arrival

Well. I made it. I am writing to you from Valle Chacabuco. To get here I flew 24 hours, bussed for 1 hour, stayed in a crappy hostel, hiked 45 minutes, met friends coming here in Coyhaique bus staion, met German family plus Austrian guy also, spent 4 hours searching for a way out of Coyhaique with new friends because the busses sold out, rode in the back of a rented truck for 6 and a half hours on an unpaved mountain road (half of which was in the rain), stayed a night in cochrane, and then rode in the backseat of a truck with 3 other people. My tent is up, the sun is still up (at 9:47), and the other volunteers here are really awesome. When we arrived there were 2, now at the end of the day we have 9. we´re based out of the administracion at the moment, so we´ll be eating dinner in a building, and we have toilets and hot showers (sleeping in tents). Thursday is the day we plan on going out into the field, which means we´ll get driven way out in the middle of nowhere and work for like 4-5 days.

Google environmental imperialism. That was the topic of discussion at the volunteer dinner table. My friends I met in Coyhaique at the bus station are brothers from California, and at the park there are 2 people from Santiago, one person from Columbus, Ohio, and one from Wisconsin.

There is a herd of guacanos right next to our little shanty town. We wanted to see how close we could get, so we walked out to them. They had little babies too. Then we saw a dog coming towards them, so we walked towards it to see what it was doing. When we got close it laid down and stayed still. We got close enough to see it wasn´t a dog but a fox. It didn´t like being that close to us to it hopped up a trotted off in the direction of the guacanos. The guacanos then huddled around the babies and and a stand off which ended with one guacano charging the fox. Pretty cool.

I´ll write later, I´m exhausted. But I made it, 4 days of traveling I´m at the bottom of the world!!!!!!!!!