Those pictures, the one's filled with a picturesque waterfall and various themes on the same sunset, also come with a story, and here, for your enjoyment, it is.
Kenzie, Corey and I decided to take the hour and a half long bus ride to a waterfall near Chillan, called Saltos del Laja (the verb saltar means to jump, hence the water is jumping from the top of a cliff, the river's abortive suicide attempt which ultimately fails, but I digress...). We all live close to each other, and so we met up and walked to the bus terminal, bought our tickets, and passed the hour until the bus left browsing the neighboring Jumbo. The bus left at 4pm.
The plan: board said bus, disembark at Saltos, trek up the falls, snap photos, maybe get lunch and browse the little shops, flag down a returning bus, return to Chillan after a couple hours of fun.
Reality: 4pm. The bus left on schedule, the trip went smoothly, and the driver dropped us off on the side of the road.
Saltos is not a town. It is a hostel sitting up on a hill, a little restaurant, a row of touristy craft-vending kiosks, a public restroom down a little hill shaded by trees (which is completely un-alarming under a blaze of friendly sun), and a little bus information booth (closed by 7). So. According to Corey (our guide and resident expert, having been to Saltos once already) we have but to hop the next bus to Chillan passing through this little stretch of tourism. Facil (easy).
We crossed the bridge over the river (the same that attempted suicide and lived to float on beneath us), pausing in the middle, waiting for the large log truck to pass so we could feel the earth shudder in an unsettling and thrilling way as the bridge shakes. And we walked down, and then walked up, on little earthen stairs, little wooden stairs, paths with steep grades, and paved stretches, snapping pictures of the falls.
It is quite amazing. Fairly small, but wide and tall enough to pretend, with a bit of a squint and a hint of imagination, that Niagara Falls is roaring in front of you. The wideness is what strikes me. In Oregon I have been to waterfalls--tall impressive waterfalls--but they are not like this. Pictures speak louder than the words my brain can't produce at the moment.
Amazing as it is, after a half hour (it is now 6), we were ready to leave. We browsed the kiosks, including an artist dabbing paint on panes of glass, little portraits of the falls for sale. There were many souvenirs that could also be found in Chillan in the mercado, the only difference being the words "Saltos del Laja" scribbled in pen in the corners. There have been no buses yet. Worry is still far from our minds.
We finished gazing at the livelihoods of various Chileans, and caught a seat on the wooden fence by the "bus stop" (a wide swath of dirt surrounding the two-lane blacktop). The first bus to stop was headed for a small town (the name escapes me at present), and we smiled away the few people who boarded, and waited patiently, taking photos of the sinking sun and chattering nothings to pass the time. The second bus continued on to Concepcion, with the three of us kicking around dirt, discussing various places in Chile. Seven has come and gone. The lady manning the small bus booth has hopped the bus to Concepcion.
By eight, little flutters began to form in the stomach region. The sun sank lower. The vendors packed up their wares and left. We waited. Bus after bus continued passing, none bound for Chillan. Eventually, we started flagging down each one, asking when the next bus to Chillan would show up. "diez minutos atrás (Ten minutes more)," assured each driver. Ten minutes slid by and no bus. At 9pm, a bus driver told us to hop on and he would take us to the autopista (highway) so we could have a better chance of finding a bus. By this time, I can read a clear scream of anxiety in the eyes of Kenzie. Corey, having traveled to China by himself, without knowing the language, seemed calm. I was also surprisingly unaffected by the passing buses. I was preparing to spend a night in a little plywood bus stop, shaking with the passing of each truck. It was cold and in between buses, we walked around in tight circles or little patrols back and forth in front of the shelter. The bus stop was situated in such a way that the main road lay in front of us, and a smaller one behind. We were assured multiple times that the bus we wanted would appear on the autopista. Nevertheless I ran to the second bus stop behind us every time a possible bus appeared on that road. Just in case.
We finally decided to make a choice. We could return to the hostel and hope they were still open and had rooms, and that we had enough money between us to stay the night. Or we could cross the autopista and take a bus to Los Angeles, and hope to find a bus to Chillan at the bus terminal there. Kenzie decided to try for Los Angeles (we saw at least 10 buses headed for Los Angeles in the past hour). As we were crossing the highway, Corey called our professor Florencia to ask her advice. She suggested waiting where we were for a bus to Chillan. We turned around and went back.
Finally at 10:30 or so, we saw a bus coming up the smaller road behind us. Once again, I ran over to the other bus stop and flagged it down. The sign, flashing in holy-grail light under a street light, read "Chillan," and full choral arrangements burst from the clouds and trees and stars. Salvation was upon us. We got on-board, being sure to ask if the bus was in fact going to Chillan (in case hallucinogens somehow seeped into our consciousnesses by some unknown means). The driver gave us a funny look and nodded. We collapsed into open seats in the rear. We caught the bus at the right time, because before we reached the terminal in Chillan, the bus had filled, including standing room. And an hour and a half later, midnight, we arrived in Chillan and walked home.
The end.
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
Thursday, October 16, 2008
Tuesday, October 7, 2008
On Achieving One Month In Chillan... (with photos)
7 de octubre
Chillan is a sweet city; I'm getting to like it more and more. It's about the size of Eugene more or less (160.000 people). Mi padre took me on a tour the first week and I've since walked home from the centro and around the barrio a few times, not to mention taking the micro to class and colectivos around town, etc. Mi familia lives in a middle class neighborhood (called jardines de ñuble). It's really nice. I like it way better than a lot of the sterile rich-folk neighborhoods. Mi padre showed me the various other parts of town too. the rich part is insane. huge houses, manicured lawns, ADT security systems (no joke, i saw the sign), fenced driveways with gates that open mechanically (like with a garage door opener)... we visited mi tia (aunt), and she lives in this new neighborhood, every house looks the same with tall white cement walls completely surrounding the yards and driveways of each one. They were nice, but everything looked and felt fake. Kind of like a Stepford wives type thing. I think. I don't really remember what that was about, except they were fake, and too perfect or something. That's a little what it was like. Sterile and fake and way too white... like a hospital.
Anyway (sidetracked) ... it seems like every house has a gate in Chillan, our gate doesn't have a garage door opener type thing though. We have to get out of the car and use brute force. We live in a duplex. Or at least that is what I choose to call it. Half the building is the neighbor's house, and sometimes I can hear them going down the stairs or hammering nails into the wall. Other than that, I hardly know we have neighbors. It's kinda funny, because each half of each duplex is painted a different color. The one across the street is white and orange. Ours is red and the neighbor's is brick. Our other neighbor has a purple half. We have wireless internet and cable/satellite (not sure which), but mis padres worry about money sometimes and are very good about conserving energy. Electricity is expensive. Gas is expensive. We only turn on the calefon (gas water heater) in the morning before showers, and to do dishes. The gas heaters don't get used except when mi madre can't take the cold any more... she really doesn't like being cold. But there's a nice little front lawn and a groovy patio area. More than adequate, way nicer than the apartment I used to call home in Corvallis.
The streets are lined with trees; some of the sidewalks are paved, some are just dirt. Some of the roads are paved, some are dirt/gravel, some are half-paved (its funny because cars/buses/trucks going both ways use the paved side, then play a pseudo game of chicken, before one or the other pulls onto the dirt part until the other car passes.)
I also saw some of the poor sector. It's pretty much the same everywhere in the world. The houses get smaller and the neighborhoods more dangerous. More drugs, delinquency, crime, etc. I don't really know much about the poorer parts of town, just what i saw through the window of a tiny green speeding Hyundai (or however you spell it). Tiny ramshackle huts in some places, rampant (and utterly fantastic) graffiti, fewer amenities.
The driving here is different. The micros (buses) are a daily adventure. They stop anywhere, for any raised hand indicating a passenger. It is 300 pesos to ride (about $0.60). To exit the vehicle, you walk up and tell the driver you want off, and he (I have yet to encounter a she) pulls over, many times to a symphony of impatient honks. I think I like the driving. It wakes you up in the morning. It seems to be the rule that if you are in a car, you might as well be moving as fast as possible. And lanes are just suggestions. And if you need to hop a curb to get around someone, well you gotta do what you gotta do. And passing people on little side streets is the norm...
My favorite thing here is el mercado (the market). It's seriously awesome. It's the saturday market amped up to a whole new level, and it's every day. Piles of amazing fruit, vegetables, flowers, nuts, second hand clothing, a tiny stand with a few books, and tons of hand made chilean stuff: many leather crafts, alpaca fur knit hats and gloves and sweaters, scarves, wooden trinkets, incredible arrays of colors and materials. It is a square block, and a fantastic one I might add. It is downtown next to the mall.
The mall, a mall which all the chileans say is small and not very good, is much larger than the Heritage Mall in Albany. It's like five or six floors with sundry labyrinthine escalators... yeah I got lost in the mall... maybe twice. It's hard to get out. I find it the opposite of small. I shudder to think how long it would take to make my way out of a "big" mall. There are all the sort of regular stores you'd expect. A few department stores, a food court, a McDonald's where a bunch of the gringos went for lunch at least once. Shame. And a supermercado, or two, and a bunch of little places: a Kodak store, office supply place, shoe store, sporting goods, a little kiosk where you can buy bus tickets, etc.
Outside the mall, in much of the downtown, are many street artists, creating their wares before your eyes. I watched a guy do spray painted landscapes for almost a half hour. It's amazing stuff.
Mi familia shops at the Jumbo, a supermercado (super market) close to our house... it's eerily similar to a Wal-Mart... everything you could possibly need. Another one is the Hyper Lider (not to be confused with the Express Lider, which is a small Hyper Lider), but mi familia doesn't like to shop there, because the people who shop there are "tonto" (I think that's how its spelled) or "fome" which are kind of all encompassing negative words meaning boring or stupid that get bandied about pretty heavily. It cracks me up.
I've also been to the bus terminal, well two of them, one downtown, one next to Jumbo, and to the post office, to mail in my absentee ballot.
Oh and I've been to the university... surprise. It's very small, but nice and relaxed. We have classes in one room (reduces the number of time we get lost). There's a cafeteria. I ate spaghetti there once. Yeah that's about it for the Universidad del Bio Bio. There are two campuses of this university in Chillan, and the main campus is in Concepcion (a little over an hour away, on the coast). I only ended up at the wrong Chillan campus once. Classes are going smoothly. Florencia, the professor in charge of the program, is perhaps one of my favorite people on the planet. She is exceptionally nice and fun and smart. The other professors are getting used to dealing with our poor Spanish skills. The classes so far are fun. This is the beginning of the third week of classes. Two tests down.
I've also been to my companera's (my Spanish tutor's) house twice now. Her dad is a mechanic who works out of their house. He's a member of the Gideons I think, assuming I understood him correctly. In any case, I now have a bilingual New Testament. He's rather hilarious, and he plays the guitar and sings very well.
Anyway, that's a bit about Chillan. I'm catching up on writing... well no. I've been writing, but not well or in any organized fashion. So I've been catching up on weeding through the excessive notebook entries and randomly typed thoughts, often late at night, and fogged with sleep-haze. One such random typed thought: there are too many names among the gringos with "k" sounds: Kelsie, Caylin, Kaitlin, Kyle, Kelly, Corey, Kasie, Kenzie... I think that's all of them. I feel bad for the Chilean professors attempting to learn these names and decipher them from one another. That's all for now. More pictures and whatnot to come shortly.
Fotos:
http://www.kodakgallery.com/BrowsePhotos.jsp?UV=146926005779_23873423714&collid=72157078614.82251813714.1223411734626&page=1
Chillan is a sweet city; I'm getting to like it more and more. It's about the size of Eugene more or less (160.000 people). Mi padre took me on a tour the first week and I've since walked home from the centro and around the barrio a few times, not to mention taking the micro to class and colectivos around town, etc. Mi familia lives in a middle class neighborhood (called jardines de ñuble). It's really nice. I like it way better than a lot of the sterile rich-folk neighborhoods. Mi padre showed me the various other parts of town too. the rich part is insane. huge houses, manicured lawns, ADT security systems (no joke, i saw the sign), fenced driveways with gates that open mechanically (like with a garage door opener)... we visited mi tia (aunt), and she lives in this new neighborhood, every house looks the same with tall white cement walls completely surrounding the yards and driveways of each one. They were nice, but everything looked and felt fake. Kind of like a Stepford wives type thing. I think. I don't really remember what that was about, except they were fake, and too perfect or something. That's a little what it was like. Sterile and fake and way too white... like a hospital.
Anyway (sidetracked) ... it seems like every house has a gate in Chillan, our gate doesn't have a garage door opener type thing though. We have to get out of the car and use brute force. We live in a duplex. Or at least that is what I choose to call it. Half the building is the neighbor's house, and sometimes I can hear them going down the stairs or hammering nails into the wall. Other than that, I hardly know we have neighbors. It's kinda funny, because each half of each duplex is painted a different color. The one across the street is white and orange. Ours is red and the neighbor's is brick. Our other neighbor has a purple half. We have wireless internet and cable/satellite (not sure which), but mis padres worry about money sometimes and are very good about conserving energy. Electricity is expensive. Gas is expensive. We only turn on the calefon (gas water heater) in the morning before showers, and to do dishes. The gas heaters don't get used except when mi madre can't take the cold any more... she really doesn't like being cold. But there's a nice little front lawn and a groovy patio area. More than adequate, way nicer than the apartment I used to call home in Corvallis.
The streets are lined with trees; some of the sidewalks are paved, some are just dirt. Some of the roads are paved, some are dirt/gravel, some are half-paved (its funny because cars/buses/trucks going both ways use the paved side, then play a pseudo game of chicken, before one or the other pulls onto the dirt part until the other car passes.)
I also saw some of the poor sector. It's pretty much the same everywhere in the world. The houses get smaller and the neighborhoods more dangerous. More drugs, delinquency, crime, etc. I don't really know much about the poorer parts of town, just what i saw through the window of a tiny green speeding Hyundai (or however you spell it). Tiny ramshackle huts in some places, rampant (and utterly fantastic) graffiti, fewer amenities.
The driving here is different. The micros (buses) are a daily adventure. They stop anywhere, for any raised hand indicating a passenger. It is 300 pesos to ride (about $0.60). To exit the vehicle, you walk up and tell the driver you want off, and he (I have yet to encounter a she) pulls over, many times to a symphony of impatient honks. I think I like the driving. It wakes you up in the morning. It seems to be the rule that if you are in a car, you might as well be moving as fast as possible. And lanes are just suggestions. And if you need to hop a curb to get around someone, well you gotta do what you gotta do. And passing people on little side streets is the norm...
My favorite thing here is el mercado (the market). It's seriously awesome. It's the saturday market amped up to a whole new level, and it's every day. Piles of amazing fruit, vegetables, flowers, nuts, second hand clothing, a tiny stand with a few books, and tons of hand made chilean stuff: many leather crafts, alpaca fur knit hats and gloves and sweaters, scarves, wooden trinkets, incredible arrays of colors and materials. It is a square block, and a fantastic one I might add. It is downtown next to the mall.
The mall, a mall which all the chileans say is small and not very good, is much larger than the Heritage Mall in Albany. It's like five or six floors with sundry labyrinthine escalators... yeah I got lost in the mall... maybe twice. It's hard to get out. I find it the opposite of small. I shudder to think how long it would take to make my way out of a "big" mall. There are all the sort of regular stores you'd expect. A few department stores, a food court, a McDonald's where a bunch of the gringos went for lunch at least once. Shame. And a supermercado, or two, and a bunch of little places: a Kodak store, office supply place, shoe store, sporting goods, a little kiosk where you can buy bus tickets, etc.
Outside the mall, in much of the downtown, are many street artists, creating their wares before your eyes. I watched a guy do spray painted landscapes for almost a half hour. It's amazing stuff.
Mi familia shops at the Jumbo, a supermercado (super market) close to our house... it's eerily similar to a Wal-Mart... everything you could possibly need. Another one is the Hyper Lider (not to be confused with the Express Lider, which is a small Hyper Lider), but mi familia doesn't like to shop there, because the people who shop there are "tonto" (I think that's how its spelled) or "fome" which are kind of all encompassing negative words meaning boring or stupid that get bandied about pretty heavily. It cracks me up.
I've also been to the bus terminal, well two of them, one downtown, one next to Jumbo, and to the post office, to mail in my absentee ballot.
Oh and I've been to the university... surprise. It's very small, but nice and relaxed. We have classes in one room (reduces the number of time we get lost). There's a cafeteria. I ate spaghetti there once. Yeah that's about it for the Universidad del Bio Bio. There are two campuses of this university in Chillan, and the main campus is in Concepcion (a little over an hour away, on the coast). I only ended up at the wrong Chillan campus once. Classes are going smoothly. Florencia, the professor in charge of the program, is perhaps one of my favorite people on the planet. She is exceptionally nice and fun and smart. The other professors are getting used to dealing with our poor Spanish skills. The classes so far are fun. This is the beginning of the third week of classes. Two tests down.
I've also been to my companera's (my Spanish tutor's) house twice now. Her dad is a mechanic who works out of their house. He's a member of the Gideons I think, assuming I understood him correctly. In any case, I now have a bilingual New Testament. He's rather hilarious, and he plays the guitar and sings very well.
Anyway, that's a bit about Chillan. I'm catching up on writing... well no. I've been writing, but not well or in any organized fashion. So I've been catching up on weeding through the excessive notebook entries and randomly typed thoughts, often late at night, and fogged with sleep-haze. One such random typed thought: there are too many names among the gringos with "k" sounds: Kelsie, Caylin, Kaitlin, Kyle, Kelly, Corey, Kasie, Kenzie... I think that's all of them. I feel bad for the Chilean professors attempting to learn these names and decipher them from one another. That's all for now. More pictures and whatnot to come shortly.
Fotos:
http://www.kodakgallery.com/BrowsePhotos.jsp?UV=146926005779_23873423714&collid=72157078614.82251813714.1223411734626&page=1
Termas de Chillan (3 weeks late)
15 de septiembre
Today, we journey from Chillan, resting peacefully in the valley, to the jagged eastern horizon. We will be staying at the Hotel Nevados de Chillan, a ski resort complete with hot springs. We piled into the bus after stowing skis and snowboards and bags packed for the two-day trip in early dawn light. These are the last days of winter and it is cold, and the eyes around me in the bus are red and half closed, but glinting with anticipation.
The drive to the mountains will be around an hour and a half. After the intensity of the travel the week before, a mere hour and a half on a bus is a welcome luxury. The buses, again: amazing. Bathroom, TV (turned off as it was), reclining seats with ample cushioning, a window complete with curtain and the capacity to admit the chilled air if you so choose--what more could one ask for?
The bus winds through the small communities along the heavily forested highway, and if I close my eyes for a minute and empty my mind, when I open them again I am moving through highway 20 to the Oregon coast. Then the bus rounds a bend and the snow-capped Andes appear, and I am again thousands of miles away.
As we enter the "foothills" which look more like the coast range back home, the bus drops off the pavement and onto the switch-back gravel road leading up to the resort. Suddenly, my ears pop, and there is snow on the ground, and a little waterfall of melted run-off. Then the Hotel peeks around the curve and we inch into the parking lot... where a Saint Bernard lies peacefully, sleeping. The driver sounds the horn in a long blast and revs the engine. The large head lifts off the gravel and the eyes look on curiously at the rumbling beast in front of it. The bus moves forward, and she (Clara, we found out later) gets up and ambles up to the front steps.
Check in moves quickly, and all too soon I am standing outside the hotel, dressed in full ski apparel, trundling in awkward ski boots to the edge of the deck. After a few quick pointers from one of the others with some experience, I stomp my way into the skis and head off toward the lift. The first lift drops us off at a little halfway point, and I have yet to fall. I remember thinking, "Hey, I have yet to fall." And then of course, "Oh, great..." because, of course, you can't think a thing like that and not expect to fall within the next two minutes. As fate would have it, at the next lift, sliding into position, the snowboarding gringa next to me plants her free foot firmly on my ski, and tips... teeters... falls, and I can't move my foot... I tip... teeter... down into the snow. The lift chair passes over our heads as we attempt to stop the laughter.
Finally, minutes later, we are on top of the easy slope, gazing down. Another first time skier in the group gives the thumbs up and pushes off, flying down the hill hunched over her skis with the poles tucked under her arms like a professional. Then I push off, poles flailing, remembering to "snowplow" or "pizza" my way to the bottom. And hey, I didn't fall. To tell the truth, my head may have swollen beyond any advisable measure. Another time or two down and I feel invincible, ready to take on the larger hill the more experienced folks are heading for. Yeah, why not?
Of course, on the lift looking down and the course rolling below me, my stomach begins to tighten. The slope is steep. The lift disgorges me at the top.
Staring down the slope of glistening white, I realize this is not going to be a short trip.
(switching tenses) I pushed off, picked up speed, lost control, and slid on my belly 20, 30, 40 feet, before coming to a stop. By the end of the first half hour, I had mastered falling. I am proud to say I can fall with grace and impeccable style. I had also mastered the art of regaining one's feet, of putting on wayward skis lost in a tumble, and shouting "Ski! Ski!" (ski in spanish thankfully remains "ski") when a ski remained upslope to those skiers trailing my bumbling attempts. Only once did I ski into another skier, and she was gracious. By the time I reached the bottom, I was able to stay upright for nearly 50 feet or so before attaining the much easier prone position.
On my return to the hotel (after climbing the hill with awkward ski-booted steps, getting lost, decending the hill, asking directions, ascending the hill, dropping my ski down the hill, returning to the bottom of the hill to retrieve it, ascending the hill, getting lost, asking directions and finally stumbling into the lobby exhausted) I felt it necessary to enjoy the bounty of the hot springs and donned my swim trunks.
That night, the group met for dinner, and drinks in the hotel lounge. There was karaoke of which I did not partake. Others did and recieved free drinks as reward. There was discussion, by political science major and english major and archeology major, of how the public stock system will be the downfall of quality journalism. This came of course before the ghastly dip in fortunes that tipped the world on its axis, and sent it tumbling down a hill. As yet we are unsure of the exact depth of the valley into which we have wandered, but effects have been felt (front page news in the Santiago paper for a full week). I blame the political science major for broaching the subject of the stock market.
In the night, we walked the snow-gleaming paths under an almost full moon. It was a fantastic landscape, pale glowing. The stars (different stars, but still stars) wavered and the mountain smiled. Pictures were attempted by others, but it was a night uninterpretable on photographic paper or ever (gasp) the almighty word scrawled in a notebook. Nature has an affable way of laughing at our silly attempts to capture her.
The next day, after sloshing through snow, visiting sled dogs, and packing, we left, the sun sinking behind the trees.
Today, we journey from Chillan, resting peacefully in the valley, to the jagged eastern horizon. We will be staying at the Hotel Nevados de Chillan, a ski resort complete with hot springs. We piled into the bus after stowing skis and snowboards and bags packed for the two-day trip in early dawn light. These are the last days of winter and it is cold, and the eyes around me in the bus are red and half closed, but glinting with anticipation.
The drive to the mountains will be around an hour and a half. After the intensity of the travel the week before, a mere hour and a half on a bus is a welcome luxury. The buses, again: amazing. Bathroom, TV (turned off as it was), reclining seats with ample cushioning, a window complete with curtain and the capacity to admit the chilled air if you so choose--what more could one ask for?
The bus winds through the small communities along the heavily forested highway, and if I close my eyes for a minute and empty my mind, when I open them again I am moving through highway 20 to the Oregon coast. Then the bus rounds a bend and the snow-capped Andes appear, and I am again thousands of miles away.
As we enter the "foothills" which look more like the coast range back home, the bus drops off the pavement and onto the switch-back gravel road leading up to the resort. Suddenly, my ears pop, and there is snow on the ground, and a little waterfall of melted run-off. Then the Hotel peeks around the curve and we inch into the parking lot... where a Saint Bernard lies peacefully, sleeping. The driver sounds the horn in a long blast and revs the engine. The large head lifts off the gravel and the eyes look on curiously at the rumbling beast in front of it. The bus moves forward, and she (Clara, we found out later) gets up and ambles up to the front steps.
Check in moves quickly, and all too soon I am standing outside the hotel, dressed in full ski apparel, trundling in awkward ski boots to the edge of the deck. After a few quick pointers from one of the others with some experience, I stomp my way into the skis and head off toward the lift. The first lift drops us off at a little halfway point, and I have yet to fall. I remember thinking, "Hey, I have yet to fall." And then of course, "Oh, great..." because, of course, you can't think a thing like that and not expect to fall within the next two minutes. As fate would have it, at the next lift, sliding into position, the snowboarding gringa next to me plants her free foot firmly on my ski, and tips... teeters... falls, and I can't move my foot... I tip... teeter... down into the snow. The lift chair passes over our heads as we attempt to stop the laughter.
Finally, minutes later, we are on top of the easy slope, gazing down. Another first time skier in the group gives the thumbs up and pushes off, flying down the hill hunched over her skis with the poles tucked under her arms like a professional. Then I push off, poles flailing, remembering to "snowplow" or "pizza" my way to the bottom. And hey, I didn't fall. To tell the truth, my head may have swollen beyond any advisable measure. Another time or two down and I feel invincible, ready to take on the larger hill the more experienced folks are heading for. Yeah, why not?
Of course, on the lift looking down and the course rolling below me, my stomach begins to tighten. The slope is steep. The lift disgorges me at the top.
Staring down the slope of glistening white, I realize this is not going to be a short trip.
(switching tenses) I pushed off, picked up speed, lost control, and slid on my belly 20, 30, 40 feet, before coming to a stop. By the end of the first half hour, I had mastered falling. I am proud to say I can fall with grace and impeccable style. I had also mastered the art of regaining one's feet, of putting on wayward skis lost in a tumble, and shouting "Ski! Ski!" (ski in spanish thankfully remains "ski") when a ski remained upslope to those skiers trailing my bumbling attempts. Only once did I ski into another skier, and she was gracious. By the time I reached the bottom, I was able to stay upright for nearly 50 feet or so before attaining the much easier prone position.
On my return to the hotel (after climbing the hill with awkward ski-booted steps, getting lost, decending the hill, asking directions, ascending the hill, dropping my ski down the hill, returning to the bottom of the hill to retrieve it, ascending the hill, getting lost, asking directions and finally stumbling into the lobby exhausted) I felt it necessary to enjoy the bounty of the hot springs and donned my swim trunks.
That night, the group met for dinner, and drinks in the hotel lounge. There was karaoke of which I did not partake. Others did and recieved free drinks as reward. There was discussion, by political science major and english major and archeology major, of how the public stock system will be the downfall of quality journalism. This came of course before the ghastly dip in fortunes that tipped the world on its axis, and sent it tumbling down a hill. As yet we are unsure of the exact depth of the valley into which we have wandered, but effects have been felt (front page news in the Santiago paper for a full week). I blame the political science major for broaching the subject of the stock market.
In the night, we walked the snow-gleaming paths under an almost full moon. It was a fantastic landscape, pale glowing. The stars (different stars, but still stars) wavered and the mountain smiled. Pictures were attempted by others, but it was a night uninterpretable on photographic paper or ever (gasp) the almighty word scrawled in a notebook. Nature has an affable way of laughing at our silly attempts to capture her.
The next day, after sloshing through snow, visiting sled dogs, and packing, we left, the sun sinking behind the trees.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
