The Long Road North Part III: Córdoba

For my overnight journey to Córdoba, I was seated next to a well-dressed older woman who very much admired the fact that the water cooler had a plastic flower perched on top. I tried to sleep, but the TV blared loudly (horror movies, as usual) well into the night, until, looking around me at around 3am and confirming that everyone was at least trying to sleep, I went up and knocked on the driver partition and pleaded with the driver to shut off the sound. He seemed surprised that it was still on, and did. And then I finally slept. For 3 1/2 hours until the bus rolled into Córdoba a full hour early.

I had stopped in Córdoba to visit my friend Fernando, who is now a geologist on the faculty of the University of Córdoba but who was still a freshly-minted PhD when I met him in 2008 when we took the Geobiology Course together. Geobio friends are forever friends, and Fer was my best friend from that summer. Our staying in touch has been helped by the fact that we both share a tiny subfield as researchers of lacustrine stromatolites. Actually Fer shares some of the blame for getting me into stromatolites, since I had only barely heard of them before taking the Geobio course, and they were, like, his favorite thing. I had just finished my first year of grad school and knew nothing. Fernando, on the other hand, had the Dr. title in front of his name. So I was prepared to believe everything he said (and I still do).

A few fun photos from Geobio 2008

Fer & me working on final data analysis, or something serious, and I'm pretty sure I'm seated where I am so that I could easily turn around and make him help me figure things out.

Fer analyzing microarrays (remember those?) while I modeled the latest in labwear fashion. We were a good team: I taught him how to pipette, he taught me how to rock hammer. The spirit of Geobiology.

A lot had happened since that summer course. Fer moved to Tennessee for a postdoc. I switched projects and passed my qualifying exams. Fer returned to Argentina and starred in a TV series (see videos below). I switched projects again and started working on stromatolites for realz. Fer got married. I graduated. We had so much to catch up about! So I was thrilled when, while sitting at the bus terminal cafe sipping coffee,  eating a medialuna, and working on my talk, Fer showed up and gave me a big hug.

TV special on Fernando and his High Andean stromatolites

Part I (unless you are a math nerd, skip to 4:44)


Part II, filmed since of the whole series that year, Fer's segment was the viewer favorite (mine, too)


So yeah, Fer is pretty awesome. And so I was excited about meeting his wife who, I assumed, must be amazing to have landed a guy like him. And she was.

Wendy answered the door when we got to their house and greeted me without any hint of a Tennessee accent (how, Wendy?) despite being Tennessee born and bred. After the three of us chatted a bit, Wendy announced that she was going for a run, which sounded like an excellent idea so I asked if I could tag along. She took me on a mini-tour of the neighborhood, and we ran along the banks of what was usually a nice riverside park but that day was mahem thanks to the unusual flooding of the river that not only jumped its banks but decided to take over some of the nearby streets as well. Meanwhile I peppered her with questions and was deeply impressed with her story: a smart, tough, independent, successful lawyer who had fallen in love and followed a guy to a different continent, arriving in a foreign country and culture without knowing the language, but adapting so quickly and thoroughly that she's now the relationship's social anchor and has carved out her ever-evolving niche doing contract work as her own boss, speaks fluent Spanish, and has been adopted into Fer's extended family. Fer even half complained, "She has more friends than me here!"

Ferris wheel in Cordoba designed in 1916 by Gustave Eiffel. Ironic, since George Ferris designed the original Wheel in 1983 for the Chicago World's Fair as an answer to Eiffel's Tower built for the the 1989 Paris Fair. There must be a story behind this...

I was doubly impressed because I know from experience how hard that is. In the end, I had not wanted to stay in Germany with my ex-fiancé. I spoke fluent German and had German friends and "family" even before I met him, but the culture and environment was too different, and it went beyond my capacity (and willingness) to adapt. I said I would have done it at the time, but I know it would have driven me nuts. I'm pretty sure I couldn't have lasted. It made me wonder if I could have done that under different circumstances, in a different culture, but a part of me doubted it. We are who we are and home is home and our culture is a part of that. And admired Wendy all the more for it. Home is also where your heart is, and where her heart was was obvious.

We returned to the house, and I showered and crawled straight into bed to catch up on the night of sleep I didn't get, and Fer and Wendy promised to wake me when it was time to eat. They didn't need to. My carnivore's nose pulled me right out of dreamland as soon as Fer fired up the Asado in their back yard. What followed was a feast: a giant slab of meat (and more meat) as well as grilled veggies that, I found out, had quite a story attached to them. Wendy may have arrived in Córdoba as a fish out of water, but she didn't waste any time in tracking down a laundry list of local farmers from whom she could reliably procure various families of organic veggies, like a sort of one-woman patchwork CSA. Now, years later, the whole system has gotten a bit more organized and she no longer has to go to 20 different farmers' homes to get 20 different types of vegetable, but she still puts the rest of us "yep. bring the box to my door. I can make it that far in my pajamas thanx" CSA-supporting veggiephiles to shame.

Was it delicious? What does it look like?? Of course it was.

And that's when the miracle occurred. My innate lunar cycle-timed capacity to lose a not-insignificant percentage of my body weight in uteral lining, apparently finally satisfied with the offerings of steak steak and more steak (and organic dark leafy green vegetables, too) that I had been plying it with all week, decided to return to me. It was a little, well, anemic, a [mercifully] far cry from its usual buckets-of-blood gory glory, but I was reassured me that my ovaries had, indeed, not been taken over by an alien or basketball-sized tumor. Iron. Turns out it's an essential mineral. If I had kept eating like I had been eating the past few months, the gnomes working in my bone marrow factories pumping out my red blood cells probably would have given up on the whole heme thing and would have started trying to substitute in manganese in hopes of producing chlorophylls instead. That could have been neat, but I don't know if I'd like life as a plant.

Anyhow, happily full of delicious food, and happy that my body had apparently started to return to normal functioning, I was ready to hit the town. Fer and Wendy took me on a brief driving tour of the city and then to a nice central park on a hill overlooking the city where we drank mate for a bit before continuing on to Córdoba's famous weekend artisanal market. The market, claimed to be Argentina's biggest, consists of a good several hundred stalls selling handmade jewelry of a thousand varieties, whimsically-painted pottery, mate gourds and bombillas in every imaginable shape, size, and design imaginable, books on the million medicinal applications of marijuana, the standard cheap trinkets you can find everywhere on this continent, giant chandeliers woven from sticks, antiques sold by Fer & Wendy's transvestite tailor neighbor, and everything in between. Meanwhile music drifted through the crowd from a group of enormously talented local kids performing on the street to a half-seated, half-dancing crowd.

Fer and Wendy as my designated Pathclearers for the Cordoba market.

Seen at the Cordoba Market. I'm a sucker for creative, artistic graffiti art.

Once we had had our fill of the market (Wendy bought a cute pair of handmade earrings), we settled into seats on a balcony overlooking the bustle from one of the hip resto-bars lining the market's street and drank some beers as the sun set.

The next morning I went with Fer to the university and gave Talk #2 in the Dr. Frantz and her Stromatolites South America Tour. I met Fer's academic extended family, from his PhD advisor to his current students and undergrads under his care. The excellent questions reassured me that I had made it mostly understandable. It was fun chatting with everyone and discussing the doubts that Fer's advisor had, which was good practice for the reviewer responses I needed to write up for the manuscript I had written on one of the topics I presented. He later hooked me up with tons of tips for my upcoming trip to the north of Argentina, including a field guide pointing out the location of a bunch of really nice stromatolites. Stromatolite people are good people.

Poster for the Cordoba talk

After lunch, Fer took me to the cafeteria for lunch and we reminisced about the Geobio course and how it had changed both of our lives. It certainly shaped mine. Life consists of a billion small and large decisions that subtly and dramatically alter the course our living takes. The Geobiology course was--and continues to be-- a giant magnet that pulled my life into its orbit and changed its direction in a huge way.

When I took the course, I had just finished my first year of grad school, a tough year where I spent a lot of nights sleeping in my office at the university while running all-night measurements and teaching early-morning classes on topics that I had previously known nothing about. I came to grad school with a background in engineering and a degree in chemistry. Yet the PhD project I had chosen was a pretty hardcore microbial metabolism study, and the department I was in was a geology department. I had never had a microbiology or geology class before in my life. It was a steep learning curve, and I felt like I was just barely keeping my head above water. The Geobiology course came highly recommended from  all of my mentors and I hoped that it would finally give me some background in the two subjects I was supposed to become an expert in--biology and geology. It did that, but more than that it made me fall absolutely in love with the field of geobiology, in love with the colorful and talented microorganisms that have shaped the chemistry of our planet since life's beginning, and introduced me to stromatolites, which years later would become the topic of my PhD thesis, despite spending most of my PhD working on bacterial metabolism. It also introduced me to the people who would later become my advisors, mentors, letter-of-recommendation-writers, and some of my closest friends.

More fun Geobio 2008 photos

Fer: "These are beautiful, domal, rounded, nicely formed stro..." Richard: "Boobs?"

Fer, getting held up by a bird somewhere in Wyoming.

Will, 2008 course director, demonstrates the proper investigation of sensitive sites while Frank, current course director supervises.

In addition to the professional and academic impact, the course was a catalyst that changed my personal life as well. Being surrounded that first summer with smart, interesting, and largely well-adjusted people who liked and respected me was novel. I had spent the past three years in an intense and serious relationship with a smart, interesting, but not-so-well-adjusted boyfriend who regularly echoed the self-doubts in my own head that I was not smart enough, not good enough, not talented enough to be in grad school, to be a scientist. Who celebrated my successes by telling me that the only reason I was accepted to programs like my PhD program and the Geobiology course was because I was a girl and programs had quotas to fill. Who would yell at me for hours about how stupid I was when I would fail to do things The Right Way, like the time I hung a pot in our kitchen from The Wrong Hook and he took that as an opportunity to berate everything from my pot-hanging logic to my abilities as a scientist and my goodness as a person until I left the house crying to go sleep in my office again.

The course was a much-needed reprieve from that. The people there made me feel at ease, accepted, a valuable part of the team, even though I was one of the youngest students and knew nothing. The mix of students from very different backgrounds provided a valuable life lesson: none of us know everything, and in order to succeed, we need a good group of friends with talents and skills different than our own. That you don't have to be perfect or the smartest person in the room to contribute, as long as you leverage the skills and knowledge you do have. And the course reminded me that I had skills and I was smart enough. And that I didn't have to put up with the bullshit I was used to getting from my boyfriend.

Monster! Giant kinda adorable inflatable one in a modern art exhibit in Cordoba.

In retrospect, I should have shown him the door when I got back home at the end of the course. I had intended to. But like many abusive partners, he had a charming and a sweet side and was a master manipulator. When I laid out my grievances when I came home that summer and told him he needed to go, he cried and swore earnestly that he was sorry, that he had been wrong, and that he would change. I wanted to believe him, so I did. I loved him like a person loves a three-legged puppy. "It's not his fault he's a asshole sometimes, he's insecure and sort of autistic, he needs me, I can't leave him." He was my best friend, we had a house together, the relationship was a disaster but it felt comfortable. And when he was good he was wonderful: kind, caring, empathetic, devoted, romantic, and bend-over-backwards helpful. But when he was bad he was a monster. He swore the same things again and again and again for years more until I finally, finally pulled my shit together and closed the door for good. It took years and was one of the hardest things I've ever done, and things may have turned out a lot differently for me if not for the glimmer of hope for a different life that I saw during the Geobio course that made me ultimately refuse to accept a life with someone who called me stupid.

All of that flew through my head while chewing my lunch and thinking about how the Geobio course changed my life. And across from me was someone I will always be grateful to for the part he played in both recruiting me to the Cult of Stromatolites and for being a living reminder that it was possible for a man to be smart AND kind, respectful, secure, and handsome (seriously Wendy, you won the love lottery! but then, so did he!).

Cordoba is famous for, among other things (like being a crazy university party town), its pile of historic Jesuit churches and educational institutions.

Not Jesuit, but very pretty. Everything was plated in gold in this cathedral. After seeing this, all the beautiful cathedrals I saw in Germany don't seem quite so impressive.

I spent a few more days with Fer and Wendy. One day when Wendy didn't have to work in the afternoon, she took me on a tour of some of the more historic parts of Córdoba (and was my guardian angel when she helped me arrange bus tickets for my upcoming adventures, dollar exchanging, and a camera repair). The two of them also took me to their local 50-year-old Arabian restaurant (apparently there is a large middle eastern community in that part of Argentina--who knew?) where I ate brain for the first time in my life (it was surprisingly tasty). But not before first stopping off for a late-night desperate exchange at Wendy's dealer where pesos were slipped through a wrought-iron gate in exchange for a paper bag full of goods: arugula, squash, beans, and other organic CSA veggies. Being that close to fresh produce made me itchy.

Hummus and Brain: not your typical Argentine dinner.

And not your typical Argentine restaurant sign.

I was excited to head up to the Argentine high desert--something I had wanted to do ever since Fer had showed me photos way back in 2007 of the stromatolites at his field site up there--but sad to say goodbye to Fer and Wendy. Thanks you two for the hospitality and I hope to be back someday! (and come visit me, you promised! haha)

Dangerous drug paraphernalia from Wendy's shady back-alley dealer.

The long road North Part I: Ushuaia to Buenos Aires

I had a 56 hour journey ahead and a 5am bus to catch in the morning, but I stayed up late sipping appropriately named Beagle beer alone while curled up recovering some of my Antarctica photos as a sort of ceremonial goodbye to the Southlands I loved so much. Three hours after finally going to bed, my 4am alarm went off, and I gathered my packed things as quietly ask could so as not to wake my 7 sleeping roommates (only two of whom were snoring), took a quick shower, drank a quick coffee that the wonderful hostel owner had ordered for me as a goodbye, and left for the bus stop. Just as I walked out the hostel door, the rain started as if my Southlands were also sad to see me go. I walked the long way along the waterfront, along the Beagle Canal, that waterway that was a bookend to two of my life's most special, memorable experiences, and let the rain run down my upturned face like tears as I waited for the bus to come.

Rainy Ushuaia Goodbye

Beagle beer, that's Darwin there (on the bottle...the guy in the background is also very awesome, but is not Darwin)

I always feel lucky when I have a row to myself and was lucky that morning for my 14 hour ride to Rio Gallegos. I slept most of the way, the good part through the mountains in the beginning being in the dark anyhow. I didn't wake up until the border control at that arbitrary line dividing the island of Tierra del Fuego between Argentina and Chile. I quickly ate the fruit and the avocado and ham sandwiches I had packed bit was able to get by with the dried fruits and nuts I had brought as snacks. This was now my 15th crossing across the Argentine/Chilean border and I had figured out how to smile and who to wink at to get away with keeping my bus food through customs.

I slept again until we were offloaded at the Strait of Magellan 9 hours into the journey, my 4th crossing, the hot dog vendor on the ferry even recognized me. I'm a regular commuter. The stretch will forever remind me of Professor Penguin, the only bus seatmate I've ever had who I actually didn't want to just shut up and let me sleep. I wondered how the rest of his Antarctic season went, and where he was now.

Mural decorating the wait for the Magellan ferry

Welcome to the Strait of Magellan

Native fashion

Hot dog, $25. Juice, $25. Coffee, $25. Keeping things simple on the ferry.

I wonder when, or if, I'll be here again? Although I hope and think I'll be back in Ushuaia someday, want to return to Navarino, and am determined to make it back to Antarctica, the next time I go I hope it will be by plane (or better yet, by sea), not the excruciatingly long bus ride from anywhere.

Four hours later spent working a little, reading a little, and napping a lot, the bias arrived in Rio Gallegos, early, for a 2 hour layover. I camped out next to the one electrical outlet and, when it freed up, jumped in to charge my laptop, plugging in my travel charger/adapter kit so that anyone with a USB charger could also use it for their phones and stuff. One Irish guy offered to share his beer with me, he was so happy I had a USB adapter. I worked only talk, terribly distracted by the chatty Dubliners and a very sweet feral border collie who camped out at my feet.

My bus arrived and I got on board. I had paid an extra $15 for more comfortable seats for the 17 hour overnight leg, and curled up in what was essentially a leather La-Z-Boy on the top deck. Dinner was served while a very cheesy and loud teen vampire movie played overhead. The movie featured a lead character who looked disturbingly like my ex-boyfriend, if my ex-boyfriend had been keen on wearing punk leather instead of womens' clothing...the character was clearly conceived to make the panties melt right off the preteen target audience but made me want to shake the female lead and warn her: "See those tight pants and how perfect that curly blonde hair is? He likes men, trust me." Dinner was cheese-soaked and came with wine (yay! finally got to experience being served wine on an Argentine bus), so after that and chasing the Benadryl with the big bottle of Cape Horn Stout I had brought for the trip, I was ready to pass out.

Sunset from the bus.

Bus dinner: fried chicken and mashed potatoes, mystery pastry, lunchmeat and a biscuit, beer, and wine.

We left the city and drove back into the Patagonian steppe and the stars were out. I could see the Milky Way out the bus window. I fell asleep to Jasmine Thompson's heartbreaking" Almost Lover", which explains my sad dreams.

I woke up my feet so swollen that I coldn't get my shoes on, and my legs ached. Breakfast was a dulce de leche fest. Between the bus-sleeping and the benadryl to survive breakfast, I was too groggy to do anything useful. I drifted in and out of sleep and occasionally thumbed through the book I had started: Maya's Notebook by Isabel Allende, which grabbed me because it took place in Chiloé, and made me miss my adopted Chilote family there.

The bus arrived right on time in Puerto Madryn, where I had 8 hours before my connecting bus to Bahía Blanca was scheduled to depart. The first hour of my landing was spent trying to find a place to stash my bags, thwarted by an utterly unhelpful and sulky information booth staffer (it appears, after extensive experience in the field, that a prerequisite for working at an Argentine information booth is to be cranky and curt by nature and know nothing that could be of any help to tourists...my recommendation to fellow travelers is to skip the official info centers and go instead to people at places like the ClubAndino, hostel receptions, travel agencies, or tour offerers). I eventually found success by smiling and batting my eyelashes at a guy working one of the bus ticket booths.

Groggy and grumpy, I wandered toward the waterfront, and decided I should eat, it being past the hour of my normal lunch food pellet, so stopped at the first place that looked acceptable. I lucked out, the restaurant had WiFi and an excellent and artistic fish Menu del Día for $8 that came with a platter of tasty tapenades. I took my time there, watching cruise ship passengers in khaki shorts and polo shirts with popped collars float by, occasionally coming in to order fruity drinks that weren't on the menu and pouting like entitled jackasses with their plastic-enhanced girlfriends when they didn't get exactly what they wanted, when it didn't come with napkins or a spearhead slice of pineapple, or when their table didn't have silverware (although why one needs a fork to consume a tequila sunrise remains a mystery to me and the poor waitress).

I moved on, making it only three blocks farther before being seduced by a beachside shop offering scuba tours. They couldn't get me in that afternoon, but did rent bikes, so off I set on a bicycle to explore the coast. I ran out of road at the Ecocentro, a modern, oceanography-themed museum with a lighthouse tower with panoramic views that made a lovely place to sit and work on my upcoming talk. When the museum closed I pedaled my way back to town, found a diner to sit at while I ate dinner and worked some more. Its always strange eating alone at a restaurant, and I was glad for the work as a diversion. I made it back to the bus station just as my bus arrived.

Lunch

My rented bike on the Puerto Madryn coast

Whale tails in the museum

Whale skeleton outside the museum

I curled up on the bus and did my best to sleep, but the horror movies (what is it with Argentine buses and the horror movies?) playing at full blast until 3 am made sleep impossible. I was very happy after finally arriving in Bahía Blanca to see Coty, a friend and former student from the Geobio course, who picked me up and took me to her house, where after showering the Bus Filth off, I quickly crawled in bed to nap. "Nap" ended up lasting 4 hours. It was the first time I had had a real bed in a room by myself in over two months, and my first time in such a comfortable double bed since staying at my parents' house in August. Glorious.

When I finally woke up, I had more work to do to finish my talk, then Coty took me to an asado at her brother's house where I met her wonderful older brother and his wife, adorable little curly-haired dancing queen 16-month-old niece, and charming grandmother. The meat was melt-in-mouth perfect, it's true what they say that Argentinians do meat better than anyone, and the company fun. Argentineans also do staying up all night better than anyone, and even though we had a 6:30 am departure planned for a mountain hike the next morning, we didn't get back home until after 1am. 5 hours of sleep never feels like enough, but especially not after 50 some hours on a bus, and I was dizzy and nauseated when my alarm went off and meekly pleaded with Coty to call off the hike so I could go back to sleep. She good-naturedly agreed and called her younger brother, who was going to guide us, to cancel, while I went back to bed. I slept until after 10, I had needed it.

Instead of hiking some of Coty's Ultimate Frisbee teammates came over and fed us lunch (more melt-in-mouth meat), and then we went sightseeing with her younger brother, which ended in a stop at a highway overpass, and not just any highway overpass. Bahía Blancian rocks climbers, lacking easily accessible topography for rock climbing, had installed plastic rocks on the pillars and undersides of the overpass, turning it into a badass outdoor climbing gym. I was out of shape (my perennial excuse for sucking) and didn't have shoes (and my gringa feet being much too big to fit in the girls' shoes and too small for the boys'), but gave it a try and had a ball while watching the spidermonkey locals hand me my ass on a concrete platter.

Among friends	This castle was built to house a power plant. No shit.
Climbing under the bridge	Me, attempting to climb under the bridge.
Mate and climbing shoes	Coty & me! :-)

My talk the next morning went really well. I get nervous and sort of neurotic before giving talks, but once I get going I have fun. It was a pretty decent crowd, with the geology, biology, and oceanography departments invited. I got a chuckle out of the poster with my mug and name--Dra. Carie (where Dra. is short, not for Dracula, which seems logical, but Doctora, the feminine for Doctor...so much for gender-neutral titles here) Carie--on it up in the halls. Coty's advisor Diana introduced me in Spanish. I then explained that my Spanish wasn't good enough to give the talk in Spanish (actually I'd be an intimidated nervous wreck giving a talk in German even though I speak fluent German...major kudos to all of you who regularly have to do this in a non-native language) and promised to try to not speak 100 miles a minute like I usually do. Coty assured me afterwards that I did a good job, and the questions after the talk were insightful, so people must have understood it. Success!

I believe this is the first poster ever made with my picture on it.

Then it was off for a Great Mat Tour, and we spent the rest of the afternoon driving around and slogging through mud to look at...mud. Because we're microbiologists, and that's what gets us off. Microcoleus mats! Stinky anoxic horizons! And the pink icing on the awesomecake: a well full of purple bacteria. I literally almost fell in, I was so excited (as it was, I only lurched forward and submerged my arm).

That evening we enjoyed a delicious dinner of homemade Milanese (and homemade pickled eggplant--a new dish for me and I'm going to have to try to replicate it when I someday am no longer homeless because, wow) by Coty's sweetheart of a mom. And then, bundled up and hugged off, it was back on the bus for another overnight journey.

The Bahía Blancan coastline

What microbiologists do for fun.	Mat!!
It was love at first sight.	I mean, PINK!

A huge THANK YOU Coty, the whole Bournod family, and the folks at the university for the wonderful visit!

Getting to Torres del Paine: hitchhiking on a yacht, long bus rides, and friendly faces

The Goal: Meet my friends in Torres del Paine

These past several months whenever people would ask me what my plans were next, I replied, “No se. No tengo un plan.” (I have no plans) I really enjoy the traveling life without a plan, doing what I want where I want when the mood strikes. However, there was one plan for this trip that I had been looking forward to for half a year: meeting up with my friend Serena and her fiancé Eric to celebrate my 30^th birthday in Torres del Paine.

Torres del Paine is Chile’s most renowned national park and is to Chile what Yosemite is to the United States. The park is centered around some spectacular walls of granite, considered by many to be one of the most beautiful place on Earth. It was recently named the "8th wonder of the world" by voters on VirtualTourist; also, my well-traveled friend Caleb recommended it as “the standard to which I compare all natural beauty”(check out his blog, he and his girlfriend are doing good things on their trip to SE Asia). Becaues of this, it attracts a zoo of backpack-laden tourists from all over the world to hike on its famous trekking circuit. It, along with the Andes in winter and the Atacama Desert, was one of very few “I must go here” goals for this trip.

The Torres. Pretty rad.

Serena and I met in 2005 when we were roommates during our three-month internships at NASA Goddard as part of the NASA Academy program. We bonded over things like arguing about which temperature to keep our room at (we worked out a compromise where I gave her all of my blankets and in exchange was allowed to keep the room at a cool-ish level), being the weirdos who biked to work, taking obscene numbers of photos with rockets, and sweeping the end-of-program awards ceremony. Unlike most summer program friendships where you stay in touch for a while but eventually drift back away into your own lives, many of us from that summer are still in touch eight years later. This is in part thanks to the Girls Heart Rockets running team that grew out of the program, first as an informal group named after an inside joke, but it quickly morphed into a seriously ass-kicking competitive relay team.

When I used “I’m going to be traveling in South America” as my excuse this year for not signing up for any Girls Heart Rockets races (glad to have a really legitimate excuse for a change versus my normal excuse that until we form a sister team “Cows in Space”, I’m too slow for Rockets), Serena responded, “Sweet, can I come?”

Serena, chowing down on a bell pepper after reaching Baso Torres.

Unlike all of my other friends and sibling who had said the same and even made promises to join me for parts of this trip for years only to weasel out in the end, within 24 hours Serena had committed, and within a few weeks we had made definite plans that the two of them would join me in Patagonia over my birthday.

So I had intentionally kept my trek on Isla Navarino “short” (if seven days can be called short) even though I would have liked more time to explore the island, because I wanted to leave plenty of buffer time to make sure that I could make it to Torres del Paine in time to meet up with them. Or at least I thought it was plenty of buffer time: I planned my Navarino trek to end on a Thursday, and the trek in Torres del Paine wasn't starting until the following Tuesday. Given that it took me 2 days to get to Ushuaia from Bariloche, I figured twice the time to make it half the distance should be plenty. Right? Right??

Leaving Puerto Williams: appropriately difficult for an island at the end of the world

There were only four options for getting off the island and to Punta Arenas (from which there are a good dozen or so buses a day to Puerto Natales):

1. A 1.5 hour flight with DAP airlines directly from Puerto Williams to Punta Arenas, leaving twice daily Monday-Saturday (the cheapest commercial option and by far the fastest)
2. Taking the same zodiac back to Ushuaia that I had taken to the island, then take an all-day bus to Punta Arenas the next day (with the bus, more expensive than flying)
3. A 36-hour scenic (but expensive) ferry ride that would get me to Punta Arenas Monday night: too late to meet Serena and Eric in Puerto Natales but maybe early enough to rush to meet them in camp after their first day of hiking
4. Attempting to hitch a ride on a yacht to Ushuaia, then bus to Punta Arenas

Since the flight was the cheapest and by far the fastest certain option, my first order of business once I returned from the trek (see Navarino Part VIII: The Feral Swampbeast Returns to Civilization) was get tickets for the first possible flight to Punta Arenas. I had been told before I left on my trek that getting onto a flight once I returned would be no problem—high season hadn't’t started yet—and that that would be better since the tickets were expensive and if anything happened to delay my return, I wouldn't want to have to forfeit the ticket.

But when I showed up at the DAP office (Puerto Williams is serviced by the famous Antarctic airline DAP via a small airfield outside of town) and waited the 30 minutes for whatever hamsters were running the computers to spin their wheels enough times to permit a search for ticket availability, I was informed that all of the flights were full. “¿Y manaña? ¿O Sabado?” I asked, and was then informed that the flights were full for weeks. I asked if there was any wait list or way to get on and they told me to return at 3 pm to see if there had been any cancellations. I showed up at 3 pm, and the office was closed. I tried again a few hours later and found them open, and they told me to return the following day at 2 pm. I did, and the office was closed. After this happened several more times I started to lose my patience with the folks at the DAP office...but I had yet to experience the full of their incompetence (I can only assume DAP pilots are as much above average as the staff at the office were below it...).

This has nothing to do with the story, but is a memorial plaque in the Puerto Williams museum honoring Captain Robert FitzRoy of the HMS Beagle, who visited Isla Navarino several times in his trips to South America

Meanwhile I went to scope out my other options. I was too late to get the next-day’s zodiac, the one for Saturday was full, and the weather for Sunday was looking iffy enough that they warned it may not go on Sunday.  So the zodiac was out. I wasn't keen on the expensive and slow ferry, despite the scenery (which with bad weather rolling in probably wouldn't be too spectacular anyhow) because it would mean missing the first full day of hiking with my friends.

So I spent a lot of time hanging out at the yacht club in hopes of meeting someone I might be able to catch a ride to Ushuaia with. It was a fun place to hang out regardless, full of fascinating people, and also had the town’s best internet signal (there are, it turned out, three places in Puerto Williams with an internet signal: the town library with terrible slow internet in a cramped space, the town museum with somewhat less slow internet that cut out often but in a really nice spot, and the yacht club which was about on par with the museum but had the distinct advantage of also having a bar). The first night back, this meant arriving with the intent of having a beer and seeing who was there, and leaving at 4am having drunk ALL the beers that the yachties and Chilean navymen kept buying me.

Inside the Club de Yates, coolest bar ever.

I had a great time there meeting and talking to people and especially enjoyed getting to know Ben and Anna (and their dog Osa), a San Franciscan couple my age who had sailed down from San Fran over the course of several years and were also looking to bum rides to Ushuaia in order to hop on a free trip to Antarctica that they had managed to charm their way onto.

My dancing all night after my trek got me two things: (1) very sick, and (2) an invitation to an asado at the yacht club the following day. The asado was being thrown at the club on Friday to welcome the sailors who were arriving for a friendship regatta being hosted by the Chilean Navy in order to celebrate the 60^th anniversary of the founding of Puerto Williams. Free wine, free food, and fun company? I do not say no to such things. At the asado, my host and I put out the word that I was looking for a ride, but there were no bites. Still, I got to meet some real characters including the famous Charlie Porter, a glaciologist (officially a research associate at the University of Maine) living out of his two boats and house in Puerto Williams, but in one of his previous lives was a pioneering (and still legendary) big-wall rock climber in Yosemite and Patagonia.

On Saturday the folks at DAP had suggested that I show up at 11:30 at the airport to ask the captain if he could squeeze another passenger on what I assumed was an afternoon flight (since I asked at DAP if I needed to bring all my luggage with me and they said no). Apparently this is pretty standard there and my chances were actually decent—if they weren’t hauling a lot of stuff, they might have weight left over for me. So I slowly dragged my sick, wheezing self the 40 minute hike to the airport from town. I made it almost all the way there at shortly after 11 when, first, a plane took off (this worried me). Shortly thereafter a car full of carabineros who were dropping a friend off for a flight drove by (this unworried me somewhat) and picked me up. We arrived just as a vehicle full of the folks I recognized from my many trips to the DAP office was departing, and they told us that the flight had already left. It turns out that the staff at the Puerto Williams DAP office have no idea when their own planes leave.

Bridge on the way to the airport.

My carabinero friend was furious in the totally calm, joking Chilean way (tip from Charlie Porter: “The key in Chile is you never, ever lose your cool. Chileans communicate in jokes when they get pissed off.”), since he had also been told to show up at 11:30, and he was a ticket-carrying passenger. We spent an uncomfortable hour back in the DAP office trying to wrangle our way onto the evening flight, although at that point I never wanted to set foot in the DAP office again, having written them all off as utterly useless.

We were promised that if we returned to the airfield at 7:30 pm, the carabinero would have a ride and I might be able to squeeze on as well. To me this meant that there might be a flight leaving sometime that evening but they definitely wouldn't have room for either of us when we showed up, but I kept my mouth shut and agreed when the carabinero told me to meet him at the police station at 6 pm to drive over nice and early (since he, too, did not trust the info from DAP).

Tired, sick, feeling quite miserable, frustrated, and hungry, I returned to Patty’s, stopping on the way at the waterfront to watch the regatta which was now fully underway and to catch my sick, wheezy breath. I cooked myself some soup and chatted with the latest arrivals. I told Patty my plans to leave at 6 pm and try to catch the afternoon flight and teared up when we said our “maybe goodbyes”.

It was the first time I had come close to crying in over a month. Walking back to the yacht club heavy-hearted it struck me how deeply the place had grabbed onto my heart. My wild soul had found a place wild enough to want to stay.

Colorful boats (with the Yaghan scenic ferry in the back right) in Puerto Williams

How I hitchhiked on a yacht to cross the Beagle Channel

I wandered back across town to the yacht club, feeling suddenly lonely and craving the company of friends. After chatting briefly with Ben and Anna I curled up on the upper inside deck of the club to catch up on emails, rest, work on getting a blog post up, try to map out my transport options, and update Serena on my transportation situation.

Suddenly Anna appeared with the news that they had found someone to catch a ride with, leaving the next morning to Ushuaia, and that if I asked there might be room for me as well but I’d need to commit right then because they were heading over to the port station to get their passports stamped out (since Puerto Williams is in Chile, and Ushuaia in Argentina). I waffled since if I could get onto the flight it would be a lot faster, but I decided to walk with them anyhow since I was going that way in order to meet the carabinero for our attempted flight-catching.

Sailboats participating in the Puerto Williams 60th Anniversary friendship regatta

On the way over, the yacht’s captain Marcel informed Ben and Anna that he wanted to leave that evening instead because bad weather was rolling in. When he said that, I jumped, thinking if I could get to Ushuaia that night I could catch the early morning bus on Sunday, get to Punta Arenas Sunday night, and be in Natales in plenty of time. So I put on my gutsy mooch pants and asked Marcel directly if there might be room for me, too. He gave a sort of noncommittal response, so once we got to the station I asked, directly again, feeling really awkward about being pushy but sufficiently driven by desperation. He said yes, sure, why not, and I promised to supply wine to seal the deal.

And that’s how it happened that my fourth experience hitchhiking in my life was on a yacht.

Iorana, Captain Marcel's yacht

I felt guilty about standing up the carabinero, but figured he would make it to the airport without me as Ben, Anna, and I handed over our passports and Captain Marcel checked us out of the country. I suggested Patty’s place as a place for dinner before we took off. Marcel laughed since he was friends with Patty and was already planning on having dinner there. Ben and Anna had to pack for Antarctica (how often do you get to say that?), so Marcel and I walked to Patty’s together.

We chatted on the way and Captain Marcel told me stories about how he’d landed in this part of the world. How he’d worked chartering trips (and still does) around Tierra del Fuego and Cape Horn. How he was now old enough to collect his Belgian pension and that it provided plenty to live on while he worked as a gaucho at Yendegaia. How he loved living without a phone and internet. How he had been married once for seven years and that was quite enough. How “I’m happy, I have no problems, I don’t want someone else’s problems.” And I could only nod my head and agree on that count.

Patty had a treat in store for us: a mountain of fresh king crab, the last of the season. I supplied the wine, an “expensive” (for Chile, where excellent wine is about as cheap as water) $12 USD bottle of Casillero del Diabalo 2012 Reserva Carmenere. Casillero del Diabalo is my favorite wine back home, and since discovering Carmenere in Chile it has become my favorite wine, and sweet shit this was good. Patty and Marcel and the others kept loading me up with so much crab that I felt like I wasn’t going to be able to walk. It was absurdly tasty on its own, and Patty makes a magic Mapuche merkén (like chipotle) spicy sauce (as well as a really good garlic mayonnaise, but her magic spicy sauce is my favorite) that made it mind-blowing. It was a meal that in a restaurant in Ushuaia—or anywhere else for that matter—probably would have run over $100. And that was just a regular dinner with friends at Patty’s place. (I miss her!)

There were several of these trays served up.

King Crab dinner at Patty's

Me, Captain Marcel, and Patty

It was around 10 pm when we wandered back to the boat, me with all my stuff, and loaded down with a belly-full of what must have been several pounds of crab. We grabbed Ben and Anna, hopped on the boat, untied from the Club de Yates, and were off. Marcel’s yacht, Iorana, was very comfortable, with a large aft cabin where he stores his wine and dried meats (and where we dropped our packs), a kitchen and dining table that converts to a large bed, a side couch, and a fore berth where Marcel slept. He set the autopilot and got up every few minutes to check on things while we sat and chatted. I was exhausted and although I  tried to stay awake and chat as long as I could, I soon fell asleep at the table for an hour, after which I was given permission to curl up in a corner and was out cold until we docked in Ushuaia at 4 am.

What I hadn't factored into my flash decision to take the boat was that I’d have to check in to Argentina before I’d be allowed to go anywhere, and the offices wouldn't be open until 9 am—well after the morning bus I had wanted to take had left (and as it turned out I wouldn't have been able to get on that bus even if the timing had worked out). Well, at least I’d get to sleep.

Marcel turned the boat radios off, determined to sleep as long as possible, and we all fell asleep to the sound of the thumping bass of a Saturday night party raging onshore. He woke us up at 10 am to go check in. We had breakfast (I supplied bread, butter, juice, and oranges, Ben and Anna supplied what fruit they had left from their boat, and Marcel spoiled us all with homemade rhubarb jam. We all waked over to the police station where they took their sweet-ass time (over an hour) checking us in. Then we said our goodbyes and scattered: Marcel to deal with customs, Ben and Anna to find their friend to help prep the boat for the trip to Antarctica, and me to try to book a bus ticket to Punta Arenas.

Anna on arrival in Ushuaia

Escaping Ushuaia

Ushuaia has no bus terminal, which made things difficult. Buses in Chile and Argentina generally cannot be booked online as a foreigner. The booking offices were all closed since it was a Sunday. At the info center I was told that word I hate so much, “imposible”, when I asked where or how I could secure myself a seat on a bus for the morning.

In fact, the info I was supplied at the info center was wrong. I had spent many hours in the previous days mapping out my transport options and knew that there was a Chilean bus company that at least in theory ran a bus Monday mornings from Ushuaia to Punta Arenas. When I asked at the info center about this bus, they said “no existe” and handed me a printout of the “complete” list of bus connections, which did not include the company that had the Monday bus. It later occurred to me that all of the companies on their list were Argentinian, which further confirmed my finding that Argentinians generally refuse to acknowledge that Chileans can do anything right (contrary to my experience, where Chilean outfits generally do the same thing for cheaper and in a more friendly way). They also told me that it was not possible to pay on board a bus in Argentina, and that because tomorrow was a holiday nothing would be open, so there was no possible way for me to leave Ushuaia until Tuesday. I didn't believe them.

Ushuaia is, however, a very beautiful town.

I was tired and grumpy and sick of information offices feeding me blatantly wrong information and being the absolute opposite of helpful. I started asking around town in shops and tourist agencies instead about where I could get a bus until finally one person pointed me down the street with the words, “5 blocks that way, be there at 6 am”. Sure enough, 5 blocks away, I found the office of a little tour agency with a little piece of paper taped in the window that showed the Monday bus I had seen on the internet leaving at 7 am.

I found a hostel that would let me pay $60 Argentine pesos (~$10 USD, depending on who you exchange money with) for a day of internet, use of their kitchen, and shower, and settled in, crossing my fingers that I could show up and get on that bus the next morning. Meanwhile, I randomly connected with an acquaintance from Bariloche who was in Ushuaia celebrating her very successful exams to be a tourism guide in Bariloche, and we caught up over dinner. I hope she makes it into the business soon, because, I had decided, competent providers of tourist information are desperately needed in this part of the world!

Marcel had generously offered to let me spend another night on the boat, so after dinner I wandered back to the boat, crawled into my sleeping bag (Marcel was off partying with boat friends), and woke up early the next morning (Marcel was out cold, so I left him a note to thank him and say goodbye) to see about the bus.

View of the boat mooring in Ushuaia at sunrise

I showed up at the tour office at 6 am, walking up the streets while the discos were still raging. There wasn't a soul to be seen outside except a stand of groggy police officers up early to keep drunk kids from getting into too much trouble. The tour office was dark, so I left a “I need a bus ticket!” note at the door and then tried to sneak into the hostel two blocks away for the shower that I hadn't used the previous day. I was caught by thoroughly disgruntled employee who I only confused with explanations, but in the end I think he was too tired to deal with me and gave up and let me shower. I was quick, and back at the tour office by 6:30, at which point the discos had dumped their load and the streets were full of kids who looked way too young to be drinking legally and girls in platform shoes and mini-dresses in the frigid cold while I was bundled up in a down jacket. The office was still dark, but I was relieved to see  a small crowd gathered outside.

I chatted with a man who turned out to be a Penguinologist from Oxford until the bus showed up and, much to my relief, they let me in without a ticket. Not only that, but they let me pay in Chilean pesos and gave me a very generous exchange rate that meant I paid about 60% of what I thought I was going to have to pay ($30000 CHP, which equals ~$60 USD). Score! I settled into my seat with Professor Penguin and breathed an enormous sigh of relief. Professor Penguin had celebrated his birthday the night before and a friend had baked him a cake, which he shared with me for breakfast. I felt like the luckiest person alive.

A final Ushuaia photo

After that it was 11 hours of tedium (= rest, sweet rest) interrupted only by a long hour and a half wait at the border crossing where, for some reason, they never bothered to stamp us out of Argentina. Then another stop at the ferry crossing across the Strait of Magellan between Rio Grande and Rio Gallegos where, because of huge swells they took us out of the bus and put us inside  (I didn't have time to grab my camera, so no photos or videos, sadly). This was fortunate because unlike all of the other long bus rides I had been on, this bus didn't feed us meals or snacks and I was getting hangry (= hungry + cranky, thanks Tom & Ellen for the brilliant word). Professor Penguin and I got hot dogs.

Punta Arenas to Puerto Natales: the final leg

We arrived in Punta Arenas at 6 pm, and 10 minutes before our arrival I was informed at all of the buses continuing to Natales for the next 24 hours were full. By this point this neither surprised nor phased me, I just asked about other bus companies and the bus steward actually called ahead for me and made me a reservation with another company. Because—I know this may come as a shock to my Argentinian readers (giving you guys shit, but you know I love you)—Chileans are helpful! And nice!

We pulled into Punta Arenas, I hugged Professor Penguin goodbye (he was transferring between two Antarctic trips to visit his penguin colonies), and the bus steward gave me directions to the other bus company. On my way I was tempted to stop and get dinner—food other than hot dogs and cake and cookies—but thought I’d check in first just to be safe. I showed up and was immediately whisked onto an earlier bus. Food can wait. I was finally on the final leg to meet my friends!

Surprise friend addition to the birthday tour: Anneke, my Australian friend I had met in Bariloche.
No one got swagger like Anneke.

I arrived in Natales three hours later (after a total of 14 hours sitting on buses) at around 9:30 pm. I set off from the bus station confidently, with a carefully-drawn map that I had made up with the help of the Internets in Ushuaia the day before in hand—only to end up standing in the rain, confused, turning in circles, trying to figure out where I was, hopelessly lost, because Natales had built a new bus terminal that was well off the edge of my nice little map. But less than a minute later someone came to my aid and the chatty, frighteningly made-up but good-hearted woman walked me most of the way to the hostel while telling me her entire life’s story.

I arrived at 10 pm where I was greeted by the hostel owner, who was expecting me thanks to my Bariloche pal Anneke who managed to make it down to join us for the trek and who had arrived the day prior. I was so very relieved to see Anneke, a familiar face, a friend to go play with. Anneke even fed me. I slept like a rock that night. The next morning at 8 am, Serena and Eric were there with their rental car, and off we went to our trek in Torres.

On the road with Eric