This Chilean rancher (poblador) on my flight today...

...had an ENTIRE SHEEP CARCASS in his checked baggage.

How do I know this?  Because the bag broke and the legs were poking out on the baggage conveyor belt.  Going round and round...

Back from the wild

Back from San Lorenzo after 5 weeks of  learning how to live in the wildnerness with NOLS, while keeping our fingers crossed for a summit attempt..

My buddy Plavs had a cool idea - take daily pics and see what happens.

So this is what 30 days in the wilderness looks like:

Before:

5 weeks in the wilderness, a snowstorm, 2 glaciers and 53 pounds of camp food later: (with a couple of years of office life thrown in the mix)

Will be updating more often now that there are internet cafes nearby...

Coyhaique

Colorful houses to beat back the winter gloom.

German influence downtown.

Modern art or a trash can downtown?  It´s a trash can.

It could be any house in the suburbs until you notice the stovepipes coming out of every room!

Random Tom Friedman-esqe social observation: you realize how small the world really is when you fly to the end of the earth, check into an internet cafe, and the 40 year old Chilean next to you is... checking family photos on facebook! 

...or when they play Maroon 5 at the local grill.

So the funny thing is, on a map, Coyhaique is at the end of the world. 

But culturally, itcould be a suburb of Denver.  There are supermarkets, free Wi-Fi, Coronas at the restaurant, a North Face store downtown, SUVs, and teenagers on their cell phones - it´s all here.  Even a GNC if you want to stock up on vitamins to be a little more macho. 

It´s a little more quiet, and it all has a Latin flavor to it, but you wouldn´t be crazy if you thought you were a lot closer to the US.

welcome to patagonia!

wow, finally arrived in Balmaceda airport after 36 hours of travel!

pictures can´t do the place justice but it´s worth trying.  feels like the west before people showed up!  the largest city for hundreds of miles is coyhaique - population 45,000.

the b&b where i´m staying is old school too... practically a log cabin with a wood stove in every room.  i feel like i´m inside an episode of the history channel or something.

and if you´re wondering where legal gets all those fish flown in every day... the plane was loaded with tons of frozen ´pescado´.  guessing they go through santiago and then onto o´hare, new york, or toronto where they are delivered to restaurants the next morning...

and another random fact - people here don´t drink fresh coffee!  only the instant kind, because the fresh kind is too expensive.  apparantely coffee roasting is capital intensive, and its a big source of hard currency for many latin american countries, so they prefer to export it for dollars rather than consume it locally (not that chile produces a lot anyway...)

2 days until my episode of into the wild starts - 5 weeks living in tents in some of the world´s last true wilderness.  it is hard to grow much here and expensive to export so the land is still mostly unsettled.

Is it a cactus?  Or a palm?

Coyhaique - boom town in central Patagonia. 

View with some fresh air, a breeze and sunshine to appreciate the setting.

It depends on what you mean by "highway"

Highway 1 in Chile



"Highway" 3 in Peru

So I learn something everyday as I research this route...

It turns out Chile has great roads. 

Peru, not so much.

Beware that, aside from a few major roads which are in good condition, most roads are unpaved and your speed on them will be severely restricted. For these roads a 4WD is necessary. This is especially true during the rainy season from November to April.