I feel as though I begin every post this way, but nonetheless I can’t help but comment on the time that’s passed since my last writing. It’s just as much a product of staying in the same place and not having much to do as it is having entirely all too much to write about and not enough time to gather thoughts in between. In the time since my last update, I’ve been to the desert in the north and to the mountains in the south, to the oceans in the West and to riverside towns in the East. New friendships have blossomed, existing friendships have grown, and old friends have set sail.

     Enough with the clichés, though. I unfortunately have to apologize for the lack of pictures in this post: I stupidly deleted many of them off my phone, but as I wait for pictures from other sources, I wanted to write down my thoughts before they escaped me. I’ll do a special picture update when I have more to put in it. Now, with that out of the way…

     November was an interesting month: four weekends brought four very unique adventures. I’ll recount them here in chronological order.

     The first weekend, I traveled down to a sleepy, secluded town in the south, about four and a half hours from Santiago by bus, called Curicó. My friends Dash and Meagan, who I believe I’ve mentioned before, informed me of a so-called “river festival” in a riverside commune just outside Curicó (whose name I can’t recall), where people gather to enjoy riversports, such as rafting and kayaking, participate in other, less aquatic activities such as horseback riding and mountain biking, and generally socialize, bond, and drink one another into a stupor. The “river folk,” as we fondly referred to the people who both staffed the event and who comprised the majority of the gathering, were especially adept in this latter category, and seemed right at home in the tiny village. I couldn’t shake the sense that many of them just traveled around from river to river, wherever they could find rapids to ride. I am confident that many people present actually did this; such is the life of an outdoor watersports guide. But many others seemed like families or groups of friends who had driven down from more populated areas to enjoy a weekend of nature and good company, much as we ourselves had done. I also got the sense that this was an annual event, but the whole thing seemed so hackneyedly put together that I wouldn’t vouch for it. Regardless, it was immensely fun. We participated in a rafting race, eight minutes of bicep-busting rapid-running chaos that left all of us exhausted and stressed and which I’m sure we didn’t win, although I never heard anything about a ceremony. We rented mountain bikes and rode to vistas overlooking the river at it’s clearest and most beautiful. And, of course, we swam, drank, laughed, and generally basked in the natural beauty of where we were lucky enough to find ourselves. Monday came far too soon.

     Not seven days later I found myself on the opposite end of the country in the desert to the north, in the small mining city of Copiapó. Santo Tomás has branches all over the country, and after I had expressed interest being relocated to one of these locations (a desire which was unfortunately never fulfilled), my employers offered as a consolation the opportunity to teach a three-day workshop at the Santo Tomás branch in the desert. Apparently there is a debilitating lack of native-speaking teachers up there, so my input was invaluable. I took them up on their offer, excited to travel somewhere new on the company dime, and not three days later was flying over the furthest-reaching sprawl of desert I have ever seen. The arid span stretched into a winding coastline to the West and further than I could make out to the East, and as I descended what looked from the air like tiny imperfections in an otherwise perfectly flat and uniformly beige stretch became giant mineral-rich hills and sand dunes—of the latter, some of the largest in the world. The workshop began as soon as I arrived from the airport, and the students were an absolute pleasure throughout. Perhaps my favorite part of the weekend was exploring the town with a man put in charge of showing me around, Washington. A light-hearted and genuine man, Washington brought me to a mining exposition, a sort of technology fair where I got to see first-hand some of the processes and products that made up the lifestyle there (and sample some desert-vineyard wines), ferried me as a guest of honor to a local radio station to talk about the university during a commercial break (my responses may have limited and in a nervous and imperfect Spanish, but it still made me feel like a celebrity), and treated me to lunch. The actual workshop was a pleasure, all the students were engaging and eager, and friendly besides.

     With November’s third week came the Liga Ultimate Chile finals, in which we contended for the top spot with our all-time rivals, Revolución Santiago. In the five years of the league’s history, Frisbulls had never been in the finals and had beaten Revolución only once. To say it was a historic and anticipated game would be an understatement. This was a true universe match. But as the remaining time dwindled and the score mounted point by point, it became clear that we were chipping away at not only their defenses, but their spirit, and that we would take home the trophy. The eruption from the side when the final pass was caught was colossal. Let it be known that I threw that final pass.

     Though it’s not traditionally part of the annual holidayscape in Chile, the significance of November’s final week is well known throughout North America, and was not lost on my gringo friends and me. For Thanksgiving, I traveled with my old roommate Allen to Valparaíso, where we met with our seaside dwelling friends for a grand turkey dinner. Thanksgiving has always been one of my favorite holidays for the familial solidarity of going all-out on a feast with the people you love. The effect is heightened when a) you are doing this with new friends for the first time, b) you are inviting people foreign to the experience to join you as if they were family, and c) you prepare it all yourselves. Turkey is crazy expensive down here for some reason, but I’d say we prepared one hell of a Thanksgiving chicken (or, more accurately, two hells of two chickens). Thanksgiving was one of my favorite weekends down here—I’m thankful for all those I was able to share it with and to those who, if I’m lucky, I may even share it with in the future.

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     December and January marked the era of visitors. Around mid-December my mother arrived with John and Nick. At the time of their arrival I was in Maitencillo, a beach town in the north, participating in a Frisbee hat* tournament. They rented a car from the airport and followed my directions to the beach. The tournament was chugging along: I was playing and joking around with friends, checking my phone between points. It was a rare feeling to have missed a call in one moment and to find my mother, who I hadn’t seen in nearly a year, standing behind me on a beach in South America the next. It was bizarre and exciting at once. She and John didn’t stick around for too long that weekend, but Nick stayed and participated for the entirety of the tournament’s remainder. He played pretty well, too, and got along with all of my friends (in many cases, despite a language barrier)—not least of which were some rowdy Canadians—a teammate and his younger brother, who showed us a good time. Hat tournaments are a rare breed, a cross of tournament and party unlike any other. It was exceptional to have shared it with my brother. The rest of the week proceeded more or less without incident. I had to work at the university, my mother and John saw more of the city on foot than I could have imagined possible, and Nick mostly slept in the apartment. I was able to show them some sights and bring them to my favorite restaurants, but it wasn’t until the next weekend that our real adventure began.

     About a week after their arrival, the four of us hopped on a plane that would take us as far south as any of us had been in our lives: Patagonia. From the airport in Punta Arenas, we took a bus to the quiet Puerto Natales, where we got on another bus into the national park Torres del Paine.  Even on the bus ride in, the immensity of the landscape and overwhelming beauty was almost too much to take in. The bus took us to a boat that ferried us across a glacial lake, impossibly blue and bombarded by wind. The boat left us at the trailhead, and from there we started a five-day journey that carried us over 50 kilometers. We were blasted with wind, rain, hail, and sun; we saw spiny glaciers, distant avalanches, valleys, grassy plains with bright flowers and charred trees, churning rivers, and bright-blue glacial lakes. Every day treated us to a different face of a different mountain, at times impossibly flat and at others jagged and rocky, covered with snow and ice, glistening with rain, and shining blue, grey, and bright red in the sunlight; each step offered a new angle on a previously unprecedented view, and just as you were getting used to one area, you rounded the great shoulder of a mountain and the landscape transformed. A flowery hillside transformed into a winding path on top of a valley; rocky riverside trails suddenly plunged into thick forests. Where one night we slept on a lakeside blasted by wind, the next we slept sheltered high in a mountain forest. Because we were at latitude 50 three days after the summer solstice, we always fell asleep well before sunset. On Christmas Eve we camped just below the final summit, and on the morning of our final day we woke up just before sunrise and hiked flashlights-in-hand to the iconic and titular towers. Winding up the rocky trail beneath the stars, one could look ahead at the next bend in the path and see the shaky gleam of flashlights from other hikers with the same idea. The summit where the lookout was located was a mountaintop water basin upon whose rim sat three tall rock formations chiseled by wind, the towers from which the park takes its name. We chatted with hikers in Christmas hats who we had befriended along the way (five days of sleeping in the same campsite, eating around the same cookfires, and hiking the same breathtaking trails is a great way to make friends) as we poked our way among the jagged rocks, searching for a makeshift shelter from the pre-dawn wind, and just as the sun broke over the mountainous horizon, it illuminated the tips of the three towers a bright, iridescent red, a light that crept down the towers to eventually shine on the entire basin. A Christmas morning unlike any other, it was the perfect way to see off our adventure.

     Hardly three weeks had passed since the first visit when the second began. Five friends (four and a sister) came from New York to visit for a short week in Chile. When good friends see one another after a long stretch of time, they pick up right where they left off—a fact that I have been well aware of for years but never fails to amaze me. That’s double true of this group: not ten minutes had they been on Chilean soil before we were talking about nerd stuff and teasing one another for no reason. We rented an apartment downtown (more like a hotel) and, among the usual city rabblerousing (the highlights of which included drinking on my favorite strip and eating a boat of sushi) took a few trips. At one point we took three days and flew up North to La Serena, which I’ve written about before, originally planning to visit the Mamalluca observatory, which I’ve also written about before. Instead, instead of spending two days lounging on the beach, we booked a tour in Punto de Choros, an oceanic nature reserve. There, we toured in a boat to see penguins, sea lions (in Spanish sea wolves, how cool is that), whales, dolphins, and an incredible variety of sea birds, mostly from less than ten feet away. The whales were especially cool (sorry, Josh). We went whitewater rafting, too, a trip in nearby Cajón del Maipo that was exponentially improved by our guide, who spoke to us in imperfect English and tried to throw us from the raft at every opportunity. Even given these highlights, probably my favorite parts of their visit were simpler things: bringing them to my house, showing them the country, and introducing them to my friends here; the countless but anticipated wrong turns I led us down as a tour guide in my own city; Chileans’ confused reactions to the name “Gumby.” And although I still look Eastward almost daily, watching my friends’ awe-stricken faces as the gargantuan, ever-present Andes loomed on our ride into the canyon (and everywhere we went, such is Santiago) definitely gave me some much-needed perspective on a sight that’s been a part of my life for over a year now.

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     For the present, the biggest tangible change to my life is my new living situation: I’ve moved into the home of one of my teammates, Andrei, and his mother, Erika. In a way, it really feels like I’m back at home, living with mom in Scarsdale. This is probably compounded by the fact that a) Erika and my mother got along better than anyone could have anticipated, and b) that I am actually living in the closest equivalent of NYC suburbs that exist in Santiago. Beyond the quiet, family feel and suburban geography, though, it’s pretty distinct. Andrei and Erika run a potted plant business out of their home, so the property is filled with flowers, cacti, and boxes and boxes of spare pots. The yard has a pool and everything is touched with greenery. The house is also home to, at the time of this writing (if I counted correctly), twelve animals: four dogs, four cats, two canaries, a cockatoo, and a turtle. They all have complicated relationships with one another, but never fail to congregate in the kitchen when food is cooking. The chaos is difficult to describe (and much more difficult to capture on film). All things considered, it couldn’t be a more perfect home, a paradise I can only dream of recreating later in my life when I finally do settle down. 

    Now that it’s February, the anniversary of my arrival has come and gone. I’ve been reflecting on my time here, as I often do, but having done a full lap around the sun upside-down is certainly a strange feeling. Of course, one of the themes I keep returning to in my thoughts are friendships and relationships: my original American friends are dropping like flies, one by one returning to the calls of PhDs and jobs back home, and at this point all I can do is hope that the bonds we created are strong enough to last. I find myself wondering how to make sense of new friendships, and how to connect meaningfully with people I know I may never see again. Frisbee is one of these areas, but I suppose feelings over a group of people whom I work and grow with almost every day are feelings I should have seen coming months away. Then again, I suppose I did, but never knew what to do. In any event, playing on a field high in the hills, watching the sun set over the city and mountains and joking around in (broken) Spanish well into the night are valuable experiences in and of themselves. I guess the same could be said of everything I’ve done since I’ve left.


     On a more positive note, I’ve got a lot to look forward to. I’ve renewed my contract with the university, so I am officially employed (woo!) and as Alex looks forward to his graduation, he and I are planning a trip into Peru and the desert to the north. I’m immensely excited. After that, the plan is as it was, to travel south and work on farms, teaching English where I can. Let’s just hope I don’t make any more friends.