Wash, rinse, repeat

Well, my worst fears were realized when I was awoken at 3:57am by the feeling of one of those big red ants crawling on my neck.  In a beautifully executed ninja-ballet-gymnastics move I was able to swat, pirouette, half-twist, shed my covers, leap from bed all while transitioning from deep R.E.M. sleep to full combat readiness.  I am confident that when I landed on my feet (like a cat, mind you), I was in a wrestlers pose - one foot in front of the other, head low, hands out in front.

I know what my wife is thinking right now, "oh, I have seen that same move.  Only Jeff is always dreaming about seeing spiders in bed. Nay, they have never been but a dream."

Thanks for the confidence, Janna.  And exposing my kryptonite to all of Blog Nation.  

In fact, I calmly secured my phone from the bed stand and flipped it to flashlight mode.

There it was!  The devil himself! That darn ant was on my pillow! If it had eyes, I would say it was stunned from the athleticism she (worker ants are always female) had just witnessed.  But I think I had stunned her with my swat.  Well, I should have snapped a photo for Doubting Janna.  But instead I flung her off my pillow with a confident, masculine motion.

I didn't sleep much after that.

Ants use the pheromones of other ants to determine their pathways. 

Breakfast in the room, pool/hades, lunch in the room, surfing, pool/hammocks, dinner.

Surfing was a ton of fun today, apart from the Worst Dad of the Year Award that I won again.  We rented 3 surf boards for $25 from a beach vender.  All four of us went into the water. Aubrey and Shelby we eager to improve.  Quinn, on the other hand did not want to be there.  I could tell. Maybe it was the body language or the fact that she insisted that she "wasn't good at it" before we left.  That and she refused to wear anything other that a tanning bikini.

For whatever reason, I decided to get on her emotional roller coaster.  I haven't done that in a while, and it is not fun, let me tell you.  As she was walking her board into the surf, with it sideways, the force of the first wave took the board up and into her face.  It smacked her good.  My sympathies for her possible concussion were muted by her complete disregard for rule #1 in surfing, keep your board aimed toward the surf at all times.  We had covered this already. Basic stuff. At this point she started crying.  She was crying from pain mostly.  I saw her crying for other reasons.  

It gets worse.

I demanded that she stick it out and hop on that board.  She is 18, mind you.  The crying, adult Quinn took the next wave and it uprooted her and slammed her head into the sand.  Now she was a wreck and I was even more so.  I recall asking this question, "why can't you rally!"  Pretty sure I was yelling.  She was full poopy-pants at this point, crying, throwing her hands down. I suggested if she didn't want to be here she could leave.  

Yeah, that's in the Not Top Ten of encouraging things to say to your daughter.  

She sulked out of the water and had a miserable 2 hours while Shelby and Aubrey and I crushed surfing.  I have GoPro to prove it.

I did, of course, apologize to her immediately after getting back.  She was still crying.  I had cut pretty deep this time.  

So there it is. Beautiful Costa Rica.  Pura Vida.  Totally messed up by really poor parenting.  

Apart from that, we have had a good time here.  The volcanos and rainforests were amazing and worth doing.  There are better beaches around the world than Tamarindo.  Although the good food in town made up for it.  

We check out tomorrow at 11, a driver picks us up at 12:15, and we arrive at the airport at 1:45.  Non-stop flight home.  Looking forward to it.  

Hey There, Beautiful

I've been trying to upload this...here's a map of the region...Punta
Arenas is where we landed and Torres Del Paine
is where we are now.

More beauty...we are getting spoiled.  I asked our guide yesterday who has been here seven years if he ever gets tired of it...he looked sideways at me and grinned, "No, of course, never."

I can see why.

We just got back about an hour ago from our hike for the day.  Usually, I write these posts after dinner, but the deal here in Chile is that they don't usually eat dinner until 9pm.  So...in between the quirky and limited wifi here and how late we are done with dinner, I finished up last night at 12:30 am...and we had to be up and at 'em this morning at 8:30 so that was okay...but tomorrow, we hit the trail at 7 am and I just need a little more sleep.

on our way to the hike...the horns of Paine in the back right

Each evening, we sit down with a guide and choose what excursion we will do for the next morning.  We chose a hike to look at the Valle Frances Glacier on a well worn path of what is called the "W" hike of the Torres Del Paine park.  Essentially, there are four legs that run through the park and usually take about three or four days to hike and most trekkers camp along the way.  Or, alternatively, you can take the W one leg at a time returning to your beautiful hotel, as we have chosen.

We left by boat across the Lago Pehoe on which this hotel is set and began our hike on the other side. Our guide, Caru (a Brazilian from Sao Paolo) and a couple, Robby and Lily, who are from Argentina.  We hiked 7.6 km up the second leg of the "W" with ridiculous views of the Horns of the Paine, stopped, had lunch together under the French Glacier and saw three (!) small avalanches!  They sounded like thunder and awed us with the fireworks of snow.  After that show, we returned by the way we came.

even the sun wants to touch the Paine

The best part was when Caru looked at Gilly and I after lunch and said, "Hey, do you guys want to go ahead?"  The couple we were with had already stripped down to their t-shirts about 2km into the hike and I was still wearing my mittens and four layers.  It was the permission we needed to really go off and make the hike our own.  We finished about an hour before the rest of the group...so I took a little nap at the base of the trail and tried to soak it all in because we are going home in a couple of days.

Only pictures will do the rest of the work, as I keep saying, we've run out of words.

I haven't written about this, but in 2005 and 2011
Torres Del Paine National Park was
decimated by fires as a result of careless
campers...the damage is still profoundly evident in
many areas.

a suspension bridge to the Italian
camp before the French Glacier

Italian Camp...just a name, not only
open to Italians....

lunch...carrots and potatoes and chicken
almost as pretty as the view

the glacier and the stream that flows from it

Note the altitude...quite a difference from the
Atacama...

Lago Pehoe...brilliant blue

Another Lago on the hike...the blue is from the glaciers

a tent camp for the W trekkers...what a view

Tomorrow is our last full day here in Patagonia, so we plan do finish with a stellar hike...22km and "expert" level (whatever that means, I just hope we make it).  Caru suggested it, she believes in us.  So, I'll report back if we make it.  :)

Swiss Family Northrupson

There are a lot of ants in our bungalow.  I am trying to ignore them. Red ones the size of Carpenter ants.  Sugar ants too. And also a miscroscopic kind that gets in the pages of my book when I read by the pool.  (I have read over 150 pages of War and Peace) They are mostly in the kitchen, where we have a very large tree growing - a full sized tropical tree with a budding branch and about a 10-12 inch diameter trunk. It comes up thru the floor boards and leaves thru the ceiling and blocks the microwave.  Shelby is convinced that the Howler Monkeys were in this very tree the first morning.  My guess is that the ants could possibly be climbing up the tree to get in? Just a hunch.

Kitchen/treehouse/ant farm 

I have only found one of the big red ones on my bed. It was dead.  I wonder if they are Leaf Cutters?  Or Crumb Getters. Or. Not Awesomers. Or. For Pete's Sakes.

Every outdoor pathway here is paved with sliced, full diameter, tree trunk discs. They are set in cement - not very well tho.  My first image of Ilse was when she was coming to greet us and one of the wood blocks flipped up as she stepped on one side of it and her foot disappeared. It was like a booby trap.  Santos probably saw that too.

Shower. Wood floor.

The discs pave your way to the pool, the bar, and the rooms - there really isn't anywhere else to go.  The bungalows are "artisan" with a lot of stained and varnished wood.  Kinda cool.  Even our shower floor is wood.  I have never seen that before.  A wood shower floor.  Hmmm.

Termites are a major problem in Costa Rica to the point where most people build with concrete now.  I'm just sayin'.

So, with the monkeys, ants, wood-floor shower, four-poster bed, and organ, it really feels like we are in one of the Swiss Family Robinson rooms.  (There is no organ) It feels comfortable - almost familiar.  There is definitely a charm to these bungalows. They remind me a bit of our cabin.  And Nelson's Resort cabins.  The floorboards squeak like they are flawed and warped, and even slant in places, like the foundation has settled.  I know this type of living quarters well.

'Hallway' behind the bed.
Connects kitchen to bath.
Tight squeeze.

Same routine as yesterday: Howlers, breakfast, pool/hades, lunch, surfing, pool/nice, showers, dinner, stare at our phones.  Actually, I could put 'stare at phones' in between (and during) every event today (except surfing).

There is not much to do at the pool except watch for iguanas and lizards and read.  Quinn, the tanning goddess, thinks it's too hot to lay out - even tho it hasn't stopped her yet.  She has a point - it is 95 degrees and humid with no wind.  I wear a lite, long sleeved, water/sun-protection shirt I got in Belize.  One dip in the pool and it keeps me cool for about 30 minutes.

Surfing was a bit better (only one of us cried today), although our equipment was weaker today.  Some hotel guests ran off with all the good surf boards before 8:30am.  At 5pm they still had not returned them.  Lame.  Tomorrow we rent from a beach vendor.

Dinner was fabulous.  The owner/chef was really good.  Season's by Shlomy.  Go if you are here. A bit pricier than others, but worth it.

Nice lighting for your only signage.

Camp Patagonia

We are at camp.  It is a far cry, though from Camp Lake Forest Springs where I went in 4th grade and Peter Von Goren threw up all over the place.  Actually, if camp had been like this when I was a kid I would have moved permanently to live there.

This is the best camp I have ever been to.

our guide all day today,
a Belgian named Song

But first, where are we?  We landed yesterday afternoon on the Magellan Straight (discovered by the Spaniard in 1520 on his trip around the world) in a town called Punta Arenas and then hopped in a van that drove us to the hotel.  It was a four hour drive (our driver was awesome and flew over the roads).  As we drove out of town, we saw the Tierra del Fuego across the straight and then we hugged the border of Argentina most of the rest of the way until we arrived at the Torres Del Paine park in Patagonia (a broad description of the region that encompasses both the southern tips of Chile and Argentina).

The terrain and the feeling is completely different than what we've seen in the rest of Chile.  It feels almost like a Scandinavian/Swiss/Canadian place.  If you can combine those three.  The landscape was flat for the first two hours of the drive and was one sheep or cattle ranch after another (mostly by far sheep).  Then, as the outcroppings of rocks begin to show themselves, there were still sheep farms, but also with the added bonus of glimpses of the Torres Del Paine.  The gorgeous granite towers dominate this region that kept enchanting us as we drove further north.

We knew we were in for something special.

guanaco remains

Added to the visual beauty, we were lucky enough to see a puma (what??  yes, they are the major predator here) leap over the dirt road (the last two hours were by dirt road) in one hug fluid jump and pounce on something just to the side of the road.

I'm guessing by what we saw today that the puma was after the most common animal in this area, the guanaco, because we saw hundreds of them today and also saw hundreds, no thousands, of bones and half-eaten remains of this relative of the llama and camel.  (We also found all the flamingoes we were looking for in Atacama...maybe they decided to come to the most beautiful place on earth, too.)

live guanacos

Okay, so I've gotten off track--back to camp.  We are at a hotel in the Torres Del Paine park that has spectacular views, so much so that sometimes, I think I am looking out the window at a painting.  So, that's one thing that is awesome about this "camp."

Secondly, the hotel is an experiential hotel, which means that every evening we meet with one of the guides that work here and decide what we will do the next days choosing from nearly 40 options of hikes (with varying difficulty) and horseback rides.  (The hotel we stayed at in Atacama was similar.)

Last night when we arrived we chose to do a shorter (4 mile) hike in the morning across flat-ish terrain but through guanaco country...which meant we saw another puma this morning, again hunting. Very unusual, said our guide, no one sees two pumas in one week. Lucky us.

Gillian takes in the
view from Camp base
(our hotel Explora)

The best part about camp is meeting new kids, I mean people, and today we started out with a great family from Cincinnati. (last night at dinner, we met two women from Mountain Brook, AL, one of whom is friends with a darling friend of mine from Wake Forest...small world!!) But today, it was a mom and dad, their two kids (12 and 9) and their grandparents.

The grandfather reminded us so much of Jeff's dad, whom we call Lulu, because he was so into photography, a gentle guy, a cardiologist (close to Jeff's dad's profession), and so interested in what he was seeing.  He was awesome.  His son-in-law, another doc (an internist) was fun to talk to as well, our conversation ranged from the "old" houses both his family and ours live in (pluses and minuses, of course) to the privatization of health care.  So, we covered a lot.  His wife and kids were awesome, too, fun to talk to (as well as the grandmother, seriously we lucked out with this group!), and had traveled around he world together, a lot like our own family.

view from the saddle

After our hike this morning, we headed up to an Estancia (ranch) further into the park for a barbecue Gaucho style with more views of the towers.  We kept pinching ourselves.  This camp is awesome.

The afternoon brought structured activity #2, which for us and six others from all over the world, was an hour and a half horseback ride through some forested areas, across a grassland where the views made my heart hurt with the beauty.

I'm not kidding.

The barbecue, guacho style
two lamb, veggies, salmon,
beef...

We are never going home.  Jeff, get the girls and come to camp with us.  It has put us in the best mood and it sounds like the rest of our family could use this antidote to what ails them all up in Costa Rica.  

this is actually, in real life, the view from the window
in our room
Yeah.

Tomorrow, a 16 km hike...can't wait.

our hotel

     

The Pop Up - a surfing term

I stubbed my ring toe.  I heard a crack.  It is already purple.  I limp now.

If you look closely, you can see our oasis between the trees.
Across the gully. 

The sun was hot before 9 am.  We were already out by the pool.  We are all getting along well, but I am not sure we are the best versions of ourselves.  I miss my wife and my life back home.  Quinn bounces between 18 and 8 - I have no idea who I will get any second of the day. Aubrey is 14 and has a constant scowl on her face and emits annoyance - today she came out to the pool and said, in the most grouchy voice you can imagine, all of these words, "Did anyone get my towel? oh thank you."  Even the oh thank you was grouchy.  If she wasn't a likable, mysterious person, she would be very unlikable right now.

And then their is Shelby.  She is basically Timmy Lupus from Bad News Bears.  Everything she touches breaks or spills.  Example.  Today at breakfast she asked me to help open the new milk carton with one of those plastic pull plugs.  I did.  She poured herself some Cherrios and as I was coming around to the kitchen to get my own bowl, I grabbed the box.

"Shelby, when you put cereal away you have to scrunch up the bag inside.  Do you know why?"
"So bugs don't get in it?"
"Yes. And do you know why we even have to do it, every time, at home in Edina?"
"So it doesn't get stale?"
"Yes.  I want you to always do that 100% of the time from now until the day you die. Okay."
"Okay."

She kind of swallowed her okay, like she was ashamed.  Just then, I noticed milk on the counter, exactly where I had seen ants the night before (we are sleeping in a bungalow near the equator).  "Shelby, you can't leave milk out on the counter like this."  With her serious face on, and desperately wanting to get out of the spotlight, she grabbed a dish towel - not a sponge, rag, or wet paper towel, mind you, but a perfectly clean towel that we needed to dry the dishes with (we are not staying at a Four Seasons here) and in one of the most spastic movements in the history of the Special Olympics, knocked my bowl of cheerios all over the floor. Ilse's words echoed in my head "don't leave little crumbs out cause the bugs will come out - we live in a jungle, remember."  Shelby was not cleaning the milk (with a clean dish towel) in anger.  No, she spilled my cheerios trying to do right but failing miserably.  I didn't get mad, I just helped her pick them up.  She went outside and ate her cherrios, after offering them to me, and cried.

We sat in the sun for about 3 hours before lunch.  Then had PB&Js.  And then we went surfing.

I watched a tutorial online as I thought it would be fun to do this activity together, as opposed to farming this off to a trained professional.  Plus I am running out of cash and I can't imagine a surf instructor accepting Visa.  Anyway, they have boards you can use for free here.  Only a few have fins on them, of course.

We were out there for about 2.5 hours.  Aubrey was awesome at it.  Quinn, Shelby and I - not do much.  In fact two of us cried.  I have since watched two more YouTube videos and believe that tomorrow will go much better.  It's all about the pop up technique.

Not much since then.  Sun. Showers.  Dinner at the Green Papaya (they only took cash, which I am running out of.  Did I mention that?).  On the way to dinner we saw 8 Howler Monkeys in the trees.  They are super loud at 4:30am.

BTW. This morning was low tide. Notice all the rocks that are covered by the ocean.  Don't surf there!  High tide was in the afternoon. The ocean crests the beach and completely fills up our crocodile runoff gully.

Straight ahead. Rocks. 

Horseback riders at low tide. 

 Horseback

Gully at low and high tide. 

Patagonia

A man we talked to in Atacama had just come from Patagonia.

I asked him what he thought.

He said, "I am not a religious man."

We were walking along the salt flats and overcome with the beauty of the desert.

I waited for him to continue while we walked.

He looked over to the horizon, the sun was just slanting against the white salt rocks and turning them pink and purple.

He went on, "I am not a religious man, but I felt the presence of God in Patagonia."

There's not much else to say.

We have just arrived.

It is stunning.

More to come tomorrow.

Volcán Tenorio and Tamarindo

Costa Ricans don't really wear sunglasses. Just an observation.

Breakfast.  Checkout.  On the road by 7:30am.

I was not aware until we got into our van that we were doing another tour today.  Janna set up this trip; I am just along for a ride.  While I was under the impression we were going straight to the coast, our tour guide, Santo, informed us that he was taking us on a tour of another volcano - Tenorio.

Tenorio is known for it mineral-laden volcanic water that flows from the mountain and is brilliant blue.  People don't drink it and really don't swim in it anymore because the minerals are so consentrated. It took about 1.5 hours to get there and then the entire hike took about 2 hours.  Quinn was right there with us this time.

Santos was less warm than Jorge, our awesome guide from the other day, but had similar training.  He seemed like someone who was either not loving his job, had something on his mind, or was carrying a bit of a burden.  Curious, I asked him if he had any kids. "None that I know of," he replied quickly.  This is a common response among strangers and I thought about laughing it off.  But you know me. It turns out he has a 7 years old son from his wife's first marriage.  But the wife isn't actually his wife yet since she is still married to another man.  But she will be his wife after she divorces her current police officer husband.  He also has a 1.5 year old daughter who "he thinks" is his - even though that niña carries the name of the police officer.  Once the divorce happens, then they can get married and Santos can take the baby girl to the Church and legally change the baby's name to his name.  The kids live with his future mother in law.

Facebook Relationship Status: Its Complicated

Two rivers each carrying different volcanic minerals.
When they combine the "miracle" happens.
The water turns blue.

After a nice local lunch (I had Casado again) and a 2 hour drive, we made it to Tamarindo.  Not long after the volcano we were out of the rainforests and in a much drier climate.  Things quickly started to "feel" more like Central America.  More garbage, rougher housing.  In the rainforest and foothills, everything was green and the houses were nice and kept up.  In Tamarindo, its dry, dusty, and disheveled. There are street venders. There is garbage. There are stray dogs. It is going to take us a couple of days to adjust.

Our driver could not find our "hotel."  This was our first clue that we were no longer in the posh of Arenál.  Of course there is no driveway here. Or parking lot. Or reception desk.  The Ocho Artisan Bungalows just has a poorly lit, handcrafted sign off the main drag.  That sign is the entrance to, and beginning of, a walkway/boardwalk to the open bar area (which doubles as the reception desk) which overlooks a small pool which overlooks a rainwater runoff ditch which cuts in front of the beach.  The ditch/gully/creek has a sign facing the beach warning of crocodiles and at high tide the water from the ocean makes its way over the beach and runs upstream.  It's probably a sewer canal.  Ilse, the receptionist/owner?/bartender/free spirit Belgian hippy with a garter tattoo around her right thigh, greeted us midway down the walkway before Santos ran back to see if we were okay.  I am guessing that Santos, after seeing the hotel that we departed from this morning, wanted to give us one last chance to change our minds.  Or maybe saw our faces and wanted to save us.  Santos, I will pray for your non-wife and non-kids if you will pray that the pool here is not of the "above-ground" variety.  Isle got us to our room after a brief tour of this tiny property.

The pool was in the ground. All good.

The room is really cool.  It is kinda rustic, but elegant.  The bungalow is draped floor to ceiling. No windows (actually the exterior walls are glass, but the drapes cover every square inch). There are two wooden sleigh twin beds and a 4-post king.  There is a bathroom with no door, just a curtain, and a kitchen.  Essentially it is all one big room with king bed in the middle up against a stone half-wall. Go right of the king to the bathroom.  Go left to the kitchen.  It's like a cabin.  We know how to do this.

The beach was kind of a disappointment. But after walking up and down the beach a ways, I realized that the entire Tamarindo area beaches are similar to ours.  All along the beaches are free spirits with hammocks and cars backed up to the beach.  Surfers and societal dropouts mixing with tourists like me.  The ocean is filled with novice to advanced surfers and, straight off our hotel, are boats and small yachts anchored way offshore.

View of the pool/crocodiles/beach from open air bar.

I feel like I need some time to get my bearings. I just came from a classic hotel. Now I am staying in a commune.  I am half expecting someone to offer me some weed - or maybe to play Go.

I like that we are close to town.  Ilsa gave us some restaurant options. We chose Dragonfly and were very pleased with the Asian Fusion.  On the walk back we watched some futsal and hit the local grocery store and got stuff for breakfasts and lunches.  We good.

Really not gonna judge this place until we leave.  Culture shock does not mean the new culture is bad.  Stay tuned.

Local futsal court near our dinner.

Tatio Geysers, last day in Atacama

Tatio Geysers

Today was our last day in the Atacama desert.  We are now in Santiago after a flight this afternoon, but woke up at 5:30 am to head off to the geysers.

First, we met our guide, Daniel, who we immediately knew would be our favorite guide yet.  I haven't mentioned it before, but we have been going on beautiful excursions (hikes, mostly) every day with naturalists who ride with us to a location and then lead us from point A to point B.  Yesterday, as I said, we hiked along a gorge until we got to the hot springs.  Gillian and I were about a half mile ahead of the rest of the group (everyone went at their own pace) and if the guide from yesterday talked or instructed, we wouldn't have known...so it's not really fair to judge.  We had Daniel all to ourselves this morning.

As we got into the van, Daniel introduced us to our driver and then said that we would be ascending to 14,000 ft altitude during the hour and half ride to the site.  Our highest yet.  He said that to prevent altitude sickness (they wouldn't even let us attempt this excursion until we had acclimated for at least two days at the 8,000 ft. level of the hotel) we needed to drink lots of water ("Kiss the water bottle at least once every 30 minutes," he said.), breathe deeply through our noses to get the most oxygen and once at the top, take it slow if necessary.  We nodded to all of it.

Then, he casually mentioned that we would be driving over roads that were quite treacherous (his own words, and granted English is not his first language so, I was hoping that it was possible that the adjective was stronger than he intended).  He said that often times, due to the condition of the road the van would shake violently, so not to be alarmed (again...perhaps an overstatement, who could know).  Finally he, mentioned that the car often turned off at unexpected times, but "Not to worry, we will just restart it."

We were still nodding but a little more slowly.

After the instructions, Daniel smiled and said, "It is best if you sleep now," and within minutes, he was snoring in the front seat.  It was pitch black out (I forgot to mention that the Atacama desert has nearly no light pollution which makes it the best spot in the world for the astronomical observatories...within 10 years 70% of all research will be conducted at the observatory that is in Atacama...Gillian and I went to a stargazing excursion last night and saw Jupiter (!!) and something called the jewel box cluster as well as Sirius all through a telescope on top of a building at the resort...to go to the observatory you must be specially invited, which shockingly, we weren't...although our new friend from The Economist went and said that he and his wife were given oxygen tanks to be able to ascend to the top of the observatory).  Because of the deep dark, I wanted to go to sleep, but not really knowing what to expect--like would they need my help if the car stopped running, could I push it or remember how to jump start a car--surprisingly, I could not sleep at all.

We drove over all the conditions Daniel described but none of it was terrible and the car stopped once and on the fly the driver restarted it like he did it every day, which thank goodness, he had.

One of the hundreds of
geysers that dot
the landscape here

As we approached the Tatio Geysers the sun started to rise over the Andes and Daniel woke up again just in time to pull out his phone and blast "Here Comes the Sun," by the Beatles while he sang at the top of his lungs and the driver boogied in his seat.

Volcanic activity from
the Andes is
responsible for the hot geysers

It was going to be a good day, we could tell.

We pulled into the geyser field to see probably twenty other tourist vans but much more full than ours and Daniel turned quickly to us and said, "You guys, see that blue van over there?"  He pointed over to a group who were all getting back in to head out of the park, "There is a really cute Belgian girl who is here, I met her yesterday," he was getting really animated.  "I asked her out, she's so tall," he said, he was craning his neck to try to see her, "You know there aren't many tall women here," the smile on his face took over.  He saw her and pointed, "There she is, we went on a date last night, she's so cute."

He pointed at a woman in a dark blue raincoat and when we pulled around the corner into the parking lot (after he had nudged and cajoled the driver to pull up next to the van), he waved excitedly at this girl, who smiled a sweet smile and waved right back.  

Daniel also knew every guide at the geysers.  He shook hands with the men and lifted all the women up and swung them around in a big bear hug.  It was clear that Daniel had the same effect on everyone that he was having on us.  Full of life and joy.  It was impossible not to like him.

But, Gillian was really feeling the altitude at this point and when we got out of the van looked like she wanted to curl up in the fetal position.  So, we took it slow as we'd been advised.  Gillian didn't feel up to taking a lot of pictures and even entrusted the camera to me for a while.  I knew then, she was feeling terrible.  But, there were geysers to see, so there was no stopping.

this plaque was put up
after the horrific accident

Daniel was full of tons of information about the geysers and volcanic activity (the area is very similar to Yellowstone, also with a huge concern about a super volcanic eruption) and even told us a terrible story about a woman who had not been looking where she was going two years before and fell into one of the geysers (some of them have very large openings and until two years ago, there was not any type of protection around any of them...one of the vast differences between Chile so far and the US...no railings or other types of protective measures anywhere, so far, anyway).  She suffered burns over all of her body and did not recover.  We walked around, paying careful attention to the ground and watched a few of the geysers blow and felt the heat of the water (so hot, literally boiling hot), which is why the park now requires all visitors to sign a paper that says that if we fall into a geyser, we won't sue.

Coco mate tea for
altitude sickness

After walking and learning all about the area, Daniel set us loose while he and the driver worked on getting breakfast for us.  Gillian kept going slowly, but after about another half hour, started to perk up and when we walked back to the van, there was breakfast laid out for us.  Yogurt and toast made over a portable stove and tea and powdered coffee...and brownies.  Gillian drank tea and ate a little toast and I had toast with avocado, freshly mashed (every restaurant we've eaten at offers mashed avocado in place of butter if you like).

The funny thing about high altitude is that you are really not ever that hungry.  So, we ate a little and were full and then Daniel told us to drink some coco mate tea to help with the altitude sickness.  I don't know how it works, but he said it thins out the blood and that somehow helps (I'm probably missing some details).

During breakfast, Daniel told us a little about himself.  He loves to travel and hitchhikes wherever he goes.  He told us about a trip to London to see someone from Pink Floyd (Jeff would have needed to be here to keep up with all the references I didn't get to Pink Floyd) during which time he crashed at the house of an acquaintance and then slept on a bench in Hyde Park the next night before he caught a train to Paris) and that he will be in Canada this summer to hear someone else from Pink Floyd.  He is leaving in one week to travel to Uruguay and then back to Valparaiso to see his mother for her birthday and will hitch rides there and back, and will likely sleep out under the stars each night.  He told us his idea of a great life is, "Sitting around a fire with his guitar and a couple of girls." Uh-huh.

Anyway, we spent the rest of the morning together, driving slowly back to the resort while stopping to see vicuna (a small llama-ish looking creature) and at a beautiful marshy area (another green spot in this desert) to watch some native birds and ducks.   We also stopped at a small village and walked around a bit--Gillian was feeling bad again so we just went up to a little church and snapped a couple pictures and headed back down to the van.  All in all, it was a fun morning.

beautiful reflection
of the Andes in the water where
the ducks and birds lived

Vicuna

There is so much more I'm missing and this story is getting too long so I'll just end by admitting that I can't relay as much as I'd like mostly because this whole thing is a "you really have to be there" kind of reality.  I will post pictures to try to get the whole of it and end by saying that we are in Santiago now, just for one night.  We wandered around and tried an eating adventure in a random restaurant that was full of people watching Chile play Venezuela.  We didn't know what we were ordering and got an embarrassing amount of food.  But, we laughed about it and are in an awesome hotel for the night and will try to walk around this very metropolitan city (where half of the Chilean population lives).

Tomorrow to Torres Del Paine in Patagonia, it will be a long day to get there, three hours by plane and then five hours to drive.  There may not be much to report...

Daniel making me laugh

This tiny Atacameño woman (one of the
indigenous people groups in Chile)  let me get a
picture with her for 1000 pesos (about $1.50).
She took off her hat and put it on my head,
giggling to herself.