Adrift in Chepu

I broke down and sobbed in the middle of my work day at the Ecolodge today following a solid week of having to hold back tears. Started crying so hard I had to excuse myself to the bathroom, then sat there for half an hour while I cried and cried and cried. I am in Chile, on an island in Patagonia, in a stunningly beautiful and peaceful place with really nice people. Nothing has changed since I said that this has been the happiest year of my life, there has been no bad news, have been no heartbreaks or disappointments.

If anything, the opposite. I've met wonderful and inspiring people who quickly became like a second set of parents. I've worked on fun projects and am learning a lot. I've had amazing experiences here, like the morning I watched the sun break through clouds as it rose and turn the river pink around my kayak. Or the morning I went for a swim and was joined by an endangered river otter, who came up to within a meter of me and circled me, ducking in and out of the water while “grrrrrr”ing at me for a solid 10 minutes before swimming off. It’s been magical.

Misty dawn over Río Punta and the Sunken Forest in Chepu

But being here in this beautiful place, working at this innovative sustainability project that my wonderful hosts—Amory and Fernando—built with love and passion with their own hands, working with this couple who has the sort of relationship that restores my faith in love and marriage, makes my heart ache.

My dream

Almost exactly two years ago I spotted the image below on Facebook and was charmed. The hobbit house was built by a man named Simon Dale in Wales to house himself, his wife, and his sons on the cheap. It is beautiful. I wanted to live in it. So did my boyfriend.

Simon Dale's Eco Hobbit House

My boyfriend was German and living in Braunschweig, Germany as he finished his PhD in Immunology. I had met him while in Braunschweig working with the esteemed director of the German Culture Collection on a project involving photosynthesis at the lower limits of light that was frustrating, difficult, and probably hopeless, but that I loved. I met my boyfriend at a Christmas party where he was bartending, and by three hours into our first date I was certain I had found my soulmate. He was handsome, a creative thinker, passionate about biology, adventurous, sexy, kind, funny, and it seemed like we shared all of the same dreams.  On our third date he informed me that he wanted to marry me someday. It took me a few dates longer to overcome my realistic doubts, but I soon agreed. We were meant for each other.

So when I returned to the U.S. to finish my PhD work, we started a cross-ocean, cross-continent long-long distance relationship that involved almost daily long Skype chats. When we saw the hobbit house, we talked about it. What it was we liked about it, what that said about us, how we both wanted to build our own house today, what it would look like, how our future children would help, how it would be difficult to build a house while both of us worked full-time, how we’d need to get it finished before we had kids so maybe we should build on weekends, where would we get the money and how long would it take?…etc.

Feral kittens hanging out on the Ecolodge stairs

That night an idea struck me—what if we did the same thing that Simon Dale had done? His house had been inexpensive, since he supplied the labor, borrowed equipment, and took most of the materials he used from the land. Both my boyfriend and I loved building things, and he was particularly skilled at it, a creative and artistic hobby carpenter who had built huge sunken beds, massive wrap-around full-wall sofas, and who later carved me an engagement ring. He was passionate about science, but not about research, and it seemed clear to me that he would be happiest doing something else. Maybe building? What if I got the full-time job while he built our house?

The next day when we talked, I mentioned the idea and after a very brief pause he replied that that that was perfect. He was reluctant to leave me to do the breadwinning, but I reasoned with him that the money he’d save us by doing the building would more than make up for any income either of us was likely to earn. He got excited, and over the coming months he drew up design plans while I dreamed up the practical aspects.

“Build our house” turned into “Build an eco lodge / education center” where both of us could earn a basic living—enough to provide for our basic needs and support the tribe of children we planned to have. We would start by buying a large tract of land somewhere beautiful with generous building codes. Then would build ourselves a hobbit house while I brought in money to support the building and helped out on weekends building and preparing a small garden/farm for growing our own food. Then we would build up other “dwellings” using other sustainable building techniques and install different types of energy systems to make a small demonstration village for sustainable living. The houses would be adorable, charming, and romantic, and we would appeal to tourists and vacationers wanting to live in a treehouse or hobbit hole all while their inner hippies felt good about the eco-experience they were having. We would grow it into a business that could support both of us to work there full-time on new projects. Ultimately I wanted to build a dorm, teaching center, and small lab for running educational camps and for tinkering with methods of energy production, waste treatment, and water recycling.

Wind turbine that supplies energy in winter at Chepu Adventures

While my boyfriend drew sketches of buildings and dreamed, I drew up a business plan, calculated how many solar panels we’d need and approximately how much that would cost to support us in the beginning, priced out composting toilets, estimated loan amounts and rates we’d need to get started, contacted property managers in the Pacific Northwest who specialized in areas that I thought would be perfect for what we wanted to do, and tried to work out all the details. It should have been a warning that while I was reading books on how to write a business plan and sustainable building technologies, he was still in dreaming mode. I thought it was just that I am a detail person and he is not (my friends and family will laugh at this because “detail person” usually wouldn’t be their first word to describe me), that once we got to building was when he’d take over.

In February of that year, I flew to visit him for a month. We dreamed more, worked on our PhD writing, went snowboarding, visited his family, and got engaged. He took me out on a repeat of our romantic first date, then, on top of a tower where we had a stunning view over frozen Braunschweig, got down on one knee, read me a poem he had written, presented me with two rings that he had carved: one for him, and one for me, and asked me to marry him. I said yes, with all my heart, and spent the next month blissfully happy.

My future was secure and it was beautiful. I was going to build a life with my soulmate, and it was going to be the life we wanted. I would have a job that was creative and challenging and that I could feel good about all while being home where I could be with my family and raise the children I wanted to have. I would work closely with my best friend, the man I loved, and we would grow closer in our teamwork toward the dream we shared. For the first time in my life, I knew what I wanted to do with the rest of my life, and felt a peace that I hadn’t felt before. This was right, it was what I was born to do, and I was with who I was born to do it with.

Dawn over the Río Punta from my kayak

Falling to pieces

It was a high place to fall from.

Just over a month following our engagement, after the visa application had been sent in and paid for, a wedding date in September tentatively set and the campground we wanted to do it in booked, the wedding dress shopped for, the wedding website made and sent around to friends and family, I got a call from my doctor. The test results had come back positive (where “positive” means bad). I needed to go in for more biopsies. The bad news hit both of us hard and led to a fight. The fight led to a worse fight.

And then he said, “I can’t do this, I can’t do this life, I want to be able to go out and party until 6am, smoke when I want to, be myself, I’m sorry, but I can’t do this.”

And that was it. He would hear no protests, no suggestions for how we could work things out, no attempts to understand him and how I could support him, he threw our relationship, our dreams, and me as far away from himself as he could, and we never spoke again.

Mist rising from the forest's edge on the Río Punta

I was devastated, crushed, destroyed. I felt that I had lost everything: I had lost my soulmate, my future, my chance at the life I had always wanted. And I had something ugly growing inside me, rotting me from the inside. I felt disgusting, damaged, unlovable, underserving of love, and broken.

Eventually, with a lot of help from the outside, I got through it. The way the relationship ended made it easier for me to get past him. It took me a long time to forgive him; I spent a good year and a half seething with anger about how he had misled and deceived me (and, I realized, himself), and how he had left me when I was at my most frightened and vulnerable before I could come to terms with why he had to do what he did. But although forgiveness came slowly, after the breakup I didn't spend much time wanting him back. Long before I stopped crying daily I was at least able to feel rationally grateful that the stress had shown the real nature of the relationship and exposed my fiancé for the person he really was—not the person he said he wanted to be. I could be grateful that I had been saved from the same thing happening at a much worse stage in life: after marriage, after giving up everything else to support him and build a business with him, after starting the tribe of children we wanted to have.

What hurt the most and has proved much harder to get over was the loss of the dream, a life and a future that seemed, at the time and still seems in my heart, perfect. It’s been two years, and I’m still not over the dream. It’s been two years and I still haven’t come close to feeling the excitement and sense of “yes, this is my path” that I had with that dream. I keep waiting for the light that fired me to reignite, scraping the bitterness and pain bit by bit from the windows of my heart hoping that will bring it back. It hasn’t come back.

The Río Punta from the Ecolodge

Chepu

Flash forward to here on the soggy green island of Chiloé. I landed here for peace, stayed to work. It’s beautiful here, with 200° views of the Río Punta and a huge sunken forest that formed when the 1960 earthquake dropped the forest by ~2 meters (!) and the subsequent tsunami drowned the trees. Today the dead trees punctuate the odd and stunning resulting landscape. The wetlands are home to more bird species than my jellyfish memory could ever hope to recount, as well as pudu—the world’s smallest deer (I saw one drinking from the river while out kayaking), and huilin—an endangered species of river otter (one swam up to me while I was swimming the other day).

The ecolodge itself was built up over time out of a dream of Amory and Fernando’s to live in a simpler, more sustainable way. Their whole story was beautifully captured in this article, but began with doubts about their future in Santiago and culminated in the construction of eco-friendly buildings run off of solar and wind power, using only water captured on their land from rainfall. They have won awards for sustainability, green living, and ecotourism, and are featured in Lonely Planet of one of the best places to stay in Chile. Having been here for two weeks now, I can attest to the magic of the place. They are also good people, and happy people. I am so grateful for the warmth they have shown me in "adopting" me into their family, and have learned a lot from them. Most inspiring: the two of them have grown together through their work on this project, and I have only rarely seen a mature couple so obviously in love.

Theirs is a story so romantic, so powerful, so special, so eerily similar to what I had pictured, that at the same time that it is beautiful and inspiring, it is painful to see live.

Moon over the Chepu Adventures Ecolodge

A ship adrift

The pain, I suppose, means that this is good for me. Being here, inside a living version of the dream I had, is drawing out that final bit of stuffed-down pain that I have been carrying with me all this time. Forcing me to face it, stand up with it, and choose to either carry it in a positive new way or let it go.

Building a place like this is not something I could do alone. That is not something I say easily, but building and running a place like this one is an incredible burden of work for two people working together as a solid team. It is too much for one person alone. But also evident is that it is, as I thought it would be, a good life, a life I feel sure I would be very happy with. It is interesting to see what I overlooked in my plans, and what I got right. This has given me incredible insight and the best possible contacts and mentors if I decide to reignite and carry that old dream. I would do it in a heartbeat if I found a place and a partner.

But alone?

Dead, bleached out, half-eaten crab on a log in the river. Not a metaphor for my life.

I have often felt my aloneness on this trip, but it’s usually been a powerful feeling, like during my Navarino trek when, looking around me and realizing that I was the only human in all that vista, I was filled with such joy I felt like I could fly. Now, for the first time since leaving on this trip, I feel lonely. Deeply, painfully alone. The freedom and lack of ties and responsibilities and solitude that I have so enjoyed on this trip suddenly feel heavy. I feel that old emptiness.

I am also nervous, preoccupied and weighed down by not knowing what’s next. I was enjoying this trip by living and loving every moment in the moment, but in a few months I return home, and then what? I have learned and re-learned a lot of things about myself on this trip, but am no closer to choosing a path. I had a north star by which to orient myself once, for that brief blissful period of knowing where my life was going, but it blinked out. I feel adrift.

I am adrift.

Alone and adrift in a big, dark —albeit beautiful— ocean. 

Sunrise over the Río Punta

I ran away to Chile and got a temp job at an Ecolodge

After I said goodbye to my family when they went home after Christmas, I had a month and a half to kill before I needed to be back in Ushuaia for…something really awesome (more about that in a future episode). What to do? As nice a home base as Bariloche had been, I was anxious to move on, and besides, there were no affordable beds left anywhere in the city beyond the few days I had booked back at the Green House Hostel. So where to go? The two remaining things on my South America bucket list were 1. Go to the Atacama Desert, see the endoliths and 2. Work for a while at some sort of sustainable/natural farm or tourist outfit.

Spotted on my bus ride out of Bariloche. WHAT IS THAT?? Borg cube crashed into an otherwise nice-looking volcano? Cerro Pantoja at the Argentinian/Chilean border.

#1 – The Atacama – was to satisfy Science Carie, the Atacama (driest hot desert on Earth—some weather stations have never recorded rain—ever!) has been the top of her World bucket list (and #3 on the Universe bucket list after Mars and the moon) ever since I read about the photosynthetic microorganisms that live inside rocks there—some seriously badass bugs.

#2 – Spend time working at a Green Nature Organic Hippie Rainbow Farm Lodge – was to satisfy Treehugger Carie who had dreamed of building an Eco Camp somewhere lovely and mountainous and running a sort of sustainable building and alternative energy demonstration center and laboratory / natural science and green engineering camp for kids. More on that in the post that follows this.

Stuff like this was pulling me back to Chile

Being indecisive by nature, I sent out emails to people involved in Atacama research asking when they were going and if there was any chance of me tagging along. At the same time, I researched Green Nature Organic Hippie Rainbow Farm Lodges in Chile and Argentina advertising a need for help, bookmarked a few that looked interesting (i.e., in a pretty location with people who worked at something more interesting than smoking pot all day and who would feed me), and sent out a few emails, including one to one particular Ecocamp in a spot in Chile I had wanted to visit at some point anyway.

I didn’t hear from anyone for a few days, so I tried to book a hostel room in nearby, but less citified, El Bolson. Still no beds available. Fine, screw you Argentina, so I found a place on the other side of the border in Puerto Varas.

Church in Puerto Varas

And then I got sick. Deathly, wheezy, coughing in a scary rattly way, fever and chills, shit-I-think-I’m-dying-of-pneumonia sick. It had started with a phlegmy cough on New Year’s Eve and wasn’t helped by hiking up a mountain for hours through the rain and freezing cold, then partying until the wee hours of morning, then hiking for hours through the rain and freezing cold back down a mountain. I woke up in the hostel on January 2^nd unable to talk and with a horrible-sounding cough, quickly developed a fever, and it was all downhill from there. But that didn’t change the no-beds-in-Argentina situation so I loaded my deathy, wheezy, coughing in a scary rattly way, fever and chills, shit-I-think-I’m-dying-of-pneumonia self onto a bus and wheezed and coughed (trying to be as good as possible about coughing into tissues and wiping my hands down with sanitizer ever few minutes to protect my innocent fellow passengers) my way into Chile. It was another 6 hour trip, which would once have seemed long, but after my 36-hour bus ride to Ushuaia seemed short and I entertained myself by, wheezing and coughing, staring out the window at the stunning views of volcanoes, and wheezing and coughing some more.

Mountains from the bus. That beige triangle is a giant mound of ash on the side of the road from a recent volcanic eruption.

More ash.

I probably should have flagged down a taxi, but being now thoroughly used to being a cheap-ass backpacker the thought never crossed my mind after I arrived in Puerto Varas and then had a few miles to hike with all of my stuff to my hostel. Lots of wheezing, coughing, breath-catching stops, and I arrived dripping sweat and completely exhausted. The upside was that I looked so miserable (and potentially dangerous to others) that a single room was found for me in the hostel attic. It was the cutest room ever, and I quickly set to work napping.

Inside the Cutest Room Ever at the Hostel Margouya in Puerto Varas

Cutest Room Ever would not have been complete without a wood etching of Che Guevara

It was another miserable, feverish night, but I was waiting for a response from my travel insurance company about coverage before I checked myself into the hospital (which would have meant the emergency room, it being a Sunday, and I’m always reluctant to call anything short of profuse blood gushing an emergency), and never got that response so never went and checked myself in. Instead I laid in bed and watched movies that my friends had generously sent to me when I went begging for brainless entertainment on Facebook (I don’t know about you, but when I’m sick I feel like my skull is full of mucus, and my brain stops working) and ate from-scratch chicken soup I made from some chicken parts and veggies I bought at a market a block from the hostel.

That did the trick, and after a few days of that (including another hostel move when I got booted out of the original one), I was feeling better enough to move on.

Bacon Avocado? 

Inside my second quarantine room at another hostel in Puerto Varas

And right about then, I got a response from Amory, the female half of the team at the Chilean Ecocamp I had hoped to work at saying that I could come and see the place and talk about what I might be able to do there. And two days later, I was back on a bus, this time to the legendary Island of Chiloé.

It was a miserable bus ride, and I was two kinds of sick, still plugged up from my dying-of-pneumonia-turned-bad-cold, and also brutally hungover. Yeah, I’m an idiot. It started when I decided to celebrate my last night in Puerto Varas and my feeling significantly better by, rather than eating chicken soup for the 5^th night in a row (my kidneys were starting to complain about the sodium strain), going out to the restaurant next door and treating myself to some of the area’s legendary seafood. On my way out, one of the other hostel dwellers told me that I could get $1000 peso beer or wine there with a special hostel card, and although I was at first hesitant to drink anything while still somewhat under the weather, I figured a beer would be good. So I sat down, at the bar because there was no table room (my first mistake), ordered my beer and a ceviche, and started chatting up the locals around me.

Puerto Varas has a large lake and a huge volcano. Making it officially awesome.

There were some great stories and conversations and when one guy insisted that he buy me a wine I didn’t refuse and then another insisted that I try the bar’s pisco sour because they are reallyreallygood, and then the bartender got involved and started having me try things, and…next thing I knew I was god-knows-how-many wines and piscos and whiskeys and and and down and in another bar scrawling my name in magic marker on the arm of a stupidly cute guy from Texas while being gently pushed out by the bar owner because it was 3:30 am and he wanted to go home.

I’m starting to develop a habit of going out for an innocent beer only to stay up all night drinking with gregarious locals. I also only seem to do this when already sick (although, admittedly, my sample size is n=2 at this point). The gregarious locals part is a blast, but the drinking while sick part needs to stop.

My downfall: I took this sign too seriously.

Despite my questionable mental state, I made it back to the hostel without incident (which was conveniently right across the street from the bar, so literally within rolling distance), but was in pretty bad shape the next morning. And I showed up at my stunningly beautiful, peaceful, healthy site of potential temporarily employment—on one of the three buses per week that head out the long dirt road to Chepu from the town of Ancud on Chiloé Island—exhausted, grumpy, still somewhat inebriated, head throbbing, stomach uneasy, having horrible menstrual cramps, wheezy, sniffly, disheveled, and reeking of alcohol. Classy.

And when Fernando, the male half of the Ecolodge team, came out to meet me as I walked down his driveway and said, “Sorry, you can’t stay here, we have no water,” I momentarily considered puking  right there to express how I felt about that news. I didn’t, instead managing to get out a semi-coherent explanation out about how his wife had said I could come, etc. Given the shape I was in, I’m surprised he didn’t throw me out. But he let me stay—for two nights until I could catch the next bus back from whence I came.

Home sweet home in the Ecolodge Dormi

Laundryline in the Dormi

So I checked into the little “dormi” (essentially a non-mountain refugio room) which consisted of a bare room with two sets of bunk beds with naked mattresses), pulled out my sleeping bag, crawled inside it, and slept for a few hours. I woke up feeling significantly, if not quite 100%, better. Then, after dinner with two lovely couples from England and Germany, I went back to sleep. In the morning I was still sick with a cold and still suffering from cramps, but otherwise better. I went for a walk to the dunes at the beach a few miles away, enjoying the quiet, pastoral landscape, the river views, and the birds, and when I came back decided to talk to the owners again about working with them for a while. It was a nice, quiet place, and I needed a nice, quiet place to relax and finally get some writing work done.

View of Chepu Adventures ecolodge from the Río Punta

And guess what? They let me stay!

Two weeks later, I’ve done a little bit of everything:

• Woken up at 4am to prepare the lodge and get guests suited up and sent off on kayaks for the Ecolodge’s Kayak at Dawn activity, then pulled them back out when they were done
• Manned the safety radio from 4:45 – 8:30 am
• Made breakfasts
• Washed dishes
• Cleaned bathrooms
• Ripped the floor out of a rotting bathroom, re-framed it, and rebuilt it
• Redid their website
• Made dinner
• Stripped beds
• Entertained guests from Germany, Holland, Switzerland, Norway, England, Canada, and the U.S.
• Folded laundry
• Done translations
• Given kayak safety orientations
• Served coffee

Guests enjoying the sunrise during Kayak at Dawn

Arranging fruit plates for guests' breakfast

Re-building a rotten bathroom floor. Step 1: Rip up cracked tiles. Step 2: rip up moldy, rotten pressboard floor; Step 3: build a new frame to support a stronger floor. Step 3: install new frame. Step 4: put down new floor on top and secure to new frame. Step 5: clean. Step 6: prettify (in progress).

Current and upcoming projects include

• Making a promotional video featuring their sustainability efforts
• Programming their beer fridge to keep track of guests’ beverage consumption
• Installing solar panels on the lodge roof

I’ve also had a lot of fun and some pretty incredible experiences

• Watching the sun rise over the Río Punta and the Sunken Forest
• Saw a pudu (world’s smallest deer) drinking from the river while kayaking
• Watched a Kingfisher fish while out on a run
• Swam with a river otter, the huilin (an endangered species), when it came up to me while I was swimming and chatted with me for 10 minutes

Sunrise over the Río Punta

Kayaks at Chepu Adventures

Bird! Diana? Helpwhatisit!

Sand dunes at the Chepu beach

It’s been great, a lot of fun, interesting, and peaceful. It’s lovely here.

So glad it worked out.

Travel tips for Southern Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego

Intro

I found it difficult to find info for some of these places, so here's some of what I dug up or tried out either alone or with friends/parents during my adventures in Southern Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego. Prices and places can change rapidly, so check into things yourself, but I tried to provide links where possible.

The lists of lodging and restaurants aren't anything close to exhaustive, just the places I tried that stuck out i my memory. Maybe someday I can get paid to try out all the restaurants and hostels and report back... ;-)

Prices listed here are what I paid or was quoted in November-December 2013. Especially in Argentina, prices change rapidly, and in this whole area there can be big differences in high vs. low tourist seasons.

If you have tips to add, pipe up!!

Towns visited (from N->S) and covered in this collection of tips and reviews:

El Chaltén, Argentina
El Calafate, Argentina
Torres del Paine, Chile (see separate "Planning your Trip to Torres del Paine" post)
Puerto Natales, Chile
Punta Arenas, Chile
Ushuaia, Argentina
Puerto Williams, Chile

With jagged peaks, the world's third-largest ice sheet, massive glaciers, luxurient forests, pasturelands, cobalt lakes, huge swaths of wind-swept desolation, fjords, charming port towns, soaring condors, frolicking guanacos, and warm and friendly people, this is an incredible part of the world.

General practical tips for the region

• Learn some Spanish. Many people speak English, many do not. A little Español combined with a smile will open doors.
• Bring cash in USD. In Chile, many hotels will offer you a significant discount for paying with cash in USD because foreign tourists paying in cash do not have to pay the 19% VAT. In Argentina, where the blue market exchange rate will give you almost twice the number of pesos per dollar as banks, ATMs, or your credit card, bringing dollars and exchanging them for pesos once you arrive in Argentina at blue market exchange houses, at hotels, in shops, or on the street (be careful that you don't get fake pesos) will essentially make your trip to Argentina cost half what it would otherwise cost.
• Bring your debit card and a credit card for emergencies. Put them in different places in case your main wallet gets lost/stolen. Many places accept major credit cards (Visa and MasterCard). However, many do not, and some towns don't have banks for doing exchanges or ATMs, so always have cash on hand before going to your next destination!
• Pay your reciprocity fee in advance. People from the United States, Canada, and Australia need to pay a reciprocity fee before they enter Argentina. For folks from the U.S., this is $160, which is what we charge Argentinians for a tourist visa to the U.S. (so it's only fair). This is true at all border crossings, and you will not be able to book a bus ticket that crosses a border into Argentina without it. This did not used to be enforced as strictly, but as of January 2013 it became mandatory at all border crossings. You can pay by credit card here (under "Log In" click "Sign Up" and follow instructions), be sure to print out your receipt and staple it into your passport so you don't lose it. It is good for the life of your passport. Chile also requires a reciprocity fee (again, $160 for U.S. citizens, Canadians and Australians also need to pay), but it only is necessary if you fly into the Santiago airport and you can pay it at the airport.
• Always carry tissues and hand sanitizer for public toilets. Toilets may not be stocked, and there's nothing worse than doing your business and realizing you have nothing but your t-shirt to wipe with.
• Bus tickets usually need to be bought in person at bus ticket offices. Some companies allow online booking, but only for residents with a local bank account. Not all will accept credit card, so be prepared with cash for your fare.
• Bring snacks for the bus. Some long bus rides will supply meals, but often a "meal" means two slices of white bread, a packet of mayonnaise, and a slice of cheese, or just a small package of cookies. Others supply excellent meals (I've heard rumors of steak and wine?), others nothing at all. It's wisest to bring a bag with some food and water. Note that when crossing the border into Chile, you will not be able to bring any plant or animal products (fruits, veggies, nuts, meats, dairy, honey, etc.), and they will check.
• Water is generally safe to drink, but if you're sensitive, ask if the water in the place you are staying is potable. Bottled water is widely available for purchase.
• Don't eat bus station empanadas. Trust me. Do eat empanadas, but eat them at a reputable establishment where they make them fresh. Also, empanadas are bigger, and therefore better, in Chile.
• Do drink the wine. All the wine. Best in the world. There are some really good microbrews here, too. When in this region of Chile, try the Austral beers. My favorite in Argentina has been beer by Berlina, but one restaurant in Chaltén served up a delicious Stout that knocked my socks right off.

Enjoying a local beer at the end of a hike in Patagonia.

Where to go, in what order, and how to get there

If I were to do this again, had more money and lots of time, and were to design a tour from Bariloche, I'd do this 4-week trip:

1. Go from Bariloche to Puerto Montt either by bus or via on the Cruce Andino cruise across the lake.
2. Spend a few days exploring around Puerto Montt, e.g. visiting Chiloé.
3. Puerto Montt to Puerto Natales on the Navimag ferry through the Chilean fjords.
4. Visit Torres del Paine for a week from Puerto Natales, hiking the O clockwise from Torres.
5. Return to Puerto Natales and go to Punta Arenas for a day or two and see the penguins at Isla Magdalena and/or Seno Ottway.
6. Take the Yaghan ferry or fly to Puerto Williams. Better yet if I had the money or connections, hop a yacht and explore some of the more remote fjords and estancias on the way.
7. Spend a week or more trekking around Isla Navarino. Skip this part if you aren't an adventurous trekker or love of extreme yachting.
8. Then take a zodiac (or catch a yacht ride) to Ushuaia and spend a day or two there hiking or going on boat excursions.
9. Take the bus to El Chaltén via Rio Gallegos, spend a few days or more trekking and rock climbing in El Chaltén.
10. Take the bus from El Chaltén to El Calafate and do a glacier trek.
11. Bus (or fly) back to Bariloche. Taqse/Marga buses are really comfortable and hit the scenic parts of Ruta 40 while blowing through the rest on mostly paved roads. Or if you want the experience from Hell so you can say you did it, get one of the Ruta 40 buses (seriously not fun, but maybe less miserable than cycling it...).

Alternately, for those with lots of time and energy (next time...):

1. After exploring Chiloé...
2. Bike the Carretera Austral from Puerto Montt to Villa O'Higgins
3. Magically ditch the bike and hike across the border to El Chaltén (description here) and play in the mountains there (rock climber's paradise, fun on the Southern Patagonian Ice Field.
4. Bus to El Calafate and do some ice climbing on the glacier.
5. Bus to Torres del Paine and do the O circuit.
6. Jump back onto the above list for parts 5-8.
7. If your butt hasn't had enough, bike from Ushuaia north on Ruta 40 (I've heard this is miserable! Yay!).

El Chaltén

Chaltén is a super-cute little mountain town and it wouldn't take much to convince me to live there forever. It is very touristy (goes from 500 residents in the winter to 3000 in the summer tourist season), but with plenty of charm to spread around. There are lots of hostels (I was staying with parents so didn't check them out), if you camp be aware that the winds can be very strong (welcome to Patagonia! brace yourselves!). The mountains are awesome, and there are trails and climbing everywhere. Also, with Fitz Roy rightupyournose there, it's a mecca for rock climbers and serious mountaineers. This would be a good place to stay for a while if you like the outdoors, a place to stick your claws into and scream "NO NOT LEAVING" if you love the outdoors (I know I did...).

The town of El Chaltén from the Fitz Roy trail

Lodging

• Senderos Hosteria (rooms $130USD and up) is right across from the bus station at the edge of town. Rooms were nice, wifi was extremely slow, breakfasts included the standard toast and jams and cereals as well as cold cuts and fruit. The hotel also has a restaurant most days of the week with very nice food. The "deluxe" rooms face the mountains and sort of have views. The "standard" rooms are on the opposite side of the building and can get very hot from sun coming in through the windows and only little ventilation.
• Lots of hostels in the town. Check them out online.
• Campgrounds in the national park (hiking distance from the bus station) all looked very nice.

Food

• La Cerveceria is conveniently located on the way back from the Fitz Roy trail (San Martin 564). Microbrews, a small outdoor Biergarten, and food (including excellent salads).
• There are several nice restaurants along the main street Jose Antonio Rojo. All were good.

Hikes

• Don't miss the Fitz Roy trail. Even if you only go to the viewpoints (there are several stunning ones) halfway and skip the final climb (it's steep and strenuous, I advise bringing trekking poles) up to the lake, this is the view you came here for. If you have a good weather day with low winds, do this and consider yourself incredibly lucky.
• If you want a nice walk when you first get into town, hike out to the waterfall. The trail takes you through the whole town (not very long), along the river, and out to the Cascada. You pass the Fitz Roy trailhead on the way.
• This trek across the border to Villa O'Higgins in Chile sounds amazing and I wish I had had time to do it.
• Climber? Then bring your gear and your friends and you know what to do. Because... this:

Mountain, you are so beautiful I just want to give you hugs. All the way to the top.

El Calafate

Calafate is a good transit point, a little wooded oasis in an otherwise barren landscape. Stop off, see the glacier(s), continue on to somewhere nicer (like Torres del Paine or El Chaltén). It has plenty of stuff for tourists including streets full of tour agencies, souvenir shops, and outdoor equippers. Restaurants tended to be overpriced, although the Cerveceria was great.

Glacier Moreno out of El Calafate

Lodging

• Los Dos Pinos offers up a range of lodging options from a lawn for pitching your tent to dorm rooms to little cabins. Nothing special, but prices were fine, the location convenient, the internet was decent, and transfer from the bus station was free (although it isn't a long walk). Tent site for a night was $40 argentine pesos, including free wifi, showers, and use of the kitchen. The communal kitchen area is nice and big, but woefully understocked due to backpackers stealing equipment from the kitchen.
• Stanta Monica Aparts has a series of very cute kit cabins complete with private living rooms, kitchens, and bathrooms (with tubs) surrounded by green lawn, trees, and lupine off at the edge of town. The staff were very helpful in helping my parents book activities and transportation.

Food

• Chopen cerveceria at the edge of town (Libertador 1630) serves up great food at a reasonable price as well as local brew, and the staff was fun. We ended up returning here after not particularly liking any of the other restaurants we tried in town.

Puerto Natales

Puerto Natales is a cute little port town with spectacular views of the mountains, but pretty much everyone who comes here isn't here to see the town, they are here on their way to or from Torres del Paine. For info on Torres del Paine, see my post "Planning your trip to Torres del Paine".

A cloudy day in Torres del Paine

Transportation

Lonely Planet is outdated: there is a new bus terminal (the glassy new Rodoviario) outside of town on Av. España 1455 where all of the buses come into and where the bus companies now have their offices. This means that, in general, you'll have a long-ish walk to any hostels downtown. Be prepared to walk in the rain.
There are so many backpackers, that despite high frequencies buses do fill up, sometimes days in advance. So leave extra time to get yourself on a bus!

• To Torres del Paine Park from Puerto Natales, Pacheco runs buses twice daily at 7:30 and 14:30 and returns at 13:00 and 18:00
• From Punta Arenas to Puerto Natales: Pacheco and Buses Fernandez both offer buses about every hour from 7:30 am to 8:00 pm. ~$5000 CLP.
• Navimag ferry runs Puerto Montt <-> Puerto Natales for a scenic 3-day trip through the Chilean fjords. Cabins start at $500 USD, although if you show up at the terminal the day of, you can get steep discounts (I’ve heard as low as $300 USD). I didn't do this (no time) but have heard wonderful things about this trip.

Lodging

Many of the hostels in town offer gear rentals (tents and sleeping pads, some also  have sleeping bags, stoves, packs, gas cans, etc.) and can arrange bus tickets to the park.

• Backpackers Kaweskar is clean, has a good breakfast, helpful staff, and enforced quiet hours ensuring the backpackers get their sleep. It is full of...backpackers. $9000 CLP/night for a dorm room.

Punta Arenas

A port town that has outlived its glory days but still retains a certain maritime coolness. Try the seafood, visit the penguins, move on.

Penguins at the Seno Ottway colony out of Punta Arenas

Food

• The mercado municipal is full of little restaurants, all reasonably-priced and offering up local seafood and other specialties (including, supposedly, sea urchin = erizo) although I didn't find it on the menu at any of the places I looked).
• La Luna is a fun place for dinner with excellent food and a nice wine and beer selection.

Ushuaia

Ushuaia bills itself as the "end of the world", which when you stand at the "End of the World" sign at the harbor and look out at the mountains beyond, kind of makes you feel cheated. But it's a fun little town in an absolutely spectacular landscape with a little something for everyone: hiking, boating, shopping, penguins, seafood...

Lovely Ushuaia

Hostels

Prices in $ Argentine pesos for dorm rooms in late November 2013.

Hostels in Ushuaia book up fast in Nov-Feb. Book in advance through HostelWorld or other booking site if you can!

All of the hostels I stopped at had good info desks for helping you plan trips and excursions.

• Hostel Antarctica has a fun atmosphere and a bar
• Hostel Yakush has a nice living room, kitchen, and dining area, $120/night
• Hostel Cruz del Sur fun and lively atmosphere with knowledgeable and helpful staff for planning outings, $100/night
• Amanacer del Bahia where I stayed, $120/night, all of the hostels downtown were full, this one is up on the top of the hill (a short distance from downtown, totally walkable) and sort of like a men’s boarding house, not a lot of charm, but it was clean enough and the people were friendly and the staff helpful
• La Posta is recommended in Lonely Planet but is a long way from the town center and is not very charming. Not recommended.

Food

• La Cantina Fuegina de Freddy for crab. Fun atmosphere and great king crab (cebolla) in this teeny, reasonably-priced restaurant.
• Dublin Pub for beer and hugs from R2D2

Transport

There is no central bus terminal in Ushuaia, which makes life difficult. To book tickets, you need to go to one of the agencies in town, all of which are closed on Sundays and holidays. Many hostel info desks can book tickets for you.
In general, Platforma 10 is the best website for looking for schedules for buses in Argentina.
Prices listed are in USD unless listed otherwise.

• From Bariloche: Marga 36 hours, ~$220 USD including meals and snacks, leaves 9 am, arrives in Ushuaia at 9 pm the following day with a transfer in the morning in Rio Gallegos.
• To Punta Arenas: Buses Pacheco ($60+) you can buy tickets on the bus the day of if seats are available, or book them at the Tolkeyen Patagonia office at 1267 San Martin. Other options are Bus Sur and Tecni Austral, check at the info center and at the offices in town to buy tickets.

Puerto Williams

Puerto Williams was my favorite place I've been in all of South America. Why? Read my Isla Navarino series. It's a tiny port town that reminded me of tiny port towns in SE Alaska. There's not a big tourist infrastructure there, and I liked it that way. So what I should say is that it's really hard to get to, there's not much there, definitely don't go. But I can't lie, I loved loved loved Puerto Williams.

View of the Dientes del Navarino from the legendary Club de Yates in Puerto Williams

Transport Options

Prices are in USD unless otherwise specified.

• Piratour zodiacs: Ushuaia <-> Puerto Williams, $130 including harbor fee, runs most days weather permitting. Buy tickets at the info center on the water front or their office on San Martin. Leaves Ushuaia at 9am, arrives ~12pm including customs. Check in Puerto Williams for leaving times (varies). This is how I got to the island and they were fine, even if I think the price is ridiculously high.
• Ushuaia Boating zodiacs: Ushuaia <-> Puerto Williams, office at Gobernador 233 was closed every time I checked there (despite posting opening hours that said they should be open) so I don't know what prices are or when boats leave, but this is a theoretical option
• DAP flight: Punta Arenas <-> Puerto Williams, $120, 2 flights/day Monday-Saturday, 10 kg luggage limit, $1000 CLP per kilo after that, flights leave at 11:30 and 8:00 pm, but arrive really early since they seem to actually leave when they want!
• Yaghan Ferry: Punta Arenas <-> Puerto Williams, $200 for basic seat, leaves Punta Arenas on Thursdays at 6 pm, leaves Puerto Williams on Saturdays or Sundays (check the schedule) at 4 pm, takes ~30 hours, boat to Punta Arenas arrives at around 9 pm the day after departure.

Lodging

• There are a handful of hostels in Puerto Williams, I only have experience with one. If you show up at one and it is full, they'll help direct you to one that is not.
• Patty Pusaki at the Residencial Pusaki is the best. She has private and dorm rooms, offers 3 excellent home-cooked meals a day (you can eat with her even if you aren't staying with her—her cooking is legendary!), is full of interesting stories, and she has a big map of the island on her wall that was actually really useful—arguably moreso than the topo maps—for planning my trek. Room and full board was ~$22000 CLP/night.

Other tips

• The info booth in the center of town was staffed by a very knowledgeable and nice Estonian woman while I was there, she was great.
• Yacht Club (Club de Yates Milcavi) on Milcavi on the waterfront at the west side of town. Good internet, club/bar open ~6pm most days, bar rages all night, great place to meet people.
• There is a bank with an ATM downtown. Stores only accept CLP. Don’t expect to be able to exchange money when you arrive, so bring pesos or use the ATM.

Hikes (starting from town)

If you only have…

• 1-2 days: Cerro Bandera ~3.5 hrs round trip, great views of the Beagle Channel
• 2+ days: Overnight camp at Laguna Salta, you can continue on to the Paso de los Dientes and back if you have time for awesome views over both ends of the island if the weather is good. Hike to Salta is ~4 hours.
• 5 days: Lago Windhond (2 days to the lake, 2 days back, one night at the Refugio Charles at the lake)
• 6 days: The Dientes del Navarino circuit
• Longer: combine Windhond and the Dientes circuit or explore some of the off-trail options

Notes:

• There are no fees for hiking.
• Campfires are allowed (using fallen wood only, no cutting new wood, but the beavers did all of the work for you), as is off-trail hiking, but be careful and responsible and follow leave-no-trace principles.
• There is apparently great fishing all over the island.
• The store across the street from the Municipalidad has lots of good stuff for trekking from topo maps to rental tents to ramen noodles and trail mix. The owner is very knowledgeable.
• For trekking, checking in with the carabinieros is mandatory and free.
• Be prepared to spend at least one extra night out and be prepared for some really bad weather—weather can turn awful (snow, torrential downpour, gale-force winds, etc.) really fast.
• Check out my post "How to pack for a trek to the end of the world" for packing advice.

And...that's all for now! Again, if you have tips to add, pipe up!! Hope this is useful!

Bus to the end of the world

I took a bus from Bariloche to Ushuaia. It took 36 hours, and covered over 2000 miles of Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego. For my U.S. friends, that's like taking a bus in a straight shot from the border of Canada to the border of Mexico, with about 80% of the drive through scenery reminiscent of the mojave desert (but a good portion of that was at night). It was pretty rad.

36 hours watching Argentina go by in my La-Z-Boy on Wheels. My seat was the one in the window at the upper right.

What follows is the 36 hours in all of their detail, as narrated by the voice in my head. In case you've ever wanted to spend 36 hours inside my head. Also a lot of pictures of bus food because most of the photos I took of the landscape didn't turn out but the pictures of food did.

Or, for the scenery without the words, here's the video (cut down significantly from 36 hours to 4:20 minutes, you're welcome).

The play-by-play

06:15  My friends at the Green House Hostel had thrown an asado the night before my departure, and so I was full of wine, beer, and Fernet when I went to bed, and still full of it when I woke up 40 minutes before my alarm when the sun rose. I showered, then attempted to pack without waking up the six snoring guys and two not-snoring girls in my hostel dorm room.

08:35  Brian the hostel owner called me a taxi as I scarfed down my breakfast in my normal frantic way. I have Brian a hug, "Voy a te extraño!" The Green House people had been my family for the month, and I really was going to miss them.

08:50  I arrived at the bus station, dropped my backpacking backpack in the luggage bay, and boarded with my remaining two bags: my backpacking backpack, my little school backpack full of Spanish homework and my computer, and a third bag full of food for the 36 hour journey: bananas, water, chopped up bell peppers, mandarins, crackers, cookies, and a half kilo of good dark chocolate from Bariloche's legendary Mamuschka. I settled into my VIP seats (the advantage of booking early--you get to pick your seats) on the top deck of the double-decker Marga bus in the front, my glass bubble for the next 24 hours. The bus was empty so I "nested" by spreading my mountain of stuff all across the front row. Anyone who has ever been on a road trip with me can guess what this looked like.

And for those of you who have never been on a road trip with me, "the nest" looked something like this.

09:05  The bus departed and rolled through Bariloche. The upper deck gave a different vantage point on the city that had been my home for a month. We passed the slum part of town, which I hadn't seen before, small shacks squished up against the huge city garbage dump just north of town, with Cerro Cathedral and Cerro Otto in the background as the bus joined the legendary Ruta 40.

The view as we pulled out of Bariloche

09:20  OMG Road trip!!! I love road trips!! There were lakes and pointy snow-capped peaks streaming past my windows on all sides. My excitement built, I couldn't contain a grin, and might have even let out a squee. As each minute brought new and more spectacular peaks with storm-colored lakes at their feet and hills and meadows full of scotch broom and dandelions accenting the layers of green, purple, red, orange, and magenta of the mountains and the sky with pinkish clouds. I kept thinking "most spectacular effing road trip ever!" (and I've been on some pretty spectacular road trips).


09:45  The bus passed the turnoff to Tronador. I felt a pang of sadness about leaving my splitboard behind. I wondered where my badass guide friend Melitta was in her Patagonian adventures.

10:00  Passed a pair of cyclists. What an incredible trip that would be, I thought. I thought about the shoulder injury I developed during my last big cycling trip (a month through the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland, and Eastern Germany), realized it was over 7 years ago, felt sad that I haven't managed to heal my shoulder yet and get back on a bike, and nostalgic about what a great way to travel it had been. I had done that trip and other memorable adventures around Europe with my boyfriend of the time, a long relationship that was difficult and rocky from the start but held together by the glue of our mutual love of outdoor adventures. Although after the breakup both of us had felt bitter about all the time (6 years) we had "wasted", I realized in retrospect I wouldn't trade that time for anything. I did so many cool things with him and I learned so much. He didn't mean to be a confidence-shattering, insufferable asshat. He had done the best he knew how to do, and gave me some very happy memories. At the same time, I felt very glad that relationship was long over and that both of us had moved on in our lives. As I thought about the cyclists with the mountains rolling past my fishbowl windows, I felt layers of scars, having healed, dropping off.

Mountain, viewed from my Fishbowl of Awesome

10:30  When dreaming about this South America trip, I had originally had big plans to drive the whole way, and would often daydream of driving for endless hours in the wild wasteland of Patagonia. Dreamed of the music I would listen to, the things I would see, the freedom I would feel. Here I was on a bus, certainly a different experience but, I thought, far more comfortable and relaxed. I realized that I was sitting there, watching my childhood and adult dreams come true as the mountains continued to roll past. I felt achingly happy.

10:40  Crossed a turquoise-covered river with views of distant mountains covered in snow. There were a few wood lean-tos announcing a small human population, but not much else.

More mountains. Curva peligrosa = dangerous curves.

11:20  I woke up from a short catnap to a caramel-filled dark chocolate on a napkin on my armrest, a gift from the Canadians sitting behind me. The bus arrived in El Bolson, with horses being ridden down the main streets, little hippie shops, lupine lining the road in their pink and purples, and huge mountains looming at the outskirts of town. "Mom would love it here," I thought, as I savored the chocolate.

11:40  The Canadians and I made lunch, combining our food stashes: baguettes smeared with butter and meat pate with some of my sliced bell peppers. It was filling and we felt clever, having brought such a nice picnic with us.

11:45  The bus steward came upstairs with trays to serve us lunch: raviolis, cornbread, little savory pastries, rice with carrots and peas, and juice. This came as a complete surprise to the Canadians and me. Not one to ever waste food, I shoveled it in, and felt utterly and overly stuffed.

Lunch #1

12:00  Uuuuuuhgggghhhhhh why did I eat so much? But I still couldn't keep my hands out of my bag o' chocolate. Someone please take it away!!

12:10  Chubut. The landscape looked like Wyoming with big snow-topped mountains on the right side and rolling steppe to the left. This was the Patagonia of my imagination. Road still paved, despite rumors of this trip being a poorly-maintained dirt road nightmare.

12:20  The driver's assistant curtained off half of my fishbowl windows, reducing my view to half. Tempted to open them back up, but don't want to be That Entitled Jerk who keeps the rest of the bus from napping.

12:40  Now I'm napping, too. Zzzzzzzzzzzz

13:45  Stop in Esquel with a 10 minute bathroom break. It took me 5 just to extracate myself from my seat-nest. No toilet paper in the bathroom. Good thing I had my tissues on me.

14:00  On the road again. There's some movie playing in the background involving the pope...and aliens? There's a stargate or something. And religious opera music. Ooooh, I hear Tom Hanks, I know what this is.

14:20  Flamingos! Hanging out in a salt pond. No photos, blew by them too fast.

15:00  Tubut. There's a big Argentine flag and a road sign: Las Malvinas son Argentinas. This would not be the last of these huge signs I'd see on the trip. I had been warned: never ever ever call them the Falklands in Argentina.

15:30  Now I'm suddenly driving south on Hwy 395 with desert on my left, snowy dry mountains on my right, driving south along the Eastern Sierras. I've been here dozens of times before. Except this time I'm in the magic rolling La-Z-Boy that I always wished I had for the drive. I pulled out my Spanish books, I schlepped four of them with me, hoping to do enough review so that I could abandon them somewhere and stop hauling them around. Over 6 weeks later as I finally write this post, I'm still hauling them around.

Hi, Eastern Sierras. Except in Argentina.

16:00  Stop in Chubut.

17:00  It's now a less-dry version of the Mojave. The road is smaller and older, but the scenery is the same. I flew across the world to road trip through California.

17:30  Pavement ended. Dirt road started.

18:10  Back on pavement in scrub desert.

19:00  The road signs no longer say Ruta 40. Still in the desert, but still pavement. Braved my first on-bus toilet experience since I brilliantly timed this trip for a heavy day of my period. Dealing with the DivaCup on the bus was a surprisingly non-unpleasant experience.

19:20  Lake! Big lake! Looks like the sort of place that would have good microbial mats. Alas, no stop.

20:20  Desert desert desert. Onto Kindle reading now: Cheryl Strayed's Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar. Downloaded this out of curiosity when I saw it mentioned in her list of books after finishing Wild (her bestseller about her time on the Pacific Crest Trail). Admit to crying several times at particularly touching stories and responses. Say what you will about Cheryl Strayed, but we could all learn from her empathy and kind way of viewing humanity.

Oil derrick at sunset in Patagonia

21:00  Now it really looks like California, oil derricks everywhere. They kind of look pretty at sunset.

21:20  Dinner served. The food on this trip has been surprisingly good (if very benadryl-requiring for this allergic-to-milk-products-and-eggs little defective human)

. All that's lacking is a bottle of wine.

Dinner

The final rays of sun reflected in the bus window.

21:30  Wait...is that the ocean? Where are we?

21:45  Now the ocean is on my right. This is all wrong. I am so confused.

21:50  Okay, ocean is back on my left. I think this is acceptable...

22:45  Sleep.

01:20  Stars! Look at those stars!!

05:15  Sunrise over the pampas.

07:20  Breakfast.

That's right, breakfast. Cake, cookies, and candy.

08:30  We were supposed to be in Rio Gallegos by now. We're still in the Pampas. My bus connection to Ushuaia is in 30 mins. Will I make it?

08:45  Still no Rio Gallegos in sight.

08:50  In the outskirts of Rio Gallegos. Asked the bus driver if I'll make my connection or what my options are. Bus driver briefly panicked, then called ahead. My bus will wait for me.

09:00  I am packed and ready to jump off this bus.

09:13  Bus pulled into the bus station at Rio Gallegos. I was quickly ushered off, my bags found and thrown into the bus to Ushuaia, and swept onto the Ushuaia bus. My Canadian friends still sleeping, I didn't get to say goodbye.

09:15  Ushuaia bus departed, the assistant handed out Chilean immigration cards. But...Ushuaia...is in Argentina... Chile? I looked at a map. Oh, duh. I suck at geography. Do I have any food products to declare? Yeah, only a giant grocery bag full. Let the frantic eating fest begin! Also, if they confiscate my chocolate I'm going to throw a screaming crying fit.

This is a photo of the sun starting to go down the day prior, but I ran out of photos for this part of the story.

09:30  Reading Charles Darwin's Voyage of the Beagle, which seemed appropriate reading given my destination. I now have an easy answer to that "If you could go back in time and meet any person, who would it be?" question: I would go back and apply for the job of cabin wench on the Beagle and relentlessly follow young Darwin around on his adventures. I love the mix of nerdy observation and absolute joy he takes in the beautify of the natural world. Charles Darwin, I want to look at your slightly phosphorescent self-regenerating jumping pyrophores in your cabin with you.

Prior to being one of history's most recognized names in science, Charles Darwin was a kid who loved being outside, loved collecting beetles and studying geology, and annoyed his father by not being too interested in medicine. One day during summer break he comes home to a letter offering him a spot as a 'gentleman naturalist' (i.e. his dad would have to pay his way) and companion to Captain Fitz Roy aboard the H.M.S. Beagle for a planned 2 year voyage (it ended up being 5) around the world with a focus on developing hydrographic maps of and surveying coastal Brazil, Argentina, and Chile as well as returning a few kidnapped natives of Tierra del Fuego to their native lands.

He was 22 when he left aboard the Beagle. He was still learning: studying books--especially on Geology--given to him during the voyage by Fitz Roy. Reading the Voyage of the Beagle is like watching a movie of Darwin's formation as a scientist. The best part is he was young, and had a passion for adventure, asking Fitz Roy to let him off on land to, say, ride a while across the pampas with gauchos or climb a mountain. While sitting in the bus reading, I developed a serious crush on young Darwin (even if he was only 22...).

Here's one of my favorite endearing passages, about Darwin playing gaucho and trying to use bolas:

"One day, as I was amusing myself by galloping and whirling the balls round my head, by accident the free one struck a bush, and its revolving motion being thus destroyed, it immediately fell to the ground, and, like magic caught one hind leg of my horse; the other ball was then jerked out of my hand, and the horse fairly secured...The Gauchos roared with laughter; they cried out that they had seen every sort of animal caught, but had never before seen a man caught by himself."

10:00  Border. Saw and chatted with a Korean guy I met in the hostel in Bariloche, random. I got another pair of stamps in my passport, bringing the South America count to six. We will get at least two more today and even more in the days to come. This is starting to look like my previous passport with the pages full of Slovakia/Poland stamps from biking back and forth across the border along the Tatras. So far, I still have my chocolate. The world is safe.

10:45  Still at the border. Made a bathroom stop. This one was less fun with the DivaCup: hovering over a shit-smeared toilet seat in a bathroom with no soap and non-working sinks while trying to wipe out and empty the cup with nothing but kleenex without getting my hands too bloody...ick. It's been nice on the bus trip generally but the changing thing is still a trick I haven't quite gotten used to. Those assholes better let me keep my chocolate or heads are gonna roll.

11:10  Border checks complete. They let me keep my chocolate. Thank God.

11:15  I'm in Chile. Plains, ocean, sheep, and guanacos. This is the other side of Patagonia!

11:45  We arrived at the end of mainland South America. Loaded the bus onto a ferry to cross the Strait of Magellan (another one of those almost mythical places that I am totally geeking out about visiting). We didn't even get out of the bus, bus just drove right onto the ferry, no big deal, ferry crosses the Magellan, as we cross lunch is served. We offload from the ferry into Tierra del Fuego. Tierra del Fuego! I made it!!

Lunch. Eaten, of course, in the fully-reclined La-Z-Boy position. Not sure what half of this was, but I'm pretty sure it was egg and cheese. More benadryl.

12:10  Phone battery died. Using my solar charger for the first time on this South America trip. Lunch must have had cheese somewhere I didn't see, loaded myself up with Benadryl. Naptime.

12:50  More flamingos! Still no photos, though.

13:10  Dirt road begins.

13:30  And now...I'm in Scotland? Sheep everywhere. Except there are also guanacos.

14:50  I really, really have to poop. But No Pooping Allowed on the Bus (there are actually signs that say this). Popped a mystery blue pill (not so mystery: immodium to stop me up for a while).

15:00  Border crossing number 2 at San Sebastian, the air is significantly cooler here. They have bathrooms! Hooray! After doing my business (and, yes, washing my hands) I ran into the Mainguys--my French friends from the Green House hostel. Friends! Also heading to Ushuaia on a different bus! I was so busy chatting with them that my bus almost left without me.

16:00  Still in the Land of Many Sheep. Sheep, sheep, nothing but sheep. I am out of water. Do I open up the box of juice? If I open the juice, I'm almost certainly going to make a giant mess of spilled juice everywhere at some point.

16:30  I opened the juice.

The Juice

17:15  Naptime. Sheep sheep sheep sheep sheepzzszzzzzz

17:50  Woke up to a very different view. Is this Darwin's "impenetrable forest"? No more sheep.

18:00  I SEE MOUNTAINS!!!!

18:30  Aaaaand, now I'm in Norway (bus trip: North Cascades to the Eastern Sierra to the Mojave to Patagonia to Scotland to Norway). Oh I love mountains. Love love love mountains. Not just "I think mountains are beautiful and I appreciate them" love mountains but "this bus just turned a corner and there's a  really good-looking mountain and now my heart is beating all crazy and I want to jump out of the bus and run up to it and give it a giant hug" love mountains.

19:30  This place is stunning. Wow. Huge mountains, sparkling lakes and sounds, more huge mountains...wow.

19:45  Ushuaia sign, really? We're...early??

20:00  Arrival, a full hour early. Unheard of! Now, to find a hostel...

Ushuaia! The "end of the world" (= fin del mundo) sign.