Cajon del Maipu and Ranger Rachel

Something I forgot to mention before: on the bus ride from Putre to Arica I noticed a run-down roadside restaurant called Markamasi (say it with a normal American accent). Anyone who is a UPS volleyball fan would definitely have stopped here.

After an afternoon paragliding in Iquique, I took the long bus ride to Santiago, made even longer by out-of-synch episodes of The Nanny. I didn´t stay in Santiago, instead making my way by bus 95km away to Cajon del Maipu, where Refugio Lo Valdes (also known as Refugio Aleman) awaited me. Once again there was no public transportation all the way there, so I hitched a ride with a dump truck driver to Baños Morales, where the refugio is. The refugio was a surprise-- a rock building with wood shutters in contrasting colors, just like the third generation huts of Switzerland. The similarity comes from the fact that the refugio was built by Germans, members of the Andean German Climbing Club. The decorating motif was edelweiss flowers, which seems pretty funny for the outskirts of Santiago. I slept in la mina, the attic, where I just rolled my sleeping bag out on a mat. (I read on the sleeping bag company website that I should avoid washing the sleeping bag... always, so that means I will go an entire year leaving it smelling just as it is... anyone want to go camping??).

In the morning I walked over the river in the valley to el Monumento Nacional El Morado. The CONAF (ranger) building at the entranced was staffed and I paid an entrance fee of $3. I walked past burbling red streams full of minerals to a quietly rippling lake at the base of a glacier. On the way back, I stopped to check out at the CONAF office and the ranger on duty (or off duty, as it turned out) asked me up on the balcony for a cerveza. I said ¿como no? and climbed up, nearly hitting one of the guys sitting on the bench with my poles. Oops.

The conversation that followed was one of the best I´ve had since the start of my Watson project. In Switzerland and India, I could talk to the locals, but I didn´t have enough of a command of their languages to get very deep. But here, with Ranger Guillermo, I finally got to discussing how wilderness should be according to Chileans. Perfect. That is exactly why I was there. I stayed watching the sun set on the vertical curtain rocks across the valley, then went back to my refugio for the night, satisfied with my invitation to return to the CONAF office the following day.

I hiked another valley that day, but, hindered by the strong wind and a wandering mind, I walked fewer kilometers. In the afternoon, I stopped at the refugio to get my pack, almost falling asleep in a lounge chair looking out at the snowy peaks (with, sure enough, German chatter in the background). My pack, decidedly heavier than one week ago, is full of books in Spanish--I am ready to spend the long bus rides catching up on South American literature since my Spanish major had a decidedly peninsular bend. I had a coffee with Guillermo the ranger back at the hut as the last walkers of the day wandered down from the glacier. We made two big loaves of bread together and spent the night talking with Fernando, the other ranger, and el viejito, whose name I never caught. We discussed why there were no women working at the CONAF station and the machista mindset that keeps them from working elsewhere. I got to take a photo in Guillermo´s official looking park ranger hut and even snuck the rubber duck in for a shot or two. In the morning, I ate more homemade bread and scrambled eggs out of a shared skillet with my new ranger friends before heading down the road. I got a ride to Santiago before I even hit the crossroads.

Now I am sweating away in the big city and the locals rush around doing Christmas shopping. My thoughts are back home as today is the first night of Hanukkah (no wild Hanukkah in Santa Monica parties for me). Tomorrow I meet Carolyn at the airport and we head south to Patagonia in search of refugios in Torres del Paine.