A quite place in a loud city...

I have been to a church service once, it was never something I especially wanted to do. In Chile, Catholicism is one of the central institutions, so there are plenty of churches throughout the city. Though going to a service has never really crossed my mind, I do like to go into the churches sometimes. I was in the center of town, where there isn't an inch of space, noise echoes through the narrow streets and pedestrian walkways, the sun is hot, and there is no escape. Except for inside a cathedral in the central square.

There is something to be said for the space inside. The noises of the city all seem to melt together and form a ever present mixed hum that sounds very far away. Over that hum is a pleasant silence obeyed by all inside. Some people have come to pray, others such as myself arrive for a bit of silence, and in a city of five million people, silence is a sacred presence.

Nothing like some good pizza....

It is a food that has taken on new meaning in this day and age: Pizza.

It is hard to believe that it doesn't have to be a greasy mix of pepperoni, brought to you a bit late in a cardboard box by some guy you don't know.

No, it can be so much more. It can be an intimate process where those eating get the experience of forming the dough in their hands, reaching a mixture and consistence to their liking. It can be a process, taking the rawest of materials, flour, yeast, tomatoes, garlic, basil, sausage, and cooking them, slicing them, mixing them, all until you have a finished product hours later.

No this is no ordinary food, it is Pizza..... (I say this with my mouth watering because the leftovers were gone a day after I spent god knows how many hours cooking one meal...)

Just a short ride to get out of the house...

I just wanted to get out of the house and see something in the city. I didn't really have a destination in mind, just started riding through a nice neighborhood not far from mine. I ended up at a park that borders two very different neighborhoods. One is full of trees, orginal houses that are guarded by dogs. It is a lush place. On the other side of a this park are few trees, older apartment buildings with lots of bars, and this dry dusty playground that had no children.

Now that you're on your way...

Please take your seat...

That's right, just go ahead and sit down, buckle up, well anyways I'm sure you would if it was at all an option.

But really, sit down, enjoy the ride. It might be a longer one. One of those rides that takes you to places maybe you didn't even know were there to go to. Or maybe it takes you to somewhere that used to be familiar but now is just a reminder of things that used to transpire in this city.

Whatever it is that you crave in commuting entertainment, it's there for you, waiting for you to come aboard.

No matter where you go, those micros will trail about somewhere near, that is as long as you are in Santiago...They can really be awful sometimes, especially in the morning when everyone has somewhere to go, the streets fill up with ungodly numbers of cars, all hammering in the same direction...

Sometimes that micro will just be enough to constitute "doing something", that you will get somewhere new and possibly unimaginable. So at the end of the day at least some bit of progress has been made. That curiously lone seat on the micro can help you explore mundane intersections, followed by strange spaces under bridges that are filled with graffiti, hopeless souls pass by routinely, the experience exposes unfriendly feelings, exposes you to unfamiliar faces, leaves you on intersections of unknown streets, filled with helpless beggars, smooth musicians that invoke chords which make the screech of bad brakes sound beautiful, unlucky gamblers try to convince you how some how they deserve 100 pesos, right after someone tries to sell you a band aid...But that's what made the seat worth taking to begin with...

Working again...

Yes I am back to work, which I mentioned in my last post, but I don't think I hit what I wanted to on the head. You see, I do enjoy teaching, but it just can't fulfill me, no I need something more, something deeper. Don't ask me why, but teaching language can be a dry experience. It is interesting in that you learn a lot about communication, or maybe more accurately, miscommunication.

Back to work...

Torres del Paine seems to be fading away slowly, dimmed by the heat of the pavement in the urban jungle of Santiago. I don't mind to go back to a work because I need the money, plus if I'm going to be in the city I might as well work. At least I have some memories to look back on as I continue to ride the micro.

On our way...

We were faced with more long hikes after the pass. The earth was hillier, and the trail would go up, then down, then up, then down. We came to long ladders that felt like they might fall over at any minute. Progress was slow.

The downside to the downhill...

I was in bike mode or something, thinking that the downhill would be a breeze. It was hellish, large trunks to step over, lots of rocks, and it was so steep, not to mention long. My feet were hurting, my bag felt heavier, and my trekking poles wore a hole in my hand (but saved my knees)

At the pass...

The pass was a long haul, but not as bad as I had thought...

Carolina might disagree



It was a sensational view, ice stretched out as far as I could see, it was like looking out over the ocean, the glacier and the sky sort blended into a hazy whiteness, far, far away.

Up to the pass...

The start was laden with mud, up to your knee, forcing us to jump from tree root to tree root and fight through as nasty couple of kilometers


After surviving the mud, we were on our way to the start of the ascent, which wasn't nearly as bad as I was expecting. (Though others came to a different conclusion.)



We past several glaciers on our way up, the wind off them was strong, and there was always a small amount of drizzle.

Along the way...

While there were sure highlights from the trek, there were a lot of smaller details that really gave the whole experience a lot of its flavor. The little details next to trail, the ones that fascinate you for a short time, and keep you strong for the remainder of the hike.

the first days were a test...

They took us through a lot of rain, well I guess it was actually considered condensation. The second day was very, very long. A 20 km hike stood in front of us, (which strangely is the same distance of the mandatory ruck marches which I endured in the army with all my gear, coincidence?) and it went up and down, past rivers and lakes, uphill, downhill, through wind, hour, after hour.

The map which I possessed indicated there was a campsite somewhere en route, but we never caught a glimpse. Instead we continued on, lost our focus and slowed down, the weight of all the food was pulling our shoulder bones a couple inches lower, distracting the mind from the beauty around us, instead it on my back, shoulder, or just the lack of progress that walking seemed to deliver.

After ten hours, when nightfall hit and we felt a sprinkle of rain, we set up a tent, a bit disorganized after having to walk back to a split in the trail. We thought we were off track, lost somewhere, somehow. That night we just passed out, no energy left to cook or enjoy the fact that it was Carolina's birthday.

The next morning we realized that at from the point where we turned around, we hadn't been more than 200km from the first glimpse of the campsite. I was a bit frustrated that I had been so close the night before, but upon seeing it in the morning, a glacier in the distance, two mountains lying in front, giving form to the turquoise lake in front of me that featured a peninsula where the campsite lay, I was quickly seduced by its beauty and declared it a paradise

Fire

A year ago a tourist accidentally knocked over his stove and started a large fire that destroyed a portion of the park including several very old forests. The effects weren't as noticeably as I anticipated. The entrance road, however, was a graveyard where a once strong and well aged forest once stood.

Critters, creatures, and livestock part 2

Critters, creatures, and livestock

The trail...

Always some more to go...the trail was well marked, didn't have too much difficulty sticking to it. It took us through many different landscapes, forests, over rivers, mountains, through valleys under tall trees past jagged branches bracing the wind, the landscape was always changing but the trail always stayed the same.

Start and Finish

We started and finished at the same place...in reality we planned to start at a different point but a little confusion with the map and an offer for a ride in the back of a pick up as the rain was coming down started us off at the Los Torres Refugio. Because of the rain and we had no sense of what the start looked like when the sun was shining, it was surprising to see it when we returned at the end...