When the next train approached, it was equally loaded, but this time I was at the front of the platform and forced my way into half a square foot that was open near the door. There was a prolonged squeezing sensation as two more people wiggled on board and then pressed themselves against the crowd to avoid the closing door. I couldn’t reach any handholds, but I didn’t need to. The train bolted forward, and as a unit, the crammed mass of humanity leaned backward slightly, cushioned and held upright by proximity. Sleepiness forgotten, I studied the people around me with all of my senses save taste. I counted seven split ends in the orangey dyed hair of the woman in front of me, and heard the breathy laugh and eye roll of a woman behind me. With one elbow I experienced the starched six pack of a man to my left; with my forearm, the tired back of a woman who smelled of lemon cleaner and dust. For six stops, I rode in intimate and anonymous communication, protected and supported by this complacent and temporary association of metro-riders.

Disembarking at Universidad la Catolica, I felt giddy, elated, uplifted by the brief but fascinating ride. For those ten minutes, I was a part of a whole: a Chilean whole. Not a tourist, just a body against five others. Weird, perhaps, but it cleared my head of the entire day, buoyed my reeling mind and renewed my sense of purpose. I do belong here! I am capable of not only completing, but nailing this project.

This was my state of mind when I opened my email and saw that I have earned %3 of my fundraising goal in one day! Katie Leum, Brin Finnegan, Syreena Mortimer, and Jordan James: THANK YOU. Thank you for being part of my supporting community. Thanks for validating my efforts and holding me up in the speeding subway train that is my life. Thanks for feeding and housing me for four days, which is exactly how many days I’ve been here! Let’s keep this up. If I can get at least $20 worth of donations every day for the next two and a half months, I’ll break even. Who will be the next to step up to the plate? Find out more here: Hydroelectric Dams Proposed in Patagonia meet Fierce Resistance.

There are two ATMs in the narrow arrivals terminal, with a uniformed security guard to watch the backpacked-backs of the Gringos and Europeans fumbling with money belts and wads of pink pesos. Got cash. Set my luggage in a corner and sat down for a minute to regroup and consolidate my carry-ons into my large pack. Public transit with a 60-liter pack requires organization. Careful not to put any valuables in the outside pockets, I also stuffed CHP20,000 into my bra (hard for someone to pickpocket that without my knowing about it). The Centropuerto and Tur Buses waited just outside the terminal. I paid my CHP1,400 and sat by the back door (the correct exit point). The first thing I saw as we pulled out of the airport compound was a PATAGONIA SIN REPRESAS billboard. A bubble of excitement swelled and burst, and I leaned my face against the window to hide my huge grin. As the bus neared the center of town, I asked the person behind me to tell me when we got to Pajaritos, the start of the Santiago Metro. Centropuerto also goes to Los Heroes, another stop closer to the center, but the metro is famously overcrowded. Hopping on at the start of the line meant I had room for both myself and my backpack to sit. At Pajaritos, I bought a “Bip!” card.

“Can I buy a B.I.P. card?” I shouted to the heavyset girl behind the window. She looked back blankly. “Bay, eee, pay?” I tried, enunciating each letter in the acroynm.
“Ohhhh. Beeeep?” Oh. Bip! is not an acroynm, but a clever onomonapoeia of the noise that the card reader makes when you brush the card against its face. “Vale miltrecientos” (it costs CHP1,300), the girl said, at the exact second that a train passed below us, washing away everything she said except for “ciento.” I thought for a minute.
“Uh…yes, I want to go to el centro.” I could feel the clerk’s sigh through the window.
“NO. VAH-LAY MEEL TRAY-SEE-EN-TOS.”
“Ohh! Okay!” I slid the plasticky notes under the glass, plus a few extra thousand to load the card for use on the subway and buses.

Still life with Fish

Large, easy-to-read maps of the Metro hung on the walls above the stairs, and I quickly deduced that I needed to catch the train toward Los Dominicos. The Metro is clean and well-organized. A disembodied voice announces each stop like any subway in the world. Universidad la Catolica was mine. My strategy for any crowded public space is just to keep moving, leave my hands in my pockets or on my purse, and go with the flow of the crowd until it breaks up and I can step away to get my bearings. I like to stand with my back against a wall or pillar to eliminate the possibility of someone helping themselves to my back pockets or backpack. I consulted my city map, but I needed to ask a peanut vendor on which street I was standing. After an easy,

ten minute walk, I was ringing the doorbell at the EcoHostel. It’s clean and cozy. Dorms line one side of the hallway, the other is open to two small courtyards

with hammocks, chairs, and tables for dining al fresco. There’s free wifi, and breakfast is included (typical for Chile). The showers have plenty of water pressure and the kitchen has a stove, microwave, fridges, and most cooking supplies. A dorm bed is CHP7,000 a night, a private is approximately double that.

A weekly farmer’s market was sprawled across several blocks on the next street over, and I wandered for an hour, buying vegetables and other treats to sustain me for the next week. I’m anticipating being in Santiago for at least one week, but more likely it will be close to three weeks. I prepared an early dinner and brought it out on the patio, inexpressibly pleased with myself. I’m finally here! Ya estoy!

**

You likely noticed the new item in my sidebar: “Help fund this story!” With a big 0% underneath. This, my friends, is the link to my fundraising website, sponsored by Spot.us, a unique site designed specifically to help freelance journalists fund and publish their work! I mentioned above that I’m traveling on a budget of $20 a day. I’m traveling on my savings account, which isn’t huge, but at $20 a day, will carry me through the end of February. $20 isn’t much. Accommodation alone in Santiago costs $15 a night. For the past six years, I’ve traveled around the world, always on my own dime. I’ve always managed to work and save before or during my trips. I’ve never asked for money before – of course not. I wouldn’t ask someone to fund my vacation. This trip, though, is different. The point of this trip is work – I’m actually working as a journalist – but as a freelancer, I won’t get paid unless and until I publish my story. I accept this. It’s good motivation to work hard, to push myself. But I could use your help to gain some breathing room. So begins operation Fund Susan For a Day! $20 will fund one day in my life on my mission to get published. Think you can help?

Please visit the website above. Clicking on the sidebar will bring you to my proposal. Visit, read, and think about it. Clicking doesn’t cost you a thing. You’ll notice that on the right side of my Spot.us pitch is a list of fun incentives. Even donating $5 gets you a little something. Spot.us requires writers to set a deadline for themselves. It’s a way to encourage us to network and actively raise funds. My goal is to raise $2,000 by February 1st. That’s 100 $20 days. Or, it’s enough to cover a $1,500 round trip ticket plus $500 for travel within Chile.

If you decide to donate, you will be required to create a username (with your email address) and log in with a password. Spot.us does not spam. You’ll have the option to pay with a credit card or PayPal. Spot.us will charge 10% of whatever you choose to donate for their operating costs. And then that’s it! I’ll be in touch with profuse thanks and to make arrangements to send you whichever incentive you have earned.

Thanks for reading, thanks for your time, and thanks for your support!

The driver of the pickup coasted downhill into the bus station in Tarapoto, riding in neutral with the engine off. Gas is expensive. Jesus and I booked front row seats on the upper floor of a large, touring bus. The huge panoramic windows created a greenhouse heating effect in the afternoon sun and the entire second story swayed unsettlingly around every curve and I pulled my bandana over my eyes and tried to sleep. It was an eight hour trip from Tarapoto to Chachapoyas. I woke well after dark, suspended over the road in a glass-enclosed crow’s nest that bobbed on an invisible sea. It wasn’t until the bus headlights flickered back on that I realized why the night had seemed so black. The headlights wavered, off, then on, then off again, at the least reassuring moments. A knot of people crowded the side of the road. Beams from a few weak flashlights shone on the white t-shirt and jean shorts of the dead man laid out a few feet away from his crunched motorbike. People behind and around me rubbernecked shamelessly. Onward we groaned, squeezing past other buses and trucks and around hairpin curves. “Chachapoyas 75km,” said a dented road sign.

Three AM was the magic hour for transport in Chachapoyas. Massive construction projects routinely closed the roads between Chachas and all points north, south, east, or west. Leaving the city meant catching a taxi or combi at three in order to clear the construction zone before it closed at six. Getting back required waiting on the other side until the road reopened at six PM. The city was our base for several days, and Jesus and I became regular customers at the street corner where the combis left. We’d show up at two-thirty AM, buy over-sweetened black coffee in tin cups from the older woman who dozed behind her gas burner and glared at me when I woke her up, and start asking around. Everyone told us something different. “That bus already left.” Or, “Si, si, it will be here, just wait.” “It’s that truck, that one’s going to Coechon,” “No, that one’s going to Luya.” “No, there are no cars to Leymebamba, you have to take this truck to Tingo first then wait there and maybe another bus will pass. What day is today? Tuesday? Yes, I think today there will be a bus in Tingo.” No one wants to say, “I don’t know.” We learned to ask everybody, twice.

One day, Jesus and I visited Gojta Falls, to the north of Chachapoyas, the third highest waterfall in the world. 771m (2,500ft) high, the force of the water as it hits the pool at the bottom creates a hurricane-force wind and drives a wall of mist fifty feet in every direction. Later that afternoon, we sat in the backseat of a taxi in a long line of cars, combis, trucks, and buses, waiting for the road to open. “¡El Perú Avanza! (Perú is advancing!),” read the back of the bright orange uniform of the construction worker holding traffic back. The woman in the front told us they were widening the road to allow the two-story tourist buses to cut through the mountains. “Breaking news,” the radio shouted suddenly. A bus had gone off the road in Luya, the next town over. “Cinco muertos.” Five people dead. We listened to the announcer talk on a cell phone to a hysterical woman who’d crawled out of the wreck. “No one is coming to help us, we are dying,” she said. “Dios mio, oh, Dios mio,” the woman in the front seat crossed herself. A few minutes later, the worker standing in front of us lowered his stop sign and moved the sawhorse barricade to open the pass. We zoomed into the opening, jockeying for position with the other vehicles, speeding around the newly widened gravel curves like racers in a cross-country speed match. The driver steered with his left hand and with his right fumbled in a CD case, selected a disc, and popped it in the stereo, cutting off the woman’s sobs on the radio. Led Zeppelin’s “All of My Love” rolled from the speakers and the driver honked and accelerated to cut off the taxi squeezing in on his right.

On our last morning in Chachapoyas, the cranky coffee vendor glared and sold me cold, coffee-flavored sugar water. I poured it into the gutter, then sat on the curb and leaned sleepily on Jesus’s shoulder. Two abuelitas wrapped in blankets sat next to us, waiting for a car going to Celendín, same as we were. This was market day in Celendín, they told us. We were lucky, because normally there are no cars to this town. But they didn’t know when a car might be coming. “Ask that driver. Maybe you can ride with him.” They pointed to a man who was weaving up the street toward an already overloaded truck. Six young boys and a couple of tired-looking men saw him coming and swung themselves up on top of the merchandise, burrowing into the blue tarp cover. The driver dropped his keys twice as he struggled into the cab. “He’s drunk,” Jesus whispered to me. A different truck, a flat bed with wooden-slat sides pulled in next, and I negotiated passage for the two of us. We crawled in the back, over sacks of grains and corn and mesh bags filled with other wares for the market. The truck stopped a few times on the way out of Chachapoyas, then began picking up speed. I slid into a hollow between the sacks and tried to sleep. It was cold in the back of the truck; wind slipped through the boards and sliced through my clothes. Another passenger settled onto the bags next to me and offered to share his blanket. The three of us, Jesus, the stranger, and I huddled together under the blanket, grateful for the body heat. The men slept. I watched the stars play overhead like a film strip, interspersed with overhanging eucalyptus branches, and I breathed the air of the moment: cold, tinged slightly with diesel and old wood, dust, and romance.

7 – 19 August

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.

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…

My first night working as a shuttle driver, transporting drunken souls the mile or so between McMurdo and the Scott Base for the weekly “American Night” over on the Kiwi side of the island.  I’m from NH.  I know how to drive in snow, wind, sleet, hail, rain, fog, ice, deer, moose…but an Antarctic condition two storm proved to be a whole new game.  Gusting winds buffeted the van as I attempted to navigate the narrow pass over the hill.  Snow flew past horizontally, steadily lowering the visibility from perhaps 100 feet, 50 feet, 20 feet… Forward movement was measured in inches as I first tried to follow the reflective road markers, my high beams picking them up at odd moments through the curtain of snow.  When those vanished I dropped my headlights and followed the tire treads on the road directly ahead of my front left tire.  And in the moments when the wind blocked even my view of the hood of the van, I sat on the brake and marveled along with my passengers.  THIS is Antarctica.

It’s gone condition two twice more since then.  The wind has woken me, shaking my corner, ocean-view room, screaming through the plumbing, hiding and revealing buildings less than 50 feet away from me as I walk to work, my legs blown sideways each time I lift one to take another step forward.  If my face wasn’t shielded by goggles, balaclava, and the hood of big red, you’d be able to see the maniacal grin.  Roll on Condition 1!!

#2 – Flagging Field Trip!

Spent an entire day away from work, away from town, and miles away from reality.  Fifteen miles north of my current reality, to be exact.  In a Hagglund, a Pisten Bully, and two snowmobiles, ten eager souls and I drove and rode out onto the sea ice, along the edge of Ross Island to Cape Evans.  THIS is what I came here for: an impossible to duplicate experience in an extreme, beautiful and unique environment.  If I hadn’t been absolutely stupid with excitement, I could have wept with wonder.  Memories of the day have the delicate sense of a dream about them: more feeling than fact.  Our mission was to plant tall, bamboo flags into the sea ice, marking the safe route for vehicles traveling to the cape.  The lead vehicle laid down the line, and the rest of us took turns following behind, drilling into the bright blue ice with electrical and hand-driven augers, then setting the flags against the wind.  I drove the Hagglund (a giant orange bisected Swedish military vehicle)!  I drove the snowmobiles!  I stood on Antarctic ice and walked across a pressure ridge; I worked next to the Erebus Ice Tongue and within sight of the Barnes Glacier.  I gazed up at the sun, low in the sky, watching as it illuminated the snow blowing off of the islands and cast pink shadows on the Royal Discovery Range on the other side of the Sound.  I felt the -20something air chew through my gloves, and experienced the once in a lifetime opportunity to feel the (significantly colder) wind on my bare skin as I dropped my drawers and peed faster than I’ve ever peed before.  At the end of the day, the sun didn’t set: it melted.  It softened, losing its spherical form and oozing across and into the seam where the ice meets the sky.  The sun’s blood is red and yellow; I watched it spread from the snowmobile, sitting backwards, leaning against my friend Andre’s back as he drove, speeding over the frozen water on our way back home.

#3 – The aurora australis

The Southern Lights!  As the nights get shorter, the opportunities to witness these natural phenomena become fewer.  One night last week, however, they were visible from town, bright enough to overcome the building lights.  I stood with a friend, Brennan, on the back staircase of his dorm, and stared at the pale green wisps of…light? cloud? energy? fairy dust?  They resemble all of those, but are in fact something quite different.  They dance.  The music is far beyond our sense of rhythm; they seem to drift, disappear and reform in irregular patterns and intervals, but nothing this smooth, this beautiful, can be the product of an entirely random, senseless universe.

Forgive the laundry list…time is a precious and rare commodity here.  I rush through the last two weeks in order to focus on the coming days in more detail…wait for it.