Torres del Paine: the fellowship of the ring

So this weekend i finally got to go to chilean patagonia, specifically torres del paine. soooo beautiful. but firstly, my cumple!

last week was my birthday and it was such a blast! my dorm mates had multiple surprises (and cakes) for me, which was fantastic. in total about 5 different cake type things. scoooore. that night we had an asado (otra vez) and a little party which turned out to be quite the fiesta once our landlady left. kelsey and laura also brought over the supplies to make shamrock shakes which was fantastic since they don't have them here and y'all know how much i love them :). so basically this was a paragraph to say thanks to everyone for making my birthday so much fun. love you all!



and now back to the torres adventure. we left thursday night from the santiago airport to head to punta arenas (very very south chile). i forgot until we got there how much damage the airport sustained from the earthquake...so much so that we never actually got into the airport. everything was operating out of tents outside the airport and we had to take a bus directly to the plane in order to board. that was a bizarre experience and a huge reminder that the earthquake is still affecting everyone here. we finally got to board our flight to punta arenas and arrived there at about 3:00am...so with nothing to do until bus companies opened up, we took naps on the airport floor. que comodo! 6:30am finally rolled around and we found a bus to take us to puerto natales (about 3 hours away from punta arenas) where we loaded up on calories before taking another bus to torres del paine national park.

while in the park we did SOOO much hiking (obviously). over 20 hours worth. and for those of you who know how uncoordinated i am, it definitely was not the easiest thing in the world. we also camped...which meant limited showers. and you also know how i feel about showering. haha. but the discomfort was soo amazingly and totally worth it. once we left i felt so great knowing that i was able to see the things i was able to see and do something pretty far out of my comfort zone. and we got to see the two best things in the park: las torres and the glacier!






so yeah...torres was crazy beautiful. not a serene beauty, but a powerful, stately, intimidating beauty. it's really one of those places you look at and go "whoa. mother nature is amazing." beyond the beauty of the mountains and the landscape, there were some downsides as it was craaaaazy windy as well as pretty darn cold, especially for camping. i also kept looking at the torres and thinking how it reminded me so much of the evil mountain thing in lord of the rings. and considering all 7 of us were always hiking in a line we were pretty much the fellowship. hence the entry title :)here's some proof of the ridic wind-



and some random things:
1) when camping, consider packing a variety of food. for instance, my packing 12 peanut butter sandwiches and trail mix maybe was not the best idea. hard to swallow down that much PB after awhile.
2) when people say it might be cold, it will be. if you hear it rains a lot, it probably does. maaaaybe a good idea to pack appropriately. whoops.
3) using your highschool back pack for intense back packing might be a little uncomfortable.
4) why oh why did rafael nadal lose to ivan ljubicic at indian wells? seriously? ljubicic?! the loss of ranking points resulting in a slide back to number 4..ugh. this is going to be a rough year for me.


back to school this week...one of my classes still has not started! so hopefully i like the profe or i guess...well i'll just have to deal with it. haha sooo yeah that's it for now. the moral of the story is that if you ever get a chance to go to patagonia, go! it's rough but totally worth it. oh and if you're ever in puerto natales you should probably hit up patagonia dulce. seriously delish chocolate related things (brownies, hot chocolate, tortas...mmm). so that's it for now. left out some deets but too many and it's boring, right? chaooo for now.

i need what little piece of paper?!

this weekend six of us (me, john, laura, marc, ellie, and kelsey) went to mendoza, argentina for a few days...and here goes!

so we bought bus tickets for 7:30 am friday morning. this means i woke up at about 5:20 am, and i'm sure you can guess how thrilled i was about that. so anyways, we got to the bus station, lined up for the bus, and was asked by the bus driver for our documents. i handed him my passport and the paper i have to claim my chilean ID. what i didn't have was this random little paper they gave me at the airport without telling me it was important. ruuhhh ohh. only laura and ellie had actually brought that piece of paper and the rest of us were all ready to go back home and try and figure something out when the bus driver said "ahh no we'll figure it out. get on the bus." okay...so i was a little nervous that i would have to drive about 3 hours to the border only to get denied. but no! the driver actually made a special stop for us on the way there at the policia internacional. the office was in the middle of the andes mountains and when the bus stopped the driver made the four of us get out of the bus and RUN to the office. it was pretty much a border scene from a movie and i found the whole thing pretty hilarious. after speaking to the police, we got clearance and RAN back to the bus again. the bus ride took us over the andes and it was really pretty. seeeeee:



so then we got to the border where i got hit on by the border official and then i stood there while there was pointing and talking about me being bonita y linda. awkward. but we made it across the border and to mendoza. our hostel was actually really nice despite my first view of it being this absolutely gigantic man wearing nothing but aladdin pants. that night we had a good and cheap dinner ($5 for pasta, a drink, and dessert) and then went to the parade.

the reason for the parade was that this was the weekend of the festival de vendimia, which is the grape harvest festival. and this parade was CRAZY. there were tons of people there of all ages and it was really the older people who were pushing to the front. we couldn't really figure out why they were so excited until one of the beauty queens on the float threw a melon at us. they were throwing fruit, some pasta, wine, soda, and bits of meat off the floats. definitely unexpected but definitely really cool. it was really fun to scream "ACA!! ACA!!!" with the rest of the crowd as all the floats with beauty queens passed by.





i also enjoyed some cotton candy.

the next day we got up to go to another parade. this parade lasted FIVE HOURS! after the first hour we decided that instead of waiting for the parade to pass, we would just walk up it. so we walked all the way up to the beginning of the parade which was in a park where i made my first artesan purchase (handmade leather coin purse for $2...score). then we walked back and had lunch. at lunch john, marc, laura, kelsey and i split two bbqs...and these were quite the bbq. along with the more traditional fare of chicken drummy and ribs, there was tripe, kidney, and blood sausage. sick. i know some people like those parts, so i tried it and honestly ...gross! miscellaneous body parts always tend to be a bit chewy for me, and i've seen the process for making blood sausage and there was no way i could have liked it even if it tasted good (it didn't).

after lunch we got some helado and then went to another artesan market where i got a couple super cute pieces of jewelry for a total of $8. for whatever reason, mendoza was crazy cheap. i spent less than $75 there all weekend including the hostel.

that night we headed to the cerros (hills) in order to watch a concerty thing/beauty pageant that's a huge part of the festival. we brought with us some cheese, bread, manjar (mmmm), and wine. it was really fun (even though we couldn't see anything from our spot) because it was clearly one of those things only locals enjoyed and it was really cool being a part of that atmosphere.



after we listened to the announcer reading off every single vote for the top beauty queen ("Maaaaiippuuuuu!!! Juuuunin!) we headed back to the hostel. the next day was a bit of a bust, although we did get to see a sweet though possibly mentally damaged turtle named jorge, before boarding the bus back to santiago.

and now for a random aside: elliot yamin is really really annoying. he's barely famous in the US so I don't know if you know who he is, but he's an american idol loser who was in chile for the vina del mar music festival. First he was complaining about the concert saying it was a waste for him to come to the country. Next, he is exploiting the earthquake in order to get press. and then i read some weird thing where he was pleading for people to come get him out of chile because he didn't want to make the "perilous journey" to mendoza. seeeeeeriously. really not important, but really obnoxious mr. yamin. mini-rant over.

aaannnd that's it. i signed up for two of my classes today (quite the disorganized process) and i have my first day of class tomorrow!!! ay wish me luck, i'm basically a freshman again.