were stirring. A skinny terrier rummaged through an open garbage bag. A black mutt with a shepherd face ran beside me for a minute, wagging his tail and looking up at me hopefully, begging shamelessly before giving up and moving off to sniff between the legs of another shaggy white male who was marking fence posts across the street.

I left the last couple of houses behind and changed my pace slightly as the paved road gave way to gravel. Natales is a small community, a collection of slightly shabby buildings clustered in a rough half circle extending outward from the waterfront. Beyond the houses the land is hilly and brown and empty, dotted with scrub and thin grass, and about 150 km away, in the middle of the grass and the crap and the scrub, sits the jewel of Patagonia, the Parque Nacional de los Torres del Paine. The park is the main attraction of the region, and every year draws hundreds of thousands of hikers, climbers, and sight-seers from around the world. During the months of January and February, the town explodes with activity; buses form convoys, restaurants put out feeding troughs, and hostels install revolving doors. Few people spend more than a week here. Most cruise through on tight schedules: one day of kayaking, two of hiking, then get them to the airport on time. This is where I landed when I got off the Navimag ferry. That was six weeks ago. I knew little about the area when I arrived, but after ten days hiking in the park, I knew I didn’t want to leave. As it happened, the hostel where I stayed when I got out of the park was looking for help to start immediately. I took a night to sleep on it and then started work the next day.

The erratic rock hostel is a hub for the adventure-seekers, a house of buena honda (good vibes) and good people. Bill and Rustyn are the owners (“backpackers, not businessmen”), US ex-patriots, originally from Oregon. What they lack in organizational professionalism, they more than compensate for with their willingness to service the backpacking community. Only four years old, the hostel has built a reputation for itself primarily on word of mouth (“tell your friends, not the guidebooks”), particularly for its comprehensive park-information sessions and killer breakfasts. In a country where desayuno is typically a cup of instant coffee and a piece of bread, the rock’s spread of cereal, yogurt, cheese, jam, homemade bread, omelettes and cowboy coffee wins grateful smiles morning after morning. I work and share a room with Kat, a student from northern Cali, who’s studying abroad in Santiago and spending the last month of her summer break working down here at the rock. Our job is to bake the breakfast bread, keep the hot coffee coming, make reservations, answer questions about the park, sell bus tickets, rent camping equipment, do the shopping for the hostel, cook lunch for the staff, and to keep putting out the vibe. I love it. I get a free room, free food, and I’ve started my own mini-panaderia, baking and selling cookies out of the hostel kitchen. The baking keeps me busy during the days, and the extra cash will help to extend my trip, one peso at a time. The atmosphere is chilled out and the people even more so. Everyone who walks through our door is excited, either with anticipation of hiking to come, or exhausted and euphoric with the hike they’ve just completed. It’s a revolving door, but each spin spills a fresh batch of positive energy into our day. There are 15 beds, but we often have guests and friends sleeping on couches or crashing on the floors. It is Laid Back. Overachieving, type-A Susan has taken a while to get used to having a job where it’s okay to take a nap on the window seat in the afternoon, but hippie Susan digs it.

I ran until the wind started to pick up, driving sheets of water from the beach onto the road, then turned back towards the town. A shopping bag blew past, a white plastic parachute, until it dipped too low and ensnared itself on the spikes of the barbed wire fence on the side of the road. Plastic bag graveyards stretch on either side of Puerto Natales, unused land that’s littered with bags that have been blown off the streets and caught and shredded in the low scrub brush and fencing. “Chilenos se encantan bolsas. ¡Bolsas, bolsas, bolsas!” Chileans are infatuated with bags, George, the owner of the supermercado tells me. George and his wife Marina run the Proa Norte, the small market next door where Kat and I do some of our shopping. The daily shopping missions are what remind me that I’m living in Chile. There’s no such thing as one-stop shopping – buy fruits here, buy meats there, some days you can find tortillas at the place around the corner, buy the yogurt at this one but not on Wednesdays, get bread from the panaderia and when you see peanut butter or brown rice, buy the entire supply because who knows when there will be more. Food comes in bolsas. Jam, mayonnaise, yogurt, olives, spices, cereal are all packaged in plastic or cellophane or foil bags. My favorite store is the fruit and nut guy’s place. He sells top quality dried fruit and nuts from a tiny stall along the main street, and keeps his outdoor speaker system cranking with Deep Purple, Eric Clapton, Pink Floyd, and Jimi Hendrix. George and Marina’s place is the store where I spend most of my time, popping in to buy tomatoes and avocados for lunch, coming back an hour later for icing sugar so I can finish the frosting for my sugar cookies. They never remember my name but they know my face and they joke with me in Spanish. Some days I can understand them and joke back, other days I smile and shrug and shake my head. Chileans speak a fast, slang-ridden, mumbling version of Spanish that can be almost indecipherable. I win small victories in communication here and there, like the day that I hunted down potting soil AND high-efficiency light bulbs by asking for help and directions from various shop owners. Most of the time, in the hostel, I’m speaking English. Our guests are from the US or Europe, though we get a lot of phone calls in Spanish. Negotiating anything over the phone in Spanish wins double points, because there are no helpful hand signals or body language to aid comprehension.

Wet, tired, and sweaty, I push open the hostel door, setting off the wind chimes that hang overhead, and wish buen dia to the two Germans and the Aussie who are sitting on the couch watching “Fargo”. It’s the third time in two days that someone’s picked the film from the hostel’s extensive collection, but I still pause to watch Steve Buscemi being fed into a wood chipper, and catch my breath. It’s good to have a routine, good to unpack the rucksack, good to have some stability. It’s nice not to feel like a homeless person, to recognize faces and to be a source of local information rather than another confused, slightly-lost backpacker asking for directions. I run, I write, I cook and bake, I meet people and answer their questions, and I read on the window seat. There are worse ways to spend a month and a half, I reckon.

(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.)

rollin’…rollin’…rollin’ on a river

Susan Munroe — Sat, 19 Jan 2008 00:32:00 +0000

I went a little bit photo-crazy on the Navimag cruise. I couldn’t help myself – everywhere, everywhere, islands like floating mountains, cliffs sparkling with countless ribbons of water, blinding white and blue glaciers hanging from black peaks, rainbows, dolphins, sunsets…my friends laughed at me because I would bolt my lunch and dinner and then race back to the top deck with my camera. “I don’t want to miss anything!” I’d shout over my shoulder. The sound of the boat’s engine was a deep, reverberating hum, an unending “om” that I could feel in my bare toes when I walked on the decks. The vibrations made my skin tingle and hum, and the gentle movement of the water lent a certain rolling softness to the days. I spent hours on deck, lulled into a state of compulsory meditation. The landscape rolled by slowly; islands and archipelagos were obscured, then revealed, peeled back in layers of green, gray, and gold, from soft green lumps to steep, rocky knots to floating mountains capped with ice and snow. Waterfalls appeared as silvery ribbons among the greenish-brown plants and gray rock. The channels closed in around us and we watched sea lions splashing around the shorelines; the channels widened and dolphins made occasional appearances, waving their tails as they streaked past the bow of the ship. I loved the feel of the water underfoot, loved wandering around the decks after dark and in the early morning, loved the constancy of the water. This was the longest I’d ever been on a boat, and the soft roll of the waves rocked me, embraced me, held me in sway.

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.

The landscape was my drug; my companions were my intervention. They pulled me back from the edge, kept me from floating away in a rapture of pastoralism, made me laugh. Our loose group of compatriots from the curanto grew to include Marc the French photographer and Ben the Australian. We’d stand together, leaning over the railings to search for whales, or they’d drag me away from the bow to sit in the sun on the back deck and drink beer and play cards. In the few moments when I wasn’t being mesmerized by the scenery or laughing with Angus and Clementine, I watched the other passengers. There were two hundred other passengers on board, all ages, all backgrounds, all tourists. This was a people-watcher’s paradise, better than an airport, where an observer must guess at personalities and histories in brief, passing encounters. On the ferry there was time to watch relationships develop and personalities emerge, and there were opportunities to talk and to interact. I was fascinated. These tourists were as deep and nuanced as the scenery. What stories! What marvelous degenerates! We travelers, we social dropouts, we who opt out of normalcy in pursuit of pleasure, adventure, inspiration, acceptance, adrenaline…we all have our reasons.

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…