March 2010
45 posts
Reflections on our journey
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...
Reflections on Chile
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...
Torres del Paine
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...
Happy birthday to me
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...
Patagonia dreaming
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...
For the best
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...
Show me the Moai
The South West of Easter Island was greener and more lush than I had expected. Tropical beach paradise rather than windswept and remote. However that wasn´t what we had travelled half a lifetime to see.
We wanted to see barren windswept plateaus and wave battered shores, where Moai glared inland impassively with their backs to the ocean and wild horses ran loose.
Easter Island
Easter Island was an odd place. I get the feeling it is somewhere you just love, or you just don´t. Having researched the island thoroughly I knew there was only one quality hotel and that required a minimum stay of five nights at a cost of US$2000 per night (inclusive admittedly of all spa treatment, meals and excursions). Elsewhere we were looking at over priced but low rent hostels.
Our...
Santiago reprise
I awoke early - around 6:00am and throughly disorientated. It was dark and beside me I could see a white square with a black border and figure 4 in it which looked in the dim light like a 4 Deserts flag. On my right I could see a light flashing, which looked like a runner´s head torch. I realised I had fallen asleep at a checkpoint and there was a runner coming. Even more bizarrely I was on my...
13th March - the home straight
For those who had made it to camp before the cut off, today would be a short trot to the finish line. Grace, Deanna and I would miss the excitement however as we had to fly out of Calama so as to make the rescheduled flights we should have caught earlier in our trip.
We had already had some difficulties with our flights. There had been a severe aftershock or lesser earthquake on Thursday with a...
No guts; no glory. The Long March
After my early night I awoke around 3am, with a puddle of vomit beside me. I assumed that I had over-eaten – there were a lot of calories in my meal and an awful lot of oil. I used some of my facial wipes to mop it up and went outside to throw it into the bins by the fire. It was cold. so I popped back into bed, checked my alarm was set for 5:00am and went back to sleep.
At 5:00am it was even...
11th March - Day 4 Atacama Crossing
Same old same old. My routine in the mornings was becoming quite slick by now and I was ready by car 1 bright and early. We were missing our checkpoint tent which had been used the day before to house the foot spa beside the medical tent. We retrieved that and we were on our way.
There would be a cut off again today. All competitors must reach checkpoint 2 by 2:00pm. The reason for this early cut...
10th March - Day 3 Atacama Crossing
Today Deanna and I were to be on cyber tent duty – which meant we would stay with camp until after the runners left instead of leaving immediately after the 6:30am briefing with the other teams. However we still needed to be packed and ready to leave at 6:30am. Our bags were to go on the course truck – number 8, and we would ride with Sam to the new campsite. Till she was ready to go, we and the...
9th March - Day 2 Atacama Crossing
I woke similarly early around 4:30am. Once more I did my ablutions before the world was awake and listened to the sounds of Peter´s snoring competing with the occupants of staff tent 1. He had lied when he claimed he didn’t snore. Eventually I crawled back into my sleeping bag to keep warm till the staggered symphony of alarms sounded at 5:30am.
Deanna remained dead to the world as the rest...
8th March - Day 1 Atacama Crossing
I woke several times in the night. Despite my elf suit I was bitterly cold. My borrowed sleeping bag was not as warm as my techie version – and I was somewhat regretting my generosity to Joanna Zsomething the previous day. The advantage of being up early was I was able to use the porta-potty before it became revoltingly stinky. I was also able to brush my teeth undisturbed – pay a visit to the...
First night under canvas
Registration all done we shepherded the racers onto their competitors buses and then piled into the event trucks – nice shiny red – to head off to base camp.
Arriving there, it all looked quite homely. All the competitors tents were angled to the sun rise and to the large camp fire on which huge back kettles filled with water were boiling, to reconstitute 200 or so freeze dried meals.
The...
Sunday March 7th - Registration
7:00am. Bright and girlie on a Sunday morning all the volunteers washed (for the last time) and donned their new clean (also for the last time) uniforms.
We set up our checkpoint tents which would enable us to register all the competitors. There was a welcome tent where they would be given their race passport and talked trough the induction process, an admin tent (where competitors would sign IP...
Basic training 2
Today all the volunteers were assembled by 9:00am and we embarked on basic training. Due to the fact most of the medical team had beeen stranded in North America and would not make the race, Eric had been drafted in to make up their numbers. He therefore escaped part 2 of basic training.
First up was the rules. This very tedious session which took us through to lunchtime consisted of penalising...
Flamingos and falsehoods and fruit, oh my!
Joining our drinking crowd for the flamingo tour were Cristobal (Santiagan hiker and mountaineer with gorgeous daughter and a fear of crazy women) and Joanna, one of Grace’s two room mates, whose brother was participating in the race. Kind and patient beyond all call of duty, Joanna had signed on as a volunteer to support him.
Lauren, the dancer turned medic, Eric the IT guy turned medic,...
Basic training part 1
All the volunteers were scheduled to have basic training on Friday 5th March before the athletes arrived on 6th. Due to the earthquake the race start was delayed for a day - so while we were all expected to meet at 9am on 5th, this was a basic meet and greet and roll call, to see how many of us had managed to get there.
Of 19 volunteers, all but two had either arrived already or were en route and...
San Pedro - gateway to the Atacama
Grace´s guidebook had told her there was little point in spending time in Calama. It was strictly a one llama town with little charm. Flying into the town I couldn´t help but agree. The town consisted of a whole series of box-like houses, laid out in a grid. It looked like a cleaned up District 9 without the prawns or the spaceship hovering overhead.
Fortunately we didn´t need to spend any time...
Resumed operations at Santiago airport
We said farewell to our apartment in Santiago and made our way to the airport, to catch our flight to Calama. In the five days since the earthquake, the infrastructure which had been put in place was impressive.
We could see as we approached that the terminal building remained closed. the access road was broken in places and construction workers were peering at the damage they needed to...
¨We´ll have what they´re having!¨
The opposite side of the courtyard offered a warming, welcoming pool of light. TGI Fridays, Ruby Tuesdays and Spaghetti House seemed to beckon - though none of them particularly enticingly. Why travel to South America to eat at an American themed pub?
Fortunately Grace spotted an interesting looking place with a specials board outside. Our limited knowledge and Grace´s guide book told us that one...
¨We are all afraid¨
During our rapid lunch we had been looking for ideas for where to go for dinner. After last night’s steak we fancied a bit of fish. Grace particularly was after some Chilean sea bass - and a place called La Perla seemed to offer the ideal choices. Oyster. Ceviche. Sea bass. Tick.
As we headed out for dinner Grace was struggling. Since her lasic eye surgery some years ago she has...
Santiago for a day
Grace and I do not usually do the standard tourist thing but after a number of days of furious negotiations, meetings and spending our entire holiday on the phone or in front of someone else’s desk, we were ready for a little mindless tourism. I had noticed a big red open topped bus with the logo Turistik painted cheerily on the side and this was to be our entertainment for our first day of...
Making lemonade in Chile
The difficulty with making lemonade is that sometimes life throws too many lemons at you and you don´t have enough sugar to take away the sourness. Grace and I felt we had more than enough lemons to last us a while – looking round our apartment, 33 floors up and with a beautiful view of the Andes, huge bathroom with jacuzzi, working showers, kitchen and huge living dining room life was feeling...
Ray of Sunshine
Seeing my meltdown, Telmo agreed to stay with us while the others went back to the hotel. He wasn´t flying out for another 12 hours so he had time to help us try to find a room. He reminded us of the training and preparations we had been doing for months and the obstacles we had already overcome to get to where we were.
We walked over to the Marriott where the receptionist spoke English. I...
The darkest hour
It is said that the darkest hour is just before dawn. Tuesday morning (2 March) was my darkest hour. I had woken early – around 2:30am. Downstairs, in front of the hotel one of the ladies of the night was brawling with a transvestite plying a similar trade, over territory.
After tossing and turning and failing to get back to sleep, I got up and answered some work emails. Because the hotel...
Monday night in downtown Santiago
At 7.30pm we met up with our fellow Spanglish refugees from flight LA800. Actually I have to digress – ordinarily I can never remember flight numbers. Whenever I have to fill in an arrival card I have to ask the flight attendant. That is one of the reasons we include flight numbers on our laminated itineraries which we then keep in our passports. However 72 hours of negotiating to get onto these...
A hole of our own
After boarding the bus we moved on. We soon left the chic residential district and headed into an area which was a little more gritty. Characterful I guess.
We pulled up at an aparthotel called rentahome. It also was characterful, if by characterful you mean a little run down and well past its prime. But a bed is a bed and by now (at 7pm) Grace had been without water for almost 6 hours. So we...
Assessing the earthquake damage
While we knew the earthquake had damaged the airport we really knew nothing of the state of the rest of Santiago. We had all seen images of the church with its spire hanging down, in the CNN breaking news footage.
Beyond this we knew nothing. Leaving the airport the first sign of damage I saw was to the highway we were traveling on - where we had to slow down to a crawl to cross a six inch wide...
Welcome to Santiago
Santiago looked much more promising than Patagonia. It was greener. The terminal building was much bigger.
Unfortunately the terminal building was far from open as I noticed from the presence of large numbers of people and suitcases surrounding the half dozen planes which had landed already. We needed to wait on the plane for another 15 minutes after reaching our allocated spot. The Captain...
Into the fire
It felt a little weird to be heading into an earthquake. All logic screamed that we should be running in the opposite direction. But weirder still for me was being without an agenda.
Fortunately I was still operating on Plan C – which involved us getting to Santiago then finding someone from LAN to re-ticket us for Easter Island.
Our fallback - plan D involved heading early to Colchagua Valley...
Plan C
Apart from lunch, Plan C involved us heading to LANs office first thing in the morning to press for a place on the next flight out.
We duly rocked up at 9:00am Monday, to find 4 rather elderly back-packing gentlemen, complete with beards and greige cargo pants, trying to get onto the next leg of their journey – Tahiti. Earwigging on their conversation, I heard that they were unlikely to be able...
Plan B
The following morning I had received confirmation from Jorge at Hotel Orongo
http://www.hotelorongo.com/ingles.htm
that he and everyone around him was okay. There had been minimal impact from the tsunami wave – which augured well for Hawaii where the same dippy bimbo was still counting down the minutes (3 hours 22 minutes). Considerably more warning than the Chilean people got when they were...
Breaking News
Obviously a catastrophic earthquake 8.8 has considerably more significant impacts than the interruption of our travel plans. 300 or so fatalities and their families can attest to that. But we had made a commitment to Mary Gaddams to help out with the Race – so we needed to get to Chile earthquake or no earthquake.
Mary had confirmed that the race was going to proceed and would be used to raise...
Living the Highlife in Citylife, Auckland
Our journey to NZ was uneventful. Slight delay. Deanna didn’t get upgraded. Grace and I bought our upgrades on airmiles. And we were all unusually tired having had to pack a lot in at work to get three weeks away.
On arrival we all had a sweaty half hour trying to get our freeze-dried foods past the NZ customs and agricultural inspections. Grace was about 20 minutes behind Deanna and me...
Plan A
Originally Grace and I had planned on something of an adventure even by our standards. About 6 months ago we both attended a talk given by Mary Gaddams of Racing the Planet, as part of the Lovells Breaking Barriers womens’ networking series of events.
Mary is an inspirational lady – who has probably made more than her share of lemonade herself. An investment banker by trade – an adventure...
Making Lemonade
As Grace reminds me there is an old saying that when life throws lemons at you, make lemonade.
Here are a few recipes we have come up with over the last few days.