PATAGONIA; EL FIN DEL MUNDO

Patagonia…
One week spent forming incredible lifelong friendships, learning new things, meeting new people, conversing with strangers in a foreign language, adventuring, exploring, and making mischief, all in one of the most beautiful places in the entire world. It was an experience I will never ever forget; the experience of a lifetime. I am so blessed.

Thank you Rotary, my family, and everyone else who made this possible for me.

Day 1:
The six of us arrived at the terminal de buses at 5:45pm, said goodbye to our families, and begun our adventure. It was a three hour drive to Santiago, unexpectedly extended by 25 minutes because of a flat tire. I think it might've been the best time I have ever spent on a bus; the six of us became really close in those three and a half hours. We g
Arrived at the Santiago airport around 10, and spent the three hours before our flight left tiredly re-meeting all the other exchange students. Kelly and I did happen to find the one open dunkin doughnuts in the whole building, and nearly died of happiness.

Day 2: slept on the airplane, then spent the rest of the day on the bus, sleeping on and off and enjoying the scenery. We stopped a few times to take pictures. We arrived at the Refugio that evening, and as soon as we figured out our rooms, we all took naps. Brigid, Kelly and I woke up and decided to explore, and ended up being chased off of a mountain by a VERY ANGRY wild horse who apParently did not like the idea of foreigners looking at his glacial mountain stream. We ate dinner at the Refugio, and it was some of the best food I have ever eaten.

Day 3: we woke up early, ate the best oatmeal I have ever had, and got ready for our 18 km day hike up to the Torres del Paine. After walking for about 30 minutes, someone realized that Alex from Germany was missing (because our three counselors, as amazing as they were, were not good with headcounts). So Taylor, Zach from Kansas, and Mathieu from France volunteered to go back and search for him. Personally, I was hoping that he was ABOUT to be attacked by a puma so that I could go fight it off, but it turns out he had decided to go on a walk after breakfast and we had left without him. It was nice though, just walking with the five of us and not all 42, an it turns out our rescue group BOOKED IT up the mountain, because, even though we were an hour behind everyone else, we got the the halfway point five minutes after everyone else did. So we felt pretty proud of ourselves. And to make it even better, our counselor, Ernesto, told Alex that he had to buy us all a beer when we got to Puente Arenas for our trouble. :) We got to the base of the Torres, ate lunch, took pictures, watched a few crazy boys strip and swim in the lake, and then hiked the rest of the way back down.

Day 4: got up, packed our backpacks, and hiked 11 km to the next Refugio. We stayed right on the lake, and it was super pretty, it wa probably my favorite campsite. When we arrived it was raining and we had to set up our tents in the rain. It rained all night and was freezing cold, but thankfully it was the only night I had to sleep in a tent.

Day 5: a day hike was planned, but the weather was pretty bad, everyone had blisters or other pains, and the only two trails were the one we ame in on and the one we were gonna leave on, so we just stayed in instead. Kelly and Casey and I learned Tai Chi from Arturo, our counselor, and we did Tai Chi by the side of the lake. It was super peaceful. Then I hung out with Taylor and Constantin from Germany in the counselor's room which was awesome (it had three-story bunkbeds and was super cozy and cabin-y) and we had a massage exchange and then a dance party. And then about half of the exchange students stripped to their underwear and swam in the icy lake, and I'm glad I didn't do that but it was fun watching them.

Day 6: thanksgiving! We hiked 13 km to the last Refugio, and it was probably the prettiest hike and also the flatest, which was a godsend, because I had four terrible huge painful blisters which I am still recovering from now. While on the trail, I met a man from Orange County who was studying at HSU, and even though I didn't get to talk to him from very long, it was still super exciting. We ate lunch at the Refugio, and it was pretty bad (but the food at every other Refugio was delicious, so I can't complain too much). Then we spent the rest of the day just hanging out.

Day 7: we were supposed to go on a day hike to see a glacier, which would've been amazing, but it was raining hard and there were 70 mph winds, so that plan was cancelled. Instead our counselors gave us the whole day to make up a skit which would be performed before dinner. My group came up with a skit entitled "the true story of where Alex was" or "la verdad historia de donde estan Alex" which entitled the five other group members hiking and complaining about the weight of their backpacks and commenting on the views and wondering where Alex is, and at the end of the skit, they turn around, and I am riding in Santiago's backpack carrying a sign that says "hi, my name is Alex". Alex found it hilarious. And yes, apparently I AM small enough to fit in a hiking backpack. Who knew. Afterwards, we got a talk from some rangers, ate dinner, and then about a dozen of us braved the wind and rain to climb the mountain that was right next to the Refugio. We pretty much had to scramble up on our hands and feet, and I nearly got blown off anyway. Taylor, Constantin, and I stayed long enough to take some pictures with flags and then got the heck outta there.

Day 8: we got up and took the boat across the lake, and then took the bus back to Puente Arenas. We had an hour to walk around the city, so Taylor, Mayella, Kelly and I walked to the plaza and bought alpaca sweaters. Then we accidentally found this pub that had a secret entrance under a building we were taking pictures of, so we took pictures with the waiters. Then we went to dinner with everyone else. Then we hung out in the hotel and I got to use the wifi to skype my parents.

Day 9: we had a bus tour of Puente Arenas and visited the cemetery which was super cool because Chilean cemetaries are NOT like American ones. They are super colorful and each grave has a little garden with lots of flowers and some of them are so crazy looking they look like advertisements for a circus. Many of them have little window boxes with pictures of people who died. It was really interesting. It was also cool because only about half of the tombstones were written in Spanish; there was a lot of English and German and Croatian. We had lunch together an then had a free afternoon. A dozen of us decided to take a collectivo to the Zona de Franca, the tax free zone, which didn't end up being that exciting because it was Sunday and most of the stores were closed. But it was fun anyway 'cause we crammed a ton of people into one collectivo and had interesting discussions with the taxi drivers. And a few of us bought Austral (the most southern region of chile) flags and later got everyone to sign them. Then we walked around for awhile, watched firefighters in a relay race on the plaza, and then Kelly, Taylor, Zach, Alex, and I broke off from the rest of the group because we wanted churros, and we couldn't find any open because it was Sunday, but we did run into Brigid and Olivia and Briana, so the eight of us found a pub to eat dinner at. We watched soccer and throughly confused the waitress with our complicated sandwich orders, but it was delicious and the waitress was really nice, and we ha a lot of fun. Then we met everyone back up at the hotel and got our backpacks and took the bus to the airport. We got back to Santiago around 3 in the morning and there were a lot of sad goodbyes.

Day 10: the six of us Talcans went to Alex's house where we had breakfast and slept for an hour, and then Arturo and Ernesto took us to the bus terminal where we took the 6 o clock bus back to Talca. I got home around 10 am, fell immediately asleep and woke up at 7pm, only because the boys got home and were loud, of course.

Day 11: I slept in long, uploaded my pictures to facebook, got pissed at the computer, and am now lying in the grass in the sun listening to Calle 13 and writing in my blog. And it is nice!

Tomorrow back at school!