Gormanka and Warmi Do Salkantay

Peru was an endless adventure with my friend Katie Gorman and absolutely the most fun I have ever had on a trip or a trek to date. I’ve been pretty overwhelmed thinking of how to approach writing this post because there is just so much to be said, so now it is incredibly long and I still know I’ve left out quite a bit. Grab a cup of tea and settle in, here’s a go!

Flying over the Andes alpenglow, Mendoza to Santiago

The adventure started before we’d even left Mendoza, thanks to customs and the Argentina visa system not having it’s act together. My study abroad program had us start our student visa process in February, but we haven’t heard about it since. As Katie and I were getting our passports checked out, we learned that our 90 days of tourist time was expired—we’d been in the country for 92 days. We got rerouted into the customs office and had a rough conversation with a rather mean officer that ended in us being labeled illegal immigrants and having to pay 300 pesos (about US$60) to leave the country. We had really no choice in the matter even if it was a 2 day difference, and paid the fee to leave. Upon returning I have learned that this was not the

Sleeping in the Lima airport, take one

same fee for my student visa, so I have to pay another 300 pesos for that, and that the fee we paid in the airport is rarely, if ever, enforced. Plus, I finally got my notification to pick up my student visa now, upon returning to Argentina. Talk about awful (and expensive) luck.

Afternoon light on the hills of Cusco, from the Plaza de Armas

I was quite surprised by how much we liked Cusco. The city is most definitely a city, but I felt far safer than I have felt in my time in Mendoza. This is most likely because the centro is absolutely crawling with tourists, even in the pre-high season window we visited in. We spent hours just wandering along the steep hills of the city along the cobblestone streets, looking at the whitewashed walls and deep indigo entryways that seem to not just be a trend but a requirement. The architecture was not nearly as European as Argentina and quite clearly a confluence between Incan style and Spanish colonialism. This was much more apparent in the last town we spent time in, Ollantaytambo, but Cusco still had beautiful Spanish cathedrals to boast. Katie and I spent an entire afternoon perched in a café balcony drawing the Plaza de Armas followed by sitting on the sunny cathedral steps, where we ended up meeting quite a few Cusqueños.

Cusco day one after a 6am arrival

Peru is debatably the friendliest South American country I have visited thus far, and we had a great time talking to just about anyone, thanks to both of us speaking Castellano. We spoke with almost every Peruvian guide who passed us on the trail and made a point of talking to as many folks as we could. We were very proud of our continued “cool gringa” status throughout the trip and met some truly interesting folks, from the very first taxi driver teaching us basic Quechua (warmi means woman) to the woman in La Playa who survived and continued to live in the valley after a 1970s landslide wiped out the entire city to the bunch of Brazilian ragamuffins in Ollantaytambo who have lived across the globe in pursuit of mountain biking. Every single person we met was nice and helpful beyond compare. My personal favorite was on our fourth day of hiking, when Katie and I collapsed in a grove of banana trees on the side of the road to plan our next move. A super adorable old woman had been sitting outside her small adobe house across the street and disappeared for a moment inside while we were talking, before reappearing outside to observe the comings and goings. When we got up to continue walking, she came to the front of her small garden and handed us a partially green mandarin orange without a word, and then returned to her perch. We were shocked and so thankful, and we ate it right there. I could not stop thinking about her kindness for the rest of the day.

Hitchhiking ride #1 approaching Nevado Salkantay

I was fairly nervous to leave Cusco since information on finding a ride to Mollepata is spotty at best, but we got some help from two Cusqueñas on the street, who tracked down the van stop with us the day before. We were in a taxi to drive us right to where the minivan rides leave Cusco at the end of Avenida Arcopata by 4:30 in the morning (it was around the corner from our hostel, but early morning robberies of walking backpackers are common), miraculously found two spots in a van, and were out of the city by 4:45. We started hiking from Mollepata after the two hour van ride for our first day that was bound to be very long to Soraypampa.

Campsite night one, Salkantaypampa at 4,100m

After quite a few kilometers, we decided to opt for hitchhiking and ended up in the back of a truck with a guided group of gringos and their mountains of stuff, which got us to Soraypampa well before noon. Good thing, because the road from Mollepata to Soraypampa appeared to be quite a bit longer than we planned, although beautiful nonetheless. Considering we’d been feeling great at altitude, we decided to ascend 100 meters more than planned that afternoon and ended up being the lone tent on the beautiful pampa of Salkantaypampa at 4,100m, just below one of the most magnificent mountains I have ever seen in my entire life. It was so cold when the sun dipped below the peaks at that altitude that we ate dinner by 3:30 in the afternoon and were in the tent no later than 5, reading Game of Thrones aloud in absurd British accents and trying to keep our toes warm.

The best lunch spot around, just below the pass

This was when health status began to deteriorate, although not for altitude reasons. Actually, altitude-sickness-wise, both Katie and I were completely dandy for the entire trip by taking ibuprofen regularly, drinking plenty of coca tea, and being responsible about not ascending more than 500 meters per day between campsites. Nonetheless, I got violently sick in the middle of the night and didn’t sleep at all, right before our second and most difficult day. The next morning I still felt it best for us to go for it, and we took our sweet time ascending the 4,600m pass. This was definitely a difficult hike, but the views made the pain and low oxygen worth it. I cannot even begin to describe how beautiful this entire landscape was in words, but we decided it was a confluence of what we imagined Ireland and the Himalayas would look like together. With speckled lichen covering the rocky pampas below the intricate masterpiece of Nevado Salkantay (Savage Mountain, 6,271m) and glaciers perched precariously on its snow-dusted slopes, it was almost as difficult to hike the pass as it was to tear your eyes away from the view and back to your footing as we ascended. We stopped for lunch just below the pass after reaching it in order to enjoy the landscape and listen to the rumble of distant avalanches as the clouds began to flood in. By midday, we were the last group of trekkers to reach the pass, but this was understandable—during our entire five days on the trail, Katie and I were the only trekkers we encountered carrying all our own gear. Literally every other non-guide on the trail was part of a paid tour group and had pack mules carrying everything other than their extra layers and during-hike water. I was pretty surprised by the lack of other solo hikers, but we still got mad respect from every guide group we encountered. Mountain woman points to the max, indeed.

Campsite night two

The second night campground was hands-down the best tentsite I have ever had and probably ever will. By mid-afternoon of our pass day, we settled on an unnamed pampas probably slightly below our first campsite altitude and both collapsed on our sleeping pads right in the open amongst the grazing horses for the last hour or so of sunlight. It was a warmer night and we were actually able to sit outside our tent in our layers as the peaks above us lit up in alpenglow and the stars began to peek out of the dark sky. It was truly the most beautiful place to just sit with our coca tea and dehydrated potatoes and stare in awe at the landscape, hoping to catch sight of the avalanches we heard. Our next morning, we passed through a pampas below our campsite that I now regard as the most beautiful place I have ever been. Between the pass and that pampas, I cannot fathom spending time in a more beautiful place and I am so happy to have been able to enjoy it for our first few days on the trail.

Nevado Huamantay, from campsite night two

Now the hiking was much easier, with the altitude descending and the temperature rising as we passed into the Peruvian jungle. This was a complete shock to me—jungle? I had been so focused on the highest altitude I have ever hiked that I completely didn’t think that the lower altitudes are indeed a banana and avocado tree forested land of bright flowers and lush jungle. We now started encountering small and isolated towns, plus guided groups and even a trio of mountain bikers who whipped past us at one point. Our plan to hike from Andenes to La Playa was already a long haul and we learned that we had camped about two hours before Andenes. The problem was, a campsite before La Playa would have to be a backyard along the road we were now hiking from the town of Collpapampa. Two motorcyclists offered we could pitch our tent at a friend’s house up the road—good, now we had an option. 

One of our fellow passengers

Soon after, however, we managed to catch a hitchhike that will forever put my few other hitchhiking experiences to shame. Instead of a guide group in the back of the truck, this time Katie and I smooshed ourselves standing in the back with four bull cows, the closest of which tied up on its side and allegedly sick for a reason we never really figured out. Despite driving slowly, the ride was still an hour-long fear of having our legs crushed or impaled by the bulls getting jostled around in the truckbed or the sick bull occasionally thrashing violently. We used our backpacks as protection between us and the horns and clung to the overhead bars for dear life. A few minutes in, we passed the friend’s house previously mentioned: turns out the “friends” were no less than 20 Peruvian construction workers. After seeing that, we both whole-heartedly took the ride with the bulls over the night staying with twenty construction worker men. I am still thankful beyond belief for catching (and surviving) this hitchhike.

Fernandito the camp cooking kitten

We ended up in La Playa after the ride with the cows, which made our final two days on the trail much more possible. This campsite was at the end of the town and owned by a very nice woman who sat and talked with us during dinner. My favorite part of this camp was the kitten that came with it, who is officially the best camp cooking cat around. Fernando was a loving terror who attached himself to Katie and me. In the middle of the night, we both woke up to a kitten silhouette on the side of the tent as Fernando attacked the side of our tent wherever we moved. He even jumped up on top of the tent (luckily not collapsing it or getting his claws stuck) and eventually let us be after much whacking on the sides of the tent and calls of “Fernando! Get off the tent!” by us. I can officially say now that I did indeed get attacked by a puma in my tent while in South America, although that puma was a feral yellow tabby kitten.

Banana trees all over the place

Our fourth day of hiking was a calm, hot, and slow plow along a road through the jungle that we filled with plenty of singing and fairly ridiculous lengths of speaking in absurd accents just because we were kind of out of it by this point. All was well until we reached Santa Teresa, the low-altitude alternative to our itinerary, when we ended up out on this hot and shadeless wasteland of a roadway in search of fabled hot springs. This was probably the closest to genuine collapse we came, but alas, the hot springs appeared in the shade of a distant cliff!

Santa Teresa aguas termales

And man, they were gorgeous pools of the clearest water and absolutely perfect for nearing the end of our trek. We bartered a ride back to town to avoid the wasteland return and ended up in another organized campsite with a bunch of gringo trains. Katie and I both wanted to meet other travelers and actually avoid our grandma tendency of being asleep no later than 7pm, but now it was Katie’s turn to get violently sick. By night four, we had officially swapped places: now I was the motivating friend who felt great and she was the sick and dying friend trying her absolute best.

But we continued on! After half a day of walking along a railroad through the jungle below Machu Picchu, we arrived in Aguas Calientes, the town born entirely for tourists. There is a phrase, buena onda, in Spanish that is used rather often that basically means “good vibes”—Katie and I could not get past the really unsettling onda that reeked in Aguas Calientes. It was unnervingly fake and uncomfortable to realize that hundreds of tourists pour in on the Asian-corporation-owned train, stay for one night, and then cart up to Machu Picchu for a few hours before fleeing. We unfortunately spent two nights in Aguas Calientes, the first in the absolute sketchiest hostel you can even imagine. Take note that there is a 30% tax at least on all food in the entire town, in case you ever travel here and want to avoid the unwelcome surprise we got.

Daybreak view from Machu Picchu

Getting tickets into Machu Picchu proved to be an all-day ordeal of desperately attempting to prove ourselves as students in order to get a 50% discount from the incredibly expensive entrance fee. Thanks to Alfredo, one of the ticket representatives, we eventually were granted the discount: we were up and outside in an absolute torrential downpour at 5am the next morning to catch the bus up to Machu Picchu. The way the mountains in this region are formed as huge, rounded, and jungle-covered spires, the climb to Machu Picchu is outrageously steep but meant that all the clouds of the heavy rain were settled in the valley, making for a very cool mist covering of the ruins for our first few hours. It was eerie and beautiful to float among the rooms of this ancient city without being able to see past the sheer cliff face on all sides. To add to the beauty we had seen on the trek, we found a perch to watch the dawn sunlight waft its way through the clouds and illuminate the landscape very slowly. It was quite simply unreal. Just absolutely beyond my imagination, of the clouds among these incredibly strange mountains seen from ancient walls.

Panorama of my painting subject after the clouds lifted

The central plaza of Machu Picchu

Katie and I spent a few hours in the midst of the day to just wander around on our own and draw in our sketchbooks, one of the many reasons why we are such compatible travelers. While I was painting the same mountain view we had watched at dawn, I unintentionally got a few visitors asking about what I was doing, including a pair of Chilenos who asked to take a photo with me and ending up as a Japanese tourist spectacle.

Near the cliff face into nothing

Something to check off the bucket list, I suppose, but it was very nice to just take my time to enjoy the place we had worked so hard to get to and truly commit the views to memory. Machu Picchu is a beautiful city and clearly built by a brilliant culture with skill in precise cutting of the soft stone found in the area, innovative irrigation methods still used in cities such as Mendoza, and a very intriguing sacred region of the city also used for celestial observation. After a solid eight hours exploring and petting llamas, Katie and I headed back to Aguas Calientes.

 

These guys are crazy

Our final day was spent taking the train to the ancient town of Ollantaytambo, where the streets and many of the buildings themselves are original Incan ruins that are still occupied.  We hiked up along a bluff to some ruins to just explore and get a beautiful view of the valley, and had lunch in a local haunt recommendation from our hostel owner that clearly never gets gringo customers, based on the looks we got from the chefs. That evening we were surprised to find that Ollantaytambo was the base camp for a week-long international mountain biking competition called Inca Avalanche. We were right on time for the results ceremony, followed by a couple of professional mountain bikers doing insane jump tricks for a few hours. I now understand why things like the X-Games are so intense—those guys are crazy, but impressive.

View overlooking Ollantaytambo from some of the ruins

O hai.

Leaving from Cusco the next day for another return itinerary of sleeping in the Lima airport and a really great movie selection (not dubbed in Spanish!) on one of our LAN flights, we were sad to leave Peru but content. We survived, thrived, and I even did it all on trail running shoes I’d bought two days before leaving, thanks to stupidly forgetting my perfectly broken-in boots in Patagonia. My friend Mauricio graciously mailed them to me a few months ago, but it appears the Argentine mail system has gobbled them up. It was truly an amazing trip with wonderful company and returning to Mendoza spurred some interesting thoughts on the concept of home. It is great to be back here with my wonderful host mom and the familiar, tree-lined streets of what is now very late fall. The beauty continues.

Much love from the Peruvian llamas, Emilia

PS- Alternate blog title that Katie and I came up with:
Gormanka and Warmi Eat Savage Mountain For Breakfast [and Then Barf It Back Up]. We thought it was hilarious. And sadly accurate. Oh well.

To Peru

I like maps. And taking breaks from planning, but mostly maps.

After loads of planning, researching through blogs, paying for plane tickets in cash, and frazzled excitement over the past two months, Katie and I are finally embarking on our major trekking trip—we’re going to PERU!

Casa nueva!
When Katie and Taylor came over to make chocolate chip banana pancakes
and watch Game of Thrones.

I had zero plans of going to Machu Picchu during my time on the South American continent and honestly had no clue whatsoever of what I wanted to do after leaving Chilean Patagonia. When you accomplish your number one life goal with flying colors by your twenty-first birthday, other plans just don’t come to mind. I lived in Torres del Paine, I can die happy now, right? Well, turns out, this has opened up my horizons for what I could possibly want to tackle next with complete freedom of mind and newfound confidence in my ability to go for almost anything, really, as long as I give it my best.

Buying plane tickets in cash a few months ago...

My good friends Sarah and Kate in Patagonia raved about the Salkantay trek they had done in December, so months later I decided to look into it as a possibility for the intercambio student break in May. If two weathered trekkers can say a trail was the best they had ever hiked after just completing the Paine circuit, you know it must be pretty spectacular. The trail is a permit-free alternative to the Inca Trail at higher altitude and lesser crowds in our small post-wet and pre-tourist season window of late May. Problem? Flights to Peru were well over a thousand US dollars and completely not an option. After a few weeks of tossing ideas around with Katie, we realized that we could get a cheaper option in the LAN office in Mendoza, use the blue market US dollar to Argentine peso exchange rate (~8.3:1USD rather than 5:1USD. Best thing ever.), and manage to barter the round-trip ticket down to US$370 including tax. We bought the tickets in cash at the office within eight hours of finding that price. Boom. We were officially going to Peru!

So now we are set to be in the country for ten days: time spent acclimating in Cusco, five days on the Salkantay trail, roll our way out of the backcountry at the base of Machu Picchu in Aguas Calientes, take a train to Ollantaytambo for more Incan ruins, then back onto an overnight plane for our South American home. We both are so excited but I still haven’t quite realized that this is happening: I think I’ll realize it once the high altitude headache sets in, and hopefully will not end up with a severe case of AMS. Nevertheless, you never know until you try, so here goes!

Fairly to-scale map found on the internet. Looking forward to finding a proper topo in Cusco.

The Salkantay trek, although boasted as one of National Geographic’s 25 Best Treks in the World, is not a very well-documented undertaking at all. Thanks to a head start of information that Sarah and Kate emailed to me, Katie and I have pulled together a pretty solid itinerary that is 70% for our own information and 30% to inform our parents of our whereabouts while being completely out of cell phone or phone card range and only having internet in rare hostels. It may appear as though their daughter is simply running amok in the mountains of the world, but I can assure you that grabbing my pack and heading out the door is not the case. It is not easy for anyone involved, but my parents happen to be remarkably wonderful for trusting each of their kids to try our limits in each of our own ways. It is things like this sort of planning that make it possible. Granted, they are more proponents for week-long, incommunicado high-altitude treks than the jumping-out-of-airplanes sort of personal trials I am guilty of, but nevertheless are the most supportive parents I can imagine.

May our itinerary help as a head start to whoever may have interest in hiking the Salkantay Trek in future, and serve as an explanation for my next few days. This is unedited from Katie and my Google Doc of joint planning, just minus the rather interesting South American grocery list and commentary: thoughts on that for another time. Enjoy and I will report back, free from altitude and infamous Peruvian bacterial sickness, by early June!

Game faces.

Much mochilera love,
Em

P.S.- In other news, I am wishing from afar for the happiest of birthdays to the best Dad around! Pops has a rather significant birthday here on the 26^th that he and Mom will be spending in the glorious land of Minnesota to celebrate my cousin’s graduation from St. Olaf College—so may congratulations also be had to Andy on finishing undergrad!

P.P.S.- Katie and I happen to be in the same place in the Game of Thrones series, so we’ll be spending our evenings on the trail reading aloud from the third book, but otherwise: if you have recommendations for card games that can be explained over email or Skype, let me know!

Making Moves

Biking between bodegas in Maipú

I MOVED. Hallelujah. This is probably going to only be a big deal to my Baldwin family and fellow IFSA estudiantes de intercambio, but it is indeed a really big deal. It’s pretty rare for a study abroad student to actually speak up about not being comfortable in a host family situation, even if it is encouraged. After months of thinking that things would get better if I powered through or that I should just deal with not being fed regularly, I finally decided I needed a change. Therefore, my last few weeks have been a terribly slow, in classic Argentine fashion, process of changing families. I am now on the other side of the city in the sixth district (“La Sexta”) where most IFSA students live and have regrettably left what was easily the most convenient host family location of anyone. I do miss living next to Plaza Italia and easy, safe walking distance from anywhere. Nevertheless, I have been in my new house for a whopping fifteen hours at this point and by two hours in I was THRILLED. Seriously, I have not been quite so bubbly-excited about something since I can remember. I got a good-night hug, for goodness’ sake! Hugs are the best.

Floor above the cellar at Bodega Trapiche

My new host mom is Celia, easily one of the friendliest Argentines I have met. She is essentially my middle school English teacher, Mrs. Velarde, who was probably one of my favorite English teachers I’ve ever had. Upon first meeting her last week, she told me her theory on host students is to treat them how she would want her two now-grown sons to be treated if they ran off to some foreign land to live with a stranger—at that point I knew she was in this for the right reasons. She happens to love cooking and immediately showed me how to work the stove to gave me free reign if I wanted to cook, plus she avidly paints and makes mosaics, my favorite art venture, in her free time. The only drawback is that now I am in a much less safe neighborhood than before: my neighboring IFSA student, Matt, was robbed at gunpoint a block away from our houses early on. Nevertheless, I feel being aware at night with the added price of using only taxis after dark is worth actually feeling happy and at home.

Bodega Carinae

Bodega Carinae

Celia announced quite quickly how much she loves talking, which is great. I’m a super talkative person in English as anyone knows, but Spanish buries my personality somewhere deep under fear of failure and lack of vocabulary. Just being around Celia gets me to talk—I’m not afraid of asking her questions or completely destroying a verb conjugation attempt or even just actively participating in conversation, all things that I was afraid of with my previous host mom. There is this reckless level of Spanish-speaking where I simultaneously don’t care if I butcher the language and actually end up being really good at the language without meaning to be that I have reached once before. In my last two weeks in Torres del Paine, I so strongly wanted to be friends with the people I spent all my time with that I just busted through whatever doubts I had and spoke. Lo and behold, my personality resurfaced and I was no longer that awkward quiet gringa!

Super chill Beer Garden in Maipú

So that is happening again and I’m super pumped. I might emerge from study abroad and actually be decently proud of my language abilities, since I’ve been pretty disappointed in my lack of fluency in the last few weeks. Nevertheless, these weeks have been great and I apologize for completely neglecting le blog, oh wonderful friends and family who graciously continue to read my blathering. I’ve been caught up in all sorts of odd events such as school or bumbling about with friends and even working on post-graduate applications and various Wheaton endeavors that I am so outrageously excited about.

Malbec the alpaca, resident of Bodega Trapiche

About two weeks ago, I successfully got around to doing one of my top Mendoza bucket-list items: a day biking between bodegas in Maipú, the rich wine region directly southeast of Mendoza. A handful of us rounded up to take a micro (city bus) out to the bodegas at the bright and early hour of 9 am (the earliest I’ve woken up for anything in weeks. That’s embarrassing). We rented some pretty hilariously iffy cruisers, tested out and rightly decided against the tandem bike option, and set out along the roads to stop in whichever bodegas our hearts desired. We first visited Trapiche, a bodega you may be able to find in the United States. It is a gigantic importer with an equally gigantic facility, and the grand volume of production they support is quite impressive. From there we moved on to try something less-Mendoza-style and stopped at a beer garden for lunch. The entire menu was one type of pizza, empanadas, and three home brews, and all of the above were surprisingly fantastic. It reminded me so much of a combination between Erratic Rock hostel in Puerto Natales, Chile, and this campsite that my family stayed at in Naivasha, Kenya: I could have lived in this place, it was so comfortable. But alas, we dragged ourselves away from the comfy outdoor couches and back onto the bikes to head to Carinae, a tiny French-owned boutique bodega

Beer Garden lunch of pizza mendocina

far on the outskirts of the Maipu region. My parents and I briefly stopped here at the end of their visit, but unfortunately missed their open hours. They had been so friendly to us that I made a point to return and it was so worth it. We had the entire place to ourselves and were able to take our time during the tour and the tasting: we are all new to this, and our host graciously taught us all about Malbecs and general wine tasting techniques in both English and Castellano. It was so welcoming and comfortable, and a wonderful contrast to the high-production Bodega Trapiche. Overall, biking among the vineyards with the snow-capped Andes lining the horizon on a sunny autumn day was purely divine and I am so happy I woke up for it.

We had sushi!! And hummus on a separate occasion

The rest of my days have been a strange but tranquila mezcla of Mendocino living: finding ourselves spectators at a super high-class polo tournament (yes, polo), testing as many heladarías artesanales as I can possibly find, officially accepting my fate as a liberal arts student by learning how and becoming addicted to knitting (albeit whilst abroad), and prepping for my upcoming backpacking trek in T-minus eight days with banana chocolate chip cookies out the wazoo. I was supposed to have my first exam since December three weeks ago, but learned on exam day that the date had changed with only the two gringas of the class completely missing the memo. The following week, I arrived, again ready to take the test, to find the building completely barred off due to no running water. Evidently this week I will finally take the test, but at this point my studying attempts are half-hearted.

As for my upcoming trip, I absolutely cannot begin to explain how excited I am for that and I will be writing about it next week before I leave on Friday. In other news, many congratulations to all the wonderful graduates enjoying festivities this or next week—it has been a pleasure to know each of you and you will all do great things!

Much love from la tierra del sol y buen vino,

Emilia

More pumped to be on a bike again than for the bodegas

Fellowship of the Mountain Goats

Cerro Aconcagua (above the hills of the Shire, it seemed)

Unfortunately closed for the season

Finally, FINALLY, I have found my way back into a tent. Granted, this time it’s a rented tent thanks to my beloved but out-of-commission Nemo Espri being back with my parents in Albuquerque, awaiting my return to repair it. Still, being tentless will not keep me away from my goal of trekking to an Aconcagua base camp! However, completely missing the memo on the end of the lower camp season will. My friends, Katie Gorman and Emily Seitz, and I set out on exceedingly short notice this weekend to Puente del Inca, a town of about eight buildings near the base of Aconcagua with plans to camp at Confluencia (3.300m) and day hike from there to the Plaza Francia Base Camp (4.254m).

Puente del Inca natural bridge

After Katie and I threw together food and rental provisions in a few hours before our late evening Friday class, the three of us headed out on a Saturday morning bus for a three-night weekend of backpacking, replete with Lord of the Rings references and singing at the tops of our lungs. Upon arriving in Puente del Inca, we stopped into a shop to get a map and met Mario, the owner of the shop, who turned out to be our biggest help of the weekend. Upon hearing our plan, he informed us that camping anywhere on the mountain, not just in the base camps as we had believed, was closed as of Semana Santa just a few weeks ago. We were two weeks late for even the non-full-tilt mountaineering season, despite there being zero snow anywhere below 5.000m, perfect temperatures, and beautiful weather. Now that we’re four hours away from Mendoza with our lives on our backs, what do we do? Well, leave it to Mario. He immediately sat us down and showed us a handful of fantastic alternatives to do over the next four days, so all was very much so not lost.

Hot tubbin': my efficient method of cooking in wind

Night after the gunshots

All three nights of our time in the high Andes were adventures in and of themselves. Our first was spent in Puente del Inca in some guy’s backyard designated for camping with picnic tables and a bathroom for AR$20 a person. All seemed well: I cooked up a pretty swell quinoa stir-fry with veggies and all, we scavenged for some firewood to make a fire, and pitched our tent as far away from civilization as we could, considering we, the three gringas, were the ONLY visitors in the entire “town.” After a fun night of chatting and such, we settled down to sleep with sounds floating down from elsewhere in town of what seemed to be quite the party going down. A few hours later, we all woke with a start to the pops of gunshots. All of us were still and terrified just as we heard three more go off. I was convinced it wasn’t a real gun, but still managed to scare myself to death by a combination of a man-looking shadow that had moved to the side of the tent with the moon and the sound of Emily moving her feet on the other side of the tent. Nonetheless, no one directly bothered the lone tent in town, and we were glad to bolt out of Puente del Inca the next morning.

Crossing the sketchiest bridge of all time

Back in Mario’s shop, he flagged us a bus to hitch a ride down the road to the one bridge across the river, saving us about an hour walk. Now finally away from civilization, we crossed easily the sketchiest bridge I have ever seen in my entire life and tore across the plain to reach the near-vertical wall of the Andes. It took us five hours to trudge our way along from 2.740m to ~3.300m, but it was one of the more beautiful hikes of my life and completely worth it considering we saw zero other humans (but two dead horses… which was rather ominous). After barefoot river crossings and far too many near trail collapses, plus Emily almost losing her sleeping pad down a cliff and into the river, we made it to Refugio Grajales. This clearly is very well attended during the season by the number of rock-walled campsites, but we had the entire plain to ourselves with a beautiful glacial river rapid as a direct water source and the sparse refugio as a wind block for our cooking (tonight was the winner for my backpacking stove experimentation: fancy soup packets are absolutely worth the extra peso or so).

Successful scrap wood campfire

Katie in the canyon portion of the valley

Barefoot river crossing

Halfway up the valley

Not too shabby to wake up to

We happily lounged around on our sleeping pads as the moon rose and the stars came out after a solid day on the trail—until we saw our first mouse. These mini-bears of the mountains have to be opportunists and guess what? We were the prime opportunity of the entire mountain at the moment. We immediately kicked into action and stuffed away the food into our packs and into the tent, the safest place available with bear bags not being necessary (we’re more concerned about mice than pumas, at this point). By the time we set up to make tea outside the tent vestibule, all was ready for the night, but we still ended up getting zero sleep. It is amazing how loud and terrifying mice can sound scurrying and squeaking around your tent all night long. I was lucky enough to be the one up against the side of the tent with the bags on the other side and Emily and Katie in the middle, so I had the lovely experience of feeling mice scampering next to me at my feet, my head, and my entire right side. Needless to say, I did not sleep at all.

The best of kitchen views

Clearly we avoided altitude sickness

Nevertheless, the next morning was easily the most gorgeous landscape I have ever had to cook with, and it was absolutely worth the sleepless night. We spent the morning day-hiking up towards Cerro Penitentes (4.356m), but turned back within a few hours due to very high winds that made the extremely steep and exposed ascent rather unsafe. Still, we had a fun time and some beautiful views, so we didn’t really mind not summiting. We got back to camp, saved our tent from getting flattened in the winds, and set off back down the way we had come the day before. Our previously five hour trek up now just barely took two hours down, thanks to altitude acclimation and few uphill sections, so we got to our next camp at the valley base super early in the afternoon. With the extra sunlight, we lounged around the nearby stream and rivers, drawing and napping in the sun, free of mice. All of us dropped the ball on finding cards before this weekend, so we got pretty creative with how we passed time and this final night was so much fun. Thanks to the mild lower-altitude night temperatures, we were able to hang out outside after the sun set to make tea and do some yoga on our sleeping pads. After crawling back into our tent, we spent the rest of the evening reading to each other from Emily’s book, The Best American Travel Writing, before falling asleep soundly, finally without rodents or gunfire.

Katie among the rushes at our last campsite

Mochilera amor

This was hands down my favorite weekend since getting to Mendoza, and it was wonderful to finally be back in my natural habitat and away from the city. It was ridiculously hard to drag ourselves back to Mendoza, and Katie and I had a pretty unwelcome return with the creepiest experience I’ve had yet in South America of being touched inappropriately and followed for a solid twenty minutes by a strange man. We finally lost him after a panicked speed-walk around the city we luckily know incredibly well, but that is a story for another time. All the more reason for me to want to get out of the city. Nevertheless, the weekend preceding that was spent with wonderful company in a beautiful place among the giants of the Andean Cordillera, so nothing short of perfect in my opinion.





Much love from the mountain goats of the Andes,
Emilia

Moonrise atardecer above Los Penitentes ski valley and the giants of the Andes

Yes, I do go to class

I swear, although it honestly still doesn’t feel like I do and I am starting to think it never will. Considering my final two semesters of college are shaping up to be killers that I will love in my usual academically masochistic ways, I am not even remotely ashamed for the classes I chose to take while on study abroad. What does that lead to? Well, if you know me well you can probably guess. Art, music, and nature. This is the kinda-final list of classes I’m registered for this semester:

-       Ecología de las zonas áridas

-       Modelado y color cerámica

-       Dibujo III

-       Instrumenta armónica: guitarra

-       Español

I don’t have a single class starting before noon, something I completely did not try for but am not complaining about. I really can’t decide which class is my favorite so far, but all of them are outrageously flexible in their Argentine ways.

Ecología is easily the most “legitimate” class I’m taking, with a classic lecture set-up and PowerPoints galore. It’s lucky that la profesora puts her PowerPoints on DropBox afterwards, so I am able to soak in the lecture and listen to the other students’ commentary during class. I still take a lot of notes and comprehension isn’t hard—many of the concepts are things I learned in high school Biology or just from a lifetime of being curious about the natural world, plus most of the Spanish terminology is cognates. That leaves the only real problem to spelling, if I am taking notes, and following when my profesora goes on high-speed rants about the water crisis in this region of the Andes. It is all SO SIMILAR to New Mexico that I’ve actually had some things to say. It was really fun once when the two gringas of the 25-person class, Katie y yo, got singled out to talk about Mount Saint Helens. You could feel the entire class shift their attention to the usually silent chicas at the front as we tripped out a commentary on a place neither of us have ever been to. Nonetheless, I really like how discussion-based the class is each week. It is my one class at Universidad de Congreso, the private university that is only slightly larger than Wheaton, so I love the welcoming and familiar atmosphere. It feels just like a Spanish class at Wheaton, but with the other students being wicked good at speaking Spanish. One crazy part about this class? It is once a week from 6 to 10pm on Fridays. Yes, I voluntarily have class until 10pm on Fridays. It’s actually perfectly fine, since that’s still time to get home for dinner con la familia and then out with friends by the early hour of midnight.

Cerámica has been off to a very strange start. It took me weeks to finally get a straight answer as to which class to go to, after hearing different stories from five sources. Finally, I ended up in the right place at the right time, but only with three other students, all intercambios, in the entire class: two American friends from my same study abroad program and one super nice girl from Puerto Rico. We waited a whopping hour and a half for our professor to arrive and were about to give up when he finally showed up, decided he wanted to change the class time from 4-7pm to 6-9pm Thursdays, and then whipped out the clay. We can still arrive early to get cracking if we wish, and I absolutely plan to, every single week. I am lucky enough to already know how to throw pottery, and it is one of my absolute favorite things on this planet. The first and only art class I ever let myself take before college was Ceramics in my high school junior year and it essentially changed my life. Then I broke my foot, and couldn’t operate the wheel for the rest of the semester, only to continue on to a college that doesn’t have a ceramics department, so I have been deprived for a whopping four years. When I got back on that wheel, man, my life was made. It’s amazing how muscle memory works and I have every intention to be in that studio as often as they leave it unlocked.

Dibujo (drawing) has been a similar love reignited. I generally restrict myself to studying my other love of the sciences, and drawing, painting, and creating outside of formal classes. Last spring, I finally took the one and only art class I’ve taken at Wheaton: Drawing I. It was wonderful and possibly my favorite class so far at Wheaton (apologies to my major professors, I love CS and math too!). The professor had such an interesting way of linking art perspectives to life perspectives, and I have never been quite so challenged by drawing before. Here, I decided not to mess around and just went for it with the third and final year available to drawing. It’s essentially an open studio twice a week that is entirely figure drawing—the models will be there, so you can show up whenever you want to draw. I adore it and have already started experimenting with materials and new perceptions of the human body that are difficult for me. I constantly fear that I’m not allowed to be here with these super talented artists. I tried to go as long as I could without telling anyone that I was a computer science major, but failed miserably within about five minutes. Yes, I am studying art in Mendoza. Yes, I study la informática y las matemáticas en los Estados Unidos. I am aware that I am strange. Nevertheless, I’m actually keeping up to speed with the rest of the gigantic studio, and I am happy to be judged for my work rather than my resume. That’s art for you.

I haven’t even been to Guitarra yet, and it’s looking unlikely. I don’t need the credits, the Instituto Chopin is very far away by iffy micro (bus) service, and you need to buy your own guitar. I am still in search of a guitar and may switch to taking piano lessons to avoid the outrageously expensive lessons Wheaton offers, but I still have hope. If all else fails, I’m aiming to find the first person I see with a guitar and offer English lessons in exchange for guitar lessons. Where there is a will, there is a way.

Español is the required Spanish class through my program, IFSA-Butler, so it is entirely with other Americans twice a week in small classes of about eight people. Each is named after a character from a famous Argentine cartoon similar to Peanuts and ours, Susanita, has turned into a family. We’re the happy middle group and the teaching style of our profesora, Gladys, has finally started making sense. I’ve figured out what my problem with learning Spanish has been all these years—I’ve been taking classes. Don’t take classes. Just dump yourself in a Spanish-speaking country and flounder. You’ll figure it out: you have to.

That’s exactly what I did in Chile and now am concerned my Spanish is getting worse because of being around Americans so often and trying to be perfect in the class setting. That’s not the language; that is a test setting. The language is conversing and making a million mistakes but still getting your point across. I am so much more uncomfortable in the class and am timid in my Spanish, but when I’m out talking to native speakers anywhere else it’s like I’m a completely different person. I just power through and make friends easily, even if I didn’t get that conjugation right or have to awkwardly explain a word for not knowing the exact term. The first time my friend Katie heard me

I absolutely adore these trees

speak Spanish to an Argentine, she turned to me afterwards and said “so you really know how to speak Spanish!” …Evidently I do! But I’m just so much more confident with native speakers and Chile really was what got me to actually being able to converse. If I’m speaking with a fellow learning American, it is far too easy to not experiment with words, question yourself rather than going for it, or collapse back into English.

Apologies for the lack of photos in this rather boring post and for writing twice in way too short a time, but I promise I’ll have more interesting things to say in future! (And may try to take photos of the studios to put on this post). Off to trek to the Plaza Francia Base Camp at 4,254 m on Aconcagua for a short weekend jaunt! So excited! Hallelujah, mountains!!

Much love from a happily art-drowned gringa,

Emilia

La mitad del camino

 

The High Andes as seen from Bodega Alta Vista in Maipú, to the south of Mendoza

It is officially my halfway point! Thirteen weeks of a solid six months on this continent down. I feel celebration is in order, as to not getting attacked by a puma or irreversibly lost on a micro in Mendoza (yet)—how so? Chocolate chip cookies, man. Bring ‘em on.

My mom was wonderfully generous and brought me many a wondrous American product—peanut butter and Nutella and Clif bars and green chile and chocolate chips and curry powder and the third Game of Thrones book. I’m saving the peanut butter for when I next go trekking in May but, in a moment of weakness and hunger for hazelnut, I broke down and opened the Nutella a few days ago. It made my day, possibly my week.

Sheer chocolate chip cookie happiness

But now, Katie and I took the plunge of the ultimate American nostalgia trip of baking chocolate chip cookies, making curry, and catching up on Game of Thrones season one and two, plus plans to bite the bullet and buy tickets for our plans for May break. It. Was. Awesome. Our wingin’ it of a curry stir-fry shindig (couldn’t find coconut milk) and our chocolate chip cookies without baking soda, brown sugar, OR vanilla both turned out phenomenally and it was a great night, even if we never actually got around to watching Game of Thrones or buying flights—it was super fun to just hang out, a concept that is one of the most impossible things to pull off here on study abroad. Visiting other host houses is rare at best, so the only time we intercambio students spend together in groups all boils down to being out at bars. Fun, but that gets old fast for a whole lot of reasons, so many of us have started getting creative. It certainly makes you miss the ease of college life and living in a house of twelve of my closest friends.

Food with taste is surprisingly rare down here, apart from way too much oil and salt on everything (Salt on lettuce? This was super weird for me, and I happen to love salt. Still, too far, man. Too far), so Katie and I have both been on a fruitless search for curry since day one. I’ve been trying to attribute my habits to experiencing the food culture, but I definitely haven’t eaten this unhealthily since I can remember. I’m really looking forward to weird things like Greek yogurt and pretzels, but hey, I will certainly continue to enjoy the helado here.

In retrospect from this halfway point, food has been the source of the hardest part for me to grapple with since arriving in Mendoza. I have been off the Wheaton meal plan and cooking for myself for two years now, and love it. I never ate meat in the dining hall my first year as it dependably made me incredibly sick, and since then I’ve cooked meat, apart from seafood, three times in my time at Wheaton and don’t miss it much at all. It’s just too much effort and expense for one person, when I can exist healthily, enjoy a variety of food, and still run marathons while being a pseudo-vegetarian/pescatarian/whatever-you-want-to-call-it-if-you-require-a-label. Thus, I wrote “vegetarian, but would like to eat Argentine meat” on my host questionnaire for study abroad. Little did I know, this was a disaster waiting to happen. My host mom is vegetarian, but I have learned that others’ definitions of “vegetarian” can be outrageously different than my own very educated system that often revolves around running. I’m not strict (Nutella is a staple, not an option) and I won’t get into it, but I am constantly aware of needing protein. My host mom is really more of a vegan in a culture with hardly any raw nuts available, so lentils will appear every few days and garbanzo beans happened once. I’ve learned that I cannot survive off of this with a fast metabolism and still keeping up the running; I was borderline starving for my first month in Mendoza compared to my usual and had no idea what to do about it.

Curry hot date (plus avocado!)

I was hesitant about approaching this—I have already paid for all my meals while here, so eating out or buying my own food was essentially out of the question. More importantly, I had no clue what to do with the cultural implications of my family situation and how to navigate those waters. I was not sure if I should directly ask for specific foods or how bold I should be in eating the house out, and did not dare try to cook for myself. I am living with a single mother and her young son; there is no father involved. Still, the gender and age norms of Latin America were difficult for me to learn, until I finally figured things out. The mother of the house still does absolutely everything, which is why the unspoken lack of encouragement to use the kitchen exists. I have forced myself to quit my hard-earned habit of always doing my dishes, and I only just recently started using the stove to make tea (and still feel guilty doing so).

Shamelessly super pumped about fresh veggies

Furthermore, children live with their parents much longer than is customary in United States households, especially my own.  I’ve known this, but it took me embarrassingly long to figure out that now, here, this applies to me. My host mom isn’t patronizing me on a daily basis, she’s just following the culture norm. After being self-sufficient for a few years, and especially after coming off of being completely alone in Chile and conquering the biggest independent challenge of my life thus far, I was super confused, frustrated, and even offended by the way my host mom treated me at first. I am still figuring things out, but I’ve accepted the family social construct and beat my independence ego down quite a bit. I am still completely not myself here and am timid to a fault. I really dislike this strange person I am here, but let’s face it, I’ve never lived

Wine tasting at Bodega Alta Vista with Shawny and Katie

in a complete stranger’s house for an extended time before. Once I realized that I am just a guest, not an extension of the family, and that my host family is getting a paycheck for my presence, I’ve started faulting myself less for not feeling entirely comfortable. I have only really known of my father and aunt’s host family experiences: my whole family knows Herr Oelerich, Dad’s host dad from college, who we have visited multiple times in Erlangen, Germany, and my aunt just returned to Denmark recently for her host mom’s 80^th birthday. Both were life-long friendships, and are completely and utterly different from my experience thus far.

Success even without half the recipe

Why? I’ve been considering this my entire time here, and I attribute a HUGE part of this complete lack of closeness to the ease of international communication and how outstandingly common study abroad is now. Internet is a killer. To keep a long rant brief, communicating with my home world is way too ridiculously easy, but it is what I am accustomed to. I tried to cut myself completely off from internet when I was in Chile, but it was just too difficult on top of my difficulty there in the first place. I spoke to my family and very few friends while I was down there, and that contact helped me tremendously. I needed that, because I am used to constant conversation, especially with my family. When my dad studied abroad in Germany for a year, he got to call his parents once as his Christmas present. I cannot fathom this, considering I have the good fortune that the internet exists. Granted, my internet dies for weeks at a time, but I can still email friends from the study abroad office and if I do have wi-fi, I can Skype to actually speak to people. This is the world we live in now, and I am absolutely aware of how it affects my life, both at home and abroad.

As for study abroad being common, my family just doesn’t care to engage me as much as I hoped, regardless of how I try. I have far more curiosity about learning about this culture than they have for teaching me about it. I think this is a personal case to my specific family, but I am nonetheless trying not to be disappointed. Plus, meeting Argentines has proven infinitely more difficult than meeting Chileans in Magallanes. Native speakers I have spoken to most thus far here in Mendoza have been from Mexico and Puerto Rico, not Argentina. So far, my opinion between my experiences in Chile and Argentina is rather warped and I do not consider it complete or accurate. A huge part may be the fact of the geographical locations, as the small, friendly town of Puerto Natales is no fair comparison to the large city that is Mendoza. Nevertheless, I am finding new ways of meeting people as my few classes thus far are so rare that it makes it difficult to get to know Argentines: I met quite a few friendly folks at the dancing places I’ve gone for salsa and tango, and I’m getting a membership to a yoga place around the corner from my house, plus I’ve started testing out Couchsurfing.org to find people for hiking and climbing.

I’m not a city person in the least and I miss the wonderful friendly faces in Torres del Paine and all of my close friends there every day, but I am trying my best here in Mendoza, slowly but surely. What is living in a completely foreign country for a few months if not difficult? After all, I am only halfway.

Much love,

Em

P.S.- I finished roping together all the little video clips I took while in Torres del Paine and put together a kinda goofy video. It's pretty much just for my memory, but the two friends I've mentioned it to were pretty pumped, so if others are interested, I'd love it if you checked it out! (Watching it in HD is worth the wait, it really makes a huge difference).