Guatemala and we’ll see what comes next.
Breathtakingly gorgeous Patagonia, cruising through the Chilean fjords, Santiago, Wow-Cusco, Machu Picchu(!), and the Amazon Rain Forest.
Monkeys! Here in a break in the canopy. That’s a baby on her mama’s back.
What I knew to be a fact but hadn’t taken into account. In the jungle, under the thick canopy of trees, it is dark. Too dark for available light pix unless you settle in with the right equipment. To settle in means to battle the mosquitos and believe me, unless you are a Jungle Boy yourself, They Will Prevail.
The guide doing his ‘I am just a simple jungle boy’ routine. This was his most frequent personna.
In the late afternoon we head out to visit a native Amazon farm. Recognize the view?
This was the view out my front screened window.
I looked through this window dozens of times and not twice was it the same view. The relationship between the clouds and the river, framed in the window, created a moving picture that was like a never repeating kaleidoscope, one’s change reflected in the other. It inhabits your dreams.
So there is the bathroom and the bedroom. This is the bedroom. There were two beds like this and a bench to balance your stuff on.
Laying inside this netting there could be a moment when it seems a guy opens the door to the sweat-lodge for a few seconds and you get a breath of fresh air.
Here’s how. You put yourself under the cold water shower (there’s no hot water and You Don’t Care) and stand there until your blood cools. The gunk and chunks of goo created from your sweat, dirt, bug spray and dead bugs and sunscreen slowly puddles around your feet. Then quick like a bunny, forget the towel, you get inside the netting and here you lie down, clothes free, bug spray free, sun screen free and you just Be… Ahhhh.
I slept like a stone every night.
Heading out into the lake. Here it looks dark and murky but a few paddles later we are overwhelmed by the blaze of the overhead sun and some relief of mugginess since we are moving through open water.
The mosquito farm positioned strategically just under the railing leading into the dining room.
The entrance to Reserva Amazonica.
On that first day I began the experience that was, as far as my body was concerned, the equivilent of spending three days in an Indian sweat-lodge built directly over a mosquito swamp.
That being said, I had a fabulous time.
The common dining room-meeting hall-social center-cocktail lounge is in the distance. I should say the food was truly remarkable. Every single bite was entirely delicious.
I’ve mentioned before how the proposition of Inkaterra is eco-sustainable-tourism, tread lightly on the land, preserve for future generations, support local residents, etc. etc. and they advertise to follow these principles with the food.
All the meals are made from locally grown ingredients. There are no choices. The meals are served family style meaning, basically, mom cooks and you eat it. But since it was all so incredibly good I didn’t hear a single complaint.
A typical dinner: chicken and rice steamed in banana leaf, a coleslaw made of raw beets, a hot dish of corn and onions and sauteed bananas. Fresh ingredients carefully prepared. I was happy every time it was time to eat – maybe partly from all the walking and climbing and sweating, but mostly I think because it was Good.
Inside the Inkaterra office. You enter this room from the grungy dusty garage door above but once here you look out onto a lovely courtyard. It seemed entirely possible that all along this road, behind rusted and bent garage doors were lovely clean open spaces.
There were many formalities involved before we could go including the company taking our return air tickets – something about this area being a reserve and the government requiring to know who goes in and when they come out.
We took a night time nature walk lit by flashlights. This guy is as big as a dinner plate. We also walked past a grazing tapir – this Huge, big as a full grown pig, rat-like creature. Whoow.
Picking up the row boat. I knew we would be spending a lot of time in the open sun so, much to the confusion of my groupmates, I had brought an umbrella. As it turned out this was indeed a Good idea!
We’re up and out by 7am. It’s coolest in the early morning.
The trip to Lake Sandoval means we motor over to a place down river, then walk for an hour or two, then the guide rows through the lake, we walk back and return via the motor launch.
Regarding these boats, it feels like there might be a rule as these are the sole method of transit up and down the river. They’re called Peke Peke.
My roof and my bird tree.
I put this picture here so I could talk about the bird wars. All those jungle sounds cds or tv shows or movies you’ve ever heard, no matter how high you jack the volume, are just not loud enough.
Imagine a hundred shrieking parrots and a hundred angry roosters and then add a hundred howling monkeys operating a monkey Cirque du Soleil In Your House and you can get some idea of what it sounds like at dawn in the jungle.
Man! Did you hear THAT!! we said every morning.
Next morning I’m heading back. The rest of the gang has another day and they’re off for more treking. Bye! Adios!! Chao!
Note the guides hand on the far right. This was one honkin’ spider web.
I didn’t get as much entertaining or useful information from this guide as I expected. Inkaterra sold each one of these outings as English speaking tours (I knew there was a chance other people would join at some point) but the six from Portugal, cute as they were, were of course more comfortable speaking Portuguese. The guide spoke Portuguese just fine and much of the time, after a few minutes of not understanding even the topic, I had to stop listening. And when he was doing his ‘English tour’ his delivery was rote and uninvolved – not so good I thought. But to his credit, he could spot a three inch green bird in a green tree from a mile away.
This was a lesson in managing expectations and delivering what you’ve sold. This should be the worst of my problems. Early on I told myself I’d look up details on this stuff when I got home, but you know how that goes.
So I don’t know what’s what with this spider web but it’s pretty cool.
Again the port at Puerto Maldonado and why I need to rethink my luggage needs. I’ve got just too much overhead in my current wheel-ies. Even the guys who helped me would give a grunt and wonder if I was carrying firearms, or maybe it was an anvil.
He’s in a jar. There was a Lot of agitation among the boys as they queried often about snakes. I could tell by the pointing and hand movements and words like python and poison. Where are they, will they get us, will we die, was the basic scenario. Not here, no and no, was the answer.
But in fact there were poisonous snakes, it’s just the odds of even seeing one was beyond remote. I happily agreed to accept that snakes were not a threat to Reserva Amazonica tourists.
I wasn’t going to worry about the piranhas either. Or the caiman, crocodile cousins that populate the banks of the Madre de Dios.
After the swim, in the shade of my umbrella, with the breeze of the boat’s movement, silent but for the symphony of bird calls – ahhhh.
The port of Puerto Maldonado. We rode one of these boats down that river, the Madre de Dios, straight to our camp, called Reserva Amazonica. I had no idea what to expect and thinking back, I couldn’t have imagined what it would be like.
The area in general is called Zona Reservado Tambopata, ‘the capital of mega-biodiversity’. The park borders Bolivia and is a bit south of Brazil. There is another National Park, west of here, called Manu that is more highly recommended for pure jungle but it is also seven times harder to get to and fourteen times more expensive to visit.
There was wildlife Everywhere but catching a pic was Hard. I put this here just because it’s in focus…
We took the boat again (ahhhh, no mosquitos in the middle of the river, ahhhh, the breeze) to Monkey Island. An island, as the name implies, with monkeys (duh) settled here by Inkaterra in an effort to reestabish some of the colonies that were lost to development.
Note the mud flats, then the shorter grass before you hit the trees. During the rainy season the river rises such that even the trees are half submerged.
During the last rainy season an entire row of cabins dropped off the cliff. Gone.
The eco-literature often focused on how the jungle is a single organism, alive, and how we must respect the give and take of nature.
The image brought to mind a lava lamp, how the blobs are always breaking up and reforming, no one shape better than another, just different. But if you drain out the water or turn off the light the thing just doesn’t work any more.
Arriving at the airport in Puerto Maldonado, the Inkaterra folks met me right on schedule. Would you mind terribly, they asked, a group from Portugal will be joining you. Well, I though, not what I expected but what’s a gal to do.
So here they are, six twenty-five year olds from Portugal who had just finished three nights camping out, hiking the Inka Trail to Machu Picchu. Also there was one more guy, a bit older, from Switzerland. This was going to be different!
There were two other tourists and several staff members in the boat as we motored to Puerto Maldonado that morning, dropping off folks along the way.
This sight generated great enthusiasm and they even slowed the boat so everyone could admire these rare birds.
Me and the guy from Switzerland and one of the guys from Portugal went swimming right here. I just rolled out of the boat and ahhhh it was cool and so very very welcome. Getting back in over the side was another matter. Good thing those boys were young and strong!
There were very specific rules the point being that we were obliged to leave the animals wild. Leave them alone.
Of course it couldn’t really happen that way. They let this guy into the lodge and who could resist? He was flirting for food. Eventually the guide took him out because monkey poop in the dining room…
Angela found the info at the LA Zoo web site:
‘Slender and diurnal, these tree-dwelling primates were named in honor of 19th-century Austrian emperor Franz Joseph, who sported a magnificent mustache. First identified by zoologist E.A. Goeldi, for whom the Goeldi monkey is named, the emperor tamarin hails from the tropical forests of Brazil, Peru, and Bolivia. ..In the wild, they feed on fruits, flowers, locusts, beetles, and butterflies.’
The view out my bathroom window shows another cabin. There were 38 places like this one. (Hmm, was this count before or after they lost that row in the last rain?)
A strange after-sunset flash shot with sky…
We visited an example of Fujimori’s most well-known project. He recruited highlanders, from areas where there was a lot of political unrest, offering land, training and materials to takers, to build a sustainable farm in the jungle.
This place seemed very much a model establishment and since Inkaterra contributes funds to their upkeep, I’m not sure we saw the real deal but it was very interesting, because they made it that way. There were examples of a huge number of fruits, herbs, corn and rice crops and on and on, and we were free to look around the cooking and living areas too.
Too bad it was dark…
Then, on leaving, in the middle of the river, the boat broke down. There were a number of repair efforts by our crew and by the farm family involving ropes and hammers, but no joy.
We did manage several caiman sightings as we drifted along waiting for the rescue canoes that had been summoned by flashlight. No one was the least concerned, all just part of jungle life, dinner was waiting, no problem.
A view from the fort. The next picture shows fishing boats that are positioned at one of the inlets along this coast.
Meet Pancho. Pancho is a full grown Andean condor. His head reaches above my waist and check out those feet.
The story is that Pancho’s mom, like all good condor moms, at some appropriate condor-mom moment, pushed her baby out of the nest. This is when condors realize flight but Pancho did not take wing and rather made a messy thud-crash landing. Mom immediately abandoned Pancho as one Loser condor. Ol’ Pancho has in fact never flown but his wing span is something like 12 feet.
There’s more to say about condors in the Peru section but this is my only picture and although it is odd to see him here in this Thanksgiving turkey pose instead of as a spot in the sky, at least you Can see him and marvel at those awesome claws.
In the 1890s Hermann Eberhard discovered the remains of a huge prehistoric ground sloth, the milodon, that became extinct in the late Pleistocene. A very modest walk takes you into its cave and this is a shot looking out at a full scale model of the milodon. That’s it. Tourist attraction.
My first stop – Punta Arenas – there at the very southern tip of Chile, a spit from Antarctica. I will execute this map idea again as soon as I finsh the pictures of the rest of the trip which I Hope will be sometime before the new year.
The flag of Chile.
In the grand tradition of God Bless America, from a local tour operator’s website: ‘The blue represents the sky of Chile, blue and free. The red stripe stands for the blood shed for Chile’s independence. The white stripe shows the snow on the massive and beautiful Andes Mountains. The white star in the blue corner allows us to see their progress and honor.’
The back of the little coffee and souvenir shop where The Guy and his wife live. And where Pancho lives.
Here’s a pano from a different perspective and you can see the main landmarks that are visible from most of the park. The bit on the left that looks like a saddle is called Paine Grande and on the right is Los Cuernos, The Horns.
This is the national tree of Chile called locally the Monkey-Puzzle Tree, sometimes called the Chile Pine in the US and to be precise, Araucaria auracana. It looks like long rows of thick prickly succulent leaves attached to the limbs of the classic form of ‘tree’.
That’s our car with a big tourist bus pulled up behind. The whole tour bus scene was quite impressive – all of them like this one – new, clean, imaginatively painted. I especially liked this one because you’ll notice the figures along the back side. This is Dad in his rancher get-up and his three gaucho daughters who run the business.
Wilson and Ramon knew every single person on our route. We have stopped here for coffee and a chat and for me to see a must-see for all the tourists who pass by. You’ll soon see why.
We’re up the next day to start back to Punta Arenas where I will join the ship that afternoon.
Your eyes do not deceive you. That Is a hand. Hi. Bye.
Ramon is setting up his camera for a group shot, so we could all be in the same picture but I didn’t know that at the time. He is hanging off the edge of a cliff here and is leaving his camera teetering half on the ledge and half off. I’m holding my breath and saying what? what?.
Here and following are three pictures of steeples and there were plenty more in this town of about 120,000. Chile is very Roman Catholic with a hint of Lutherans added in for diversity.
Right at the airport, as Ramon went to sit in the front seat I right away, not being shy, asked if I could sit in the front seat, being as I was the customer and all. They thought it a bit odd (little did they know…) but agreed because I was indisputably the customer.
So that was our seating arrangement from then on and Ramon had to lean forward to be the guide but I got the best view. Can you just imagine the luxury? I had the full attention of two great guys whose only task was to see to my amusement.
I held the camera backwards over my head and took this shot.
Wow.
Torres del Paine is most well known for its appeal to backpackers and the glory of the trekking. There are two main routes – the ‘W’ which moves you around the major peaks and ‘the Circuit’ that is the W plus ‘the backside’.
The Circuit takes seven to nine days, all camping out, the most challenging part being the weather. They say you get all four seasons in a day, all complemented by ground level clouds and gale force winds.
I of course wouldn’t know as my two days were perfection itself.
I’m waiting by the side of the road in the picture above while the guys get gas. So what to do? Why foto-foto of course.
Grasslands.
Physically this outing was a long flat easy stroll and a nice way to kick off a trip that would end up having been a Lot of walking and not all of it so flat and easy!
We’re back at the hotel in Punta Arenas where I was presented with my first Pisco Sour, the national drink of Chile and drunk at absolutely every opportunity. Pisco is a liquor made like Italian grappa, which they then blend or shake with fresh lemon juice, powdered sugar and ice. Some places add an egg white but it isn’t strictly necessary. Yumm.
Since it doesn’t get dark until 10pm-ish I walked around the town a bit and ate dinner at the hotel.
I asked for both menus, English and Spanish to study up a little on the vocabulary of eating and discovered that the dishes and the prices were different on the two menus(!). So all the staff gathered ‘round in a flurry of confusion and to my great amusement they attempted to explain, as in ‘oh, that item is out of season’ or ‘oh, you get more if you order this instead of that’.
King crab is a specialty, pretty good here, and I ate congrio for the first time. Congrio is a local fish and so dee-Licious I will look for it back home. Also I developed a real taste for boiled potatoes as apparently no meal is complete without them.
We went to meet Ramon’s sweet wife Paulina, get some maps, find jam made with the berries that only grow here…
Dawn from the hotel breakfast room. We’re off at 6:30am heading north to catch the penguins before the tour buses show up and then make our way to Torres del Paine.
A view from the road heading into the small town of Puerto Natales, base camp for ferries that move cargo and backpackers through the fjords, and a kickoff point for the thousands who visit Torres del Paine.
My guys told me to pronounce Paine like a pine tree plus eh as in TORR-ehs del PINE-eh. An article I read recommends TOR-ehs del PIE-nay. Take your pick.
It is a natural wonder on a scale of Yellowstone and Yosemite and of course my two nights are such a tiny representation of all that is there.
Notice the glow in the sky in the middle far right. This told the guys we should high-tail it to the park because it looked like the clouds were lifting.
This is the beginning of the walk to view the face of Grey Glacier. We trudged along for about a mile on this pebble and sand beach and then climbed for a good while to see some vistas.
…and find Ramon’s son Rodrigo. Rodrigo is 14 and got to take the day off school to ‘work the buses’ for Crystal’s city transfers. He saw us from across the street and called ‘ola viejo’ ‘hey old man’, beaming and rushing over, throwing his arms around his dad and at the same time pulling his tips, a wad of dollar bills, from his pocket. It was utterly charming.
Another cute thing – Ramon would call home every night and his wife would ask him ‘so, how is your tourist?’. For some reason that really tickled me.
This statue is in the center of the main square and commemorates (what?…) but the deal is you have to touch this guy’s toe. You can see that by the glistening.
Then one of two things will happen. The stories don’t actually conflict – maybe both will happen. You will come back to Patagonia and/or you will have sweet dreams. Both outcomes are welcome so of course I touched his toe. I did have sweet dreams and maybe I’ll come back to Patagonia.
I also saw pictures of people kissing his toe but nothing in the literature indicated that would be more effective.
These are rheas and there were flocks of them, assuming rheas move in flocks despite the fact that they cannot fly. They totally cracked me up. They move so entertainingly with their truly bizarre shape and ambling gate and undulating neck.
Like I said, Ramon and Wison knew everyone everywhere we went, hugs and kisses all around.
A view of the town from a vista point including the Strait of Magellan.
Check out those colored roofs. It is something they do on purpose and looks really cool even from the street. You’ll see more of them!
Arriving in town after something like 20 hours of travel my new best friends Wilson the driver and Ramon the guide pick me up at the airport. I have an hour or so at the hotel, brush my teeth, and we’re off for a drive to see some sights. Oh I am happy. Sightseeing! Let’s go!!
Notice here it is Flat… more topography to come.
We ate lunch here. Except for the first night when I was on my own and ordered the King crab and congrio, the food on this part of the trip reminded me of Hawaiian plate-lunch. I was simply delivered what seemed like a tour-package plate of food: a meat or fish, some cooked vegtables and some boiled potatos. Then dessert came. Breakfast was a modest buffet. This was the pattern for three days and two nights. It was all well prepared and fresh, fine really, I just have no real idea about the variety of food in Patagonian – unless maybe I do…
Wilson. I asked him how he got that name. He said his mother liked all kinds of names… (get all the sibling’s names).
My idea about the people of Chile is that if you could imagine a country called EU you’d get a feeling for who lives there. From what I could see and from what people told me, the country is populated 95% by a vast mix of European immigrants. (PS, when pressed Chileans admit that discrimination against non-Europeans is pretty universal.) You’ve got your Spanish of course, and Portuguese and Germans by the boat load. Also Basques, and French, Irish and English and a ton of Croatians and no doubt many more I left out.
Because the country is so long and so flat and so mountainous and so wet and so dry with all variety of stick and stone and a vast coast line there is a place for every talent, which is what drew all these hard working immigrants in the first place.
I put this rap here so I could mention the sheep. How adorable is that baby?! In the late 1800s the territorial governor brought over 300 sheep from the Falklands. Sheep flourished here, and the vast estancias (‘great cattle- or sheep-grazing establishments with a dominant owner and a dependent resident labor force’) developed which wouldn’t have happened without the many sheeep-farm-experienced immigrants.
First full views of the mountains to come and Torres del Paine National Park.
LP: ‘Before its creation in 1959, the park was part of a large sheep estancia, and it’s still recovering from nearly a century of overexploitation of its pastures, forests and wildlife. In 1978 it was declared a Unesco Biosphere Reserve.’
The Magellan penguin colony is on the eastern bank of the Seno Otway inlet. There are inumerable islands and inlets down here so it’s pretty much water water everywhere.
The walk around this protected reserve was quite excellent, well maintained paths, clean facilities etc.
Various sources allow that 10,000 breeding pairs of penguins nest here from October to March and here it is November but…
More. The range is called Paine Massif, ‘medium high mountains emerging suddenly from the plains of the Patagonian steppes’.
Like the weather, this sight caused gasps of enthusiasm from Wilson and Ramon. You can see this scene in a postcard but even though Ramon had traveled in this park since its inception, he had never seen for himself the babies on the mother’s back.
Every bus and car that passed screeched to a halt and tourists poured out to take this picture and even the guides were all a-buzz. I had to run off down to the lake bank, with windmill arms against the flurry of attacking mosquitoes because the swans kept moving further and further away, much to the merriment of W&R, but at least by now they were getting used to it.
Representing the pioneers.
So it was in the program that we were to do a city tour – see the museums, the public buildings, the scenic drive. Ramon was slumping his shoulders so I would be sure and see. He was heaving sighs. What? ‘City tours are such a drag but ok let’s go.’ Fine. Fine. Fine. No problem. What are you going to have in these museums anyway? Let’s do something else.
We, being me and Wilson and Ramon have been together for about five seconds and I’m already in a twist. OOoowAH can we stop huh-please-just-for-second-huh-pleeease?
Foto-foto! became our mantra and rib-poking joke. From time to time Wilson would stop the car on his own and turn to me and say ‘foto-foto?’ or Ramon would point out a sight and in an insistent voice would say ‘foto-foto!’.
I have heard back from Ramon and will now fill in all the names of the birds.
This is the gorrion, also called the house sparrow.
Here we have guanaco, in the same family with llamas, alpacas and camels.
When I saw my first pair of these guys I went balistic. Foto!foto!!foto!! Wilson and Ramon were chuckling but I didn’t care. Then a few miles later there were a hundred of them and then hundreds more. They move in herds like buffalo in a cowboy movie.
