On-the-Road Tales

My van arrived 20 minutes early which translates to me still getting ready so my nice houselady invited them in for coffee while I shoved breakfast down my throat. The coffee here in Chile is awful stuff. I guess you can not have everything good wine = bad coffee. We picked up the rest of the group and headed to an enormous cave where prehistoric remains of the Milodan animal and cave people 30,000 years old were discovered. Believed to be the oldest in the americas. We drove northeast 2 hours to the park. The entrance was about 30$ which is quite steep but about what our parks run nowadays too. We got to a turquoise lake and pile out to see nothing but clouds. The good part about being unprepared and never reading your guidebook ahead of time is that you do not know what to expect so you are not so easily disappointed. Apparently, in front of us was supposed to be a panoramic view of the famous spiky rock towers but they were obscured with cloudcover. We saw foxes, eagles, gunacos (like llamas) milling about as well as flamingos. Who knew there was such a thing as cold water ones. I guess the thought of plastic flamingos stuck in front of trailer parks in Florida or thousands of them on the beaches of Bonaire has skewered my image of the birds as warm water.

The old Italian woman beside me was fascinating. A big traveler she especially is interested in natural phenomenon and tries to coincide her trips with them – a woman after my own heart, she went to Maccu Pichhu on June 21 solstice etc. She flew all the way from Italy to Antigua a few years back for a full solar eclipse. She said you could see the stars and constellations in the dark band across the sky. Wow – I never pondered this – if you shut the sun off in the middle of the day – will you see stars? yes, apparently, that is so cool. must find me one of those to watch. Anyway the woman detoured all the way down here from her northern Chile trip to see these spikes and I thought she would start weeping when they were covered.

We proceeded to a waterfall and as we were walking the clouds started to lift a bit to reveal the 2 mountain horns, as they are called, hidden underneath. As we approched, there was a suddenly a tremendous noise that stopped everyone dead in their tracks. I recognized the word terremoto in spanish and was not pleased at the prospect of an earthquake, to me it sounded like thunder. Turns out, we were told, it was a cascade of ice breaking off the glacier and hurdling down the mountain. One more reason not to trek. By the time we reached the perfect teal waterfall – the clouds parted for an amazing view of the range ahead. It was truly an incredible sight and to think we almost missed it by a few hours.

We proceeded to lunch at a nearby refugio where I dined with an Israeli couple and chowed on on some tough, Chilean meat. Not my thing. In speaking with some of the other tour members, turns out one of the guys from Brasil is a Aeronautical Engineer as well and a CFD professor! what are the chances in a group of 11. I am not sure why I keep running into aviation people, I just find the entounters a little higher than normal probability would predict. We moved on to Glacier Grey and took a 30 minute walk to the beach. Wow, the long beach surrounded by forest, the mountain range, the clear water, with bits of icebergs floating below the rocks was spellbinding. This was one of those moments when you realize just how tiny and insignificant you are in the shadow of natures immensity. To think this all might melt and be destroyed in the next decades in the name of ¨progress¨ halfway around the world is terrible. (yep, i will send in my greenpeace ck first thing when i get back haha).

Tags: Travel

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 13th, 2007 at 8:28 am and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.