I´m at the begining of the end in the place that I began.

Oh man, I'm sitting a table away from a guy making a paper mache mask, I love it! Hostel craft time is the best. So my last few days in Iquique were action packed. We rented a car and hit the road for our last batch of tide pool surveys. We found lots of new species including GIANT FUZZY CHITONS seriously the size of my hand, bright blue anemones, big sucker fish that clung to rock faces and would drop off into the water when they sensed our presence, and one feisty octopus that changed brilliant patterns in the flash of a second. The waves in this area could not be trusted though and the beach was jagged rock, so it was difficult to do counts. There were times when I would be like 3 meters from where the waves were coming up and then suddenly a freak giant one would appear and we´de have to make a run for it. The first time this happened I wasn't fast enough and got knocked over onto the rocks, landing on my knees. Good adrenaline rush though. After spending the whole day out we stopped by this beach side ghost town that had a castle up on a rock and a cemetery. We found out later that almost everyone in that town died from a tsunami. The next day Jorge picked us up and took us out into the driest desert in the world. Our day began with a bang, seriously, we were stopped by police on the highway and we weren´t sure why until there was a giant explosion out in the desert in front of us. Still not sure what that was about. Jorge took us to this abandoned nitrogn mine, a sad, spooky place where the Chinese workers were treated horribly. They were paid in fake coins that were only good at the factory store so they couldn´t buy anything down in Iquique. When they protested this, they were fired upon with machine guns and it was said that their blood ran all the way down into the ocean. It was these Chilean factories that really woke people up about worker´s rights. Afterwards we headed out to the geoglyphs which were really so much bigger than I expected. It was indescribably hot and dry out there, I can´t imagine how people were able to make them up on the steep slopes. They are 8000 years old and were the billboards of those times, advertising water, livestock and such. Then we drove through the flat, cracked desert for a while before reaching this bizarre town that exsists in the middle of it, just this oasis of green that looks so out of place in the harsh landscape. The town survives on natural springs and they produce mangos and oranges. We spent the afternoon in a hotspring that was partially underground. You could go back into these clay caves to almost complete darkness. We bought a bag of oranges for juicing and it was probably the best orange juice I´ve ever had in my life. Our last day in Iquique we spent saying goodbye to the beautiful Pacific and getting knocked around by waves but this time on the sandy beach. There happened to be a porteño at our hostel who was an asado master, so we had a bqq then reluctantly packed our bags. At the airport we had the biggest face-off with customs over some presents that we are determined to get home. We were arguing for at least 30 minutes. Security was being so ridiculous but we couldn´t back down and managed to get all 14 gifts onto the plane. I know the guy just wanted to keep one for himself, because thats what it came down to. Although I love Chile, it can seem totally strict at times and I love how Argentina just doesn´t give a shit. Like I got here with a bag of mangos that the dog sniffed out, and I was like here, take em, but security shrugged and said they didn´t want them. Its so funny because I was declaring all this stuff, but they never actually took my declaration paper from me. Anyways, now I´m back in Buenos Aires to wrap up class. Got to see baby Luca last night and he really is so beautiful! Now I somehow must finish my journal and species accounts once and for all, although its insanely hard knowing I will be finished with school in less than 2 weeks. I just want to slack off and play in the sunshine.

don´t dream it, be it

Soooo don´t appreciate whoever randomly put on a CD full blast that opened with the sound of a tsunami warning. Yeah, I know I´m paranoid, but there has been 3 earthquakes since I´ve been in Chile. But things are good. Yesterday I got to live out one of my dreams of running and flying off a cliff. Seriously, I´ve dreamt it so many times it felt like I had done it before. I glided up and over the city with the turkey vultures. I got lots of pictures of my feet. After tide pooling yesterday I went for a swim and got totally taken out by a massive wave. It was enormous and broke right over my head. I should have body surfed it but instead I tried to stand my ground like an idiot and it devoured me. Now my back has a thousand knots in it. I wish I was kickin it with some massage savvy homies, but it looks like my only option is to find some professional stranger and pay them cuz my self massaging only reaches so far. We went to the movies again and saw 127 hours. I cried a lot. Probably more than I was suppose to. Got to talk to Naomi this morning. Can´t wait to do that every morning this summer!

the sun burns!

So we stayed out tide pooling just a little too long yesterday. Ouch...first sun burn in a while, and I was wearing and reapplying sunscreen. Katrina on the other hand, only put it on her face and now has second degree burns on her back. I miss spike, my volumptious aloe plant, cuz the bottled stuff just doesn´t cut it. But the tide pools were so amazing, we couldn´t help staying out so long! I found baby starfish, sunstars, crazy giant fast-moving jumping crabs that would run around jumping from rock to rock, so many different colors of anemones and my favorite creature ever, the chiton! They come in the most beautiful colors and patterns, I´m totally inlove with them.









Last night we took it easy, watched a zombie movie and ordered the worst pizza I´ve ever encountered. It like dissolved in my mouth. No amount of hot sauce could make up for how nasty it was. We just changed hostels for a night, but I grew to like the old one. Check out was at the very generous hour of 11:30. I´ve never known a hostel with such a late check out. I´m kind of worried a bit about my low income burning man application, because I hadn´t realized they had already started accepting apps. Definitely gettin on that tonight, hopefully its not too late. Had a stressful dream where I missed the bus to Buenos Aires, Katrina spent 9,000 pesos on box wine and I broke my mate gourd. I blame the rotten pizza.

ho-mance

Spent valentines with some true loves of mine, the trusty sharpie and exacto blade. Also took the cliché long walk on the beach with Abi Juanita Kathryn. We found some crazy sea-stars with more legs then we could count. Planned a day out with the owner of our favorite burrito place. He's going to take us some hot springs and an old abandoned mine. We've eaten at his place every day we've been here and its the best food I've had in forever. Spicy guacamole, freshly blended peach juice, and tecate with salt, lemon and tobasco. Benha is sick in bed. He's been puking all day, so Katrina and I have been doing what we can to help him relax. It looks like Katrina and I won't be getting our diving certification down here, but plan to do it in the Puget Sound this spring.

¡Iquique!

So the average rainfall here is 0 cm. This is a beach city surrounded by giant sandy mountains of nothing. No plants whatsoever. It took us 36 hours to bus here, up along the beautiful coast during tsunami warnings. There was an earthequake off the coast right near where the big one hit a year ago that caused that deadly tsunami. Luckily nothing happened but its wierd because I was totally thinking about it while we were on the bus but had no idea it was actually a possibility. We are staying at a typical party hostel which is kind of annoying and impersonal, so the search is on for a better one. Last night we went to the cinema! I haven´t been to the movies since last summer and it was really nice. We got popcorn and everything. Saw El Cisne Negro. Today we swimsuit hunted, found nothing, but we went to a street market and I bought some wierd dress with a bollywood scene on it and another kind of ugly shirt with tigers drinking water. I don´t know why but I really like them.

blog attempt

Wow, I think I have just met the most annoying computer in the world. I can´t believe i`m paying for this.

I’ve been inspired by my parent’s blog to write more, but since I only get to be on a
computer for bits at a time, you’re just going to get some giant blog dumps gleaned from
my written journal which is almost as sporadic and poorly kept as this blog. This was
written two weeks ago:

Life is crazy good and just crazy. I’ve been camping the past two weeks at different
national parks. We’ve been hiking every day in monkey puzzle forests which are
insanely beautiful and prehistoric. The monkey puzzle tree is considered a living fossil,
since it is so ancient and use to kick it with the dinosaurs. According to the Mapuche,
the trees marry each other by linking their roots or using birds as go-betweens. My first
hike I got lost with Amy and Katrina. It’s hard to figure out where you are in the middle
of a forest of trees so unclimbable that they would “puzzle a monkey.” By the time we
bushwhacked to a path it was pouring rain and I was completely soaked. The next day
we moved camp to a lake and the next hike we tackled I got even more lost, only by
myself this time. I wandered off because I fancied some alone time and wanted to
sneak in a swim, so I found a spot where the river pooled deeply, stripped down and
jumped in. The water was heart-stopping freezing cold and I decided that wouldn’t do so
I attempted to find my way back to camp instead. I tried following the river but every
path I found turned out to be animal trails that would end a few meters later. I tried to
cut across a field that turned out to be knee deep swamp. I started getting kind of
worried and frustrated so I just began crawling under the spiky calafate bushes in
search for a path but they just got denser and denser. It was hot and there were flies,
big biting ones that would not leave me alone even after I tried explaining to them that
no means no! At this point I started to freak out because I had no water and I start
screaming at these flies when I heard a whistle. I looked up and there suddenly
appeared two gauchos on horseback with three dogs following behind. The older one
took off his boots, rolled up his pants and lead me through the swamp. I followed them
to higher ground and ran into Sam. I was so happy to see him after feeling so lost and
alone! We walked back and bought a goat from the Mapuche village. Turns out what
happened to me was one of the luckier cases. Pretty much everyone in my class got
lost and two of my classmates weren’t found until way after dark (it gets dark here at 10
pm). It’s probably good they didn’t know about the puma skins hanging up at the
Mapuche houses. My professor lost his new cell phone while crawling under bamboo
whereas when I crawled through calafate I found someone’s digital camera with a 4gb
memory card. I was also the first person to get back. We crucified the goat over the
bonfire and it was ridiculously delicious. The next few days consisted of more hiking,
feather finding, wild mint mojitos concocted by my professor and wrestling matches
spurred by said mojitos. Then we moved on to El Bolson, stopping in Bariloche for a
mamuschka fix. El Bolson is a wonderful place, a town in a valley between beautiful
mountains. Throughout the day you can see hang gliders up above the mountains,
looping around like condors. The campground we stayed at felt like festival camping and was 4 blocks from the town plaza. The farms surrounding the town are where most
of Argentina’s hops are grown, so the town is full of artesenal breweries. This adorable
march-forth-like band played at our campground and I danced until morning. Lots of
people in clown makeup, it felt like home. The next day we went out to the lake for
some swimming. We kicked it with some sweeties from Buenos Aires and cooked up
some tuna melts on the sandy beach. I fell in love because a boy played me some
smashing pumpkins and radiohead songs on the guitar with an adorable accent. Then
we went back into national park land and continued our hiking expeditions. Took a ferry
out on the lakes to see a glacier and old growth forest, smeared calafate berries all over
our faces to make war paint, had a girls night out by the lake, threw Tez a birthday party
complete with puppet show and a dinner where every dish consisted of potatoes, made
patches for Ashley’s baby blanket and then headed back to El Bolson where we learned
that Ashley had her baby (a boy, little baby Luca!). Then I said goodbye as everyone
went their separate ways. I woke up and my little pup tent was all alone. My family has
scattered and for the next month we will be having separate adventures.

Went to brush my teeth in El Bolson, looked next to me and there was a Nessa monster!
She led me to a Pete! And then life was good. We stenciled (clothes, pup tent, Nessa’s
leg), drank cynar, crossed peligroso bridges, hedge dived and read nurse novels. You
know, the usual. Got to stop in Bariloche one last time for some new woman and
mamuschka. Camped in the hostel parking lot cuz there was no room at the inn. Then
went off to Chile, where it rained a lot and there were sick kittens at our hostel. We
bought them cat food, did some gambling, ate seafood stews, danced with some locals,
then Nessa and Pete left and I was bummed out and homesick for a lil while, but I’m
better now. I’m in Chiloe, a beautiful island thats surrounded by islands and mountains.
Its absolutely surreal and feels like the never ending story sometimes. We rented a car
and have been driving around seeking tide pools to study. I stumbled across two red
octopi crawling around on the beach! I also got chased by a pack of scary beach dogs
and threw my field notebook at them which was really dumb. But a fisherman found it
and returned it to me an hour later. Now I’m having repetitive dreams about getting
attacked by dogs. We found a beachside farm that let us camp on the beach for a
couple days. It was heaven. They sold us garden vegetables and I got to work on
overcoming my fear of geese which backfired because I only got more squeamish after
the geese started chasing car while hissing! Now we are in the most beautiful
campground that has a zip line over the water for 10 bucks. Low tide isn’t until noon
tomorrow, so I think I need to take advantage and go flying after breakfast. I’ve been
curing my new mate gourd which is an interesting process because it feels to me kind of
like bonding. Why have I been bonding with inanimate objects lately? I find myself
talking to pup tent when I’m trying to coax her into the bag every morning. More like wrestle, she is a fiesty one. Its probably cuz I miss my teddy bear. Wait, I didn´t really just admit that...I was sad to
part with my trusty rope sandals, but when I was packing them for Chiloe I almost puked
because they smelled so bad. My attempts at hand washing them were all in vain. Aw well. Headed up North to desert! Iquique, here we come (after 2 days of bus riding)...

why must weekends end?

I have lost the will to shower. I just don't see the point, especially since I haven't been able to do laundry in forever. I finally had a weekend and it was the best thing ever! Adventures with Nessa and Pete were epic and its really too bad that Pete's camera got stolen, mine got lost in some hedges, Nessa lost here memory card, and then we smashed her camera while dancing to a ska band in clown makeup. So all my pictures from the past month and a half are lost. Its really tragic. I had some good videos, like me jumping off a waterfall, befriending a monkey and Nessa acquiring husbands. So many pictures, I just have to let it go. I have a new camera now, that I found in the monkey puzzle forest. I just got a charger for it, so now I guess I will just have to make new adventures.