¿Hasta cuaaaando ya?: A lesson in Chilean slang

When I arrived in Chile three months ago, people’s stories were a lot wilder than they are now. One day at lunch, for example, I learned there’s a two-week period every August where Venezuelans take to the street and eat banana Jello, and I considered making a trip. As I've grown more accustomed to the language, the stories have calmed down a bit and have started to make more sense. But to understand them completely, it helps to recognize the slang that peppers most every Chilean sentence.

Here’s a quick guide to the Chilean slang I’ve picked up on so far: Al tiro — Immediately Bacán — Cool! ¿Cachai? — Get it? Carrete — Party Fome — Boring Guagua — Baby Guata — Belly Huevón(a) — Buddy, Dude, Man, Jerk or Asshole, depending on the context. Often added to the end of a sentence to indicate familiarity. La onda — Attitude, mood, character of person. As in “Ella es buena onda” or “She’s got a good vibe.” La pega — Work, Job Pololo(a) — Boyfriend/Girlfriend Po — Well Short for “pues.” Added onto the end of many sentences and phrases. As in “Sí po” or “No po.” Ponte las pilas — Go for it! Try harder! Literally “Put your batteries in.” La raja — Excellent, Cool, The shit El tuto — Sleepiness (in a cute sense) As in “Tengo tuto” or “I’m sleepy,” and “Voy a hacer tuto” or “I’m going to take a nap.” Wea — That shit As in “Esa wea no funciona” or “That shit doesn’t work,” and “Esa wea está mala” or “That shit is bad.”

A separate slang culture, mainly driven by the baqueanos (Chilean cowboys), has developed within the park. Here a few phrases you need to get around here: Meh — A sound used to express surprise or disbelief Vamos, VAAAAH-mos — Let’s go, leeeeet’s go. Shouted as loud as possible, often by a baqueano, a guide or me, when prodded ¿Hasta cuaaaando, yaaaa? — When’s it gonna stop? Literally, “Until when, already?” Uttered with a nasally voice in fake annoyance

There you have it. Consider yourself Chilean.

Walkin' the W

Trying to put up a tent in the wind is like trying to walk a big, dumb animal that has an agenda distinctly different from your own. On the first night of my 3.5-day solo-hiking excursion along the Torres del Paine’s legendary W Circuit, my tent wanted to go in the thorny bushes surrounding the campsite — or the lake, it didn’t matter — and I wanted it to go in the nice, flat spot I had picked out in Paine Grande campground.I’m proud to report that after a long, fierce battle, I firmly anchored my opponent to the earth with titanium stakes, and I lined its inside with heavy rocks for extra measure.

Triumph

The W Circuit is approximately 50-kilometer route through Torres del Paine National Park that runs between Grey Glacier the granite towers themselves, ascending the awe-inspiring Valle Frances along the way (forming, oddly enough, a W-shaped route).

A mystic mountain and wind-blown lenga tree I encountered along the trail

For some reason, I wasn’t intimidated by the prospect of taking on the W alone (I didn’t find out about the disappearance of Irish hiker Ronan Lawlor until after I returned). I figured the trails were well marked and I was way more likely to run across a crazy psycho maniac in the hollers of North Carolina than the internationally-visited Torres del Paine. Still, I packed a map and first aid kit, gave Victor in the office my route and asked him to send out a search party if I wasn’t back by Tuesday. I started the hike toward Glacier Grey along the western leg of the W in rain and the 90-km-per-hour winds on Friday morning. The trail ascends a valley, passes the dark-watered Laguna Los Patos and then traces the shoreline of Lago Grey as it approaches the 15-mile-long glacier, one of the largest tongues of the Southern Patagonia Ice Field.

Icebergs in Lago Grey

The still, blue glacier fills the valley it occupies almost to the top, and its edge hugs an island as it meets Lago Grey. The ice field is hard for the eye to comprehend from afar because the sun refracts off it in so many different directions. It registers as a white glow that’s hard to distinguish from the sky. When I crested a hill and first glimpsed it, I inadvertantly gasped and got chills at the same time.

Glaciar Grey and its island

The wind blowing off the glacier is fierce and unrelenting. Despite the rough conditions, though, flowers manage to bloom. I’m impressed by their resiliance.

On Day Numero Dos, I hiked about two hours from the Paine Grande campground to Valle Frances. I pitched my tent at the base of the valley in Campamento Italiano, reserving a spot in the lenga forest right by the river. Then I strapped on a fanny pack (yes, a fanny pack) and ascended the valley, the looming, glacier-ridden Cuerno Paine Grande to my left and the smooth, granite slabs of Los Cuernos to my right.

Los Cuernos from the trail

Let me just say, the view from the mirador at the top of the valley is one of the best in the park: Towering rock formations, including Las Torres in the distance and Los Cuernos more immediately, surround you on all sides. Lucky for me, the ranger who works the Italiano campsite invited another camper and me into his metal-sided shack for dinner. We pooled our pack food, fed the wood-burning stove and created a rich feast of 5-Minute Rice, pasta with red sauce and sauteed hot dogs. As the water boiled, we listened to traditional Chilean music on a set of just-repaired speakers and discussed beehives and garbage. The social interaction was good.

The following day, a warm bed and fluffy comforter thwarted my well-laid plans. I had intended to hike to Refugio Los Cuernos and convince one of the staff members to explore the hidden Valle Bader with me in hopes of touching the base of Los Cuernos themselves and glimpsing the elusive huemul (an endangered deer said to live in the valley). But when the Refugio Cuernos staff offered me a free stay in one of the cozy, A-frame cabins on a hillside overlooking Lake Nordenskjold, I accidentally spent all afternoon napping and reading Jon Krakauer’s “Into the Wild.” It was heaven, really. I helped the Cuernos staff wash dishes in the refugio as a thank-you.

My cabin

After breakfast in the refugio the following morning, I strapped on my pack, extended my hiking poles and took off toward Refugio Las Torres, my home base. The sun was shining, the birdies were chirping and Lago Nordenskjold was blue as ever.

I stepped off of the trail and onto my doorstep, feeling exhilerated by three days in the aire libre of Paine.

Visit this link to see more pics from the hike.

Missing person

Ronan Lawlor started the W Circuit in Torres del Paine on Nov. 18 and has not been seen since. The 28-year-old chemical engineer from Ireland signed in when he entered the park, but never signed out. He has not contacted his family in over a month and has yet to return to a hostel in El Calafate, Argentina where he left his rucksack. The Irish embassy, local police and park rangers began an official search for Ronan today. If you have any information on his whereabouts, email inforonan@gmail.com.

Ronan Lawlor

An ode to my gloves

It might be a sunny 60 degrees while you’re packing for your hike through Torres del Paine National Park. But don’t be fooled. You need your gloves. The weather is unpredictable and often rotates through the four seasons in one day. It might be sunny when you wake up, raining by mid-day, snowing by 3 and sunny/blue again by dinner.

I learned this lesson the other day when temperatures plummeted midway through my ascent to the towers. As the weather worsened, my hands went numb, and tasks I usually complete without a thought suddenly occupied me for a longer than I’d like to admit.

Among the most daunting of my challenges were:

1. Opening the wrapper of a granola bar 2. Zipping up my rain jacket 3. Pushing the ‘take a picture’ button on my camera 4. Tearing duct tape off the roll to stick over the hot spot on a hiking partners’ heel 5. Unclipping the waist belt of my daypack 6. Unsnapping and unzipping my pants’ fly / re-snapping and re-zipping my pants’ fly (It’s especially embarrassing if you manage to accomplish the former, but not the latter.)

A moraine made slightly less impressive by freezing hands

For those of you heading out for a day in the park, I recommend you wear a synthetic outfit and broken-in boots and pack the following items, even if you don’t think you’ll need them:

Warm gloves Warm hat A fleece or wool pullover Rain jacket Sun hat Sunglasses Sunscreen More than 1 liter of water A snack A first aid kit

Despite my trials, I made it to the towers the other day. Here they are and here I am:

Go ahead, take a sip. Everybody's doing it.

I’ve heard enough horror stories to reject any water taken straight from the creek. I’ve had friends incapacitated for days on end by the giardia bug that rejects, projectile-style, any food or drink that dares enter the body. ‘Purify, purify, purify’ has been pounded into my head during so many backpacking trips and outdoor leadership training sessions that I can fix a broken water filter with my eyes closed. That’s why, when a friend assured me on a hike that Paine water is safe from it’s source, my first reaction was ‘Whaaa? No way! That goes against everything I stand for!’

But, as I stood in front of a mountain waterfall sipping a Nalgene of water taken from the bathroom sink at work, I grew tempted by the clear, cool H2O flowing by my feet.

Then, I did something unthinkable. I poured out my carefully chlorinated sink water, submersed my bottle in the creek until no more bubbles rose to the surface — and, without taking any precautions whatsoever, took several long, deep gulps.

After that, I waited. I waited through the afternoon and evening and into the next three weeks for some sign that what I had done was a really, really bad idea. But a sign never came.

My conclusion: Paine water really is safe to drink from its source. And, it’s damn delicious.

The advent of the bicycle in Torres del Paine

Las Torres hotel took a bold first step in creating a mountain biking program: they bought the bikes. Two guides and I agreed to sample the merchandise for company photographer Gabriel Ortega, who needed some pictures for marketing material we’ll put out soon. We three did our best to look like bad asses as we rolled over the trail toward Laguna Inge and Los Cuernos: We took downhills extra fast and splashed extra big as we rode through streams that crossed the trail.

Though the hotel has not yet decided which routes it will open to the bikes, the terrain we rode that day was ideal for biking: smooth, fast and in the shadow of some incredible snow-capped mountains. Give me a bicycle, and I'll sample it anytime.

Photo by Gabriel Ortega

Un cumpleaños feliz!

I hiked up to Refugio Chileno on Nov. 5 with a dozen eggs in the top of my backpack and down on the 6th with an apricot cake to share. My roommate Alejandra radioed the folks at Chileno the day of my hike to let them know it was my 27th birthday, and I must say, the folks at Chileno did me right. A 'Happy Birthday' sign, printed in box letters on sheets of graph paper, greeted me above the hiker hostel's entrance. Pato, the gregarious hostel jefe, led the dining room of guests in a 'Happy Birthday' song after dinner. And after the dishes were clean and the guests tucked into their bunk beds, Freddy combined those eggs with flour, sugar and fruit, and we all ate the result. Mmm, mmm, good!

There's no 'I' in team

Here’s my itinerary on a recent morning:1. Pack a gourd with yerba mate, a traditional Chilean tea that, in a very ritualistic manner, is infused with hot water and passed among a group of people who take turns sipping it through a metal straw, or bombilla 2. Saddle a horse. 3. Help a compañero run from one point to another holding a shrieking piglet by the forearms 4. Split firewood and light a fire 5. Clean a bathroom 6. Pitch a tent, taking into account the wind that’s blowing in from the northwest Ok, I’ll admit. That’s not a typical morning for me here. It was actually a teambuilding exercise for some of Fantastico Sur’s employees. I learned a lot about the jobs other people — the gauchos (cowboys) and the maintenance staff — have around the hostería property, how to pack a gourd of matte, oh, and how to work as a team.

My team:

Quick, before it melts!

I almost touched a glacier yesterday, but I couldn’t reach it because it’s rained a lot recently, and the river in front of it was too wide to cross without getting swept away and possibly drowning in ice-cold runoff. But I got really close — and by that, I mean 25 meters close. To a glacier.

The glaciers in Torres del Paine National Park are among the most accessible in the world. You can strap on crampons and hike across the top of Glaciar Grey, a 26 kilometer long finger of South Patagonian ice field. Or you can settle into a kayak and paddle up to the ice mass’ base. In a world of rapidly receding glaciers, that’s pretty rare.

Here’s a brief history of the park’s ice: The Earth’s plates shifted in this area about 12,000 years ago, thrusting the once horizontal layers of sedimentary rock out of the ground and into the air. Then it snowed and it snowed, and rather than melting like it’s known to do, the snow compacted into glaciers. The glaciers advanced, mostly during the Pleistocene era, eroding away at the uplifted rock, carving the dramatic formations this park is known for. Several of those same glaciers still remain, but are receding at between four and 10 meters each year. That means I’d better touch, walk on or otherwise experience the glaciers here quickly, before they're gone.

Check out pictures, like the one below of Los Cuernos, from my hike up Valle Frances.

A night out

The trail to Refugio Chileno climbs the side of the snow-capped Almirante Nieto and enters Valle Ascencio at Paso de los Vientos, or the Windy Pass. As soon as you round the corner into the valley, you have to brace yourself against the powerful gusts that, if blowing in the right (or wrong) direction, could knock you off the exposed mountainside and into the thundering river below. After a long day of work, I started the hike with John, an American in the park to help with trail maintenance, as the sun was setting on Saturday. I was eager to get out of the office and into the park, if even for a few hours.

The climb up the side of Almirante Nieto was tough on my calves, especially since John is 6’8’’ and takes half the mountain in a stride. But once we entered the river valley, we saw the Torres del Paine, the trio of towers that gave the park its name, in the V formed in the distance by the valley walls. They served as an excellent reason to keep walking forward.

We reached Refugio Chileno around 9 p.m., about an hour and a half after we started. The hiker hostel sits on the opposite side of the river from the trail approaching it. It’s a wooden building with a windowed dining room, bathrooms with showers and about six bedrooms packed with 2- to 3-story bunk beds.

We took off our boots on the stone front porch and padded inside to meet Christian Morales, who was already there, two visitors from Germany and the refugio staff.

After a dinner of garlic rice, lamb and fried potato wedges, Pato, the refugio’s manager, taught us some Chilean slang. Patagonia has more regionalisms than I’ve ever heard before and the slang changes fast, which might explain why people can be so tough to understand. Rest assured, I can now say “Que rica cola” (“What a nice ass!”) and “Ella es como quieres” (“She’s hot!!!”) like a pro.

Refugio Chileno has a good feel to it. I think it might be my favorite of Fantástico Sur’s hiker hostels because it seems the most comfortable and laid back. At night, gas lamps mounted on the walls cast a warm glow about the dining room and a wood-burning stove heats it against the wind howling outside. The staff usually plays music over an old CD player and is quick to share bits of their culture or invite you to a game of chess (which, by the way, I lost tragically. To quote my opponent, Freddy, as he points to the pieces he’s taken: “I have a cemetery over here!”)

I slept a few hours in one of the bunks and arose for toast and eggs the next morning. Then, I hiked out of the valley and into the office for another day of work.

Day at the office

I did not break out in hives today, as was expected. I survived a 2.5-hour horseback ride without any symptoms that would tempt me to shove an Epinepherine pin into my thigh. My throat didn’t itch, my eyes didn’t run. I didn’t even sneeze more than the normal amount. I joined Christian on a journey from home base to Refugio Cuernos, the hiker hostel 12 km east of here. His purpose was to entertain a business consultant; my purpose was to see the refugio in order to write about it later; and the purpose of the pair who shuttled us there and back was to re-supply the refugio with two cases of Cabernet Sauvignon, six cases of juice mix and two cases of hot chocolate.

To get there, we took a Zodiac boat across Lake Nordenskjold, whose water is the color of the weathered, translucent Coke bottle pieces you find on the beach sometimes. The rocky hills on the opposite shore, muted gray figures, stood out starkly against the white, raining sky. It was a cold trip, and I couldn’t effectively tighten the drawstring to my raincoat hood with my glove shells on, but that didn’t matter. The scenery was beautiful.

We took our boots off in the front entryway of Refugio Cuernos and padded inside to dry off by the wood-burning stove. The refugio employees served us a hot lunch — bread, a bowl of bean, pasta and sausage stew and tea to finish — and we — rather, they — talked business. I listened in and out and nodded some.

Afterward, one of our shuttlers decided the water was too choppy for a safe return via Zodiac. While a few hombres returned to Las Torres for horses, I learned how to play the Chilean card game Quince with Ricardo, a refugio employee on his day off, and another refugio guest. (Should I blame the language barrier on my inability to add to 15?) Though I was never clear on how to score the game, I think I ended up winning.

I was pretty happy to get the horse named Gata (Cat) and not the one named Sin Corazón (Without Heart). As you might guess, I am no expert at riding on horseback, but during our ride home, I gained a great appreciation for horse judgment. ‘You think your hoof will hold on this wet rock? ... Okaaaaay....’ We were always fine.

After I grew accustomed to the feel of the horse body below me, I began to enjoy the ride, which took us over rolling, rocky terrain through Nothofagus forests (I think it’s basically deciduous beech). It snowed some, it rained. We forded a couple of rivers of glacial runoff. I rode a cantering horse without screaming. The view of Lake Nordenskold to our right, the gray hills on its opposite shore and the snow-capped Andes Mountains in the distance, basking in the only sunlight anywhere, was absolutely stunning. While I imagine most of my working days won’t be as spectacular and will probably consist of sitting in an office in front of a computer, I can only hope for exceptions like today.

Hold onto your lugnuts

The wind blew so hard today that I walked to work at a 45-degree angle, with tears blowing out of my eyes and spit blowing out my mouth. Cyclones of dust rose from the ground and hit me in the face at periodic intervals, and I got blown off of my path and into incoming traffic more than once. I learned later the wind velocities reached around 80 miles per hour — and as I sit on my bed ten hours after that walk to work, I can still hear them rushing against the sides of my house. The people here are not nearly as alarmed as I am about this situation. As a matter of course, buildings are constructed to withstand 200 km winds and in towns like Punta Arenas, the central plaza contains rope fences for people to grab onto during especially gusty weather. On days like today, when walking to work sends me into helpless hysterics, Patagons simply zip up their windbreakers and say, “Es normal.”