The bottom of the world!

Here I am- it's 6:14 AM and I'm in my 7th hour at the Santiago airport. After returning from Southern Chile late last night, I'm meeting my parents here in about an hour and we're taking off for Mendoza, Argentina at 9AM. They've been here for a couple days already and I'm anxiously awaiting to hear how that's gone over with their minimal Spanish and overwhelming gringo appearance. I could suggest that my dad take a turn at this blog writing with a Lee Greenstein-esque guest appearance, but his typing is so slow (law school really needs to hire 6th grade typing teacher extraordinaire Mrs. Linford) that it might take the rest of his vacation to complete any such task. All I know so far is from an email I received from my mom saying the gypsies have already tried to scam them (something I have yet to experience myself, but doesn't surprise me to hear). Even in a place like Chile where fanny packs are considered really popular/hip, my Dad will still find a way to stand out....


Okay, enough about the old folk. Onto Patagonia! The trip as a whole was great - put me in a hotel and I'll be fine, but the place is a little different than I expected. For Christmas, my brother gave me the book In Patagonia by Bruce Chatwin. I'm ashamed to say I really haven't started it yet except for the introduction by Nicholas Shakespeare, which definitely echoed a lot of how I felt about the Patagonia I saw - mainly the small town of Puerto Natales.
One line in particular struck me (sorry this isn't a 7th grade DBQ but I guess I'm too lame to write my own words):
"In Patagonia, the isolation makes it easy to exaggerate the person you are: the drinker drinks; the devout prays; the lonely grows lonelier, sometimes fatally." We were only there for 3 days, and I clearly wasn't lonely surrounded by 20 energetic students, but I can certainly understand the depression and loneliness that I'm sure is quite prevalent. The economy of the town is overwhelmingly based on tourism which was both good (delicious delicious vegetarian restaurant called "El Living" where I ate 2 meals including a grilled PB and banana sandwich that you can't appreciate until you've been in Chile and deprived of PB) and bad (the poverty in the town was pretty obvious and there was basically nothing going on outside of the several main tourist streets).

Our group trip to Patagonia was a lot of different things, so I'll just give you some highlights that stuck with me:

-None of us really knew what to expect going into the trip (were we going to be the Chilean version of Jon Krakauer, soon to be documenting near-death expeditions?). No, we were not. We spend wayyyy more time on buses (1st day: Torres Del Paine National Park) and boats (2nd day: the glacier visit) than any of us expected. I think it's difficult to be dissatisifed though - we were at the bottom of the world!

-While we were on a bathroom/consumer stop the first day at a gift shop, I bought a hat for myself. As I was paying, I noticed the cashier was wearing a Mountain Hard Wear coat similar to mine. I pointed it out, and he gave me a free Bon Bon. Score... I knew buying this overpriced (albeit on sale) coat would eventually be worth it.

-GLACIERS ARE MELTING... turn off those lights!
Okay, sort of ridiculous, but sad and true. When we got to the glacier, i think we were all amazed by both their wonderful blue color and also by their very evidently shrinking appearance. Even the comparison between the picture on the brochure and the real thing was pretty substantial. After viewing the glacier and once back on the boat, they think it's really cute to give you a glass of Pisco (liquor) with glacier ice. First of all, perhaps a terrible idea to be offering alcoholic beverages to potentially sea-sick travelers. But also, what the F. Sort of made me mad...

And alas, let's end on a good note....