December 14 - The Adventure Begins

I woke up on my feet with a phone in my hand, saying "Hola?Hola?" How quickly I convert to the native tongue.

It was 5:45 a.m.—our wake up call. I was in such a deep sleep that I had incorporated the ringing phone into my dream. In my half-dreaming stupor I believed I was having a conversation with my Aunt Betty who was taunting me by not revealing her name and urging me to "guess who." As I shifted into consciousness I realized I was holding a phone and listening to an alarm-style "beep, beep, beep."

We made it to the airport for our early flight without event. Security in the Chilean airports is a joke. As long as you're not carrying an ax or an uzi in plain view, you're pretty much okay to board any plane.

The flight from Santiago took across some of the most beautiful mountains I've ever seen. The Andes looked so much like the mountains from the flying monkey drawing I recently completed. I was mesmerized. Their beauty was expansive and completely enthralling. They were a rich gray with deep dark brown undertones. Turquoise rivers wound through the snow-capped peaks. Signs of human life and civilization were nowhere to be seen.

We had an hour to ourselves before our Active South America tour guides showed up. We ate at the only restaurant in the tiny little Punta Arenas airport. It was probably the best food we had on the entire trip. Creamy soups and humongous sandwiches the size of my head.

The remainder of our group had stayed in Punta Arenas overnight and met us at the airport with our guides. We divided into two groups and began our drive to Puerto Natales. We quickly learned a little about our travel companions as we drove through pasture after pasture of sheep. I was so excited to see all the sheep. I've been drawing sheep for a few months now. It started innocently enough as an exploration of my fear of herds and just grew from there. Seeing the sheep in their element was a nice surprise.

We soon arrived at "the end of the world"—Puerto Natales. The town has obviously benefited greatly from its proximity to the national parks. Tourism is a huge industry in Chile. Many of our guides have studied in universities to gain degrees in tourism. Were it not for tourism, I can only imagine that Puerto Natales would be a forgotten shanty town.

We spent a quiet Sunday afternoon walking around the city, taking photos, browsing the souvenir shops and talking to the stray dogs down at the pier. The buildings in the town were all painted in a gorgeous color palette that seemed unique to the region. Turquoise. Yellow-green. Mossy Lime. These colors repeated themselves throughout many of the towns of Chile. Despite the run-down nature of the town, it has a certain appeal to it. It is very genuine and welcoming. And I'd love to go back for a couple of nights if I'm ever planning another trip to Torres del Paine National Park.

Holiday in Hell

Maybe we're just unlucky, but I couldn't help but notice the day's date as we continued our search for Cain's luggage—the 13th.

It seemed the luggage was lost in a bureaucracy of laziness, stupidity, disengagement and unhelpfulness. The afternoon's proceedings went as follows. Phone call. Phone call. Phone call. Busy. Voicemail. Hung up on. A little internet research. A handful of jumbled numbers for international phone calls. Peak of frustration and a brief break for lunch to appease the pending grumpiness.

We ate at some crappy uber-mall restaurant notable only for its similarity to the mediocre fare of Atlantic Station or Perimeter Mall back home. Alas, we needed to be at the mall for the next phase of Operation Luggage Recovery.

With heads hung low, feeling overwhelmed and exhausted, we headed into the mall to stock up on wilderness gear. We spent 461,614 pesos (roughly $700) in about three hours. But it wasn't without much effort and perseverance.

Shopping in the malls of Santiago for cold weather gear was not exactly an easy or productive feat. When it's 80° F outside, not too many people are shopping for long underwear or wool hiking socks. To further complicate things, stores in Chile apparently carry very little inventory. There are generally four or five sizes of an item in stock and no additional sizes in the back of the store. And not to overlook the biggest hurdle of the entire shopping excursion, you should note that cashiers in Chile are a special breed unto themselves.

Chilean cashiers operate in clusters of four or five. They each share an insignificant portion of the same brain. While one begins ringing you up, another will interrupt them or move all of your merchandise out of the first cashier's reach. A third will appear from under the counter to ask a completely irrelevant question that temporarily confuses all of the cashiers at the register. Inevitably a fourth or fifth person will show up carrying register tape or some other dislodged register component, causing all of the cashiers to shuffle like penguins to the adjacent register for an emergency register repair session. When the gaggle of cashiers return they might scan your next item, or they might gaze absent-mindedly out the store entrance for a couple of minutes before remembering where they are and what they're supposed to be doing for this strange person across the counter who seems to be staring at them.

So here's a word to the wise, do not go to Chile with major shopping excursions in mind. This is not the place to do it. Our experience with the inept cashiers was not unique to any one store. It was a widespread epidemic.

Needless to say, the shopping experience just further tired us out. We headed back to the hotel and collapsed for a few minutes. We tallied up the receipts for Cain's purchases, removed tags from the new clothes and packed up our gear in preparation for our flight to Punta Arenas in the morning.

We had a quiet dinner near the hotel and watched an endless progression of belly dancers passing in and out of a nearby dance school. A bottle of wine and a good partner to reassure you when you're feeling defeated can make a huge difference after a long day.

A Four Hour Tour

The plan for today seemed simple enough, if not a bit vague and subject to key developments in the search for Cain's lost luggage. Our consensus was this—if the luggage is lost then it's lost and we can't make it otherwise just by calling various offices at Delta and fretting endlessly over the bad situation. It seemed then that if we were to enjoy any of our time in Santiago we would have to just put the luggage situation aside for a little while and go explore the city.

Jason had arranged for a guided van tour to pick us up at his hotel early that morning. So we had a simple brunch at Hotel Orly and then headed over to the Grand Hyatt so that I could lick the floors and smell the lingering stank of Madonna's ego—she stayed there the previous two nights while on tour.

The van tour was a wonderful way to see Santiago. It certainly helped that our guide was smart, funny and amiable. Carlos looked a lot like Antonio DiGiorgio, President of Winthrop University. So that was weird for me.

Carlos seemed very proud of his nation's history. His enthusiasm for Chile was infectious. I admit that I don't know a lot about Chile or its history. I just know that once upon a time, there was a dictator named Pinochet. And because I'm an American, I presume that all dictators are always bad. Interestingly enough, Carlos was hesitant to criticize Pinochet, but passionate about freedom and human rights.

Carlos showed us site after site, spouting the political significance of it all. It was almost too much information to process. But to be in the presence of a Chilean who wished to share their culture with us was a great blessing. We ended our tour back at the hotel and Carlos was bumping fists with us, giving high-fives and grabbing us and hugging us as we said our good-byes. He was a sweet man.

Then began the epic hellacious saga of locating Cain's luggage... a cloud creeps in over Santiago.

Surviving Santiago

Well, our first day in Santiago was a bit trying. Delta lost Cain's bag—you know, the important one with all of the expensive and difficult to replace hiking gear. I'll go ahead and say what everyone was thinking, now that we're home and have sufficiently recovered from the experience—at least it wasn't Jack's bag! Yes, that could have been an ordeal. I don't recover as easily or gracefully as Cain seems to.

The city is a little "danky" (a new word that I am using to indicate dinginess and general stank ... you'll learn of its etymology later). We passed some nice slums on the way in from the airport. The placement of poverty and affluence were completely opposite from our American cities. The poor folks are on the outskirts of town and the affluent folks are in town. We saw lots of trash tumbling down the banks of the Mapocho River from the slum towns. The water was disgusting, prompting us to nickname it the MaPOOcho River.

So after a hot day on the less than fabulous streets of Santiago, we settled into the Hotel Orly to try and make some progress in the search for Cain's luggage. I lay on the lop-sided bed trying not to roll off into the floor as I wrote in my travel journal while Cain cursed the intuitive-texting feature on my Blackberry. "Uncle Saul" from Brothers & Sisters tried to make us feel at home with his presence on TV, but he was muttering jibberish in Spanish and turned out to be some spy guy on Alias and not our beloved "Uncle Saul" after all.

Santiago rests in a valley with the Andes to its East and the Chilean Coastal Range to its West. The city is strikingly flat with the occasional mountain springing dramatically upwards in the middle of it all. Cerro San Cristobal, or Mary Mountain as I like to call it, is home to a huge sculpture of the Virgin Mary who keeps vigil over the city. She puts on a fierce light show at night. But she's a bit of a nag when you're walking around the city looking for a bar and trying to have a good time. W.W.M.M.T.? What would Mother Mary think?
The city is very smoggy in the mornings until the sun finally burns it all away. It can be difficult to see the surrounding mountains at this time. Phil and I both mistook snowcapped peaks for really beatiful clouds until our vision focused a little and we noticed the huge mountain supporting the "cloud." It was eery that something so huge could blend so discreetly into the smoggy atmosphere.

The stray dog population is ridiculously large. Yet they all seem very well-fed. Clyde is easily skinnier than these dogs. Of course, I know that weight is not necessarily an indication of health. I did see an abcess on one dog. Cain said that he had hoped I wouldn't see it when I mentioned it to him. Got to love him for trying to shield me from the harshness of life. It was pretty cool to see how the dogs have bonded together in packs. You could watch them rounding up their posses as the sun set and they geared up for a night of plundering the trash cans for food. They are remarkably kind and well-adjusted for strays. A few of them let me pet them. But for the most part they wish to be ignored and prefer to socialize with one another instead of with humans.

After one day in Santiago, I am yet to be impressed. I'm sure part of that has to do with the loss of Cain's luggage and the uncertainty of how we'll spend our second day here. We have a four-hour van tour set up with our new travel buddies tomorrow. So hopefully we'll learn something interesting and find out that Santiago has a little more to offer than what we've seen so far.

Art with a Capital A

I've been unusually busy Jackpacking around the country this winter. And as attempted with the European trip, I'm going to try and capture some retrospectives on the New York and D.C. trips we took in December. And I'll intersperse some European retrospectives along the way, as there's plenty yet to be told.

I just got back from a trip to D.C., where art, architecture and history crept from every crevice and pore in the city. My top priority upon arrival was to visit the National Gallery of Art and check out the Rauschenberg exhibit. Since we were traveling with a group and I had a business meeting on my first day there, I had to make some concessions and postpone the pilgrimage until day two of the trip.Rauschenberg is one of my top three artists (in the company of Van Gogh and Jasper Johns). He has perhaps had the most immediate impact on my visual aesthetic. He is hybrid graphic designer, fine artist, sculptor, painter, and social activist. 

The National Gallery's exhibit does a great job of telling the story of Rauschenberg's evolution as a printmaker. The exhibit begins with more esoteric subject matter being told through his early trials and mistrials of printmaking. It then evolves to showcase an artist in control of his medium, one broadening his palette to include powerful symbolism juxtaposed with mundane scenes of everyday life and highlighted in dramatic color in dynamic compositions. It is this later work that has always fascinated me. The juxtaposition of a huge blue JFK with an astronaut in the background connects fragments of our collective history without telling us exactly how we should feel about that particular period in time so that, as he intended, the viewer is as involved in the art as the artist himself.

Robert Rauschenberg: Retrospective I

One of the great surprises of this trip was that a friend of ours has recently begun working for Ted Kennedy's office. We were able to tour his office while he and the other Senators were home for the holidays. His office was like a national treasure of history. The very juxtapositions that I so admire in Rauschenberg's works were echoed in the mementos displayed on Kennedy's walls. His brother's dog tags, a letter from Rose correcting his grammar, and paintings that he had made of his boat. 

The understated intimacy of the space was remarkable. His family's work and legacy belongs to this nation, yet the same humble care that we take of our own children, parents, cousins, aunts and uncles is a current running palpably through the stories and mementos on display in one of our longest serving Senator's office. There was something very reaffirming about the experience. It seemed his moral compass was well-tuned, despite his length of service in a tough political arena.

Ted Kennedy's Office: A National Treasure of History

October 12th - Definitely

So, I figured out that today is indeed October the 12th. I've made it to the hotel and checked in. On the way, I've been almost moved to tears about four times. We rounded a corner on the train ride into the city and—BOOYOW!—there was Sacre Couer! It rests on a hill overlooking the city and despite all the times that I've read that or seen a picture of it, the real experience of seeing it pass by my train window was so much better, bigger, grander, prettier...

How I made it to the hotel is beyond me. I knew I was going to the Place de Clichy metro stop and that our hotel was right there on the plaza. I mean, there was a picture of it and everything. I saw it on the Internet and I'm good with matching pictures so I figured it would be a breeze.

First off—the Internet lies. That picture was SOOOO NOT our hotel.

Secondly—where are the freaking street signs? Oh, nice. They're a good fifteen or twenty feet down the street corner on little placards embedded in the side of the buildings. Nice. To figure out what cross street you're on you have to walk up and down every damned side street.

Third—our hotel is not technically on the plaza. It is on a side street on Rue de Douai. And how do you even pronounce a word with four vowels and one consonant?

But, like I said, I've made it. And in walking around the neighborhood in search of it, I found an Internet cafe so I can give directions to Cain and find out when he's arriving.

On the way into the city, I changed trains somewhere and on the new train a little swarthy European boy boarded with his friend and their jamboxes/karaoke machines. He proceeded to rap and dance until the next stop where he got off. He treated us to a couple of flips and a lot of gyration. Sadly, most of the gyrations were in some old lady's face. She seemed quite unimpressed, as if—either she'd seen her share of boy parts before, or—she had no interest in little boys at all. I was torn between being annoyed by the dirty little metro performer or being excited that I was on a metro in a big city with a real live little street urchin performing for me! [Note: the previous blog post's photo montage was inspired by the metro boy and all of the train travel]


(Place de Clichy in front of what the Internet would have you believe is our hotel)

Twice As Hard - October 12 (I think)

Sweet mother of Lord! I'm finally on the metro! And getting here was an ordeal.

First, a note on long-distance overnight travel. If you don't have prescription grade sleeping aids, don't bother with anything else. I took 5 Tylenol PM and was certain that would knock me out. Instead, it has just might me mighty groggy and put me in a foul mood. I think I may have slept for a total of one hour with my head down on my folding tray, a blanket over my head and earplugs in. It was not pretty OR comfortable. Despite that, Air France is the way to go!

When we boarded the plane, the man across the aisle from me ate the biggest sandwich I had ever seen. Then two hours later, he ate the first in-flight meal, and another two hours after that, he ate the NEXT in-flight meal. Ew. I didn't eat any of them. I just got water every time the stewardess walked past. Heights make me thirsty. Apparently it made my wino neighbors thirsty too. Those bastards drank like fish. I can't imagine landing in Paris and being hungover and sleepy. Maybe they have a tolerance level that I don't.

Meanwhile, I developed a little crush on the stewardesses. They were both so French! One reminded me of my first girlfriend - Perry. This got me wondering about my affinity for Jews again. And I wondered, if maybe my affinity for Jewish women could be equated with the matriarchal nature of their culture. As if, maybe I was hot for the power, but since I live in a patriarchal society and am not Jewish, I pursue men for love. Then I thought, I wish I could sleep and not let my mind wander into nonsensical psychoanalysis.

Leaving Charles De Gaul Airport

Jeez. Did all of that really have to be that hard? I don't know for sure that I'm on the right train, but I kind of don't care. Being on a train is an improvement from being an line of confused tourists.

It took me an hour and a half to do two things just now—exchange currency and get a metro ticket. The lady at the information pointed me to a mass of confusion to exchange my currency. When I got fed up with the chaos of fifteen Asian teenagers trying to exchange currency in line ahead of me, I left and stumbled upon a kiosk with no waiting!

Then I embarked on a trek toward the Metro. The automated kiosks don't accept bills larger than 20 Euro, or any credit cards that aren't "international" (there's a special chip on the international buggers). So I got in another line that wound all over the place, but turned out to move pretty quickly. This would be my first big test of the French language and it went pretty well! I meekly waivered in and out of French, because it's tough to start out a conversation saying, "Bonjour" to be polite and then switching it up and saying you don't speak French—because I do.

So I did waiver in and out of the language a bit at first, prompting the ticket vendor to ask, "What do you speak—French or English? You go back and forth!"

"Well, English really," I replied.

"Where are you from?"

"Uh, je suis des Etats Unis."

"There you go again. Just use your French. It's good."

That made me feel good. Now, does anybody know where this f*@king train goes? I think I read all of the signs right, but we'll see! It gets me out of the airport and that has to be a good step in the right direction...