The Overpacker

Location: Santiago, Chile

Date: Tuesday, January 18, 2011

Santiago is Los Angeles. Sure, Santiago has a better public transportation system; it’s south of the equator, not north; it doesn’t have the Lakers; and L.A’s full of Mexicans, not Chileans.

But, standing on a hill overlooking the urban sprawl; the fog of smog; hearing the low hum of a thousand cars; and seeing the low, surrounding hills, it’s hard to tell the difference. Throw in a beach, herds of women who are convinced they’re prettier with rearranged collagen, and a bunch of douchebags in flashy cars and you’d have L.A. Read more…

Location: Valparaiso, Chile

Date: Monday, January 17, 2011

Valparaiso is one of the most beautiful cities I’ve seen, though not in a conventional way. It doesn’t have the sophisticated I’m-szo-Freeench affectations, the cobbled streets, and the shimmering lights of Paris. It doesn’t have the sleepy, foggy-eyed mystery of London. It doesn’t have the flash and the energy and the human/cash constructed cosmetics of Nueva York.

Nope. It’s got grit. Some gnash. Some bohemian flare. And it’s got some curves—hills to be exact.

The fact that it’s built on slopesides reminds me of San Francisco if San Francisco spoke more Spanish, permitted smoking indoors, and wasn’t packed with new money young professionals. Valparaiso feels old, tired, but on the verge of being reborn. Read more…

Location: Viña del Mar, Chile

Date: Sunday, January 16, 2011

It is now the dead middle of summer. Unlike my aborted beach time in Uruguay the chances of rain here are slim to none. On the other hand, these low odds, conversely, up the probability of skin cancer. Me, I’ll take skin cancer any day.

Stumbling off a 25 hour journey by bus from Chiloe is disorienting at best. From the wilds of northern Patagonia to the sunny beaches north of Santiago along hundreds of miles of road. It’s nauseating, almost. Read more…

Location: Bus to Viña del Mar, Chile

Date: Saturday, January 15, 2011

Look. You know how much I love bus trips, right?  Well, I went and did it again. This time, it was 25 hours from Castro on Isla de Chiloe to the beach town north of Santiago called Viña del Mar. Needless to say, it sucked. But it wasn’t without its benefits.

For example, I learned that gringo is not really a bad word. At least not according to the papers. Gringo is just the word for “white people” in Spanish. It’s so ingrained and (I assume) neutral that it shows up in headlines like the one pictured above. (Note: the article talks about how white people are studying the oceans bottom after a recent tsunami.)

So I’m a chinito and my white brothers and sisters are gringos. Did I mention that black people are called negros? Read more…

Location: Castro, Chiloe, Chile

Date: Friday, January 14, 2011

My brother and I were talking about Evil Dead II, a cult classic comedy-horror movie.

“What makes it funny? What about horror can be comedy?” I asked.

“Well, you know how in horror movies there’s sometimes blood?” he replied. “In Evil Dead II, there’s blood too, but the blood doesn’t just come out of the people; it’s everywhere. It comes out everything. At one point, the walls start to ooze blood, at which point you’re so overwhelmed with the stuff that it’s ridiculous. What should be horror becomes something else. You have to laugh.” Read more…

Location: Tour bus to Chiloe, Chile

Date: Thursday, January 13, 2011

Take a Spanish language tour of Chiloe and you will discover the enchantment of the Chilean isle. Sitting on a bus of Chileans who’ve come to visit this mystical place is a treat, especially when you’re mashed into a van early in the morning and they all start singing along to Chiloean folk songs that wax eloquent about life on the island. It made me think Chiloe is Chile’s version of like Los Angeles’s Compton—you may never visit the place, but through familiar lyrics everyone knows that it’s a wild, untamed place. Read more…

Location: Bus to the city of Castro on Isla de Chiloe, Chile

Date: Wednesday, January 12, 2011

I’m going to the island of Chiloe.

“Chiloe?” you ask. “What the hell’s a Chiloe?”

That’s what I said. Turns out it’s a rainy Chilean island on a bunch of “Top 10” places to visit in the world lists. It makes the lists in large part because Western tourists don’t really come to Chiloe. One telltale sign: it’s not on the “Israeli Trail.” Read more…

Location: Puerto Montt, Chile

Date: Tuesday, January 11, 2011

I will always remember Puerto Montt as the place where I first tongue kissed the ocean and, shortly thereafter, just missed out on getting stabbed.

It all started out innocently enough with a visit to Mercado Angelmo, a local fish market. About 2 km west of the main bus station you’ll find a bustling bayside collection of buildings where fishermen unload their catch. On the second floor of each winding building are cocinerias—little kitchen restaurants that serve fresh seafood. Each is about the size of a walk-in closet, usually with just enough space to seat a few people and fit a kitchen manned by one person who cooks, cleans, and serves. Each cocineria employs a woman who wanders the parking lot and entrances to the market to lure, cajole, and harass tourists (foreign or otherwise) to coming upstairs to her friend’s/family member’s/boss’s place.

Read more…

Location: Bus between San Carlos de Bariloche, Argentina and Puerto Varas, Chile

Date: Monday, January 10, 2011

Puerto Varas is a Chilean lakeside town nestled under a volcanic mountain. It’s lovely, it’s beautiful, and it’s picturesque all in a mostly natural, effortless way.

Bleh. Nature can shove it. Perhaps not forever, but at least for the rest of my life. If I never hike again, it’ll be too soon.

Puerto Varas is also a beach town, even though the beach is on a lake instead of the ocean. Chileans come here to sit by the water and darken their skin so they can look brown, but not too brown. You wouldn’t normally think of suntan oiled tourists lounging under umbrellas as nature. Then again, you wouldn’t be me. At this point, just being in the sun is too much naturaleza for me. Read more…

Location: Bus between San Carlos de Bariloche, Argentina and Puerto Varas, Chile

Date: Sunday, January 9, 2011

It’s hard to beat a storyline to death, but it’s bound to happen when you try to explore South America overland. That’s right, folks, another bus.

At 4 a.m. I was awake. At 5 a.m. I was on a bus to Puerto Montt with the aim of reaching the Chilean lakeside town of Puerto Varas. I can’t tell you how long the trip was supposed to be, but I didn’t get to my final destination until 9 hours later.

In between, there was a border crossing from Argentina to Chile at Paso Cardenal Antonio Samore, more gorgeous scenery, a bus switch in a small Chilean town, a switch to a combi at Puerto Montt, and one grumpy traveler (me). Read more…

Location: San Carlos de Bariloche, Argentina

Date: Saturday, January 8, 2011

A two hour, 120 km bus ride north of El Bolson (i.e. my favorite town in Argentina, so far) is the ski town of San Carlos de Bariloche. Commonly known as El Bariloche, it’s a popular holiday destination mostly because of the world renowned skiing as well as it being the largest city from which to explore surrounding Lakes District. Like all things Argentine, it’s desperately trying to emulate something European—here, it’s a town in the Swiss Alps complete with peaked roofs and Swiss-like clock towers. Lumbering St. Bernards with kitschy barrel collars included.

The town’s very popular with Porteños as a vacation spot and, for some reason, as a place to get married. Its popularity makes it pricey. It’s like Aspen except if all the millionaires spoke like American day laborers. Read more…

Location: Cajon de Azul, outside El Bolson, Argentina

Date: Friday, January 7, 2011

After hiking to and from Cajon de Azul–reportedly one of the most beautiful hikes in the El Bolson area–I’ve come to one conclusion: I will never hike again. Never.

Maybe it’s the days of trudging through Ushuaia, Torres del Paine, on Perito Moreno glacier, and in Chalten all in less than three weeks. You know, too much of a “good” thing.

Maybe it’s all the buses. I’ve been running nonstop from place to place for about a month with almost no breaks. Perhaps all movement disagrees with me.

Maybe it’s my personality. That, I’m a city boy who’d rather be sitting in Hoi An or Saigon for weeks on end just eating, drinking coffee , and driving around on a motorbike.

It could be that I’ve become the George Clooney of hiking. One stunner is something to cherish. It’s memorable. It’s special. The problem is, after so much beauty– the Torres, Parque Nacional Tierra del Fuego, El Chalten, glaciers— I’m over it. Like George, I’ve experienced so much of nature’s wonders that I’m starting to take it for granted. Cajon de Azul was like bedding my 50^th supermodel this month. Enough’s enough; I just wanted to shove this hike out of bed and spend a few days alone, in peace. Pretty little Miss Trekking, please leave me alone. Read more…

Location: El Bolson, Argentina

Date: Thursday, January 6, 2011

If you like to eat, you’re going to love El Bolson. This town knows how to do food. This could be in part to the hippie culture–a commune can’t survive without at least one vegan which means someone’s gotta know how to grow a vegetable. This alone makes El Bolson a culinary oasis in the meat-only wasteland of Argentine cuisine. This is a country, after all, that considers the tomato in your meat sauce and the grain in your milanesa enough vegetables to last the week. This country hasn’t met a vegetable that it wouldn’t rather eat pre-ingested and processed in the form of a cow.

But let’s not get hung up on that. El Bolson is a food town for more than just its greens. Amongst the great ice cream and yogurt, a variety of empanadas, fine chocolates, alfajores, and a horde of fine microbreweries and you’ve a lifetime’s work for an aspiring fat man like me. Let’s do a quick rundown of some of the highlights. Read more…

Location: El Bolson, Argentina

Date: Wednesday, January 5, 2011

Sometimes the journey’s what matters, not the destination. Other times the destination is what makes an tough journey worthwhile. And, now and then, both the journey and the destination just plain suck.

Which leads me to this: I’m not saying the Cabeza del Indio (Indian Head) rock formation blew chunks, but I can’t say it was worth the effort. It just wasn’t what I was expecting. Read more…

Location: El Bolson, Argentina

Date: Tuesday, January 4, 2011

Every town in Latin America has a market day. Vendors descend on a central location, often the town square (another town staple) and vend their wares. A visit to a local market is often a CliffsNotes version of a town’s culture—a summary of what makes a town tick. Some markets are more touristy than others. Some, like the Bac Ha Market in Vietnam, are for locals (how many tourists do you know who want to buy a cow?). Regardless, markets are a peek at local life; you just have to skip the souvenir stands and look at what the locals are buying, selling, and eating.

In El Bolson, a little mountain town in the Lakes District of Argentina, market days are Tuesday, Thursdays, and Saturdays. Geared towards tourists, you still get an idea of what non-tourists in this town are about. Stands filled with fresh produce; stalls of wood crafts; artisanal hand creams, fruit jams, and alfajores; and tiendas selling pints from the areas plentiful microbrews. This is a town that prizes its artisans, its small time food makers, and its handmade jewelries. And its beer.

It’s also a town of hippies. Hordes of them. How can you tell? Well, I’d be happy to answer that, and a few other questions. Read more…