The End is the Beginning; 6

January 15^th, 2012

Bread and coffee for breakfast while watching Monsters Inc. in Spanish on tv! TV??? We felt so fancy being able to watch tv! Then off we were, back on the road again to continue our drive through National Geographics. More guanacos, sheeps, horses, cows, birds, landscapes-again for the 100^th time—NEVER GOT OLD! Chocolate and rest! My knee was hating on me at this point in the trip so it was nice again to JUST sit. Sidenote- we kept passing this large Bino animal statue/sculptures (bear/dinosaur looking creature). We were so intrigued and later found out that they are called “Milodones.” They are these very large sloth-like creatures that existed in caves in Southern Patagonia right after the time of the dinosaurs! Cool! I think Becca used to be a Milodon in her last life- had to be. Roar.

Okay, so we arrived in Punta Arenas and found Hostal Costanera- a 2^nd very highly recommended hostal! This hostal was a home and veryyyy comfy! After hostal hopping/camping for some time, it felt nice to be in a home (that was a “hostal” but literally someones house). We put our bags down and headed out- trying to suck the joy out of our last days of our trip. Go figure a half hour later, we find ourselves raging in the middle of a rally in main plaza of the town!

A rally to let voices be heard!

The government upped the cost of education and many other things and there stood people demanding a fair chance at education and a future for themselves and their children.

It was such a peaceful rally with really awesome traditional bands playing sweet music. Nothing like music and dancing to pull you right INTO the culture- a whole world inside of music and dancing! Their traditional dance involved this towel/napkin flagging. It was cool- slightly similar steps to Paraguay’s traditional dances, yet different.

So there we were, cheering, chanting, dancing and just- well joining their movement. Totally in our element-we felt on fire! This is what its all about! We had perma-smiles while twirling around to the rythmns and just Being with the people. Too cooooool. We stayed at the rally till 10pm then headed back to the hostal where we met some more characters that added quite the Chilean spice to the end of our trip! Two girls from Brasil, an Australian/Argentinian couple, guy from Israel, and a guy from France (who was in the midst of traveling the world by motorcycle- Che Guevara style). There we sat, yet again, exchanging-words, stories, cultures, songs, laughs—exchanging, sharing and melting our completely different worlds and adventures into one. One of the Brasilian girls was studying Transpersonal Psychology which made me so happy! I’ve never ever met anyone who was actually studying that so it felt really cool to me that I met someone who had the same specific interests I have. She was totally lit up about it and so was I just listening!  I love that! We also met 5 girls from Germany who we ended up loving and becoming close too so quickly for whatever reason. Even though we just met, it was one of those encounters were we felt like we knew them for years. They were all in South America-doing different volunteer work in different countries but all met up for a break/vacation in Patagonia. We hung with them till 2 am-then cookies and tea then bed!

January 16^th 2012

Wakey wakey- bread and coffee for breakfast and off to the plaza to check out all the local artisans work-again NEVER gets old. So muchhhhh culture in art! Obvi, we made 3 besties along the way. We met one artisan who we ended up exchanging business cards with. Her work was so impressive and well, she was super nice! Why not! Look at us doing business in the midst of our travels. What?? We also ended up becoming besties with this lady and guy who made really unique cool jewelry. We ended up sitting and hanging out with them at their stand, almost missing our ride to go see the penguins that day. The lady threaded tereres (that’s what they call them in Paraguay- basically just waxy thread into our hair) while we hung out and learned all about her work and life.

 After artisan bestie time, we caught a ride to the port to catch the boat to see LOS PENGUINOS!!!

So we met the 5 German girls at the port- all heading out to see the penguins on Isla de Magdalena. It took us two hours by boat to get to the penguin island! SO PERFECT coasting the Pacific Ocean- such a feeling of complete freedom! The ocean- again- mother nature- is out of this world to me!

We shared cookies and laughs on the boat while looking for whales and dolphins and marine life on the way!

W hand gesture for WHALE!

And then we arrived! PENGUINOSSS!!! Oh my god!!! Ahhhh 69,000 penguins on this island!! Penguinland!! (Sarah McGrath-I was wishing you were here with me in this exact moment! I think I found your heaven! “S” for Sarah!)

Penguins EVERYWHERE!

The penguins swim/migrate to Isla de Magdalena every October because its summertime here which means it is the time of the year where there is the most sunlight-good for finding/catching fish and for warmth, etc. The baby penguins are gray and fluffy! (AWW!!!) The youth/adolescents are black with white chests. Some of them still have their fluffy gray falling off-like malting. It looks kind of weird-like the awkward teen years. Instead of having pimply skin or changing awkward voices, they have awkward hair-do’s.

The adult penguins are black with a white stripe like the youth, but the also have a black V-like stripe across their chests where-as they teenagers do not have that stripe! Penguins are considered adults at 5 years of age when they start to reproduce. The eggs are incubated in 45 days. But anyways, theres your penguin lesson for the day! The Patagonia penguins were about 1-1.5 feet tall and SO SO SO SO SO CUTE! So CUTE! I cant even handle it!

They were so close to us- at one point I got a little too close because one penguin started thrusting its head at me and then chasing me! Ahahahaha! Funny but not funny! Its their island, their home and perhaps I got too close and too homey too soon. My bad. After that, I respected their personal space more. Again, its their home after all and I am privileged to be a visitor! We stayed on the island for about an hour until Carla, the boat lady yelled at us 3 times because we wouldn’t get back on the boat. We were the bad kids. It was just so hard to leave the penguinosss because they were so cool and so so cute! 

After the penguin fiesta, we headed back on the boat on the Pacific.

where Monetti, the 5 German girls, and I were feeling extra goofy and happy because we were just on this silly high from hanging out with the penguinos. During the 2 hour boat ride back, we "walked" around the big boat...or should I say we waddled around the boat, doing our penguin walk! 

Some people were definitely disturbed by us because we were clearly 7 “adult” women, not children sqwacking like penguins and waddling like penguins. Ha- immature fun at its best! Oh, and get this! We totally saw whales and dolphins on the boat ride home! The dolphins were literally swimming and jumping and flipping right next to our boat! SO SO SO COOL!

Marine life is so beautiful and cute and cool and awesome!! National geograhics-planet earth ocean edition!

After an amazing day, we heading back to the hostal where we all cooked together and shared –guess what?? PASTA! There were some new Israeli guys in our hostal who had some left over food that they shared with us! There we were again-Germany, Israel, Argentina, Chile, United States, Australia, Brasil, France, and Switzerland- different people, different worlds, different cultures, different adventures, different everything- and yet all the same- too cool. From pulling our food together to discussing the Triple Alliance War and its consequences-still to this day-on the different South American countries to sharing popular music from each of our countries to learning new languages to sharing mate

and pisco to playing games to acting like penguins to singing to dancing bachata and back to singing some South American classic hits. Good food. Good Hostal. Good people. Good night.

Sidenote- so the German girls were on the same bus as us a week or so back (before we met them). I saw Julianna- one of the German girls- crying while the bus was stopped and we were sorting out border crossing/passport stuff. I approached her because she looked really sad and I started to talk to her. She was emotional leaving Argentina (entering Chile) because she had spent a lot of time there/made her own little family there and was just feeling a little sad to have to leave all of it, etc. Then- like a week later- we end up being at the SAME hostal out of all the hostels in a completely different country! What are the odds of that? One funtivity of our trip-in general- was the coincidences and the re-crossing of volunteers and/or backpackers.

January 17^th, 2012

Wahhh! We don’t want to leave today! Breakfast with the hostal crew

then headed to some famous cemetery in town with the German girls and our Swiss boy. There were are modeling our "fancy cookies." One of the German girls whipped out these expensive delicious fancy oatmeal cookies randomly? Where was she hiding all this time?

It was famous four its “houses” of people (instead of burying people underground).

Monetti was disturbed and creeped out that we were going to visit a cemetery as our day activity but I thought it was pretty cool. Death represents something different in every culture and I thought it was cool to see their spin on it. After that, we said our goodbyes to the German girls, packed up and headed to the airport with Swiss Welly and Polish Jessica from our hostal -all getting on the same 1^st flight but different connecting flights.  Had some airport laughs, obvi, and headed out of Punta Arenas, Chile.

We arrived in Santiago, Chile at 1am and took turns sleeping in the airport again. The airport was freeeeezing on a whole other level! I had on jeans under my sweats. I basically took all my clothes out of my backpack and layered them, including wrapping Patricia’s lovely pink sweater she gave me as a head wrap to keep the heat in. It was brutal. Ha.

Dunkin donuts, airport wandering and 14 hours later, we were off on our connecting flight back to Asuncion, Paraguay.

January 18^th, 2012

5:00pm and we are back into the heat of things. Walk out of the airport and BOOM! Nothing like the HEAT of Paraguay to bring us back! We were sad that our trip ended but were also feeling a sort of nostalgic feelings being back in good old’ Paraguay. Two crowded bus rides later we returned to our casita- where our beds lie awaiting for us in the kitchen where our only functioning fan works. The retired sisters embraced us returning as preciously as they always do/are which obviously felt nice. And there we lied, in our beds that night, hysterically laughing saying:

“Yo Mo remember when we said about a month ago. Heyyy wouldn’t it be cool to see some penguins? Imagine if we went to the ‘end of the world’ for the New Year?”

“Ya…”

Like I said way earlier… we had our hiking boots, our backpacks of clothes, some reeses, a map, and well-eachother. No plan. Well, I suppose the plan was to have faith, to laugh, and see where the trip would take us…

Did we really just backpack southern Patagonia? Again, who do we think we are? Ha. The end of the world was the beginning of an AMAZING adventure.

Trip of a lifetime.