Off to Argentina
Headed to Argentina tomorrow on a bus.
As with most things here in South America thus far, my Internet connection here at this cafe moves at the same speed as the glaciers that carved out most of Patagonia. Brutal. Therefore, this post will be short.
What word on an ATM means withdrawal from checking? I thought the ATM here would have an option for English. Guess not. Couldn't even make out the meanings of the words from the roots, or similar words in French. Oh well.
Torres del Paine is a very impressive national park.
I'm running out of reading material. On vacation, you can absorb books as quickly as the pisco sours they serve before every meal. I read one novel on the flight down to South America (Final Epidemic, an Amazon recommendation: trashy medical thriller, completely plot-driven, the type of novel in which any character's inner revelations are set off in italics, but timely in that it covers a viral epidemic resulting from biological and chemical terrorism) and finished Seabiscuit: An American Legend yesterday and today (engrossing read--highly recommended!). I used to wonder how it was possible to fit a book on two cassette tapes, but when you have blocks of hours to kill, it doesn't take long at all to read a book. I'm down to my last paperback, and I haven't seen an English bookstore the whole time I've been here.
My sleep schedule is odd. I fall asleep each night at about two, two thirty in the morning. Wake up usually around 6 to catch a shuttle to my next destination or tourist destination. Begin tiring in the late afternoon and feel like dying at about 5pm, so I catch an hour nap. Then dinner at around 8 in the evening, and I'm wired until 2 in the morning when it starts all over again. It's not much sleep, just a series of short naps throughout the day, but it seems to work well, like the idea that it's best to eat a whole lot of small meals rather than three large ones.
Given that it's off-peak travel season here, most of the tiny towns I've visited have been very quiet. A bit too quiet at night for me, the solo traveler, but perhaps some time off to think is a good thing. Too much time to think can drive me batty, though.
You don't know darkness unless you've stood out in the middle of a campground in the middle of the night in Torres del Paine, with not one light to be seen anywhere except that of the thousands of stars in the sky. It's a blackness so deep it seems to have weight, and density. Luckily I found my flashlight, or I would have never gotten my tent disassembled and made my ride out of the park this morning.
As with most things here in South America thus far, my Internet connection here at this cafe moves at the same speed as the glaciers that carved out most of Patagonia. Brutal. Therefore, this post will be short.
What word on an ATM means withdrawal from checking? I thought the ATM here would have an option for English. Guess not. Couldn't even make out the meanings of the words from the roots, or similar words in French. Oh well.
Torres del Paine is a very impressive national park.
I'm running out of reading material. On vacation, you can absorb books as quickly as the pisco sours they serve before every meal. I read one novel on the flight down to South America (Final Epidemic, an Amazon recommendation: trashy medical thriller, completely plot-driven, the type of novel in which any character's inner revelations are set off in italics, but timely in that it covers a viral epidemic resulting from biological and chemical terrorism) and finished Seabiscuit: An American Legend yesterday and today (engrossing read--highly recommended!). I used to wonder how it was possible to fit a book on two cassette tapes, but when you have blocks of hours to kill, it doesn't take long at all to read a book. I'm down to my last paperback, and I haven't seen an English bookstore the whole time I've been here.
My sleep schedule is odd. I fall asleep each night at about two, two thirty in the morning. Wake up usually around 6 to catch a shuttle to my next destination or tourist destination. Begin tiring in the late afternoon and feel like dying at about 5pm, so I catch an hour nap. Then dinner at around 8 in the evening, and I'm wired until 2 in the morning when it starts all over again. It's not much sleep, just a series of short naps throughout the day, but it seems to work well, like the idea that it's best to eat a whole lot of small meals rather than three large ones.
Given that it's off-peak travel season here, most of the tiny towns I've visited have been very quiet. A bit too quiet at night for me, the solo traveler, but perhaps some time off to think is a good thing. Too much time to think can drive me batty, though.
You don't know darkness unless you've stood out in the middle of a campground in the middle of the night in Torres del Paine, with not one light to be seen anywhere except that of the thousands of stars in the sky. It's a blackness so deep it seems to have weight, and density. Luckily I found my flashlight, or I would have never gotten my tent disassembled and made my ride out of the park this morning.