How'd you do that?

San Pedro

We’re up early the next day, much to the dismay of many. There are a lot of groans as we get on the truck,
Grace and Danielle

but it’s a long drive day, so we have to get going. Today is the longest, most boring truck day in South America. We pretty much just pass through rocky desert the whole way. It looks like the way I imagine Afghanistan to look; lots of sand and rocks and not much else.

That afternoon we stop in a town named Calama that has a big mall and supermarket. San Pedro has virtually nothing for shopping, so I want to get it all done here for the next 3 days as quickly as possible. Unfortunately, about halfway through the shopping, Andy walks up to me and mentions that there’s a possible situation in the mall involving Grace. She seems to have lost her credit card into a pay phone. I rub my head, “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

Sure enough when I arrive on the scene, Grace is crying and yelling at the mall manager. It seems that in England you can put credit cards into pay phones and they’ll just charge you through your credit card. Regrettably here you have to use a phone card. So while Jill, the American girl, tries to calm down Grace I have a chat with the mall manager. He claims that he doesn’t have the key to open the phone and that we’ll have to wait until the next morning to claim the card. Of course, that’s impossible or at least really inconvenient, as we’re still an hour and a half from San Pedro and we would have to come back the next day. So I ask him if he has the phone number for the people who manage phones and he says, ‘no he doesn’t and it’s quite impossible for them to come out now anyway.’ Hmmm…first of all I find it hard to believe that he doesn’t have their phone number, but OK, does he have a phone book so I can at least try.

He looks at me obviously irritated that I won’t be put off so easily. Eventually, I get him to take me to his office and we find the number. It turns out that it’s not impossible for the guy to come out to the phone and he says that he’ll be out in a jiffy (he doesn’t really say in a jiffy, but whatever the Spanish equivalent is). In the end, the guy gets there before the shoppers are even done, opens the phone (infuriately with a screwdriver) and we’re back on the truck without any time lost.

We finally get to San Pedro that evening and set up camp. San Pedro is in the middle of the Atacames desert, one of the driest places on Earth. The town itself is very small, but charming with adobe buildings and a number of nice cafés and bars with large outdoor courtyards. After dinner a bunch of us sample of a couple of the bars and then come back fairly early. Embarrassingly, Claire invites me to her tent, but when I come back from the bathroom she’s already gone to it and I don’t know which one it is. There’s 16 identical tents spread throughout the campground and I’m not about to start knocking on each one trying to find her, so I end up just going to my own tent. The next morning she’ll laugh and laugh.

Note: Unfortunately, this is where I stopped blogging about this tour. I always meant to continue, but I never got around to it.

Spit and Sangria

Bahia Inglesa

Off we go the next morning up to Bahia Inglesa. I must admit, Northern Chile is not my favorite part of this
Sangria on the beach. I know... my job's tough.

tour. The only reason we stop in Bahia Inglesa is because we have to stop somewhere on our way to San Pedro de Atacames. I actually asked the office if we could change our route and go up through Argentina, which I find to be much more interesting and a whole lot cheaper, but as I expected I was denied.

Anyway, we make the best of it. At the campground they have these little A-frame cabins that are almost as cheap as camping and fun to stay in, so I call ahead and make reservations. Unfortunately, even though I specified what I wanted, the guy made us reservations for these shitty little non-A-frame cabins that are really cramped and in bad shape and of course now the A-frames are all taken up. Grrrr.

Steve has decided to do a spit and I make my famous Sangria, so we still have a pleasant afternoon by the beach sipping on my deceivingly tasty cocktail. It’s not really Sangria at all, but white wine, red wine, vodka, rum, an assortment of juices (whatever I can find) and Sprite. It tastes like fruit punch but punches like a heavyweight.

Steve’s spit is out of this world, as usual. I really need to learn how he does that. Afterwards we pull out the drinking Jenga. On each block of the Jenga there’s so

That night after all the hilarity, I have to share a room with Steve, as there’s not enough rooms to go around.

Star Gazing

La Serena


People spend the day lounging on the beach or at the large mall in town. I spend the day sending off info to the office about the new kids and getting random errands done.

That night some of the pax go on the only tour that I offer in La Serena, the Mamalluca observatory tour. Because of its clear skies and it’s isolation, Northern Chile is one of the world’s best places for star gazing and there are several renown observatories in the area. At the Mamalluca observatory the pax get treated to a presentation on the stars and so forth and are able to look through a couple of high powered telescopes that let them inspect closely for instance the rings around Saturn. I find it very interesting, but I find if I sell this tour too hard a lot of people come back unhappy. Not everybody is that fascinated by looking at stars.

The Serene

La Serena

Getting on the truck today is a completely different experience from before. Only a couple of days ago each person had at least 2 seats to themselves. Now almost every single seat is filled. Martin, who is also a large man, looks at me balefully stuck in a seat next to a new guy. Gone are the days when he could stretch out across four seats and sleep laying down. So now
Finally

there are 31 sets of eyes looking at me saying ‘now what?’ I go over our itinerary from Santiago to La Paz, talking about the towns we’ll be visiting and the tours that will be available. If they read (or are read) the itinerary and are made to understand it, it eliminates a lot of the questions that they’ll ask later. Unfortunately, only about 15% of them seem to be capable of listening to it or reading it themselves and so the questions persist.

We make our first stop at a Copec gas station, the nicest gas stations anywhere. Besides providing 5 star bathrooms (1 star for cleanliness, 1 star for working order, 1 star for T.P., 1 star for a door and 1 star for a toilet seat ((I’ve seen lots of no star toilets, but that’ll have to wait until Bolivia))), showers, a remarkable selection of soft drinks and delectable pastries, they offer Chile’s national food (I kid you not) hot dogs. I very rarely eat hot dogs anywhere, but for some reason every time we stop at one of these gas stations, even at 9 am I have to get a hot dog. They’re so good.

During our lunch stop I once again do a truck tour for all of the new people, showing them the wonders of Doris. On the road again we separate everybody into cook groups and work teams. Everybody gets a shot at cooking and everybody will have a job that rotates weekly. Basically the jobs get split up into two categories which I’ve named, rather diplomatically I reckon, Strong jobs and Finesse jobs. Strong jobs include things like Bootpackers who load and unload the back packs off of Doris, Gas man who sets up the big gas tank for the stoves, Tent Packer who packs and unpacks all of the tents, etc. The finesse jobs include sweeping the floor of Doris when we arrive somewhere, keeping the refrigerator clean, etc. It just so happens that there are as many strong jobs as men and finesse jobs as women.

When we get to La Serena we go over the job responsibilities and Steve teaches the new people how to set up a tent. I have a bit of a dilemma because it just so happens that at the campground where we’re staying, there are some really nice apartments that have kitchens and everything. The problem is, is that there aren’t enough for everybody. I solve the problem by decreeing that all of the new people have to camp at least the first night. I figure it’s only fair as the old people have been pretty much camping every night for almost two months now.

La Serena is a fairly good size city situated on the beach. The campground that we stay in is just across from it which is convenient. All along the beach are nice little restaurants and ice cream stands and such. It’s pretty crowded during the high season which it now is.

After everybody is situated, I take some people out shopping. The one good thing about La Serena is that they have a huge supermarket which makes everything easy to find. Then we come back to camp and the cook group starts cooking and everybody else goes out to this little bar a block away that has a nice deck that looks out to the sea. I notice that Kate and Naomi have taken the 18 year olds under they’re wing and are feeding them drinks. I have a premonition of danger, but they have to learn sometime.

In with the New

Santiago

Now the hostel is positively humming with new people. It’s always fun to speculate on who’s new and who’s just happens to be staying at the hostel. That morning I get an email from home office about a girl named Grace Freeman, who’s joining the tour, but is stuck in Pucon, of all places. Apparently, she might be late. All day, I keep getting emails and notes about this girl and what to do if she doesn’t make it on time. To me it’s not the end of the world. If she’s not here when we leave, I’ll leave her a note on how to find us in La Serena, our next stop. Easy. Finally, she does show up, however, a young pretty but very frazzled English girl, who apparently arrived in Santiago a couple of days early, decided to go to Pucon, rented a car, proceeded to crash said car and then had to stay in Pucon an extra day sorting out payment and ended up eventually just flying to Santiago only to come into the hostel, bags swinging off of her like a tinker, hair standing on end with a very deer caught in the headlights look. Hmmm…I think to myself, this one might be a little high maintenance. I help her get her stuff to her room so she can settle down a bit before the meeting.

I get all of my last minute work done and that evening, at 5pm, we have the pre departure meeting. This is when I basically go over what they can expect from us (Steve and I), what we expect from them and what they can expect from the tour. This crowd is a bit younger, especially three girls from England (Ellie, Ella and Rosie) who are all 18. One shocker is that I have an American, Jill, joining the tour. Besides my Dad, I’ve never had an American on my tour and so it’ll be nice to have an ally in the never ending what’s wrong with Americans battle. So throughout the meeting I go over some of their responsibilities, talk about what happens if they’re sick (I’ll take them to a doctor), what happens if they bring drugs on the truck (they get kicked off the truck) etc, etc. Afterwards, I make them sign the appropriate disclaimers and take their emergency contact info and local fund. Local fund (I can’t remember if I’ve explained this already) is what they give me to pay for their hotel, food and things like charcoal and cleaning supplies. This is usually about $100 a week each and with this many people it’s a bit nerve racking, because I end up carrying around a lot of cash on me. One time in Lima because there was nowhere in my hotel to do the meeting, I had to do it in another hotel and afterwards my driver and I had to walk back to my hotel carrying an envelope containing $18,000…at night…in Lima (if you’ve ever been there, you know that it makes you nervous to carry around $20 much less that kind of money). I had fantasies of somebody coming up to me and stealing my wallet and leaving me with the envelope.

That evening we have our welcome meal back at the Vaca Gorda. The restaurant is good and nearby, so I just can’t be assed to find another one. The only other place I’ve taken a group was a Viking restaurant where we all had to wear hats and there were a lot of animal heads on the walls. Sounds like fun, but the food was excruciatingly slow and it was expensive. So back to the Vaca Gorda. When we get there, the maitre’ de can’t find my reservation that I know I booked two days ago. That’s almost my worst nightmare, to have 33 people behind me and they can’t find my reservation. Luckily, it’s a big restaurant and they’re able to make a table for us. Afterwards, I end up going to bed pretty early. Big day tomorrow.

Gettin' Ready

Santiago

Today I spend getting ready for the arrival of all the new people. The hostel we’re staying in is a true
Me and some of the new pax

Hostel International hostel with all shared rooms, usually 6 people to a room. Some of the new people are starting to trickle in and some of the old pax will find themselves sharing a room with the new tonight, which is a good thing. I’m hoping that the two groups will be able to integrate as soon as possible, but it usually takes awhile.

Most of the old pax go off on the wine tour today. They’ll visit two different wineries, the first one being a smaller old one that still stores wine in large oak casks and then after lunch a much bigger newer one that uses all modern technology. The woman who runs this tour is an American who went to school in Santiago where she ended up dating and eventually marrying the guy who owns the winery. All the girls in the group swoon when hearing this story.

While they’re off having fun, I’m making passenger lists and itineraries, copying city sheets, putting up a welcome notice and doing all the annoying little things that need to be done before a new tour starts. I’ll have my pre-departure meeting tomorrow with the newbies and everything needs to be ready before then.

That evening is the last for most of the people who are going home. We eat another group meal and say goodbye to Damon and Kristie and Leigh.

Hard to Say Goodbye

Santiago, Chile

We pull out of Pucon at 6 o’clock, heading up to Santiago. We’re all pretty subdued, hungover from the
Leigh, Kate and Naomi outside the Hostal in Santiago

night before. About 15 minutes before we get to Salta de Loja, the waterfall where we were supposed to stay a night and where we’re now scheduled to have lunch, we have a blowout a rear tire. Luckily, it’s not entirely popped and we’re able to limp it in to Salta de Loja. There, while the pax all check out the waterfall, Steve and I go find a tire place. The tire is completely ruined. While we take it off, I watch one of the workers replace the tire of a truck that basically has a bee farm on the back of it. The guy changing the tire kept getting stung on his bald head while he was trying to take the wheel off. In the end we ended up just leaving the destroyed tire and putting on our best spare. Unfortunately, our spares aren’t in the best shape after the rough roads of Patagonia, but hopefully we’ll make it back into Argentina with the tires we have, as it’s much cheaper there to buy new ones.

We pull into Santiago in the evening. Santiago is all right, but it has one major flaw: it’s not Buenos Aires. It’s not as cheap as B.A., not as attractive, the nightlife isn’t as good, the women aren’t as hot and it’s pretty average in every way.

That night I take everybody to the Vaca Gorda, a nice restaurant a block and a half away from the hostel. The tour is about to change drastically. Right now there are 14 passengers on board. A few are getting off, but a lot more are getting on. When we leave Santiago, we’ll have 31 passengers, which is 3 away from full occupancy. It’s a very difficult transition for passengers to make, so I’m a bit nervous.

After dinner we head off to a club a few blocks up the road. After about 20 minutes in the club, I walk up to the bar, slip on a patch of water and end up in the air completely horizontal and land flat on my back. I haven’t fallen like that in years. I’m a bit stunned, but otherwise OK.

The Volcano Climb

Pucon, Chile

We all get up early and head off to the tour office to get outfitted for the climb. We all get gloves, snow pants, snow jackets,
Top: The hike up. Bottom: The much more fun slide down


boots, crampons and ice axes. The night before, I asked everybody to be sure to bring lots of sunscreen and a pair of sunglasses because the snow reflects the sun very brightly on the mountain. Of course, a few people forget so we have to go back to camp before heading to the mountain.

Eventually, we get to the base camp, which is actually a ski resort. They keep one ski lift running that you can take up the first hour or so of hiking. It costs an extra 10 bucks or something, but I advise everybody to take it as though it doesn’t seem far to the top, it’s going to be a bit of an effort. I’ve learned on previous mountain climbs, that summits are like things in a rear view mirror: they appear closer than they actually are. Damon’s the only one who decides to run up it like a real man. The trail he takes actually runs right under the chairlift, so of course as we glide over him everybody has to make some smart-ass comment as he slogs his way uphill through ankle deep light volcanic rock that makes you feel like for every two steps forward you make, you go one back. Ultimately, his intelligence wins over his pride and he gives it up and goes back and buys a ticket.

When we’re all at the top of the chairlift, we start the climb. I think we’re about 5 minutes into it, when Kate starts to moan.

“I don’t think I want to do this,” she says in her thick Birmingham accent that draws out certain vowels, “I just don’t feeeeeeel like it.

“Oh, come on Kate,” I say. “We just started. At least go until you’re tired.”

“I don’t waaant to,” now really starting to pout. “I don’t like hiking.”

For some reason, I decide that she’s making it up the mountain. So for the rest of time I cajole, scold, threaten to kick her in the ass with my crampons and finally outright lie to her, telling her that we’re not coming back down the same way, so she’s has to come with us.

It’s a beautiful day and not too difficult of a hike, as long as you take it slow. The volcano isn’t that high compared to a lot of the mountains in the Andes, I think only 10,000 feet or something, but you do start from about 6,000 feet so you definitely get your exercise. When we get it to the top, there’s a stunning view of the surrounding area. The crater makes the air a bit noxious, but it’s still pretty cool to look into.

We have lunch at the top before starting back down. Now comes the really fun part. All the way back down, there are about 11 vertical chutes cut into the snow and ice ranging from 50 meters, to about 150 meters. So one by one, we lay down into the chutes and shoot down them on our snow pants like a luger or a bobsledder. To slow down or stop we just dig our ice picks into the snow. The closest thing that I can compare the experience to would be going on waterslides. It’s great fun.

Tonight we all go to bed early, except for Leigh, Kate and Naomi, who inexplicably decide to stay up until the wee hours.

Buck Neked

Pucon, Chile

We get up fairly early to make the beautiful drive up to Pucon. The beginning of day is the usually stunning 7 lakes drive,
Photographic evidence!

where we make several stops to take photos of waterfalls and lakes that are surrounded by craggy, glacier-clad peaks. Unfortunately, today it’s a bit cloudy, which puts a bit of a damper on it all. Also, I think the fact that all we’ve seen for the past couple of weeks or so have been beautiful glacier-clad peaks and spectacular lakes, puts our threshold for being impressed a bit high.

We do stop for lunch near a bridge that you can jump off of into turquoise blue, very, very cold water. You can see the glacier that it comes from. On my first tour, Dave, my first driver and I, pioneered this bridge jump and we’ve been stopping here ever since. Because of the weather and the fact that I’ve already made the jump a couple of times, I just can’t be assed to do it again. But that doesn’t stop Neal. It just so happens that it’s his birthday so he decides to jump in his birthday suit. He’s not shy, that boy. He just stripped down and jumped in. I’m not sure that I would have the… let’s call it testicular fortitude to jump into water that cold, neked, in front of that many people, most of whom were holding cameras that have the video function on them. Memorable birthday nonetheless.

We continue northwest until we get to the Chilean border. I hate Chilean borders. They’re always so nit-picky about everything. I always ask everybody to throw away any fruit, vegetable or meat products before we get to the border, but people always forget one thing or another. This time they board the truck, always with me keeping an eye on them, and they find some eggs. Usually, if they find “contraband” like this, they just throw it away. This time, however, this guy decides to line everybody up and ask them whose they are. Damon, for reasons I can’t explain, raises his hand and says, “Oh yeah, I think they’re ours.” So then he actually pulls Damon, with me right behind of course, into his office and starts to write him up some sort of ticket (really I think that he was looking for a bribe). Luckily, Damon happens to mention in passing that they’re hardboiled eggs. I grab one of the eggs and break it open in front of the official. Haha, hardboiled eggs are legal. The official lets us go a bit dejectedly.

We finally pull into the Pucon campsite just before it starts to get dark. Pucon is a little town set next to an attractive lake named Lake Villarica and in the shadow of a volcano of the same name. Mt. Villarica is a perfect snow cone volcano, that still looks a bit ominous because of its vicinity to the town and the fact that it constantly has a bit of smoke spewing out the top.

I have a lot to do before dinner. I run around doing shopping with the cook team, as well as set up our volcano climb for the next day. Everybody but Alison has signed up for the day long tour for the next day. I have never had the time to do it, so I’m really looking forward to the tour. Just as dinner’s almost ready, I realize that I haven’t bought a cake for Neal’s birthday, so I rush off to do that and get back just in time as dinner’s ending. There happens to be a cherry in the middle of the cake and so I tell Neal that it’s Chilean tradition for the birthday boy to eat the cherry off the cake with no hands…and then as he’s doing it I push his face into the cake. Classic jokes never get old. I do end up getting a lot of grief from Claire, however, who was apparently really wanted to have some cake.

The Worst Fishing Trip Ever...

Another lazy day. We were actually only scheduled to be in Barriloche for 2 nights, but I always have felt that it’s not enough and since we were originally scheduled one night near some waterfalls that aren’t worth more than a half hour or so, I’ve given us an extra night here. This gives the pax and extra day to check out the ski gondolas overlooking the area or rent bikes.

One other activity that I organize is lake fishing and besides myself and Dad, 3 other people Claire, Alison and Martin sign up. Weirdest tour ever. First of all, the tour operator is this big awkward Swedish guy and he shows up a half an hour late seeming genuinely shocked that we would still want to go fishing when there’s a bit of a breeze. Then when we walk down to the dock, I realize that he only has three poles and when I ask him about it, he just smiles and says that only three can fish at a time or the lines get tangled. So now we’re starting to have some misgivings. The pax paid like $50 for this tour and we’re not sure that it’s worth it if 2 people have to sit and watch at a time. As we’re discussing this, the Swede is pulling in his boat to the dock, which is about 8 feet tall above the water and out of the corner of my eye I’m wondering how we’re going to get down to the boat. Then the guy makes kind of a half hop off of the dock, then in slow motion bounces off the rubber pontoon side of his boat and somersaults head first into the water. Heavy coat, pants, leather shoes and all. Well…that kind of ends the conversation. We’re just peering down into the lake struggling not to laugh. Somehow I manage to offer words of concern without giggling, as he flounders about in the water, but really there’s not much we can do, short of jumping in the water ourselves, which none of us are that keen to do unless he’s really drowning. Finally he manages to clamber up on to his boat and climb sopping wet up on to the dock. So now I kind of feel bad, because we’ve definitely decided to cancel the trip and now he’s cold and wet for nothing. Anyway, there’s no way we’re going fishing now, so I mumble a kind of thanks but no thanks and we all scramble up the shore, only just holding our laughter long enough until we’re out of earshot. It was all very surreal.

Lunar Kayaking

Barriloche

Lazy day. I actually get to sleep in a bit today, which doesn’t happen very often. Claire wakes me up to come play Frisbee with her. When we start out it’s apparent that she’s the worst Frisbee player ever. It was more like playing fetch than catch. Eventually, though, she gets a little better and we enjoy ourselves.

Kyanne and Steve have taken a cabin down by the lake and in the afternoon when we see her walking down there, we follow her. It’s a perfect little love nest. Nice little cabin with a porch over looking the beautiful lake. We seemed to have interrupted a little romantic afternoon snack. Steve has bought nice wine, smoked salmon, crackers and all the rest. Luckily, Claire and I manage to get ourselves invited to stay and we enjoy a pleasant afternoon with them (only feeling slightly guilty).

That evening there is a lunar eclipse, so I manage to organize a little kayak trip on the lake for a few of us. I go along with Damon, Kristy, Neal and Leigh and we paddle up and down the lake under the eclipse. Damon, Kristy and I enjoy it, though Neal and Leigh thought it was pretty boring. Apparently, they thought there would be rapids or something to negotiate.

That evening everybody’s up for a night out, so we head into town to the Irish bar. Soon, however, Kate and especially Naomi are anxious to find a club. Naomi has a way of stamping her foot and declaring “Michael!” when she’s impatient. Unfortunately for her we find it more entertaining than threatening. Finally at about 2 am we do go look for a club. When we find one, it’s only after we pay the cover when we realize that we’re the only ones there. Once again, the Argy’s love for late nights has struck again and the place doesn’t start to fill up until about 3:30 in the morning, but by that time we’re pretty tired and only stay until about 4.

Bumpity-bump

Barriloche

Another long, bumpy day up Ruta 40. Barriloche is a Swiss-themed town, situated on the beautiful lake Nahueul Huapi. It’s a ski resort in the winter time and has lots of Swiss style chalets and architecture. It even goes so far as to have a bunch of St. Bernards walking around with little barrels around they’re neck. A bit cheesy if you ask me.

That night, I take everybody to what’s called a tenidor libre. It’s basically a big all you can eat buffet with a massive grill with almost any kind of meat. Afterwards we head around the corner to a bowling alley. But I end up playing pool with Claire instead. We started out only playing a couple of games, but something weird happens and I start playing well and winning. She wasn’t having that, so we keep playing and funnily enough I keep winning. Claire can be a stubborn girl and very competitive (though she insists only with me), its 3:30 in the morning when she finally concedes.