Anchovies, cargo, trucks, oh and humans... ALL ABOARD!

Quellon, Volcano Corcovado on mainland
Since leaving quiet Quellon, a lot has happened. For one, we made the 32 hour ferry journey to Puerto Chacabuco. The seascape was exquisite. We spied volcanoes and spired mountain peaks frequently. The clear weather permitted us to see clearly and spend time lounging on the deck. On deck we were deilghted by the flooming of nearby whales! I am ashamed to say that I did not positively ID these mammals, but I lacked an insightful guide and no crew seemed to be able to provide any other information than "ballena, si es una ballena. que tipo? un ballena de color gris!" I too noticed that it was whale, a grey colored whale.

Glaciers abounded as we neared sunset on the second night. The outline of the mountains to the east and mounded islands to the west provided quite the contrast.

The accomodations, un butaca (meaning arm chair according to my dictionary) were less stellar (oh speaking of stellar.... quite the night sky view from the top deck. Lots to see if it were not for that pesky flood light atop our vessel). The Alejandrina, our vessel also housed anchovy, cargo and trucks. Passengers, well, its not about the passengers. We spent the night in and out of conciousness, plagued between reclining in the "arm chair" which was actually a stripped down version of an airplane seat and lying down across several seats and being probed by unfriendly metal screws it was not easy to decide how to sleep. The crying baby didnt help, nor did the constant chug of the engine and vibrations and fierce humming drone that ended up ringing in my ears and central nervous system for longer than the after-effects of most concerts.

So it wasnt glamorous, but it wasnt without redemptive value either.

From Puerto Chacabuco to Aisen to Coyaihque all on buses. Moderately priced passage and good timing. We arrived in Coyaihque and spent one night at a hostel. We dined on Pichanga, a Chilean dish that I think someone who is stoned would make.

The line of thinking would go something like this: I made french fries... what else should I add?

Going through the fridge they decide: hot dog, cooked lamb, chicken and melted cheese... and hard boiled egg. Going through the pantry they decide; pickled vegetables and mayonaise.

ta da. RANDOM.

That and a Dolbek, a Patagonian Ale, not bad.

As for Chilean cuisine... I am not the biggest fan. Lots of bread. Lots of mayo.

Some of the summer fresh fruit we were finding in the north was great too... nectarines and peaches and melons.

I havent really the time to detail our first full trekking adventure now, so I will save for now. Briefly though, it was amazing... up and over two mountain passes, eye level with gaping glaciers, the bluest blue lake I have ever seen, dumping waterfalls, raging rivers (and river crossings) scampering up and down scree faces, rainbow delights, ice and snow field crossing, some seriously sore quads and a million breathes of relief were had.

So, love and daring and all else from the south.

Yours in Chilean chaos,

CT

And next... on to Conservacion Patagonicas project site, the future patagonia national park to look around, tour, take notes and interview for my senior thesis project (and hike and backpack) and then a crossing to Argentina!!

donde esta el hospedaje mas bueno?

I am writing briefly from Chiloe Island. A place I have indeed been before (I also noted Darwin´s dislike of this island when he visited in the early 20th century...he called it a miserable hole which was suitable only for the most resilient of amphibians due to the high amount of rainfall it recieves year round) this time I am in Quellon, a tiny fishing town on the southeast corner. It is typical of other seaside chilean towns: dogs roam, tiny tiendas with fruits and foods populate every street, there is a central soccer pitch and some crumbling abandoned infrastructure, fissured sidewalks with discarded box wine containers piling up in alley ways, artesania markets with ponchos and matte gourds, a walmart owned supermarket (named ¨Bigger¨), the scent of freshly caught fish, the cries of gulls, colorful fishing boats moored offshore, bobbing like corks in the gentle waters, and streets lined with azalias, roses and this time of year (to my great delight) fruit trees bursting with ripe red apples and plums.

Mike and I took a bus, about a six hour ride in quite comfortable quarters on a ferry from mainland to Chiloe to catch a ferry that leaves tonight for Puerto Chacabuco. We stayed last night in hospedaje Captain Don Luis. After some asking around and a recommendation from the Captain himself (who claimed it was un ambiente muy agradable y limpia, con toallas calientes... a nice, clean environment with hot towels... though there were no hot towels let alone hot water) buy pleasant enough!

We will be traveling for 36 hours with no sleeping accomodations (we hope to pitch the tent on deck) many degrees of latitude south to this remote port town in region XI of Chile. It is here that we will visit Conservacion Patagonica´s project site in the Chacabuco Valley. I hope to conduct some interviews and take photographs. We plan to backpack as well. It is my great hope that we will be able to hike from Chile into Argentina as well. From this juncture in southern Chile, the easiest option is east. More will be found out upon arrival, and don´t worry mom, I am getting the inside scoop from a local researcher and we will not be wandering aimlessly in vast, uncharted wilderness.

All is well otherwise. It was sad to say goodbye to my wildlands studies buddies. We parted ways yesterday and it is doubtful I will see them again in South America. But not doubtful that I will not see them again ever! A great group of people.. I will miss stargazing, speaking in nerd voices, washing dinner pots, hiking (and the inevitable falling that took place), jamming, swimming, cliff jumping, waterfall sliding, kayaking, rockthrowing, gooseberry bush trimming, running in the rain, traveling in the rain, huddling under the tarp against the rain, dancing, ´making the deal´ cram studying, book clubbing, temporary tatoo drawing, cooking and all else that took place on these 6 weeks of hyper speed ecological education. SO loved the whole experience, our wonderful teachers and my dear peers.

slight tear...

So, ahead we charge yet further south and more north of nearly nowhere.

Yosemite of Chile

Salutations from home base, aka Puerto Varas. We are back from our latest backpacking trip in the Cochamo Valley a glacier carved narrow vallley, lined with dense forests climbing the steep hillsides that are littered with waterfalls (I´d like to make waterfalls my speciality... I imagine a career where I must visit all major waterfalls and classify them under the christina-cascadas system). the walls around give the place a yosemite of chile like feeling... dark graphite and light grey. jagged, textures rock faces that are sometimes encircled by a condor flying over head, and though more than 10 feet in wingspan, they are but small dots far away. Cochamó valley is a climbing mecca and also a place where you can backpack into Argentina across the border, something I am keen on doing!

Our group did have the priviledge of seeing a condor quite upclose. it swooped below us and we were able to see its huge white tipped wings as it dipped next us and glided out of sight around the bend. YESS!

We hiked to waterfalls and got to waterslide down some of them. the water is more chilly than even than Santa Barbara´s slice of pacific coast... I´d say it was about 48 degrees, it is snow melt afterall. so refreshing after days without proper showering and sweating alll day.

The weather was beautiful all 6 days of our trip. 80 to 85 degrees under a strong southern hemispher sun. even nights were warm (did not need my long johns in my sleeping bag!)
only bain to this beautiful weather was the subsequent infestation of mosquitos. I didn´t count but I think the running total was close to 50 bites... itchy.

More lessons from the back country: camping pizza: a great recipe when the bread is a little stale! ingredients: hockey puck bread rolls, packet of pasta sauce, oregano, garlic, spices to your liking, packet cheese and salami if you need. on your camp stove add oil to the pot, brown the bread, through in the sauce and melt the cheese and salami if you are of a pepperoni persuasion!
delicious.
Another tip; when prunes are not enough to keep digestive processes going, use wheat germ! a simple additive that your intestines will thank you for.

on the personal story front, I really have few... I have so far pulled off a few leeches, I have purchased and begun to use a pee rag (please don´t be grossed out, they are so useful) I have aquired a taste for cold oatmeal (a fine trail lunch, espeically in lieu of hockey puck bread sandwiches with whatever condiments are left. I kid you not, someone on the trip: bread, mustard, jam, cucumber, cream cheese and ketchup). And I am officially an expert on blisters, blisters within blisters and blister care.

I am loving the experience down here and really getting into being in the field. Although I do not plan to go into orthinology or botany the experience is none the lesss valuable. Learning about international conservation issues has been quite enlightening and I have a much broader perspective on the question of conservation and challenges to it.

Next trip is to Pucon where we will mount a volcano and hang out in a supposedly stunning forest, adjacent to a lake in a forest of Arucaria (monkey puzzle) trees that look otherworldly. The class concludes next Monday and I will miss all the great travelling companions that I have become close with these past weeks. I am greatly looking forward to the arrival of
my boyfriend, Mike Bishop so we can further juant southern South America for a good six weeks more. I feel many delights are yet to come!
For now, back to the hostel for my last civilized meal... lots of iron please!

Yours in ecology,

Christina

from fjord to farm

Greetings from the tiny town of Hornopiren! I am situated east and south of the bay of Ancud perched on the edge of a fjord. The water weaves around high mountain cliffs that are covered with thick foliage including prehistoric looking giant ferns.

The group is back after a 10 day stint in Vodudahue, an organic farm part of Pumalin Park, a private reserved owned by Douglas Tompkins an expatriot businessman spending his fortune preserving wilderness areas in Chile and Argentina. A very unique situation this farm.. I won´t go into the politics now, just a bit about the trip:

A particularly awesome moment was the boat ride to this farm... we had a surprise stop at hotspots or Thermas. the silky soft mud bottom was filled with hot water you could change the temperature of by diverting streams.

Additionally, a hike we took up a mountain through thick foliage, generally ferns and bamboo giving way to mosses and trees in riparian areas led us to an amazing waterfall. It was graced with two alerce trees...famed, now rare trees of chile and argentina that take a long time to grow and were almost cut down to extinction before being legally preserved. they are very old and tall, similar to redwoods of northern california. we took a brief dip in the freezing cold water, it was super refreshing and nice, because i hadn´t shower in quite some time!

As for laboring...Work started at 8am and we preformed tasks until lunch. farm tasks included weeding, sheep tackling (in order to trim their toe nails) pruning, road maintenence and seed collecting. Days were often wet with a few, glorious summer days thrown in. The temperate was moderate and would only really heat up if the sun out.

There is much much much to share and I will save it for Puerto Varas. Just a taste but think: sea lion colony, boat ride from hell, fresh baked bread, being close to your meat (slaughtering a sheep that we later ate at an asado de cordero) much ecology, and gorgeous southern stars.

apologies for the rapid and unedited nature of this post.

love from the south, Christina.

Austral Summer Delight

Greetings from Puerto Varas, a small town on a lake, Lake Llanquihue. It is most quaint. currently it is infused with some unusual cultural fesitivies, the Prostfest is here for all Aleman, that is the spanish word for German residents and descendents here this weekend. I use Spanish frequently and keep the dictionary on me so that I may improve my vocabulary. The accent is not hard to understand generally, Santiagans speak fast however.

When i first arrived I was most miserable with a case of tonsilitis. After a trip to the doctors and a week of phlegm filled frustration , I improved and had no problems since. The trip to here was long, I lost a full day in transit and woke up in summertime with no concept of actual time. It was a blurry beginning to a new chapter which is so far, amazing.

Favorite food item thus far: mariscos (seafood, shellfish) and empanadas... the empandas are baked pastries that come filled with apple or cheese or meat. a filling treat indeed!

We have just returned from our first group foray into the field. And briefly the group is 15 other kids and two wonderful instructors, Esther and Dan. It is a Wildlands Studies program where we have three separate field courses that require a significant amount of work from identifying birds (on field quizzes that are actually somewhat stress... as in, oh no, I only saw that plant when it was flowering, what the heck is it without those orange, bottle like flowers! I also can´t seem to find the question mark on this key board some ! will suffice. We also do field surveys and study land conservation practices of the places we go. I will later write a 2500 word research paper by hand and turn in 30 field journals written during my time here. Its a lot of work, but its great and there are other suffering and experiencing and loving and hating it all with me.



But the first trip to the field was an 11 day stay on Chiloe Island. It is Chile´s largest island and one of the rainiest places in the world. We first stayed at a biological station, Senda Darwin where alot of plant and bird research takes place. it has fragmented north patagonian forests that are convinient to study. it was also a place charles darwin went and hated (he called it a 'miserable hole' and said that 'only amphibians could like it' mostly due to the year round rainfall).

highlights were sunbathing at 730 pm, followed by a 10pm sunset... so incredible!! group cooking and dinners, story time at night, learning to bird watch and swimming in a swimming hole that was more of small, slow flowing creek littered with cow pies. hopefully better places to swim in the future.

Following the Senda we left for Chiloe national park. the park, set on another lake quite near the coast (at this point it is the west coast of the island, so when facing west we had a spectactular view of ocean, big, uninterrupted and fraught with tempests). after one night in the front country we set off for a remote beach called Cole Cole. The hike was long, over 10 miles of mostly beach hiking followed by a steep incline and descent over a large hill with a severely muddied trail. My blisters were large, my pack sandy, and my boots wet by the end of it. we forded a flooded area too.
Cole Cole itself was beautiful. the campground was recessed from the beach in small clearings in the thick, Valdivian forest. treeless circles with picnic tables connected to each other through muddy forest trails no larger than deer trails. we filtered water that was amber colored due to the high amount of naturally occuring tanins. the waves broke in a heavy barrel on shore usually between one and one and a half meters. birds and seas cuold be seen out to see as well as several washed up penguins that were distinguishable only by their remaning feet or feathers.
Cole Cole was wet. rain pants and jacket were on all the time and when it was dry, the sun wasn´t out for long. i was cold to the core mostly. energy was zapped from me by the time it was 10, and just barely dark. it was extremely rewarding to cook our own meals, having brought all our own food in and be a self containted, self sufficient unit more or less. one treat was Calafate berries that populate the edge of the forest. they grow on thick, thory bushes but are similar to blue berries in size and stature. pretty good to add to one´s oats in the morning.

I snapped some beautiful sunset pictures and ones of me poking out from Nalca, giant ferms that look so prehistoric. they are the size of couch cushions or larger, incredible.

Now that we are back in town there is a lot to be done before our next trip. we must buy groceries for 10 days in our cook groups and pack the food. i must also buy new foot inserts to try and decrease the rubbing in my boots. i also want to do research for my research project on the South American volcano, Chaiten (if you have any great sources, send them my way!).

So far Chile is magnificent, the people are kind and interesting, they are helpful and I find their culture to be comforting, its value of hospitality, genorosity and a notion of stewardship for the environment in most cases. the landscape is ranges wildly, i saw volcanoes flying in, many lakes, the beach.
the next trip about 21 days long is a trip to an organic farm in Parque Pumalin, a privately owned (American owned) reserve in region ten of Chile. we will be working on an organic farm which I am most looking forward to. following that a backpacking trip to the Chochamo Valley follows.

All my love to you. Best, Christina Australis.


please feel free to post a comment or email me at christinatabacco@gmail.com

Shipwrecked

Ahoy! Although this very awesome outing happened over a week ago, it lingers strongly in my mind--the scent of the sea, the corroded iron (oxidation at its best!) a helipad covered in birds, the maiden's quarters (they were hardly that of a maiden, perhaps deckhands?) the cold, cold atlantic, the breaching whales....

I shall write about it briefly now and share pictures.

In a special place on the Atlantic side near Cape Town is a ship wreck. I found this information on it: The BOS 400 broke loose during a storm while being towed by the Russian tugboat Tigr from Point Noir, Congo to Cape Town, South Africa and ran aground on Duiker Point near Sandy Bay on June 26, 1994.

More than a decade of wreckage has brought a new crew to the ship. birds as I mentioned have capitalized the upper decks while the reefy area where the ship rests is home to fishes and seals.

After an hour of shimmying and crawling and vigorous hiking, we reached the launch site.

from then on, we swam, scrambled on to the ship, explored and jumped off.

Me gusta reggae, me gusta punk rock

A day off of the school grind to play in the waves-- not a bad idea. With exams drawing near, final projects underway, more grey days than springy ones I thought it would be acceptable to hit the beach and leave the books. Surf was small but so excellent for the soul, I enjoy the coasting down the face of wave, touching its glassy features with my extended fingers. Niceee.

What else in Cape Town? A handful of good friends make life here a treat. Surprisingly I feel as though I fit in around campus after just three months of school. I know the ropes well enough, where to get the cheap coffee, which bathrooms generally have no toilet paper, where to find elusive marine minded professors, even certain stairwells that have water heater compartments that are not locked, making for the perfect hiding place before terrifying a passerby. I suppose the weirdo African things I used to find so foreign have lost their alien sheen, overall rendering the surroundings familiar and warm.

Last weekend boasted a delightful festival called Rocking the Daisies. I got the full experience. The venue was up the west coast at a wine estate with lush grass, a reservoir for overheated dancing revelers, hippie vibes and musical fantasia.

Raging all night, watching the most beautiful pink and blue sunset, the boerwvorst rolls, the aging hippies still alongside the neo-eco-hippies, body paint and flowers, and perhaps oddly enough, a concert experience only myself and my two girlfriends had: an awesome game of tag with kids we found in an adjacent field. There is a picture below, the kids were so wonderful, and such a random surprise.

Alas, I must go because I must ready myself for my official scuba certification knighting! I shall receive my official 'scuba stina' card and all the other bells and whistles.

Photos: Rocking the Daisies (left) Field Kids (right)

This photo deserves some explanation. This is Muizenberg, a place where I frequently surf. The reason for this mass amount of surfers is that on this Sunday they were trying to break the world record for most people on a wave at one time. We saw the crew succeed, a joyous and stoked moment indeed.

Scuba lady.