Making Lemonade

Most people have been surprised that Grace, Deanna and I were able to spend 7 days in the desert without showers, bathing, changes of clothing, sleeping on the floor under canvas.

They were even more surprised to find that this was actually one of the easiest parts of the trip and that it was fun.

It seems petty given the fact that 300 people died, to whine about the inconveniences we suffered. The problem was that these difficulties were beyond our ability to handle them.

We work quite long hours as lawyers. And while I love my job I treasure my annual leave. To spend almost a week of that leave hanging on the telephone, sitting at a desk in an office or negotiating to protect my contractual entitlements feels a lot more like work and less like holiday. At one point I was wishing I was back at work because at least I know I can make a difference there. I am more than competent. In Chile without a translator I felt like a chocolate teapot.

We had expected to spend a week in a luxury resort resting after the stresses of work, restoring ourselves and preparing mentally and physically for the race through the desert. Instead we found ourselves living in a virtual brothel, unable to go outside at night without having to run the gauntlet of brawling prostitutes in the red light district outside and all without the linguistic ability to negotiate our way out of the predicament or to carry on with our journey.

In contrast, in the desert we knew what we were in for. We were prepared for everything the desert could throw at us. And when it did throw those, we were able to say “Bring it!” We knew what to do. We knew we could get where we were going. And everyone spoke our language. To be honest once we got over the whole not bathing thing - which took a couple of days - it was a piece of cake!

Beyond that though, the race gave us experiences to treasure.

We saw landscapes that few people ever get to see. And we met the most fascinating people and shared their stories. And for Grace and me particularly we did something we had never done before. (We like new challenges)

Our fellow volunteers were almost without exception humorous, warm, engaging individuals. The medics were astonishing. To devote your annual leave to draining blisters, drilling toe nails and inserting IVs takes the hippocratic oath to extremes. With some of them we have exchanged emails already; some we hope to see again soon or on our travels.

To any of our fellow volunteers and medics, there is a spare bedroom en-suite waiting for you in Admiralty if ever you are passing through Hong Kong.

As for the racers - they are an amazing bunch. I was inspired less by the front runners than by the people in the middle and rear of the pack. People like Ryan and Eric and even Joanna Zsomething are a different breed. They come from a different world to which I could never belong. The vast majority of the people competing however appear normal. They are fit - but not in a way that I cannot aspire to be. What is extraordinary about them is their achievement. Some of them I really don´t know how they completed the race. Some didn´t but their achievement was monumental nonetheless.

Paolo Giannerini completed the race in 120th place despite having been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis last year. One of the most popular characters in the race among the volunteers was tiny Chizuko Kida, a 58 year old Japanese lady who crossed the entire desert in 118th place with her entire weekś food carried in a shopping bag over her arm, as though she were heading out for a picnic. Laurie Brophy - the 78 year old Welsh hero who walked 200km carrying his national flag proudly on his backpack - so close to getting his 3rd 4 deserts medal.

I hope to see some of these people again in Nepal.

I have decided after my pathetic performance sweeping in Chile that I have unfinished business to attend to - so I will sign on for Racing the Planet Nepal 2011. Grace has amazingly got the volunteer bug (not the same one I got) and she will join me. I’ve already heard from Tony and Bev Brammer that we will see them there. Now we just have to work on Deanna!

I´ve been back from Chile now for five days. Lots of people have asked me if I had a nice time and when I reply “Challenging¨ they are puzzled. I say ¨Earthquake?¨ and they are mystified. I wonder, if I had not spent the last three weeks in Chile, would I have been so breezily unaware of such a substantial event half way round the world.

To an extent I think this is a reflection on Chile and the Chilean people. A much smaller quake earlier in the year devastated Haiti and the shattered island continued to make headlines for weeks afterwards.

Chile is a very different place. It is an affluent country, rich in natural resources and after its capital was shaken by a number of earthquakes, most recently in 1985, it learned its lessons and prepared for the inevitable. But that is not to underestimate what Chile suffered.  The quake which leveled Haiti was 7.0: an enormous quake by any reckoning. But the Richter scale on which earthquakes are measured is not linear - it is logarithmic, with the effect that the 8.8 quake which struck Concepcion was around 500 times the size.

The speed with which the Chilean authorities and people moved to restore normality was astonishing. Within 2 days of the earthquake they had surveyed the runway in Santiago to determine that it was safe for planes to land and were able to land 15 planes. Since the front of the airport terminal building which housed the check in and baggage handling facilities was tumbled down and inaccessible, they had to make alternate arrangements - see my earlier postings about the Punta Arenas immigration and the domestic and international departures tent.

Outside the airport and the airline offices in Santiago, life went on as normal. There were some signs of damage - primarily to older buildings which had not been subjected to the construction safety controls imposed after the last earthquake shook the city. However the people of the city just got on with life. Our taxi driver had had windows blown out and every single item in his home which was not fixed, had fallen and shattered. But life went on.

One of the things I appreciated most about the people of Santiago was that almost without exception they were helpful and polite. From the airline staff at LAN office in the Parque Arauco mall, who struggled with our lack of Spanish but got there in the end, to the waiters and hotel staff, to the freaky street cleaner in Santa Lucia and the concerned stallholder - who alarmed us at the time but had the best of intentions - even the drivers in Chile are a different breed.  We are accustomed to living in Hong Kong where it is every man for themselves and a steely-nerved jay walk is essential if you don´t want to grow old waiting at a marked crossing.  In Santiago we would approach a zebra crossing and find that the cars had already stopped in anticipation. Made me want to cross roads all day!

We never touched Concepcion - so we never saw the full devastation. But the fact that it has disappeared from the news to the extent that only 3 weeks on people have forgotten it happened is both tragic and in its way a tribute to the strength of Chile and its people.

Outside the park there is a salt lake. If the sun is shining and the wind is light - it is sometimes possible to get a beautiful reflection of the Torres del Paine (the Blue towers) in the lake.

We were lucky. It must have been my birthday or something. The view was exceptional and even Cristian wanted to take photographs.

Despite the fact we were pressed for time and there were two others in the bus wanting to move on, Dea, Grace and I wanted to get closer to the water - and we are not a trio to be denied.

As we scrambled down the hill towards the water, Cristian commented on the quality of our shoes. We assumed that he usually took tourists who are improperly dressed in dress shoes or flipflops, unsuited to the mountains until we noticed that we were all four, including him wearing montrail mountain masochist shoes. Group hug!!

I was still not feeling 100% next day - but it was my birthday and I didn´t want to spend 2 days in bed - not even when the bed was as comfortable as the one at Indigo.

The receptionist wished me a happy birthday when I went down to breakfast and I was all geared up for my trip.

Grace and Deanna had said it was bitterly cold outside - so I had decided to wear my festive thermal pyjamas underneath my outer layers, my Andean hat (which was quite the height of fashion in Patagonia) and as many clothes as I could muster.

Our guide´s name was Cristian. He was quite fond of himself and wore hair gel. We thought he would get on well with Anthony the Camp Manager - so we christened him ¨Friend of Anthony¨ so that we could talk about him behind his back.

First stop was the Milodon cave - which was big. If big is a good thing then it must have been very good - but to my mind, having seen beautiful caverns in England and China for instance, it didn´t hold a candle to the Blue John mines, the Cheddar Gorge or the reed flute caves. It was pretty unphotogenic to tell the truth. And do they call those stalactites?  Pretty poor show!  But I behaved myself and looked forward to driving to the country park.

Next stop was a shop at the entrance to the park where we signed the park management forms with a huge condor feather quill so they could keep a record of who was in there. We wanted one of those quills but for some reason we could not fathom the gift shop didn´t sell them.  Finally we were able to head towards the Torres del Paine.

On the way there we encountered wild ostrich and a llama like animal which Cristian called a Guanaco. Unfortunately his Chilean pronunciation was difficult for our Hong Kong ears to follow. The ¨g¨ is pronounced like a breathy ¨h¨. So when he said the name of the animal it sounded like ¨Bwanaco¨ leaving the three of us looking round for bottles of mineralised water.

It´s a long way to Patagonia from Easter Island. We had a four hour flight to Santiago which got us in around 5:30pm. We then had to wait around Santiago airport for five and a half hours for our connection to Punta Arenas. We were expecting to have to greet our bags on the tarmac as we had the last couple of times we had been through Santiago airport. But this was not needed. The man at the Easter Island check in desk had printed off our boarding passes and checked our bags right through with commendable efficiency. we loitered around everyone else´s luggage for a while, unable to believe that things were going smoothly for a change - but when it started to look suspicious, we decided to treat ourselves to dinner at the Holiday Inn - and I could update the blog using their electricity and internet connection.

The Santiago to Punta Arenas leg was three hours and we were to be collected by car for a three hour transfer to Puerto Natales - where we would find our hotel for the next two days - Indigo.

http://www.indigopatagonia.com/

Grace managed to get some sleep on the flight but I was less fortunate.

On arrival at Punta Arenas we had an initial hiccup when our car driver was late. We were last out of the baggage collection area due to my stomach bug (which I still hadn´t shaken after the Atacama) feeling a little left out and determined to make its presnce felt. On my exiting the bathroom I found that all our co-passengers had left. There were no taxis and it being 2:30am we were unlikely to be able to get any to come out. Even if we did find an appropriate phone number and talk a taxi driver into collecting us with our non-existent Spanish, we would have a job directing him on a three hour drive to a remote hotel we had never visited before.

I called the hotel to find out what was happening. Naturally the night security guard was manning the desk and even more naturally he spoke no English. Grace tried to wake Deanna who was in residence to see if she could find someone - but she was obviously warm and cosy in the land of nod and didn´t answer her phone.

After a number of calls to the hotel to see if he might perchance find an English speaker instead of putting the phone down on me and hoping I would go away my increasingly loud and urgent pleading woke up an old man asleep on a bench. He looked around the deserted airport and seeing only the two of us was about to go back to sleep when he heard me speaking English yet again to the hotel receptionist.

Firtling in his pocket he pulled out a postage stamp sized square of paper which he began to unfold and eventually opened out an A4 sized piece of paper bearing the legend ¨Tracy Williams x 2¨

I wanted to smack the living daylights out of him while all he would do was explain in Spanish why it was not his fault he had not been awake to meet us.

¨VAMOS??!!¨ I insisted.

We got in the car and again Grace was able to sleep for the next three hours while I wriggled uncomfortably. We reached the hotel at around 5:30am.  It was warm and gorgeous, overlooking the Ultima Esperanza Sound.  We were checked in and immediately allowed into the suite which we had booked where we would have an hour to sleep before we had to leave for the boat to the Grey glacier - which Deanna had booked on our behalf - she having been in the hotel for 2 days already.

Sadly Grace and I divided the hour alternating in the gorgeous wooden bathroom with separate rain shower - since by now Grace had begun to pick up on my stomach bug.

With no sleep and my bug getting increasingly active I decided to bail on the boat trip. The following day was my birthday and I had booked us on a trip to the Torres del Paine. I figured that resting for a day and hoping to sleep off the problem would give me a better chance of enjoying the day. So when Deanna came to wake Grace and me at 7:00am, I decided to stay in bed.

I managed to lie in until around 10:30am. Three hours sleep was pretty good for me - I am a very poor sleeper. So I got up, washed my hair in the rain shower and headed out into the open area in the middle of the hotel. The rooms in the hotel are comfortable and chic but the interior spaces are dramatic and designed to facilitate relaxation and mingling with other guests. Wifi is also available in the interior areas so I spent the day updating and uploading my blog.

Deanna and Grace returned in the evening to find me better refreshed and we hit the hot tub on the roof, with one of our bottles of champagne to celebrate being ina lovely hotel.

Dea had also researched dinner - and we later went out for dinner to one of the two restaurants which she had found which were always busy. The other she had booked for dinner on my birthday.

It turned out to be something of a blessing that Grace and I missed the organised tours. Most of these seemed to be packed with Japanese or Korean tourists, loaded down with Nikons. This over-excited crowd

had clearly been promised a sight of Grace´s famous bottom

http://madeinhongkong.tumblr.com/post/224984228/bottom

- but after a week in the desert, it was feeling a little over-exposed and had turned reclusive.

Reynaldo was a treasure and came to see us off the island. It seemed to be traditional that everyone on the island who knew you would turn up to see you fly out, garlanding you with sea shells. Those who had been there for some time were loaded down with dozens of necklaces. Grace and I managed two each - one from Raul and one from Reynaldo. Not bad for one day in residence. A girl from our hotel, Serena from Australia, had been there 4 days declaring it to be the best place she had ever visited. But she only managed to score one necklace.

We were ready to leave Rapa Nui - the eccentricity of the people notwithstanding. The pace of life was just too slow. Also I had bed bug bites since the blanket which Grace had thrown down for me on the first night, had by the second night been folded into the bed - the staff having assumed I too might be cold.

¨I thought I might have been bitten by bed bugs on the first night but I wasn´t sure¨, mused Grace. Now you might have mentioned that earlier!