Off to Sea!

The three of us just before we go with Dana in the background...
...not my dream photo but sometimes you have to take what you can get!

The past two weeks have flown by readying Dana to go to sea. I’d sort of hoped to have a day or two to head into town by myself, poke around, get my haircut and buy a new outfit or two, but we have been more or less continuously busy and there has been no time. It has been interesting though, as each day has been different. I spent one whole day helping Sven troubleshoot a software upgrade glitch in the satellite GPS navigation system and another one helping him empty, clean, and re-pack the various lockers on board the boat. I was sent off shopping one day with a list, which I followed, and bought $1000 worth of groceries, enough basics to do for several months, and then watched, amazed, as Lisa managed to pack all of them into the tiny cupboards aboard. One day I swabbed the decks and then cleaned and polished the stainless steel stanchions and lifelines eradicating any rust spots along the way, Lisa cleaned the galley, and Sven put a new set of gaskets in the water maker. The list of chores, which initially seemed endless, has been almost gotten through, and tomorrow, at noon, because there is a good weather window and the tides are favourable, we are leaving dock and heading west out into the Pacific. Eeek. I’d hoped to have a pic of the three of us waving goodbye, but, if you were to hear the list of chores still left to do you’d know that it is not going to happen! We have to get cooking gas, deflate and tie up the dingy, buy 50 pounds each of potatoes and onions, do a last load of laundry and hang it up to dry, go to the Armada to sign out of mainland Chile, clean some filters, fill up on water, both the main tanks and some extra jugs, and then coil the water hose and put it away, get gasoline for the dingy motor and diesel for the main engine, clean the fenders, do a last vacuum inside, put everything away, run the gib lines back and through pulleys, and, Sven, of course, has more stuff to do that I can’t remember! I see my hope of getting a good bye photo - in my mind we were all going to pose on the stern of the boat in our foul weather gear - let alone posting it, is doomed…  Overall however, despite being busy, not much of note has really happened lately. Hopefully our first leg will be fantastic and I will have a photo or two to show off at the other end. 

Dana on the hard

Dana, the boat, was lifted up the other day, to have her bottom washed and re-painted, her seacocks checked, her propeller scraped and polished, her zinc anodes replaced, a couple patches filled in from where she was dented bumping into icebergs, and other such work completed. I don’t know quite what she thought of the ignominy of having her nether regions displayed for all to see but fortunately the weather held, it was a very productive time, and Sven was happy with it all. 

Lisa polishing prop in early morning light

pre-painting patching and taping

one spectator

more spectators

The wrong foot

Starting out with the wrong foot first AKA At odds - already - with Lisa AKA Be a Duck...

The details don’t matter. They are petty. But the bottom line is that Lisa, the other crew, and I do not currently get along. She rubs me the wrong way and I bristle. She tries to bully me and it gets my back up. I don’t give in to her but I don’t like the situation. It’s not comfortable. I am always waiting for her next criticism, biting my tongue to resist responding, and then walking around trying to hide my irritation.  I have pretty much committed to Sven to staying on the boat for four months but, at present, I can’t see that it would be enjoyable. I like Sven. I respect him. A lot. His boat is fantastic and I am sure he is an excellent sailor. He is going exotic places. But I just can’t stand Lisa and don’t know if I want to spend four months in close confinement with her. Life seems so short at the moment that I don’t want to waste it waiting on edge for a trivial and uncalled for comment to come out of nowhere and slap me in the face, gritting my teeth, grinning and bearing it. Tuesday I snapped at her. Wednesday, after being reprimanded literally 3 seconds after I got up, I called a boat meeting, stated that I found the situation unpleasant, and suggested a solution. Sven backed me up both in public and in private. But Lisa continues on her merry way. She can’t help it. It is how she is. I want to be happy. I want to spend my time in a congenial atmosphere. And I don’t know if I can fix the dynamics here or if they are doomed. So Thursday I write her an e-mail (and store it as a draft). I fear it would only make the situation worse but it expresses my opinion clearly. I hope I have the strength not to send it.

Lisa,

I meant what I said yesterday. I actively resent continuous petty criticisms. I am not perfect, I am far from perfect, I will never be perfect. I will make many mistakes every day, but, oddly, I do not wish to have them all pointed out to me as the day goes along. Obviously if something is immediately important, please tell me, if, for example, I am washing potatoes in the ‘poo pot’, or if something is leaking, or if a sail needs adjusting, let me know right away and I will correct it at once. But the little things I do wrong, like misplacing the ginger in the spice cabinet… please, simply write down any of my errors you feel compelled to share and give me a list once a day for me to read at my leisure, because, frankly, I do not want to feel constantly bombarded with an accounting of my failings.

Thank you,

Emily.

I am sure much of it is my fault. I know how prickly I am, how difficult to get along with… but… 

Currently I am tempted to take my backpack out and pack it up, slowly head north, over land, rather than going west, over the water…

Then something amazing happens; Lisa gives Sven a small packet of gummy bears for Easter. “DON’T eat them all at once,” she commands, “and DON’T put them in your pocket.” I hear her, think that she sounds downright nasty, as usual, and yet somehow manage to interpret that what she means is, ‘I got you these as a token of my love, Sven, even though I know you are on a very strict diet.’ I am also very aware that if the exact same comments were directed at me I would hear only the bossiness of her tone and implied criticism of her words and not notice, at all, any kind intent behind them.

I talk to Ben, my oldest son and best sounding board, about the situation and he makes a couple of salient comments. He says he would put a low probability on Lisa’s manner changing, that my best tactic is to be a duck and let her words run like water off my back. He also says that he hopes, if I do go on this trip, that my experiences on the boat will be defined and dominated by grander things. I like it, do a 180 turn in my thinking, and decide that I will, afterall, go sailing with Dana, that every time Lisa snaps at me I will remember the gummy bear incident and that my mantra will be, “Be a duck and let grander things dominate.”

Tan and Green

AKA Through the Bus Windows

If you go to Google Earth and look at southern Chile and Argentina you will notice that Chile is dark green and Argentina a golden tan. I can verify that this is true having noticed exactly the same thing out of the bus window. 

Dark green lush Chile... I love the way the rain makes this photo from the bus window look like a painting.

Beautiful golden autumnal Argentina again through the bus window... I am told that the grass is always this colour even in the spring and summer.

(Further inspection of Google Earth shows that further north, where the prevailing winds blow in the opposite direction, Argentina is green and Chile is tan… I guess I will have to go there one day to check this out in person too!)

Trekking

Nahuel Huapi National Park

Refugio Frey - the grey building at the end of the lake - where we stayed the first night.
What you can't see in this photo is the climbers that were summiting the big stubby needle.

My legs are sore. My eyes are sore. My mind is sore. The three day trek I did was not a tourist trail, it was a trek, a real trek. It stretched me to my limits. It was fantastic. But now my legs are sore.  

I almost didn’t go. I’d had a few days lounging in Bariloche and was feeling lazy. I’d already done two great classic treks in the last month and figured that the third one would be, relatively, disappointing. Also, after waiting for good weather I only had three days. It hardly seemed worth it. But, mostly because I’d planned to go hiking in Nahuel Huapi National Park, I went.

I got off the bus at the base of the hiking trail with three other people, Aud and Arnaud, a young Belgian couple, and Vanessa, a Quebecois girl. All four of us had been sitting around waiting for a break in the weather and all four of us had the same three day itinerary planned. We started out together, and, by the end of the first day, had agreed to stick together for the duration of the hike. Lucky for me. The guide says that the hike is graded “medium” hardness and the description calls the ascents “easy scrambles”. Well. I’m not sure what scale they are using. Vanessa is, among other things, a mountain climber and Arnaud is a young enough male that he can leap up any bouldery ledge like a mountain goat yet old enough that he stops at all the trickiest spots and is just there pointing out footholds and offering his hand to help you up. Without them I would not have completed the trek. No way. I’m not sure exactly when I would have reached the limit of my comfort zone and turned around but I would not have been able to do it. With them helping me, I did. Just. I was definitely stretched. I found it difficult, scary at times, and oh so empowering to finish. Now, however, my legs are sore from ascending and descending 100’s of metres a day, my eyes are sore from watching so carefully where I was going, and my mind is sore from just concentrating. Who knew that hiking took so much concentration?

Climber on the needle at Frey. 

Aud, Arnaud, and Vanessa

Rocky clamber down to second hut after second pass of the day.

I don’t, unfortunately, have any pics of the tricky bits. I stuffed my camera in my backpack for those and was using every particle of energy making sure that I didn’t slip and die. I have the memories though… and they will just have to do!

Bariloche

AKA A Holiday from my Holiday

It has been wet in Bariloche. Raining. Bucketing down on occasion. Which has been, in retrospect, quite wonderful. I had come to Bariloche to hike in Nahuel Haupi National Park but instead I have been lounging in a hostel. A friend from Deep River recommended I go to Mt. Tronador which is close by. It’s a volcano with 9 glaciers coming down from it. It looked great on the map and on google earth. I thought it an excellent suggestion but when I went to see the park rangers to get some info they said, ‘Please don’t go.’ I’ve never heard park rangers say that. ‘It is wetter there than here,’ they said. ‘It’s so wet that the buses aren’t running, the lower level connecting trails are 2 feet deep in water, and the clouds are down so low that you can’t see anything anyway.’ So instead I have had a holiday from my holiday and loved every minute. 
I am staying in the Penthouse 1004 (that's a link btw, how do I make it look like a link?) and the views, when the clouds lift for a few minutes, are as lovely as shown in the link. I have had delightful respite: I have slept in, showered, done laundry, gone window shopping, chatted with my kids online, sent an e-mail or two to friends back home, napped, piddled around on my laptop, watched the latest episodes of Castle and The Good Wife, gone out to dinner with  friends I met on the ferry three weeks ago, started to read my way through the eclectic selection of books on the shelf in the living room here… and just taken it easy. Each afternoon the hostel has a pot-luck tea-time which anyone is welcome to attend, and, given the weather, most of us gather in the dining room and then sit and chat or play cards for hours. It is very congenial. Bariloche itself feels Swiss. It has a huge ski-hill and consequently is a resort town with lots of good shops and restaurants. It is also the chocolate capital of Argentina. It has a huge lake for sailing, great rivers for kayaking, hills galore for hiking in when it’s not quite so wet... I like it here. If the hostel had an opening for an employee I might well consider staying, here, right here, putting down roots, learning Spanish, starting over. Instead, assuming the clouds do lift a wee bit, I will head off into the hills for a short 2 night trek and then catch the bus back into Chile where “my” boat is. Hopefully it will be dryer there.

Going Solo

(I’ve been having so much fun backpacking that I’ve almost forgotten that I’m supposed to go sailing sometime soon. I do hope I enjoy myself as much when I finally set out to sea.)

This past month I have been continually surprized at how many of the people I’ve met are traveling on their own. About half of them. Which is huge. (The other half seems equally split into couples and larger groups.)

Traveling solo definitely has some advantages. I can do, any day, exactly what I want to. I don’t have to discuss, or negotiate, or compromise, or come to consensus with anyone else. I can do just whatever tickles my fancy. And, because I am on my own, I meet and talk to a lot of people. When Alexander and I went to Denmark last summer to bike we met almost no one because we were always with each other. Here, by myself, I chat with many other backpackers while in hostels, always join anyone else who is by themselves at meals, and look for the most interesting person to sit with on every bus, and, consequently, end up having lots of good discussions. I spend far more time with other travelers than with locals, which, perhaps, is a shame, though understandable as I have somehow become locked into the tourist circuit and stay always in hostels (or my tent) and as I still speak NO Spanish. Those I do talk to, however, tend to be well-educated, well-travelled, well-read, and, frequently, thought-provoking, enlightening, or inspiring.

Other times, however, traveling solo is almost lonely. I spend a day with three couples who have been friends forever and are off on their annual month-long summer trip together. This leaves me feeling both a hint of envy and a twinge of regret that I, myself, am just too autistic to maintain a stable relationship with one other person let alone five. And, even though I have come to accept my lot in life, I feel just a little bit lonely and decide to do another multi-day hike so that I will be too tired to be maudlin. But before I can get to that I spend another day with a group of seven unrelated people who are on a Tucan Tour who all appear very happy to be traveling together and I think, ‘I could do that (well, if I could afford it)’. But then almost before I’ve finished that thought, the very next day in other words, I spend a few hours with a woman my age who is on a GAP Tour, which she joined precisely because she didn’t want to be on her own, but it isn’t working out for her as the group split up into 3 cliques and even though she is welcome in all of them she doesn’t fit in to any of them and so she, being alone in a group, is far lonelier even than me.

It is all a mess so I do do my second multi-day hike, again awesome beyond words, exhaust myself, and then go back to traveling, more or less happily, on my own. I meet a lovely young British doctor on a 24 hour bus ride and we decide to share a room in a hostel together for a few days and then I go off bird watching, of all things, with another Brit. (We might even have ended up spending several days bird watching together if Lipsticktoo had not been a smart ass and rivalled his 10K camera!)

Perhaps part of the attraction of crewing, for me, is that simply through the odd social structure of life on a boat - shared proximity and isolation - almost intimate relationships with the others are effectively forced upon you all.

I wonder how many of the other solo travelers I have met, most of whom, like me, are traveling for months on end, have solo lives at home. Some do not. Theresa, who has just completed her PhD and is on a several month long celebratory vacation, lives with a large extended family and has a fiancé back home planning their wedding. She is definitely not lonely at home. Linda on the other hand, the GAP woman, who also, incidentally, has a PhD, lives alone with three cats, and may well be.

Having been ditched by the bird-watcher I stop in the revolving restaurant at the top of the mountain and have a fantastic European-style hot chocolate (by myself) and decide that, lonely or not, I have nothing, at all, to complain about in life at the moment. It is, without question, all good.

Another condor photo taken while out with the Brit...

... and the snap shot that miffed him!

Fitz-Roy Photos

I went hiking for several days in the FitzRoy Mountains. It was fantastic. If Darren had been there I know what his comment would have been!

I have to start with a photo from the bus on the way there ..,

... and add a breakfast-selfie in the snow ...

... a river valley ...

... a waterfall ...

... a photographer taking a picture of an iceberg in the morning light ...

... flora ...

... fauna...

...  and the ice at the lip of a steep skinny glacier.

Notice the tourist on the glacier,

admire the morning light on the peaks, 

imagine my delight at meeting Sue and Phil who I'd first met on the Ferry,

and my smile totally makes sense!