Month: December 2019

And a Nandu in a Lenga tree

Long Solstice shadows – Lago Argentina Estuary at El Calafate, Argentina

Dec 31 2019

By Annelise

Traveling through Southern Chile and Argentina with the kids during the holiday season from Thanksgiving, Sinterklaas, Christmas through New Years has been interesting.

I am very grateful for our 10 year old who, happily, is still a child at heart. Siri kept her joy of celebrating each special day and would find and point out decorations or signs of holiday cheer. Early in December, Bariloche, with its Bavarian and Alpen influence had Christmas craft markets, street decorations to lift the holiday vibes. Ushuaia with polar wind and some snow ushered in more hopes for a snowy Christmas. The approaching summer solstice erased cozy candles and fires, so she downloaded a list of Frank Senatra and other remixed classic Christmas ballads to listen to on our long car rides through the Patagonian steppe from Ushuaia at the Fin del Mundo up to Torres Del Paine in Chile and onward to El Chalten. She searched out paper crafts to make a wreath (an over complicated origami flexigon) and I made Danish paper heart baskets. She has helped off set the homesickness that was bound to creep in with all the traditions we have been missing. Each hike and long drive, a few miles of trail were eaten up with detailed descriptions of classic dishes, who has the best recipe, which dish will be most missed. More hiking hours passed by recalling fun memories with friends and family around the table of visiting. The wish lists are short, in large part by necessity – we can’t add more to our packed duffels, also in realizing we do not need much and what the kids really want is time with friends.   We celebrated Christmas morning in El Chalten and went out for our traditional walk. It was laughably miserable for a while in the blowing rain, sleet and grit delivered by Patagonian winds strong enough blow our legs out from under us or lean on entirely and providing us new sympathy for those reindeer. The next day we had far better weather for the hike to Laguna los Tres at the base of Fitz Roy and Siri crossed one wish off her list – to play in snow

In the northern hemisphere there is more a sense of reaping the harvest of the quieter introspective time of fall to winter, increasing darkness towards solstice then opening to the new year. I have missed this part of the year associated with our holiday time the most. In our perpetual spring summer heading south we have not had that autumnal pause in our pace. Planning the next place to stay or route knowing it was gradually also leading to the end of our travels as a whole family has left me more grateful for the extended hours driving and hiking in Patagonia to allow my mind to catch up.

The message of Christmas is the joy wonder of new birth, new light, new chances to be kinder to each-other and the world we live in/on. With that in mind, I am looking forward to the next month with the kids in New Zealand. This next phase, the first part of the new year will be new for our family as Mark will be in Seattle while I am traveling on with the kids. It is a new beginning in a way and will come with new challenges and opportunities. After nearly 20 years traveling together it will be so different to be apart – like two trees in the forest whose canopies have grown in just the way that allows each the most light and shelters each-other from storms. It will be new to be parenting and traveling without my life travel partner for a while. So it begins, Mark departs in half an hour!

Nandu: ostrich-like bird of the Patagonian steppe.

Lenga: a beech (genus Nothofagus) tree common in Patagonia on which Darwin’s Fungus (Cyttaria darwinii) can be found

Nonsense title of course, Nandus are not found in trees even on the 12 day!

Patagonia Pensive

Lago Nordskold, Torres del Paine National Park, Chile

Dec 19 2019

By Annelise

As of this week, we have been traveling for three months, every day together. In three weeks, Mark will be back in Seattle and I will continue on with the kids to adventure through more cultures and continents for another half year or more. In the vast landscapes of Patagonia where I feel at once lost in time and feel it’s immensity, I realize again that this time together is truly precious and something I do not take for granted. Looking forward I am not sure if this will ever happen again for the four of us. Never again will we be able to spend nearly every moment with each other for this length of time.

We have had a lot of fun and new experiences through Central and South America -thrills of surfing, ziplining or encountering new animals and foods; goofy moments when we completely miss the mark. The beauty and otherness are stimulating and at times over-whelming.  Not all the experiences have been pleasant, and we have had grouchy, frustrating and wits-end moments. I realize though that the low points, though intense, are just that, points or moments; they are not the arc or thread of our journey.

An apt quote I remind myself of; “A Journey is like marriage. A certain way to be wrong is to think you control it” John Steinbeck, Travels with Charlie. We are learning more about each other’s tempos and temperaments and how to foster individual and family flow. Just as we can’t make is stop raining so that we can experience the breathtaking views of a mountain peak or color of the water, we can’t control individual weather patterns either. There is a balance and tension between the comfort of routine and structure and the ease of spontaneity and taking things as they come. Too much of one or the other and the journey would not move forward.

As if a metaphor for personal growth, traveling through Patagonia takes time. Not just that the distances between parks or towns are immense but also the roads are not always paved, even the main highway in places. There are not many benchmarks or signposts. The map of southern Argentina is denoted by one vast ranch after the next, as we drive there are hours where we barely see any structures at all other than fences. One evening we saw a rancher out fixing a fence post. It must have been one of nearly a million lining the borders of his ranch. How did he know to address that particular one?

We see Nandus (ostrich like birds), Chilean flamingos, black necked swans, brown foxes, armadillos, hog nosed skunks, guanacos, so it is clear that this landscape of volcanic mountains shaped by glaciers over millenia is enough different from familiar territory of the Pacific Northwest. Here it feels like the US Southwest and Northwest combined in the sense of human scale and geologic time. The territory is familiar and unfamiliar at the same time.

Places like this help me not take myself to seriously. I feel rightfully like a spec in the universe. Some wonder why I would want to leave for a year of travel. Leaving one rhythm behind to try to find a new one. Not really. I think it was Confucius how said, “wherever you go, there you are”. You take yourself with you when you travel. For me I would say that getting out of my patterns and environment helps me see and feel more clearly who I am at this time. I am developing a better sense of my strengths and weaknesses and how I want work with them as I navigate forward as a person and parent.

Reflecting On Riots

Dec 6 2019

By Haakon

Last week, on our way from Peru to Patagonia, we enjoyed a gracious, cozy visit with family in Santiago, Chile. When we first arrived, everything seemed normal – the buildings were nice, and lots of people were enjoying family walks in the park.   However, the next day we started to realize that things were far from normal. The day after we arrived, we decided to go to the mall to replace some of our worn-out clothes.  As we walked to the mall it almost seemed as if there were no ground-level shops. All the ground-level shops had 10-foot temporary metal walls covering them and were closed even at 11 o’clock in the morning on a weekday. When I got back to Nicole’s house, I asked her why all the metal walls were up.  She said the walls were up because of the rioters, and she explained that there was a city-wide curfew that prohibited congregating in public after 10 pm. Most of the main shops had been opened only for very limited business hours for the past two weeks, so nobody could break into them.  Some shops selling high-end goods had private security.

One afternoon, my dad and I decide to get haircuts, so we walked down the boarded-up streets to the barber shop.  At around 5:30 pm our haircuts were finished, and we started our walk home along the same streets.  To our surprise, there were about 30 national police officers, dressed in riot gear, outside the main mall. Now, they weren’t your basic mall cops.  They didn’t have rinky-dink Taser’s; they had machine guns.  They didn’t have helmets; they had full-body plates and riot shields.  They didn’t have mall cop segues; they had bullet-proof Sprinter vans that bore plenty of signs of heavy abuse from rioters, such as deep dents to body work, and cracked windows.

              Interestingly, once we arrived into the rural areas where we spent time visiting national parks, there was little evidence of the civil unrest we observed in the Santiago and the smaller city of Puerto Montt.  In the small town of Chaiten, life was quiet.

The weekend we were in Santiago, Chile was the 20-year anniversary of the 1999 Seattle WTO protests. It is a strange connection in way. The protest in Seattle had some roots in concern many would be left behind by globalization. From what I understand, in Chile, the cost of living has been rising, tuitions are getting more expansive, and pension values going down. In Chile, a country where low wage workers spend 20% of their income on transportation a 4% rise in the metro fare sparked huge flash metro-fare dodging mobs that led to the Metro shutting down and then flash mobs devolved into a weekend of intense rioting and looting and the destruction of 40% of the metro stations.

              I am glad that now in United States there is not violent social unrest and the economy for the most part is stable. Still, today in America many feel the economy is leaving them behind, the odds are stacked in favor of the rich and powerful and the cost of higher education is more and more unaffordable. I suppose we are not immune to similar demonstrations. Maybe they will come.

It was an interesting Thanksgiving week, I was reminded to be grateful where I live, I am reminded not to take the ease and safety I feel at home for granted and to be more grateful for what I have.

Walking with the giants in Patagonia

Dec 6 2019

By Siri

Alerce trees are among ten oldest-living species of trees in the world and are nearly extinct in Patagonia where they once thrived.  One of the largest, the alerce can reach 200 feet in height and 16 feet in diameter. Scientists estimate that some individual trees are more than 4,000 years old. Charles Darwin would have seen these but most of the oldest trees were logged since he passed by here. In the Pumalin Douglas Tompkins National Park forest they are over 3000 years old and the park is working to protect them. Their round big trunks stretch tall and branches with dark leaves are near the very top. I take big steps over roots as large as branches and wonder how much nutrition trees would need to stay healthy enough for 3,000 years. During our walk I feel so many different kinds of moss at the base of the rain-soaked trunks. I wrap my arms around the trunks of these thousand-year-old giants, and I only reach a small way. I wonder what life was like when these trees were sprouts. All around me ferns and their fiddleheads stand over my head. Bamboo rustles with the wind and hot pink fuschia flowers dance on their tree branches. Umbrellas dipping of the rain, I feel grateful for my new fuzzy and soft rain boots, slurping through mud and splashing in puddles. I feel like a small thing in this big old forest as I cross the springy wooden suspension bridge over a rushing light teal river, listening to nature music.