greymatters

Ushuaia was my last major stop on Llamaquest. Getting there was a pain because Aerolineas Argentinas is not good with last-minute schedule changes. But once I got there, I enjoyed a day of penguins and the beagle channel. My second day I went for a hike at valle des lobos and checked out the prison museum. Leaving there was even worse than arriving. Frustrations aside, it was definitely worthwhile.

Torres del Paine national park is one of the best hikes I have ever done. The landscape is varied, refugios comforting, and terrain not all that hard. Getting there involves a long bus ride from El Calafate to Puerto Natales. After that, Day 1 travels along the lake from Refugio Grande Paine to Refugio Grey. Day 2 I continued up to Campamento Guarda, then back to Refugio Grande Paine. Day 3 was a long trip from Refugio Grande Paine to Campamento Brittanico and then Refugio Cuernos. Day 4 could have been a simple trip to Refugio Chileno, but I added a rock scramble up to the Torres. Day 5 was the exit down to the ranger station and back to Puerto Natales. From there, it's another bus ride back from Puerto Natales to El Calafate.

( bonus images.... )

After a few days in relaxing buenos aires, I am ready to journey to patagonia and be active again. I begin with a day of glacier trekking.

( and a few bonus images )

I hadn't actually planned on trekking Fitz Roy, but with relatively little to do in El Calafate I bussed up to El Clalten. I hiked the Laguna Torre Trail and Poincenot Trial.

I'm jumping back into academic life by attending the MIT Global Operations Conference. This is run by the LGO (nee LFM) and focuses mostly on managing global supply chains. My manufacturing background focuses almost entirely on the factory floor, so this is an illuminating new way to think about a much bigger system.

The corporate types deliver slick talks with a message of "we did X and it had Y result." Of course, the speakers only discuss success so Y is a parade of victory and growth. There is little discussion of how they did X and why they rejected the alternatives. I can see why so many business discussions take the form of "What is our cloud/social networking/outsourcing strategy?". Some executive heard that X is a path to success. And it may very well be, but these talks have little support for why that is.

The academic talks are more nitty-gritty. Many take the form of comparisons across companies or industries for a pragmatic look at what works, when it works, and why it works. Or, more interestingly, why things fail. We learn about global compliance regimes for labor standards. We learn about open vs closed corporate architectures and what kind of markets they work in. We learn about creating products versus creating platforms. We learn about why logistics costs have increased from 9% to 10% of GDP since 2003. We boggle at the increased materials consumption of our economy and wonder what to do about it. I'm engaged and digging it. (It's also a reunion of my favorite MechE professors. Harry West and David Wallace are both here. Cool.)

The academics and corporate types all agree on a few things:

• The US is not an exciting market. It is saturated, static, stable, and old. US and EU sales merely provide a comfortable source of cash to enable entry into China, India, and Brazil. The middle class is exploding there. It's where all of the meaningful growth is going to be for the next generation.
• GM is dead. Everyone talks about it in the past tense. "Detroit" as a concept is synonymous with decay, decline, and a bottomless hole of debt. The most interesting idea here came from Charles Fine, which is that post-buyout GM had the opportunity to recast itself to be an integrated enterprise like Airbus: publicly owned, cozy with the unions, having collaborative supplier relationships. Airbus is sick, but Fine suggests that this architecture may be the right way to survive in a mature market. But they're not going that way, depriving us of a good case study.
• There is a casual dismissiveness about six-sigma manufacturing methodologies. Yes, they say, it's important. But if you apply robust methods to a wasteful process, all you get is a more reliable wasteful process.
• There is a new vocabulary I'm going to have to learn. ERP, SCM, BRIC, SCOR, GSCF, Keiretsu. I'll get it all soon enough, but I'll never be able to unselfconsciously say things like "We're going to uniquely advantage our integration."

Question for you: is this kind of thing interesting to you? Do you care? I'm trying to figure out how to blog my upcoming student life. One option is to split the blog into separate student and personal journals.

With Peru done, dr_sunflare flew off to Switzerland and I made for Buenos Aires. After all of the outdoor activity of the last few weeks, this is meant as a restful cosmopolitan trip. I spent 4 days here and enjoyed each of them: 1 2 3 4.

Uruguay rests on the eastern edge of the river from Buenos Aires. How could I resist another passport stamp with so little effort? Day 1 , Day 2

Biking the Sacred Valley. My writeup from the day focused heavily on the disaster at the end of the trip, but the first 80% was remarkable. During the major descent I wished I had a helmet-cam; this was the source of the best views and also required the most concentration.

We hiked the Inca Trail on days 1 2 3 and 4 .

We arrived at Machu Picchu late on Day 4, spent the night in Aguas Calientes, then toured the site for most of Day 5. The fog and clouds on day 5 were not great for visibility, but at least I walked away with a perspective different from the usual tourist postcard images.

I'm clearing out the technological cruft from my home entertainment center. Before consigning everything to the landfill, I am offering you the opportunity to pick through the technological bones. Everything here is up for grabs, for free. Just let me know if you want it.

• Working VCR & remote. RCA and coaxial outputs.
• Farscape, Season 1 (VHS). Maybe the best non-serious SF series ever. Heavy use of practical effects means that it still looks fresh.
• The X-Files, best of seasons 1 & 2 (VHS). See the show before it became a parody of itself!
• Movies on VHS: Pink Floyd the Wall, American History X
• Working 2x cassette deck, RCA inputs & outputs. (maybe taken)
• Cassette tapes. An embarrassing collection of classic rock and 80's music.
• 6 CD changer. Still works great.

Two years ago, I wondered how I was going to respond to the digital tv switchover. At the time I was considering buying an eye-TV and turning my mac into its own DVR. Little did I expect that the combination of Hulu and Netflix would enable me to ditch broadcast altogether.

Before I left for south america, zmook kindly excerpted some fine travel writing from Idle Words which closely mirrored my itinerary. Idle Words is a fantastic writer who inspires me to keep my own journals snappy. But in the end, maciej is better at this than I am. Here's a few choice quotes from the originals.

My favorite is the long rumination on argentinian food, with its breathless praise of the steaks and the utter bafflement about everything else. Especially dulce de leche:

Dulce de leche is a culinary cry for help. It says "save us, we are baffled and alone in the kitchen, we don't know what to do for dessert and we're going to boil condensed milk and sugar together until help arrives".

Also check out the follies of learning tango, with which I can definitely identify from my time in the studio back home:

A Partial List of Tango Mistakes I Have Made

• Torso too far forward
• Torso too far back
• Torso technically straight but still just wrong somehow

I had this line running through my head the entire time I was at Torres Del Paine:

A better name for this place would be Holy Sweet Mother of Jesus National Park, since this is what you will say the first time you set eyes on it.

But this was my favorite line from the same article:

Border formalities would be fun if not for the icy rain. On the Argentine side there are three conscripts, a drug beagle, and an old radio. The conscripts struggle with a hopeless Internet connection before giving up and waving everyone through. They have rigged a giant road sign on their side of the border reading LAS MALVINAS SON ARGENTINAS, in the same way a saner country might warn BRIDGES FREEZE BEFORE ROAD. I'm told that every land crossing to Argentina is rigged with these signs, preventing countless drivers from careening off the road due to geopolitical anxiety over the status of the Falkland Islands. The effect is somewhat like bringing a new friend home for Thanksgiving only to have your conservative uncle start ranting at him about politics.

And let's not forget El Chalten:

Concerned about the wobbliness of the local border, the province of Santa Cruz decided to take matters into its own hands and in 1985 mandated the creation of a town to help assert Argentine sovereignty (a phrase that correlates suspiciously with making people live in icy wastelands). The government duly trucked in all the essentials needed to build a small Argentine mountain town - bricks, sheet metal, steak, hundreds of stray dogs - and the town of El Chaltén was born.

Thanks, zmook!

Spend some time with the sights in lima and cusco A good introduction to the country.

.

Rafting the Apurimac River, day 1 day 2 day 3. It's hard to get good photos here. The camera is safely stowed during the whitewater portions. When we're stopped, the valley is always in shadow and the sky is bright. It's impossible to meter and impossibly beautiful.

...and with that I have hit my upload limit for flickr. Photos of mountain biking and the inca trail in December.

Thanks for following along. It was fun bringing you to south america with me. Here's the table of contents for the trip:

• lima
• cuzco
• apurimac 1 2 3
• biking
• inca trail 1 2 3 4 5
• cuzco 1 2
• buenos aires 1 2 3 4
• uruguay 1 2
• bue-fte
• glacier trekking
• trekking fitz roy 1 2
• fte-nat
• torres del paine 1 2 3 4 5
• nat-fte
• fte-ush
• penguins
• ushuaia
• ush-bue
• palermo 1 2

This was the longest vacation I have ever taken. I had a great time, but am also very glad to be home.

I am out of toothpaste, shampoo, and deodorant. Must be time to go home.

I spend most of the day walking around the more residential parts of palermo. Buenos Aires is an incredibly liveable city, and palermo seems to be its most liveable part. It's a lot like davis square with medium-density housing, funky independent shops, and shady streets. If it weren't for the heat I could see myself settling down here. It's more rewarding but harder to do souvenir shopping outside of the tourist zones. Less crap, cooler stuff, but also less appropriate as giftware. The best thing I find is thoroughly modern and also completely argentinian - a collapsible silicoln mate gourd. I love the blend of tradition and materials science. Sadly, I don't know anyone back home who likes mate.

The magic number with Aerolineas Argentinas seems to be "3". Get to the airport 3 hours early and you will get a ticket for the flight you have been promised. It's a long trip home with 3 connections and 2 border crossings. After 24 hours of travel, I arrive home, pet the dog, and collapse.

Items lost on the trip:

• Lonely Planet Peru
• Fleece hat
• Favorite Black Diamond gloves. Those things were awesome and irreplaceable.
• Yellow bandanna. (black bandanna present but severely injured)
• packtowel

Books read on the trip:

• Iain M. Banks - Matter - his newest Culture book. Satisfying ending, but takes about 80% of the book to really get moving.
• Devil May Care - the new james bond book. Given to me by a british backpacker in peru. Meh - read like a luxury goods catalogue.
• The Wind Up Bird Chronicles - not done yet. having a hard time becoming absorbed.
• Cory Doctorow - Makers - What is it with this man's obsession with Disneyland? (read ebook on iphone. convenient, until the battery dies)
• Iain Banks - Transition - serialized podcast novel. Good so far. Not done yet because all episodes are not yet released.

Good trip overall. Things I would do differently:

• Do mountain biking after the inca trail. Trying potentially injurious new things before a 5 day hike is not smart.
• Book Ushuaia trips with original itinerary. Aerolineas is not good at last-minute changes, which cost me hours of waiting around and painful uncertainty. I would still totally go to Ushuaia. With the heat of buenos aires, i am not sure I could have handled an entire week there after torres del paine.

This is not many changes with hindsight. Overall I think I ran a tight and varied itinerary which hit the sweet spot for experience saturation in each place I visited.

You can tell a lot from a culture by its city parks. Do they value public space? Green space? Is there an interest in animal habitat, hiking areas, cycling paths, art, or fitness equipment? The parks of Buenos Aires' Palermo region absolutely put the Boston Garden to shame and reflect quite well on the area. Times may be tough in argentina, but there is genuine pride here. I spend most of the day walking on red gravel paths dotted in fallen purple tree blossoms. Rose gardens, trellisses, bridges, botanical zones, and paddleboat ponds abound. I needed a low-key day to relax and this is absolutely perfect.

One highlight is the Japanese Gardens, a credible interpretation of the perfectly-proportioned outdoor spaces of hiroshima and kyoto. I am especially excited by the sushi restaurant as I haven't eaten any in weeks. The menu is pretty pedestrian, lots of california and philadelphia rolls. But they serve up a pretty good tekka maki and jasmine tea. There are lots of plazas and parks in this area named for other countries. I even find a Parque Pakistan. I don't know what jokester situated the Japanese Gardens right next to Plaza Alemania, and both of them just down the street from Plaza Italiano. Maybe the park layout happened before the Axis got together.

The islamic cultural center is also located in this neighborhood. Drawn by its medina-meets-modern architecture I stop by for the tour. It turns out to be 5 minutes of walking the facilities followed by a 30 minute amway-timeshare presentation on folding chairs. It's delivered entirely in spanish, so I don't know the content but presumably we are being told how awesome islam is. I like that the locals are asking lots of questions and that the guide answers them with good humor.

I had hoped to have some meaningful personal interaction with the tango here. A french couple in el chalten even recommended a good studio with drop-in intermediate classes. But with no decent shoes, no time, and no partner, I instead find myself herded into a small theater for one of Buenos Aires' many tourist tango shows. The skills on display are about the same level as the street busker tango show I saw way back on my first night in BA. (Which is to say incredible. This is barely the same dance I was taught.) The main difference is that there are more costume changes, the music is played by a live band, and there isn't equal time turned over to donation-soliciting as the dancing itself. I even have a front-row seat so I can smell the sweat of the performers. Profoundly touristy, but a fine way to spend my last night in town.

Instead of the usual continental breakfast of bread and cereal, by hostel sets out ingredients which include fresh eggs, a basket of oranges, and a juicer. The kitchen is open. I make myself omlettes with garlic and fresh OJ. It feels so great to have a pan under my hands again. This trip has been all eating out and I miss cooking for myself.

I had been thinking how lucky I have been to have spent a month in hostels without someone entering the dorm room at 3:30am and puking in the corner. Last night some blotto brazilian barfer fixed that for me. Watching him spend 20 minutes trying to scale to the top bunkbed with his pants around his ankles was schadenfreude fun but annoying for the racket. Maybe it's time to treat myself to a single room in buenos aires. (What is it with brazilians in hostels, anyway?)

Other hostel notes:
WIN - towels and soap
FAIL - no hot water
WIN - no smoking
FAIL - cats everywhere
FAIL - long walk uphill from the city center
WIN - beautiful sunrise views over the channel (above)

I spend the morning running errands and checking out a few more small museums. There is a lot of duplication with the presidum museum, but the historical governor´s palace has a lot of great photos from 1900-1950 when this place was a rough outpost without basic services. All that changed in 1952 when aerolineas added regular passenger service to ushuaia. Linked to the rest of the world, it took off to become the tourism and shipping center it is today.

I present myself at the airport 2.5 hours before my flight, figuring that this will give aerolineas enough time to process me through their kafkaesque organizational nightmare. I am wrong in this assumption. The list of reasons why they cannot place me on my reserved flight is so stupid that it makes me angry just to think about it. I spend the afternoon shuffling from queue to queue, being handed between indifferent staff. At some point, the machine spits out a perforated ticket and I find myself on a cramped, overhead MD-80 turbulencing its way to Buenos Aires.

One of the nice things about BA's late-night party culture is that you can fumble your way into your hostel dorm at 2am and not wake anyone up. It's a small gracenote after a frustrating day. As of today, I am officially defeated. I have had enough of travel and want it to end. Cripes, how do people do this for 6 months or a year at a time?

After trekking Fitz Roy and Torres Del Paine, I suppose anything is going to be a letdown. The mountains around Ushuaia are only about 3000ft tall, but they look much larger due to their 1000 ft treeline and craggy snowcapped peaks. I reflect on the irony of travelling to the end of the world to find weather and geologic conditions rather like New Hampshire in November. The hike to Laguna Esmerelda is notable mainly for passing through two peat bogs. The short summers here mean that little decomposition happens so the plant matter on the ground never quite compacts. There are kilometers of spongy, wet bogs at the base of the mountain range. I sproing-spoing-slosh through these, always careful to keep my ankles above water. The lake itself sits at the base of a mountain and a small glacier. If I saw this before Glaciar Grey, I might be impressed. Now it seems rather ho-hum. I had planned on hiking further up the mountain to go directly onto the glacier, but the snow is too deep and I posthole thigh-high not very far up the slope. Defeated, I head down to the lodge to await pickup.

The lodge is actually home base for a dogsledding operation. The owner used to compete in the Iditarod, but now maintains a 70-dog pack so that middle-aged package tourists can go for sled rides once the bogs freeze over. The dogs resemble their northern hemisphere cousins: lean, active, and one blue eye betraying some husky heritage. I sit by a fire in the lodge for a long time talking with the dogs' caretaker with his australian-inflected english. (he spent a while in adelaide doing emerging-markets sales for a winery there.) He's an interesting guy and it's great to speak with someone I'm not employing. He rants about Chileans, the American TSA, police corruption, Chileans, wine, americans who don't speak spanish, Chileans, the other mushers in the area, and Chileans. We share some mate and are old friends by the time my ride shows up. I notice some snowshoes stacked by the shed on my way out and wish I had thought to borrow a set. And maybe a sled dog. (It seems obscene to be doing this much hiking without canine assist.)

Back in town, I visit the old prison which has been turned into a maritime/historical/antarctic/contemporary art museum. It is cooler than it has any right to be. The government decided 100 years ago to build a prison for repeat offenders, the most heinous criminals, and political prisoners. In a place where modern heaters can barely keep the place warm in late spring, I can see how this place would be especially punishing. One of the five wings is restored to prison-condition with small shrines to the more infamous residents. One is left crumbling and unrestored for a flavor of what it was like when it was decommissioned after world war II. Another wing documents the maritime history of the region. Much like the excellent maritime museum in Halifax, this area is so tied to the sea that its oceangoing history really is the area's history. I groove on the replica of the Beagle and also read up on the indigenous Yamana people who were wiped out by smallpox and measles. They were uniquely adapted to coastal life, with short legs and long powerful arms suitable for paddling their tiny bark canoes. The arctic section was interesting for its director statement, which acknowledges that "antarctica is owned by everyone and noone". This is in direct contraction to the government message which always shows maps of argentina extending all the way to the south pole in a pie wedge between 72 and 25 degrees of longitude.

Dinner at what may be the most southerly irish pub in the world. King crab stew and toasted cheese sandwiches are perfect for the snowy, windy day outside. This is spring at 53 degrees latitude.

10:30am: I am facedown on a rocky pile of penguin guano and feathers. It is telling that I prefer this to yesterday's encounter with Aerolineas Argentinas.

I am on penguin safari, the main motivator of this trip to the bottom of the world. We drive far out of town and cross the channel in a zodiac, then quietly make landfall on the penguin rookery. Our guide, Anna, is strict with the rules: don't crouch down near a burrow, no sudden movements, no noise. There are two species of penguins here, one of which digs burrows in the soft earth and the other incubates on rock cone nests. Unfortunately, we are a week too early for hatching so there are no fluffy little penguin chicks. From what I have seen of penguins in zoos and aquaria, the behavior here in the wild is not all that different. But it's cool just the same to have such direct contact in their actual habitat. We are required to stay 3m away from the birds at all times, but there is a loophole. If you stay still, the penguins can investigate you all they want. We are advised to minimize our profile, either by sitting or laying prone. (would you walk up to something 10x bigger than you?) That is why I am facedown on the beach. It works. Two penguins eventually approach and I see them from arm's-length before they waddle back into the water. It's refreshing to have an encounter with an animal in south america which doesn't involve eating it.

After the rookery trip, we warm up with tea at estancia halberton. To most guests, it's a cafeteria and a toilet. I find a book of press clippings for the place going back to 1940. It turns out that this place has been an active sheep ranch going back to the first missionaries in the region in 1860. It became famous when a teacher/biologist from Ohio travelled down here to see the place, married the ranch owner, and spent the rest of her life documenting the flora and fauna of the region. Lots of articles with names like "Housewife at the end of the world" and even a few national geographic pieces. Why don't the tour operators tell us about how special this place is?

Back in town I sign up for a harbor cruise with the operators running the smallest boat available. (Most are 100-person catamarans, mine is a 10-person cabin cruiser.) We head out into the Beagle Channel and I am suddenly following a historical legend. Captain FitzRoy ran this channel on both voyages of the Beagle. This is the first time my path has intersected so closely with Charles Darwin's. And what a path it is. Snowy mountains rise on both sides of a waterway which extends from horizon to horizon. We check out some lazily sunning sea lions, a cormorant colony, and the world's southermost lighthouse. (it's much smaller than it appears in the photos) There is usually so much wind in the channel that trips are cancelled all the time. We are lucky with blue sky and calm seas, so I perch myself on the bow and dangle my feet over the gunwales. Once again, I long to have my kayak. (Though the constant 3kt current would make all trips one-way.)

I may have had dinner at the southernmost chinese restaurant in the world. Unless there is one at McMurdoh. Which, now that I think of it, I suspect there is.

Despite the problems getting here I am glad I was able to switch my flight. I like buenos aires, but this frigid place suits me better.

disaster strikes. aerolineas argentinas is saddled with a lumbering soviet-style bureaucracy which refuses to do the right thing or even agree with itself. i had been happy that i was able to change my buenos aires flight to visit ushuaia. but the phone rep's reality does not agree with the gate agent's reality. i am now stranded in el calafate's tiny airport, future uncertain. so angry it is hard to type on the iphone keyboard.

update: got to ushuaia eventually. it's a hardscrabble little town stuck to the bottom of south america. the scenery is awesome (more on this tomorrow) but the city itself looks like every other cruise-ship port in the world. All-you-can-eat buffet restaurants compete for space with jewelry shops and liquor/cigarette/perfume dutyfree. Fortunately, the cruise season hasn't started yet and the town has the shoulder-season feel of expectations and preparations.

My precious bandanna was killed in action this morning, developing a big tear along the midsection. Oh, bandanna, you served me well. Such a simple thing can be a facemask, headgear, blindfold, towel, glasses cleaner, bandage, ascot, and sponge. Curiously, none of the many outdoor shops in town sells bandannas. Curse you!

The flight into town is pretty cool. Sunset dapples the mountains and water with pools of orange light. The airport is the only flat part of town, built on an island in the channel. I can't get to my camera in time, so today's photo is actually stolen from tomorrow's harbor cruise.

travel, argentina, ushuaia, airtravelsucks

you know that your hostel is not the best-appointed when item 7 on the Shower Survival Guide is "don't look too closely at the showers"

today is spent mostly in transit back to el calafate. nothing much to report other than that several folks from Refugio Chileno made the same journey, so many of us are sticking together for an unprecedented third day after two bus rides and a border crossing. It's almost cozy to have this multinational nomadic family.

argentines are famously concerned with their personal appearance. morning television is packed with infomercials for a variety of dodgy dietary supplements, teas, girdles, home-fitness equipment, meal plans, and other low-effort miracle slimming products. someone mentions that buenos aires has the highest rate of bulemia in the world, however you measure that. it's kind of depressing.

i may have figured out the reason for so many dutch people travelling in argentina. Really, this tiny underwater nation of 16 million people is sending out more representatives than germany, france, or the US. My theory: the crown prince of the netherlands is dating an argentinian woman. Argentina makes the news in some capacity on a weekly basis there. You can't buy that kind of awareness. I suspect that the dutch just think about this country more than other european countries. I'll let you know if I see any south carolinians inspired by mark sanford.

Bus time is a time to catch up on podcasts. Notable: Radiolab broadcast a story about "helicopter boy", a kid who made a harness out of duct tape and jumped out of a tree with a cardboard propeller. The kid says that he can't understand his mother's lectures, but loves radiolab so Jad and Robert sound-produce a lecture on "always think things through to the end". It is beautiful.

Also, I listen to the Moth podcast. It is a storytelling series started in new york. The content is good, but very NY-centric. The stories all come from self-centered neurotics in publishing, fashion, or c-level acting gigs. Now that the series has expanded, the first detroit story is a gritty story of love, resourcefulness, and rust-belt reality. It's a breath of fresh air.

No photos worth taking today, so the image above is another one from Torres del Paine. It´s from Day 3, looking east on the Valles Frances. Incidentally, this posting is so late because the hostel computers in Ushuaia are so antiquated that they don't even have USB ports.

Missing home, missing dr_sunflare, missing kaya, missing my friends, missing having my own fridge.

i had planned on hiking to the torres this morning, but since i did that yesterday i see no reason to repeat the scramble. i fall out of bed at 5:30 to photograph the towers from afar as the rising sun paints them red. then i go back to sleep because, really, i don't have much to do today.

it is a mere 2 hour hike hown to the technical endpoint, a posh hosteria built for the higher-end park guest. i visit their bar mostly to charge the phone. it's hard to believe that their spa opens AFTER the bus leaves back for puerto natales. maybe their staff doesn't want to touch smelly backpackers or let us befoul the jacuzzi.

for lack of anything better to do i hike down to the park ranger office, where i meet the good folks from dinner last night at refugio chileno. we watch the herds of agile guanaco while we wait for the bus. (a sleeker version of a llama. this is the third andean cameloid species I have seen on this trip. according to the best av talk thread ever, lorenzo lamas' archenemy is either alfonzo alpaca or guiseppe guanaco. watch the trailer for the awful movie, too. it looks like a classic of western civilization. anyone want a screening of "mega-shark vs giant octopus" when i get home? and what will this do to my netflix recommendation set if i do rent it?)

the bus to the park contained a nervous energy, the general air of possibility. the return bus is all accomplishment and exhaustion, with the air of weapons-grade trekker mank. now i see why a plexiglass wall divides the driver and passengers. laundry desperately needs to be done.

i enjoy a shower, fresh change of clothes, and a massage back in town. we have a sort of refugio chileno reunion for dinner. it's an excellent african-andean place which dares to put SAUCES on its meat. such a refreshing change. After a Friday the 13th party at my hostel, it is time for some much-needed sleep.

torres del paine was a pain to fit into my itinerary. it is a long bus ride from calafate, but totally worth it. day 4 at the torres will definitely be a high point

the lady delivering the w-trek briefing claimed that the Torres are oversold. if you must cut out one part of the trek, she said, eliminate this one. clearly, she is insane:

but i get ahead of myself.

after yesterday's long march, i need an easy day. the hike to refugio chileno is a mere 5 hours. the day begins in pelting rain, which confirms a course of limited ambition. (at least i don't feel stupid for bringing along my rain pants anymore). i speed off in search of the unmarked shortcut which will cut out some unwanted PUD.

when i reach chileno, i notice two things: (1) a "ski mad river glen" sticker in the window reminding me of home, and (2) glorious blue skies. i had planned on ascending to the Torres on the morning of day 5, but in patagonia you take your opportunities when they arrive.

and what an opportunity it is. the hike is the first serious up i have had since entering the park, terminating in a scramble over loose boulders. rising to the mirador, an achingly beautiful view appears. most of the photos of the torres show only the magestic triple spires. little do i know that there is also a snowfield and a lake below. light clouds form and twist around the towers, but the view is never obscured. all of the westbound trekkers i spoke with have reported nothing but heavy fog here, so i consider myself lucky.

my last trip to chile was 3 years ago and my travelling companion was a treo 650. in almost every aspect the iphone is a more capable piece of hardware, but apple's reluctance to license the dock connector for anything but audio means that the awesome folding full-size keyboard i used last time is unavailable. you would at least be getting more capital letters if the iphone soft keyboard automatically hit shift after a period. come on, steve.

friendly staff and warm hikers at refugio chileno. a perfect way to end an unexpectedly rewarding day.

this is the longest day of the "w" circuit. two hours to campamento italiano, 3 hours to the mirador above campamento brittanico, 3 hours back to italiano, and 2 hours to refugio cuernos. that is a long day with a full pack on your back. it can be shortened by removing any amount of the valle frances, but as the (supposedly) most beautiful part of the park it is a big pity if you do.

my best pictures all day come when i leave the refugio pre-dawn. wind blows droplets down azure lago pehoe, where they are backlit to golden by the wakening sun. a perfect crescent moon still hangs in a mostly- cloudless sky. after an hour of this, clouds appear. while i still enjoy the mysterious peeks at the peaks, the camera doesn't.

the glaciar frances hangs off cerro paine grande, and precariously. most of today's walk is up and down the valley accompanied by the thunder-like crackboomswish of avalanches. unfortunately, by the time you hear an avalanche it is already over. a waterfall of ice is all that remains.

refugio cuernos is a welcome change after paine grande. small, but with high ceilings and big windows facing the mountains. (and triple- decker bunkbeds. certain death!)

i think that i have figured out why some people think that the refugio staff are rude. the refugios are run strictly as profit-making institutions. if you buy all your meals there, the staff are gracious and helpful. if you try to do anything off the map (like request hot water to make oatmeal) they will either refuse or try to figure out some way to charge you for it. i can see why trekking under the Rules of Acquisition would rub some the wrong way.