Chile – Come Away with Dan

February 28, 2018January 24, 2023

Low on batteries at Atacama Desert

San Pedro De Atacama, Chile – 13.-16. January 2018

I know that I still owe you some articles. Well, I am not surprised for not having completed this… work. Probably that is the real problem. Updating this blog started to feel like a work, and well, working is not the kind of thing that you want to do while you are in a holiday.
But now it is a good moment to tell you some other stories. So let’s start from my days in the Atacama desert.

Initially I did not planned to visit the desert, but when I realized that this is one of the best place in the world to watch the starred sky at night, I decided that staying some night would have been definitely a good deal.
This time I booked a tent. I don’t really love to sleep in a tent, but this one was kind of a luxury tent: a real bed, some furniture, and fresh breakfast served every day at the sunrise. Thinking to it now, when in the mornings I have to prepare my skimpy espresso while the cold Berlin wait for me outside, it hurts a lot!

Of the different excursions you can do in Atacama, the one that I loved the most was the one to the Salar de Tara. To get there you have to travel on the Andes highland, reaching an altitude of about 4.500 meters. It looks like the classic desert we have in our imagination: a dead flat of red sand with some dunes and very, very sparse vegetation. But thanks to its altitude it is also a pretty cold area: I had to wear the same clothes I was wearing in Patagonia to stay there! The Salar de Tara offers some more colors and some more life: the reflection of the sun on the salted water, the low vegetation and the beautiful flamingos offers an unusual, but lovely view of this desert.

I also visited the Moon Valley. This valley is not far away from San Pedro de Atacama, the town where I was staying. Honestly, I didn’t enjoy this visit that much. And the fault is all mine! I visited this area with a big group of people, most of them unprepared and very, very casual tourists. I had to be a bit more aware of the guided tour I was booking or, even better, sticking to the initial plan and going by myself.

In Atacama I started to feel a bit tired of travelling. The pace was a bit too high and visiting the places “just because I am here” wasn’t the best attitude. Luckily I was able to recognize that, and trying to get a better attitude in the following steps. But that was also the confirmation that, at least for me, 3-4 weeks are the ideal duration of a trip: enough time to get a break, enough energies to enjoy that time off. Well, in the end it is something more that I learn about myself, so I can’t really complain.

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Song of the post: Talking Heads – This must be the place (Naive melody)

Home is where I want to be.
Pick me up and turn me around.
I feel numb, born with a weak heart;
I guess I must be having fun.

January 17, 2018January 24, 2023

Breathing again in Santiago

Santiago, Chile – 8.-13. January 2018

When I arrived in Santiago my mood wasn’t at its best. I don’t know exactly what happened after the new year’s eve, but suddenly I started to feel slightly sad. They say it is pretty typical that at the beginning of a new year one can feel like that. Mainly if the year that just ended has been very complicated for both your private and working life.
During 2017 I saw the disintegration of the certainty I built in my previous (?) life. I guess it is normal, it is maybe even healthy, feeling bad for what has been and is no more. It is, I guess, the first step to look at that time with the tenderness that owns the good moments of the pasts. And also the first step to prepare the soul for what will come.

Santiago and its atmosphere helped a lot to live this process. My experience there has been extremely relaxing, being able to spend my time in green parks under big blue skies, or even visiting a swimming pool on the top of an hill.

Beside the nice weather, what impressed me in Santiago was the way in which the city is lively and full of people at any time of the day.

One of the park that I wanted to visit was the Sculpture Park. It is a park with several sculpture made with different materials are. Unfortunately the park was closed because they were organizing a jazz festival there. Still I was able to take a shot to some of the sculptures.

I also visited the Precolombino Musem. The museum offers a thorough overview of the history of South and Central America before the arrival of the Europeans.

Santiago was already in my mind also for other reasons. It was in 2012 when Daniel Zamudio, a young gay boy from Santiago, was killed during an homophobic attack. As I already wrote in my facebook profile, his death was a great pain, that I still bring with me. So it has been natural for me coming to the place where Daniel has been found dying.

You remain always with the doubt of paying a tribute can really help to change the world in which we live. I don’t have an answer for this, but being testimony of the life you dream – “simply” living it – may be a good way to make this place a bit better than we found it.

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Song of the post: Midge Ure – Breathe

With every waking breath I breathe
I see what life has dealt to me.
With every sadness I deny
I feel a chance inside me die.

January 15, 2018January 24, 2023

The long sail to Puerto Montt

From Puerto Natales to Puerto Montt, Chile – 2.-5. January 2018
Puerto Montt, Chile – 5.-8. January 2018

The trickiest part while organizing my trip was finding transfers across Patagonia. There are multiple good location where to stay, each of them with pros and cons, and even more ways to get there. So it is not a surprise that I used buses, taxis, planes, passages by car and even the ferryboat. This last in particular is the transport mean I used to travel from Puerto Natales to Puerto Montt.

I was initially pretty excited of traveling across the Chilean fjords by ferry, being able to take a look to the landscapes without any rush. I have to admit that after the first day the sail have been a bit boring. Maybe the lack of a wi-fi connection on-board played a role as well in my bore (and yeah, I am not proud of this). Also the destination, Puerto Montt, didn’t offer that much to see.

Luckily not far from Puerto Montt is possible to visit the Chiloé Insland. This island is the homeland of the Chilotes, a local population that tend to differentiate themselves from the Chilean. The island is incredibly green and offers nice landscapes and even a penguin colony.

This stop was just an interlude before the next big city on my schedule, that is Santiago. I will talk about my days there in the next post.

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Song of the Post: Billy Joel – Piano Man

sing us a song, you’re the piano man
sing us a song tonight.
well, we’re all in the mood for a melody
and you’ve got us feelin’ alright

January 9, 2018January 24, 2023

Shall I stop to raise the bar?

Puerto Natales, Chile – 26. December 2017 – 2. January 2018

Similarly to Ushuaia, also Puerto Natales don’t has that much to offer as town itself. The weather has been slightly better than the one I found in Ushuaia, so I enjoyed more my walks along the coast, but the main course was not the town itself, but the National Park of Torres del Paine.

This Park in particular is one of them that you typically see in documentaries and travel books. It is world famous for the lot of different hiking tracks you can follow and for the three natural “towers” that are visible only from the top of one of these tracks. During my stay in Puerto Natales I also took the occasion to visit the Glacier Perito Moreno, in the argentinian Patagonia. It is a long trip by bus from Puerto Natales, but it is definitely worth of it.

There is not that much that I can say about the national parks: the pictures talks by theirselves (or at least I hope so).

I can say something about what meant to me doing these hiking alone. Hiking is maybe the less demanding activity you can do in the mountains: it is not skying, it is not climbing, for sure it is not opening new routes. But for someone that has known in his life only Lignano, Poti and some vulcans between Sicily and Lanzarote, hiking in Torres del Paine was a bit of a challenge. I don’t talk about the track to la Torres, that moreover I did with a guide. Neither the tracks from Paine Grande to Campo Italiano or to the Mirador Grey were that challenging.

But when you raise the bar again, and you decide to go a bit off-track to reach the top of a cliff to take a look to the Grey glacier while the wind whistle and the snow hit your face, or when you decide to reach the Mirador Britanico from Campo Italiano despite the muscle soreness and the fatigue of the last week, then yes, it becomes a challenge. And when on the way back from Britanico you feel like you are doing too much mistakes, when you fall down with your face in the mud because you are unfocused and put your feet on a slippery rock, and when you have still more that 7 km of walk in front of you, you ask yourself if this time you didn’t raised the bar too high. Of raising the bar, of never settle, I made a laical belief. But there is a limit to which one should, at some point, stop raising the bar? And how to recognize it? Is it failing to reach that last objective that set your limit? If so it is, every success is just another step on the road to the failure, and to the frustration. Then what to do? Just nothing? Renouncing to everything, because everything is just an illusion that will bring you up to the next failure? I am for sure not the first person in the earth having this questions in his mind. I think to Saint Francis, I think to the Tibetan Monks. I think to the hermits from yesterday and today. And I can’t stop thinking that maybe that bar should be lowered, much more than raised. Until we understand that maybe no success really matter. That nothing really matter.

Refugio Base – Torres del Paine

(manual recording)

Refugio Paine Grande – Glacier Grey

Refugio Paine Grande – Mirador Britannico

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Song of the post: Cristiano De André – Il cielo é vuoto (the sky is empty)

Ti accorgi che il cielo é vuoto
perché la nostra immaginazione
ha bisogno di spazio.
E’ vuoto
perché la nostra immaginazione
naviga nello spazio.
Si stacca l’anima, non fa più rumore;
puoi chiudere gli occhi, ma è vietato morire.

You realize that the sky is empty
because our imagination
require space.
It’s empty
because our imagination
fly to the space.
The soul split up, it makes no more noise;
you can close your eyes, but death is forbidden.