Review - Fuente Alemana

Recently, I started freelancing as a restaurant reviewer for a local English-language online magazine in Santiago called Revolver. To read my first article on a famous Chilean-style sandwich shop, click here.

I will post my weekly articles here. Wish me luck in finding good food in Chile (a trying, but all the more satisfying, feat)!

Cook preparing sandwich at Fuente Alemana

VEGlobal Newsletter & Frequent Flier Campaign

In January, my position at VEGlobal changed. I am now working part-time at Domingo Savio and part-time as VE’s Marketing and Communications Coordinator. This makes my time with the kids at D-Sav feel even more special while dually allowing me to utilize my Public Relations degree. I am now in charge of producing and writing the VE Newsletter which you can view by clicking here. If you would like to subscribe to the newsletter, e-mail me at pr@ve-global.org, subject line "Subscribe to Newsletter". I hope you enjoy it!

On a similar note, VEGlobal is launching a campaign called Share Miles, Share Opportunities to raise frequent flier miles for its volunteers. The goal is to raise as many miles as we can as an incentive for our volunteers to stay involved in the organization as professional staff. To participate you pledge the purchase, sharing and/or transfer of American Airlines, Air Canada, British Airways, Delta, LAN, or United airline miles to VEGlobal. If you think you might have some extra airline miles you are not going to use, or if you know someone else who might be able to help, your donations would really help sustain our fledgling nonprofit. For more information, please e-mail me at ronancarmen@yahoo.com.

Daniel's Despedida

It was the day of my fellow volunteer Daniel’s despedida (going-away party) and I was running ridiculously late. The entire staff of Domingo Savio was scheduled to meet at the Puente Alto metro stop at around noon so we could take a bus to the countryside together and begin the daylong festivities in Daniel's honor. But on that particular morning I had hit the snooze button one too many times and, on top of that, I had underestimated the amount of time it would take me to buy and prepare my salad for our pot-luck lunch. I literally ran to the grocery store to pick up my salad ingredients before hopping on the metro, panicked that my coworkers might leave without me. I arrived at the appointed metro stop about 45 minutes late but, in true Chilean fashion, I was actually one of the first few people to arrive. I love that I never have to worry about being late in this country.

Once we were all together, we flagged down a bus and headed out to my coworker, Tía Amparo’s, countryside home. About 20 minutes later the bus driver dropped us off on a dirt road in the middle of nowhere where a single pickup truck awaited our group of ten people. We all giddily scrambled into the back of the pickup truck like kids (even though there were several open seats inside the truck), the wind whipping through our hair as Tía Amparo’s daughter drove us to their home.

Us riding in the back of the pickup

We arrived about ten minutes later at a simple wooden dwelling situated in a large field of unruly grass, flanked by a scenic mountain landscape and guarded by a friendly pack of dogs. Rosy-cheeked with rambunctiousness, despite the crisp fall air, we unloaded our five days supply-worth of food from the van and began preparing lunch.

As I set to cutting and chopping the ingredients for my salad, Tía Olga, my boss, began washing and cutting up pieces of chicken for the grill. After she was done, Tía Olga asked my fellow volunteers Suemedha and Elliot if they would juice her some lemons for pisco sours (a pisco sour is a Chilean drink made with lemons, powdered sugar and pisco—a fiery tequila-esque liquor made from grapes). Suemedha and Elliot dutifully followed orders, cutting and juicing the lemons.

At one point I looked up from my chopping and asked them, “Hey, did you guys wash those cutting boards off before you started chopping the lemons?” They told me that they, in fact, had not washed the cutting boards smeared with raw chicken juice.

My lip turned up in disgust, I asked Tía Olga, “Did you wash the cutting boards?”

“No,” she said.

“But what about the salmonella?” I said, horrified.

She responded with a dismissive wave of her hand, “Only eggs have salmonella, Carmen. Plus, I washed the chicken beforehand, so it is fine, and the lemon will kill any bacteria that’s left.”

I bit my tongue, not wanting to publicly contradict my boss and/or cause a scene with my obviously different food service standards, but I stayed away from the pisco sours just in case. (No one got sick in the end, so decide for yourself who was right.)

Suemedha juicing the infamous salmonella lemons

For lunch we ate some typical Chilean side dishes along with some smoky asado, or barbeque. Chileans cook the hell out of their meat, but somehow it seems to come out tasting great every time. Chileans also eat their barbeque in waves. First come the chorizo, or spicy sausage, which they put inside a mini-baguette to make a choripan, then comes the chicken and last comes the beef or pork—the crowning glory. Even though asados last for hours, you always have something to fill your plate in between courses of meat. In true Chilean style, we also had plenty to drink—namely a white wine punch made with canned peaches, which sounds very innocent, but can be dangerous when it comes out of a bowl that seems to miraculously refill itself.

The tíos tending to chorizo and chicken on the grill

The tías drinking white wine punch

At D-Sav we eat lunch together every day, but for some reason this lunch was different. This day the jokes were a bit dirtier, the smiles a bit wider, the air a bit cleaner and the ambiance a bit warmer, despite the cold. As I looked across at my jovial coworkers wholeheartedly enjoying the simple act of sharing food and drink together on a beautiful day, I took in the moment, hoping it was one I would remember forever.

The tíos goofing around after dinner

After lunch, we dispersed across the grounds of the ranch to pass the time, but with the onset of dusk, the stark, rural cold brought everyone back into the cozy house, where Amparo was preparing a dessert I specially requested—sopaipillas pasadas. Sopaipillas are disks of fried dough that generally have a touch of pumpkin in them, and they can either be topped with savory items like salsas and other condiments, or they can be pasadas, which means they are soaked in a dark syrup infused with rich Winter spices until they get deliciously soggy. Although I could literally feel my arteries clogging after eating so much rich food for hours on end, I still ate my entire bowl of dessert, unbuttoning my top jeans button to make room for it.

Tía Amparo holding a plate of her homemade sopaipillas

We finished up the day by singing karaoke—a surprisingly popular Chilean pastime. We sang every kind of song you could think of, from tear-jerking Chilean folk ballads to Latin pop classics to the basest of reggaeton songs (one of which talked about women who liked to be whipped—did I mention that political correctness is not always top of mind in Chile?). When it started getting late, we said our goodbyes and made our way back to our respective parts of the city, our stomachs full and our cheeks sore from smiling.

Me singing karaoke

Everyone singing!

Learning about other cultures is not always glamorous. On the one hand you make all kinds of unforseen "mistakes" and on the other hand they do things that befuddle, annoy and sometimes even offend you. But other times cultural differences push you to appreciate the stuff of life with new eyes. Daniel's despedida is a perfect example of this. My Chilean coworkers didn't just buy Daniel a cake and have everyone come in to wish him well before getting back to their computers. They made a big show of their love and appreciation for him, both by scheduling a mini staff vacation in his honor and, later, by coordinating a song-and-dance performance for him, put on by the kids. They don’t hide their passion and enthusiasm for the people and things they value, they glorify their existence with zest.

I don't know how the whole bon voyage extravaganza made Daniel feel, but I know it made me realize how familial my relationships with my coworkers have become and how much I admire their Joie de vivre.

Torres del Paine

As I stood outside a bus station in Punta Arenas, waiting for it to open, fear began eating away at me even more than the icy wind was eating away at what you could see of my scarf-and-beanie covered face. My fear was: “How will I survive this cold?”

I wasn’t afraid of falling off a mountain while trekking. I wasn’t afraid of camping in the middle of nowhere—even though I had never camped before. I wasn’t even that afraid of the pain I knew my out-of-shape body would feel after I pushed it to its absolute physical limit for five days in a row. No, the one fear that made me briefly think about canceling our whole camping trip to Torres del Paine national park in Chilean Patagonia was a fear of being cold.

People come from all over the world to hike, trek and camp at Torres del Paine (pronounced PIE-nay), a national park located at the southernmost tip of Chile and, therefore, the bottom of the world. Because Torres del Paine is probably the most infamous tourist spot in Chile, I knew I would have to go there before I left. I also knew by word-of-mouth that summer is the only time of year to go there, so I booked my flight for the end of February and started planning my trip.

At first when I envisioned going to Torres del Paine (or Torres del Pain as we came to call it—for reasons that will soon reveal themselves) I thought I would stay in a hostel, do some light hiking and explore the surrounding cities a bit. I soon found out that staying in the hostels near the park would be too expensive for my volunteer’s salary to handle, so I decided to camp and trek my way through the park like all the other people I knew had done. I was pretty intimidated by the thought of trekking and camping for five days, the time that is required to complete the popular 80 kilometer “W” trail (it is shaped like a big W), but my reservations were mitigated after I got an extensive rundown of the experience from volunteers who had already hiked the trail. They reassured me that the trail was “beginner-friendly,” which put my mind at ease.

The Torres del Paine W trail

I was also calmed by the fact that I would be taking on the Torres del Paine trek with my roommate Brooke, who is very outdoorsy and an experienced camper. Brooke really took charge planning the trip: making lists for food, booking hostels and making sure we had all the proper clothes and gear. I procured a tent for us from a Chilean friend and borrowed a backpackers backpack from one of my volunteer friends, so before I knew it we had our backpacks packed and were on a plane to Punta Arenas—the hub city you fly into to get to Torres del Paine.

We landed at the Punta Arenas airport at around 5:30 a.m. and took a shuttle into town. The shuttle driver dropped off at the bus station because we needed to take a bus right away to Puerto Natales, the town closest to Torres del Paine. As we were on the shuttle from the airport to the bus station I thought to myself, “Wow, that was easy. We’re going exactly where we need to and we never even had to ask how to get there.” But as I stepped off the shuttle when we got to the bus station, I realized something had gone terribly wrong. The bus station was closed! We asked the shuttle driver when the station would open and he told us 8 a.m. As the shuttle drove away and the early-morning cold grabbed a hold of my inadequately covered body I said to Brooke, “Eight o’clock! That means we are going to have to wait here in this freezing cold for two hours!”

Not having any other options, Brooke and I wrapped ourselves in our scarves and tried to distract ourselves from our near hypothermia by watching the neighborhood stray dogs have turf wars. We couldn’t help but laugh at the ridiculousness of our situation: dressed in thin traveling clothes, we were trapped outside in the early-morning Patagonian frost with several other poor saps who had not gotten the hours of operation memo either. When the bus station did finally open, they only had late afternoon busses available, so we had to walk four or five blocks to another bus station to get tickets. As we were walking from one bus station to the next I realized that my 27 pound backpack was actually quite difficult to lug around—on perfectly flat sidewalk. I tried not to think about how much heavier it would feel while scaling mountains for eight hours straight. We boarded the bus to Puerto Natales and got a couple of hours of shut-eye before we arrived.

Puerto Natales is a small, easy-to-navigate tourist town, so we found our hostel without having to ask for directions or look at a map once. The second we were in our room at the hostel we put on several more layers and then headed back out into the cold to get a bite to eat. The hostel owner recommended a place called La Picada de Carlitos, so we ate there. We packed in a very hefty lunch and then spent the rest of the day buying last-minute food and camping items for our trip. All that planning and packing got us really hungry, so we went to La Picada de Carlitos again and we both had gnocchi for dinner, which was amazing. Not surprisingly (due to my shameless love of leftovers), I took the leftover gnocchi back to the hostel with me and packed them in my backpack to enjoy on the trail.

As I lay in bed that night, reveling in my last good night of sleep before I headed out into nature, I awoke to a phone call from our volunteer friend Forbes. His camping partner had been robbed and canceled her trip at the last minute, so he wanted to know if he could join us on the trek. We said he was more than welcome to join us and told him where we would be camping in the hope that he would be able to find us, since we would not have time to meet up with him in Puerto Natales.

The next morning we woke up at around 6 a.m. to catch the bus to Torres del Paine. We said goodbye to electric heating and hello to the freezing drizzle that had started off the morning. About two hours after we boarded the bus, we were officially in Torres del Paine national park. As we were getting on the shuttle that took us to the beginning of the trail, we ran into some other volunteer friends, Lindsay and Jessica. We knew they would be camping in Patagonia at the same time as us, but were not quite sure if we would catch them on the trails, so I was really excited to add more people to our little twosome. The more people we had together, the less chance we had of dying in the middle of nowhere with no one find us, was my thought. So we all started on the infamously steep trail to our first stop—Campamento Torres.

Although it was grueling hiking up a steep mountain with our huge backpacks in tow, it was also really exhilarating to finally be on the trails after weeks of anticipation and planning. Brooke and I decided the only way we were going to make it up the towering mountain was if we did a bit of grunting; so we may have alarmed a few passersby with our guttural cries of exertion, but we climbed the mountain at a fairly good clip.

On the way up, we ran into a couple of Israeli men who were headed to the same camp we were. They were both recently discharged from the army, one of them having been a regular soldier and the other having been a Special Forces soldier who captured suspected terrorists in the middle of the night. The Israelis were both very impressed that we were taking on the Torres del Paine trek with our giant backpacks. “Giant backpacks?” I thought, “But don’t all trekkers have these same backpacks?” Soon after the hefty size of our backpacks was brought to my attention, I realized that not only had hardly any of the trekkers brought big backpacks stuffed to the gills like us, but many of them would in fact stare—and sometimes even snicker—at the sight of our group of four small girls struggling valiantly to not fall over under the weight of our backpacks. Despite our apparently very obvious rookie status, we got to Campamento Torres on schedule.

Me trying to put on my giant backpack...a daily struggle

When we got to the camp site, which was tucked away into a little forest with a stream running through it, we parted ways with the Israelis and set up our tent in a flash, happy to relax inside it and eat a couple of egg salad sandwiches. Forbes made it into the camp just as it was starting to get dark, so our troop of five (me, Brooke, Jessica, Lindsay and Forbes) had all officially made it to our first stopping point.

In the process of checking in to the campsite we made friends with the camp guards, and they ended up inviting us to share some homemade bread with them for once (a Chilean early-evening snack). We decided we couldn’t come to the little gathering empty-handed, so we brought Nutella with us. When we walked into their closet-sized guard’s quarters, we were enveloped by the smell of freshly baked bread and the almost suffocatingly warm heat of the oven. Knowing I would be spending all night in a cold tent, I soaked up every moment of warmth I could and savored my freshly baked bread covered in Nutella, washing it all down with hot chocolate. As we were all sitting around, chatting and eating comfort food with the guards and their Argentine friend, I thought to myself, “I could really get used to this camping thing.” Everyone we had met so far had been extremely friendly, our campsite was serene and beautiful and we had received a warm welcome into the wilderness on our very first night (literally and figuratively). We headed back out into the night chill with rosy cheeks and warm guatas (guata is the Chilean word for stomach), falling into a deep and restful sleep—wrapped in every single layer of clothing we had.

We woke up at 5 a.m. the next morning to do the popular sunrise hike to the torres—the rock “towers” the park is named for. Because the sun was not up yet, it was freezing outside so I embarked on the hour-long “rock scramble” to the torres in all the layers I had, leaving my big backpack in my tent. Rock climbing in the dark first thing in the morning proved to be difficult, and we almost got lost on several occasions. Thank goodness the sunrise hike is so popular because every time we got lost we just followed the headlamps of the trekking veterans around us.

After an hour of strenuous hiking, we finally reached the pinnacle of the rock scramble. I was immediately taken aback by how truly breathtaking the park’s namesake—the torres—were. They lay there in front of us, majestic and beautiful, jutting up into the clouds as the sun rose behind them. Feeling the invigorating morning breeze on my face, I took in the whole scene, wondering what the discoverers of the torres must have felt when they first cleared the threshold of the mountain and saw the now-infamous formations.

A picture of the Torres del Paine at sunrise

Soon Lindsay and Jessica joined us at the top of the mountain and we immediately stumbled upon a great photo-op spot that was being used by a rambunctious group of foreign men. As we were waiting our turn for the photo shoot spot in question, the group of foreigners started chatting us up. They were also Israelis and two of them spoke really good English. I asked them how they learned English and they said that they had lived in California for a while selling hair straighteners. Upon hearing this, I broke into hearty laughter at the thought of these two rugged and boisterous ex-soldiers selling hair products. But then one of them then asked, “So what brand of hair straightener do you use? Is it ceramic? Do you have problems with split ends?” I couldn’t believe my ears. It was just too true-to-life to the new Adam Sandler movie “You Don’t Mess with the Zohan,” about an Israeli special forces soldier who moves to New York city to become a hairdresser. But they weren’t messing with us. They really had learned English while selling hair straighteners in a mall in California, and they proudly proclaimed this without an ounce of self-deprecation.

Endeared by their lively wit and fascinating idiosyncratic factoids—for example that Israel is home to the biggest Big Mac in the world—we all became fast friends. We even took a picture with them holding a sign that said, “Happy Birthday, Mom” in Hebrew, as a birthday present for one of the boys’ moms. It was precious.

The sign we're holding says "Happy Birthday Mom" in Hebrew

After chatting and taking in the scenery for a little while, we decided to head back down to the campsite. On the way down the mountain I realized that my knee was being bothered by all the downward leaps I was doing, but I figured it was just a temporary agitation due to the increased level of pressure I was putting on my joints.

When we got back to the campsite we chilled out for a while and then packed up our things and headed on to the next campsite, Campamento Los Cuernos. Before leaving the camp, our hair-styling Israeli friends told us about a great shortcut they had found on the way to the Los Cuernos. The instructions they gave for how to follow the shortcut seemed very vague and open to interpretation, but directions always seem muddled to me, so I went along with the plan to take the shortcut.

We made our way down the mountain from Campamento Torres, the wind throwing us to our knees and almost pushing us off cliffs a handful of times. When in doubt of whether the wind was actually strong enough to pick me up off the ground and hurl my body down a cliff, I threw myself against the mountain, always landing awkwardly in some sort of sand pile or shrubbery and creating a great show for any hikers passing by. Every time I picked up my foot along that narrow trail I feared for my life so, needless to say, when we reached the part of the trail where the steep mountain passes started going over flatter rolling hills, I actually began to enjoy the view without wondering if my top-heavy backpack would stage a mutiny and catapult me down a mountainside.

It took awhile but, eventually, we reached the fork in the road where the shortcut lay. I voiced that I didn’t trust shortcuts, but we were pressed for time, so the Powers That Be decided we should take it. Shortly after we had started along on the shortcut my knee started bothering me again, but this time more intensely. So I took an Advil and hoped the irritation would go away.

A few hours later we found ourselves at another fork in the road, except this one had an absolutely useless sign marking it (think: the Cheshire cat in Alice and Wonderland), so we had to guess in which direction we thought Los Cuernos might be. Forbes picked a direction and led the way in his all-terrain hiking boots, the rest of us following suit in our flimsy tennis shoes. Brooke and I ended up unwittingly following Forbes right into a swamp, our feet suddenly soaking wet up to our ankles and Forbes’ feet dry as a bone. Forbes in his magical GORE-TEX boots had not even noticed there was water underneath him until we began yelling frenziedly as we retreated from the waterlogged patch. Lindsay and Jessica had been far enough behind that they had not entered the swamp, so we ran back and regrouped with them on dry land, concluding that we must have gone the wrong way. We then went the opposite way, only to realize about 500 yards later we were going the wrong way again.

At this point we were all starting to get pretty stressed out and I was having terrifying visions of us lost in the swamp as darkness set in, but Forbes kept his cool. He got out his compass and his professional-looking map and calculated that we would have to go back into the swampland to get to Los Cuernos. Despite the fact that there was no discernable trail to guide us through the swamp, we ventured back into the muddy abyss with Forbes at the helm making paths out of logs and rocks so we could cross the swamp without being up to our thighs in stagnant water. Little did we know that the swamp was childsplay compared to the fierce water crossings we would soon come up against.

Once we got out of the swamp we came across an actual trail again, only to find that the trail took us through underbrush that was just as wet and muddy as the swamp had been. So we girls in our tennis shoes tip-toed our way along the trail for several hours, trying not to get our feet any more wet than they already were, while Forbes easily charged his way through puddles without even looking down. It was at this point that we dubbed Forbes “Tío Monster Truck” and ourselves “The Unicycles” because we felt as awkward, unstable and slow as unicycles put up against a beastly monster truck that effortlessly dominates everything in its path. The Unicycles valiantly pushed our way through the underbrush, hoping that this shortcut would drop us at Los Cuernos in no time.

To our dismay, not only did the trail not end, it began to lead us over bigger bodies of water: first small brooks, then streams, then full-fledged rivers with rapids. The first river we crossed I almost fell into because we had to slide down a steep hill to get to the riverbank. Then, not seeing any promising collection of stepping stones, and because I already had wet feet, I just walked right through the ankle-deep river, getting my feet soaking wet. The other girls took Forbes’ hand as he helped them teeter-totter from rock to rock across the river while I waited on the other side and wondered if my shoes would still be wet the next day.

Finally we came to the largest, fastest river we would encounter on our trip. It was quite beautiful actually—its white peaks crashing down a rocky mountain on the way to a lake below—but I could not enjoy how pretty it was because all I could think about was the pain in my knee. I had thought the tinge of an aching pain would go away, but it became almost unbearable over the course of the day. As I looked at the river I began to seriously wonder if I would be able to leap from boulder to boulder to cross it like my comrades had done or if my knee would just give out on me and I would plunge into the icy water and be carried downstream. I became even more disconcerted when I saw some of the park’s resident cowboys unsuccessfully trying to get their terrified horses to cross the river. They yelled at the horses and whipped them until they crossed, the powerful animals dubiously placing one unsteady hoof in front of the other until they reached the other side. Seeing these creatures—fashioned to conquer nature’s obstacles—reel in fear at the sight of the unrelenting river made me doubt my already-encumbered abilities even more. If Forbes hadn’t offered to take my pack across the river and then come back and help me across, I probably would have paid one of the cowboys to take me across. (This thought actually entered my head more than once.)

Forbes helping me across a river

Once we crossed the river we took a little break and I popped a couple more Advil, not knowing how much longer I would be able to walk. When we started walking again we realized we had chosen a ridiculously steep and narrow path. A feeling of utter despair washed over me as I realized I would probably not be able to make it down this mountain with my knee in such a state. The rest of our group had seen some other hikers go in the opposite direction, so we decided to turn around again and look for a less intense trail. We were having no luck until we heard some hikers moving around above us. We yelled to them and asked them how to get to the trail and they told us. This would not be the first, nor the last, time that we found our way solely because we had the good luck of coming across other, more seasoned, trekkers. I still don’t now how these other trekkers had this sixth sense for finding the right trails in the labyrinth that was Torres del Paine, but thank goodness we were lucky enough to come across these capable people just when we needed them.

The next stretch of the trail was absolute agony for me. I started groaning—and sometimes crying out—in pain with almost every step, and I began to wonder exactly how I was going to make it through the next day on the gimp knee I was relentlessly aggravating. Forbes, seemingly concerned by my dramatic display of pain, insisted on several occasions that I let him take some of the weight off my backpack. I finally relented, handing him a plastic bag full of probably about seven pounds of tuna. He then fell back to the rear with me and started chatting me up, thankfully, because without the distraction of lighthearted conversation I don’t know that I would have been able to make it that last kilometer or so.

Finally we reached the Los Cuernos camp site. It looked absolutely gorgeous from on top of the hill where we stood, looking down. There was a big lodge and also several cabins surrounded on all sides by greenery. It looked much swankier than the last campsite we had been to, so we hoped it promised the same, if not better, comforts. Not surprisingly, we went the wrong way on the trail to the campsite and had to backpedal, but we eventually made it there.

When we got to the big lodge we collapsed outside of it. In order to avoid carrying our huge backpacks around for one second more than we needed to, we decided to split up—Forbes, Brooke and Jessica scouted out possible campsites for us while Lindsay and I guarded our backpacks. As Lindsay and I waited, we surveyed the other campers milling about on the patio in front of us. They were drinking, laughing and smoking and seemed to be having the time of their lives. They all looked like they had recently showered, brushed their hair and even put on makeup. I knew that I probably looked like a filthy, rabid animal and smelled even worse, so I immediately felt a strong animosity toward all these clean, happy people. I had no interest in laughing or having fun that night. All I wanted to do was set up my tent and get as comfortable as I could while I savored my leftover gnocchi from Puerto Natales along with a hot cup of café mocha (instant, of course, because all they drink is instant coffee in Chile).

Eventually our scouts came back and reported that there were almost no spots left to camp on, but they had fortunately found just enough spaces. Brooke led me to our spot, which happened to be in a high-traffic area right next to the lodge. There was hardly any space for our tent but we knew we didn’t have any choice but to park there. Just as we got out our tent, the wind picked up a couple of notches as if on cue. With our tent blowing every which way in the wind, we began trying to hammer our tent spikes into the ground to secure it. As we were trying, in vain, to set up our tent, one of the campsite administrators came by to collect our camping fee. He came up to me as I was having a particularly animated wrestling session with our tent to keep it from blowing away. After seeing the slightly crazed look on my face he said, “I’ll just come back for your payment later.”

We soon realized why our camping spot had been left for last—the ground was hard as rock and it was almost impossible to pound the stakes into the ground. The more we tried to pound the stakes in, the more they bent in half and became useless. I looked around and saw that many of the campers around us had secured their tents to the ground using rocks. So we started affixing the outside of our tent to pieces of string and tying those strings around the heaviest rocks we could find.

When we finally finished setting up our jury-rigged disaster of a tent about an hour later, twilight had begun to set in. We crashed into the tent exhausted and ready to eat everything in sight. As I was eating my delectable egg salad sandwich in perfect serenity, the top flap of our tent flew off with a jolting rip, completely exposing us to the elements. There we sat, our stunned mouths agape with surprise, and when Brooke and I looked at each other we flew into a fit of laughter at the ridiculousness of our situation. One minute we had been enjoying a simple egg salad sandwich, and the next minute our hair was swirling around us as the tent cover violently threatened to spring itself loose.

Refusing to let the wind ruin my first pleasure of the day, I finished my egg salad sandwich in peace and then got down to business trying to figure out if we could salvage the tent. I said to Brooke, “We have two choices. I can go try to find someone to have pity on us and help us with our tent, or we can scrap the whole tent idea and see if they have any dorm rooms available in the main lodge.” The dorm rooms were ridiculously overpriced, so I hoped we would not have to resort to option number two. I would have asked Forbes to help us because he was camping right next to us but he was having just as much trouble with his tent as we were. So I stepped out of the tent, ready to use every feminine wile I had to get someone to take pity on us.

Lucky for me, a good-looking young guy came walking briskly by our tent right as I was attempting to put it back together. I looked up from my work, obviously completely inept at what I was doing, and asked him, “Are you any good with tents?” He looked like was in a hurry somewhere, but I must have looked so pathetic and helpless that he couldn’t say no, so he said, “Yeah, I know a bit,” and he got down to business rescuing us. While the tent rescuer was at work, talking to us in his delicious South African accent, the camp administrator came by again to collect our fee. I told him the sob story about our tent cover and threw in the fact that I couldn’t help the South African and Brooke reinforce our tent because of my bum knee. To my surprise, the administrator replied that he was studying to be a physical therapist and he asked if he could take a look at my knee. I felt a little strange letting a random stranger—and a young, sort of cute one at that—touch my knee, especially since my legs were pretty hairy by that point; but I did want to know what was wrong with my knee and I also hoped my affliction would distract him from his tax collecting. He told me that I had a pulled a tendon in my knee and that I should ice it to keep the swelling down. In the end, my ploy for sympathy worked and he did not collect our fee. I think he was also a bit smitten with me because, as he was leaving, he kissed my hand and told me I was very pretty. He also lightly stalked me until I left the next day—typical Chilean behavior.

When the South African was all done doing whatever voodoo he had done to the tent to hold it down, I thanked him zealously and offered to pay him for his troubles in chocolate. He said that he had to cook his dinner before it got dark, but that he might take us up on our chocolate offer. Sitting back inside our secure, warm tent, I thanked my lucky stars that we had at least had some good luck after our awful, no-good, very bad day. Later, the South African did, in fact, come back to cash in on his promise of chocolate, and Brooke and I chatted with him and his brother for about half an hour before going to bed.

The next day we woke up and headed to Campamento Italiano, the gateway to the Valle Frances—which forms the center line of the W trail. We actually had a fairly easy and pleasurable hike to Campamento Italiano, but by the time we got there my knee was on life support, Jessica was having major troubles with blisters and Brooke was complaining of a sore shoulder. The skies were also looking pretty gray and we knew if we continued into the Valle Frances, we might get rained on the whole time, which would slow us down and possibly make it so that we didn’t get to the next campsite before dark. Not wanting to repeat the same stressful race against dusk that we had had the night before, we decided to skip the Valle Frances and just forge onto the next camp, Refugio y Campamento Pehoe. We knew that by skipping the Valle Frances, we would not be able to claim having completed the entire W trail, but we just didn’t have it in us to overexert ourselves.

Shortly after we got back on the trail it began to sprinkle on us, but the trails were ridiculously well-marked and there were bridges over all the water crossings, so we counted our blessings despite the weather. Once the rain stopped I started to sweat, so we took a little break and I decided to take off some of my rain layers. As I was taking off my rain pants on the side of the trail, another group of trekkers came up behind us. I was so used to taking my rain layers on and off at that point that I didn’t realize that my disrobing might be slightly alarming to passersby. Brooke said to me, “Carmen, pull your pants up!” and as I sheepishly pulled them up, one of the trekkers passing us said jokingly, “Watch out, I could be dangerous…like the puma.” We laughed hysterically at this oddball comment mixed with his funny foreign accent. Later we found out that he was not just a crazy foreigner when Jessica read one of her guidebooks more closely. It said, "All should be aware that, for all its popularity, [Torres del Paine] is still hazardous terrain. Hikers have disappeared, the rivers run fast and cold, the weather is unpredictable, and there is one documented case of a tourist attacked and killed by a puma." Needless to say, thank God we read this passage after we had left the park.

Eventually we reached Campamento Pehoe, the Ritz of the Torres del Paine campsites. Its amenities included: steaming hot showers; a hotel with a bar, a cafeteria and a mini-mart; a huge open field of soft, east-to-stake soil; and a big community kitchen where everyone gathered together to socialize while they cooked over portable gas stoves. Although the hot showers felt amazing, and the soil made for breezy tent setup, the best part of the camp was, by far, the community kitchen.

We stayed at Campamento Pehoe for two nights. The first night after we had all settled in, we decided to have a potluck in the community kitchen. We each came bearing gifts—tuna, soup, coffee, a can of beans, tortillas, dried fruit and Forbes even brought a packaged curried rice dish with raisins that was delectable. After a fairly easy hiking day and a stress-free check in, we enjoyed being able to let loose in the warm, cheerful din of the kitchen, laughing as we dunked our spoons into whatever food course was in front of us at the moment. In our revelry we also made friends with a few new people, one of whom was a Californian entrepreneur, writer, musician, activist and filmmaker who just happened to be a dead ringer for a young Johnny Depp. I took a break from being dazzled by Johnny for a second to wash some dishes and, lo and behold, on my way to the sink I ran into our first set of Israeli friends—Special Forces and his sidekick. We ended up hanging out with the Israelis for pretty much the rest of our time there, even sharing in our potluck with them (which they insisted should be renamed a “Communist Pot”, but I told them that verbiage might not go over so well in the U.S.). That first night before we went to bed, Brooke, Forbes and I stargazed for awhile, trying lamely to identify at least one southern hemisphere constellation.

That night I was awoken at around 3 a.m. due to the cold, which had been the nightly routine. I put on a few more layers and tried to get back to sleep, but our tent had other ideas. A big gust of wind came and the tent billowed inward and hit me in the face. Then a few seconds later another gust of wind came and the tent hit me in the back. The tent beat me up like this for a good 15 minutes, making a deadening racket with every blow. After about five minutes of this nonsense, I started cracking up at our predicament and rolled over to share my amusement with Brooke. To my surprise, Brooke slept through the whole thing and somehow I was lulled back to sleep despite the wind’s fury.

The next day, we went with our Israeli friends to Glacier Grey. The glacier was really quite amazing—a plane of jagged ice as far as the eye could see—but it was just so windy that you could hardly see it or enjoy its beauty. Being glacier territory, it was also freezing, so while some other trekkers decided to walk down to sea level and touch the nearby icebergs, our band of gringos just wanted to get out of the blinding wind and back to camp where we could nurse our varying infirmities back to health. But the Israelis had other plans in mind.

Glacier Grey

We had our backs turned on the Israelis for not more than a minute and they had already climbed down the steep cliff that led to the icebergs as easily as goats. They putzed around near the iceberg for awhile and then, all of a sudden, I realized that the Special Forces guy was taking off his shoes and socks. As we peered to get a closer look at what he was doing, we collectively gasped as he took off his shirt and pants as well—standing there only in his skin-tight boxers. He was so far below us that we couldn’t hear anything that was going on and we had no idea what kind of stunt he was trying to pull, but whatever he was doing was causing just as much commotion down on the rocks below as it was causing amongst our group of gringos.

I let out a scream when I realized what he was doing, “He’s going to go jump on the iceberg!” I cried. The iceberg that he was headed for was not that far away, but it was far enough away that if he slipped and fell, he was going to fall into the icy ocean. We all waited with bated breath to see if he was going to make it over the slippery stepping stones to the iceberg, and when he finally did we cheered with delight. But just when we thought his antics couldn’t get any wilder, he reclined in an Austin Powers-like modeling pose as his friend took pictures of him. Once he was done with his seductive iceberg photo shoot, his sidekick did the exact same thing—posed for a photo half-naked on an iceberg. Some people in our group thought briefly of copying the Israelis—after all it would make for a pretty impressive photo—but we decided it would be best to not risk hypothermia or death.

When we got back to the camp that night, I couldn't help but sigh with relief. We had officially done our last hike and our adventure was over. We were a broken band, but we had survived. Jessica would later have to get her toenail removed at an urgent care facility due to the injuries she sustained, and my knee stayed out-of-whack for about a week after we got back to Santiago, but every bump and bruise seems worth it when I look back on my pictures from my adventure at the end of the world. I made friends with an assortment of fascinating and eclectic people, I saw natural wonders I will never see again, and somehow, by the grace of God and the kindness of strangers (and the absence of pumas) I made it out of that park alive.

When we got back to Santiago, Brooke called her dad to tell him about our trip. When she mentioned that I had been a camping novice before we went trekking, her dad commented, "Well your friend must either be really brave or really naive." I think I was a little bit of both. I had no idea what I was doing, but I challenged myself to conquer nature and my own fears and I ended up having a fabulous adventure along the way.

Tío Monster Truck and The Unicycles

Tabo Wabo

Thanks to my best friend Megan, I had the pleasure of going back to the U.S. around Christmas/New Year’s time. I was a bridesmaid in Megan’s wedding on Jan. 3, so I got to go home for a couple of weeks to enjoy the festivities and spend time with my quality time-deprived family.

Two weeks at home passed like a snap of the fingers, but apparently it was enough time to alter my comfort zone. When I got back to Santiago I felt like a stranger in what I thought had become my home; and I suddenly felt the poignant absence of my family even more tangibly than the sweaty wall of humidity that pervades Santiago’s metro this time of year. I had never expected to feel so jolted by my return to Santiago. I didn’t have much time to feel jolted, though, because I was immediately whisked away to the Chilean beach town of El Tabo.

El Tabo is about an hour and a half from Santiago and is surrounded by a chain of other small beach towns. In theory, beach hopping in Latin America in the summer sounds amazing, but I wasn’t too excited about the trip because I knew I was going to be working the whole time for my institution, Domingo Savio. They had obtained a stay in some free cabins there, granted by the municipality of La Granja (Domingo Savio is located in La Granja, a borough of Santiago). Apparently La Granja rents out cabins to groups of people like ours who aren’t able to vacation at the beach like the rest of Santiago’s middle-to-wealthy classes do in the summer.

The four days we stayed in El Tabo were so jam-packed with events and my memory is so fleeting that I literally can’t give a play-by-play of everything that happened on the trip. But the beautiful beach experience captured the spirit of Chile and Domingo Savio so well that I have to at least give the highlights of the vacation. So here they are (in semi-chronological order):

“Carmen Cuidando los Niños”
We got our first full dose of the El Tabo beach after eating a huge lunch at the cabin mess hall. When we got to the beach, I set my towel down and closed my eyes, and between the waves and the carbs I was lulled right to sleep. When I woke up I realized that I had conked out for several hours and had not been watching the kids at all. Did I mention that my sole reason for being invited on the trip was to ensure the safety of these kids—most of whom can’t swim or love to wander off in all directions of crowded beaches without warning? Thankfully the other tíos had taken up my slack in watching the kids (or lack thereof). But to rib me a little bit for my indiscretion, Tío Jorge took a picture of me sleeping on my towel and titled the picture “Carmen Cuidando los Niños”, or, “Carmen Taking Care of the Kids.” He showed the picture to everyone and rubbed it in my face several times. Needless to say, I did not live my carefree moment down and I also did not fall asleep on the beach again.

El Canelo
On our second day in El Tabo we went to a nearby beach called El Canelo. To reach the beach we had to go through a little mini-forest, and when I got to the clearing in front of me lay this beautiful, albeit tiny, resort-style beach. Now, I have two requirements that need to be met before I go into the ocean: tiny waves and no sharks. The waves at El Canelo were the calmest I had ever seen and I had heard from the Chileans that Chile was shark-free (which is definitely not true, judging by the video I just watched of a gruesome shark attack in Chile. Uggghh.). Having met my two criteria for desirability, the ocean was very tempting at that point, but the water was freezing cold, so, at first, I refused to go in. Eventually, though, the kids and tíos cajoled me into going on one of those inflatable banana-shaped water sleds that gets pulled along by speed boats—a ride which I thought wouldn’t get me that wet. The banano, as they call it, was a blast but, unfortunately, the guy at the front of the banano did a “fun” tidal wave maneuver by putting his foot in the water while we were going full speed and we all got soaked.

Mounting the banano. I'm at the front

After that I went to dry off for a bit but eventually made my way back into the ocean (after basically being thrown into the water by two of my girls). I swam all the way out to the buoy, which I had never done before because I am always scared of sharks and waves. It was such a peaceful and yet exhilarating feeling to swim around in the open ocean like that—past the waves and all the people. (Too bad I will never do it again in Chile now that I know they have sharks…) I also played boys vs. girls Keep-Away in the ocean with my kids for quite awhile, but retired after being repeatedly pegged in the face with the ball. By the time I decided to go back up to our spot on the shore, the beach was so crowded there was barely room to step between towels. I have never in my life seen a beach so crowded, but I love people-watching so I actually reveled in all the commotion.

D-Sav bathing beauties at El Canelo

Los Juegos
Nearby the El Tabo beach they had several mini-carnivals set up with rides and games and, of course, fried food (what would a fair be without fried food). They called the parking lot-sized collection of rides the juegos (the games) and a big group of us went to the juegos after dinner one night. The only juego I went on was this saucer-shaped ride that you sat around the perimeter of as it spun and bounced you around to the beat of reggaeton blasting in the background. (Reggaeton is like a mix of reggae, salsa and hip hop and it is WILDLY popular in Latin America. To hear a popular reggaeton song, click here.) I am not always a fan of carnival rides but the saucer one made me laugh so much I was out of breath. Thankfully I wasn’t thrown out of the seatbeltless ride because then I might have joined the list of carnival ride casualties that are allegedly quite common at these slipshod Chilean juegos. Another thing that caught my attention about the fair was that at several of the games—like Ball-Toss and Bingo—you could win alcoholic prizes like bottles of beer and pisco. I had definitely never seen that before, but it didn’t surprise me seeing as how alcohol is so cheap and readily available everywhere in Chile. I finished up the night at the juegos with a sinful dulce de leche-filled churro before we all walked back to the camp.

The bouncy saucer ride

What Personal Space?
The cabins we slept in were huge, having something around 16 bunk beds and 2 bathrooms in each cabin. The girls slept in one cabin and the boys in another. Because our bunk beds were sans ladders, the girls were always climbing on the beds, knocking my stuff all over the floor and waking me up in the morning by stepping on me. And if I ever happened to be in the bathroom, every minute on the dot without fail someone would knock on the door, jingle the handle to the point of it almost coming off and then testily ask, “Who is it?” I guess personal space is just not an option when it comes to living with kids!

Beach Races
One day when we were hanging out at the El Tabo beach, the tíos threw together some impromptu relay races. The races we did were fairly generic, but when you combine 30 rambunctious kids, a handful of already-conspicuous gringos and a handsome, theatrical Master of Ceremonies—you create quite a spectacle. So in our relay performance I was paired with one of the older girls who is a bit heavier than me. Because of our weight differences, she ended up having to lug me around for most of the races (which Tía Andrea later joked was an abuse of power), but the race where I really couldn’t pull my weight was the rabbit leap. Maybe it was because everyone else was cheating—in true Chilean style—but I was by far the slowest rabbit jumper, which is apparently very amusing. In the end I cheated too, not wanting to be outjumped by any 5-year-olds. One of the other gringos, Daniel, also had his moment in the spotlight when he catapulted himself through the air doing a kangaroo leap, and Tía Andrea got some laughs when she face-planted into the sand while crossing the finish line. I think competitors and congregators alike delighted in the festivities.

Me "abusing my power" during a race

The kids racing

Jammin’
Where there is music and Latinos, there will be fun. Knowing this, the manager of our camp was very intent upon having us take advantage of his seemingly professional-grade Karaoke setup. So we had a Karaoke sing-along one night and a dance party another night—all overseen by the owner, who reveled in every minute of our revelry. The Karaoke was entertaining, but the dance party was “epic,” as my brother would say. It went on for hours—starting with all the little kids, then transitioning to a middle school dance in which, “you could cut the pre-teen sexual tension with a knife,” as Elliot joked.

The little kids just amaze me with how well they can shake and move their hips. I don’t know where they learn their moves from, but they could put a lot of my adult gringo friends to shame. And, unlike the U.S., these kids are definitely not embarrassed to tear it up on the dance floor. Even though I sometimes think the kids dance a little bit too risqué for their age, I also love how dancing is like breathing for them, rather than something that is seen as a talent or personal preference. Boy, girl, fat, skinny, gay, straight, old, young—everyone is socialized to love dancing here, and you can feel the freedom it gives them.

The little kids dancing

As the dance progressed, one of the pre-teen boys asked me to dance. Now this is a boy who very blatantly has a crush on me. He is always trying to hug and kiss me and I have to tell him things like, “No, we don’t kiss the tía on the neck,” or, “I’ve already kissed you hello today, so we don’t need to kiss again,” but he never seems to be deterred. And over the course of the beach trip a little bird told him how to say several phrases in English like, “Will you go out with me” and “You are my wife and I am your husband” so he was getting more and more determined to profess his crush on me. I didn’t know if it was the best idea to dance with him, but since it was just salsa dancing and the other tíos were all dancing with the kids, I went ahead and said yes. To my surprise, he was very sweet and kept his distance the whole time, but I think it was mostly because he was trying so hard to concentrate on how to salsa because he was obviously just learning.

Me in the Congo line at the dance

Eventually, I started dancing with another pre-teen boy. While we were dancing, a reggaeton song came on and the music video flashed up on the Karaoke machine. We were dancing away (with me making sure to leave PLENTY of room for the Holy Ghost) when all of a sudden he stopped me and said, “Tía, you need to do that dance.” I looked over at the screen to see what he was talking about and saw girls in go-go dancer shorts gyrating their butts just like in our rap videos. I ignored his request but he didn’t seem to care because he and all the other teenage boys had become transfixed by the T.V. screen. On the one hand I couldn’t believe how different this culture was that a kid could possibly even entertain the idea that I would dance like that in front of him—me being an uptight gringa who takes sexual comments so seriously and all. And on the other hand, I saw the cultural similarities between U.S. and Chilean adolescent boys, for whom butt-shaking music videos are all too intoxicating.

The big kids dancing. See if you can spot the gringos...

Lastly, I finally saw in action the famous Koala dance. I was flabbergasted by how sexual it was in nature and yet how no one blinked an eye over it. I guess that when I came to Chile, I thought that it would be a very conservative, Catholic country and that I would be viewed as the racy American heathen. I mean, divorce was only just legalized in Chile in 2004! But the longer I am here the more I realize how sexualized things are in this country and how I am viewed as an uptight gringa for being taken aback by them. If you’d like to see what the Koala dance looks like click here. (They demonstrate the dance about halfway through the video.) “Uptight” gringos beware…

Tío Time
One of the things I loved most about the vacation was the hour or so the tíos would get to spend together after the kids went to bed. We would bring out our secret rum and Coke stash and serve ourselves a glass, referring to the drinks as “café” just in case impressionable little ears were still alert. And one night we even ate a big summer watermelon together, getting juice all over our faces and making slurping noises so loud I think we woke up a couple of kids. After a long day without personal space and the incessant clamor of children’s voices, being around only adults felt like a rare treat. I also felt like we tíos bonded quite a bit during our grown-up gatherings, which means a lot to me since I work so closely with all of them on a day-to-day basis.

The tíos devouring watermelon and sipping "coffee"

Neruda’s House
Another one of the towns near El Tabo is Isla Negra, which is the location of one of Pablo Neruda’s many houses. Pablo Neruda is a beloved Chilean poet and his grave is actually located at his house in Isla Negra. The big kids and a few of us tíos hopped on a bus over to Isla Negra and took a tour of Neruda’s home, which was covered top-to-bottom with trinkets, most of which were nautical. The view of the ocean from his house was spectacular, so I can see why he was buried there and how his mind might have been nurtured by the space. Neruda is such a point of pride for Chile, and now, having been to his home, I can see that he was not a man to be forgotten.

The view of the ocean from Neruda's house

Building Trust
I never imagined just how hard it would be for me to build relationships with the kids I worked with. I guess I thought that I would come and play with them for a few weeks and then I would magically become their mentor and confidant. Well, it hasn’t worked that way. I don’t feel like I have built strong relationships with any of my kids and I certainly don’t feel like they would turn to me with their problems. Sometimes I feel like I have failed at my most important job—being a listening ear and giving good advice to these kids. That’s what I wanted to do as a volunteer here more than anything else, and yet it seems almost impossible to push through that boundary that takes these relationships from superficial to whole. I still haven’t made whole relationships with any of my kids—relationships complete with trust, support, faith and love. But I feel like I did get a little bit closer to building trust with them during the trip.

Several of the girls who usually have nothing to say to me went out of their way to strike up conversations with me or hold my hand on the way to the beach; other girls started joking around with me more and engaging me in their games. I also spent quality time with several of the kids playing games like Bingo, Uno and Foosball—although I almost lost my religion playing Bingo with them because they kept wanting to “help” me fill up my board (a.k.a. take over my board so I couldn’t play). But perhaps most special of all, one day one of the 14-year-old girls stayed behind with me to guard the towels while the other kids went to walk down the beach. I had previously not really known what to think of this girl because during a getting-to-know-you exercise, she asserted that she wanted to be a mother by the time she was 16. I always knew she was a nice girl, but she seemed very impressionable and at times stand-offish. During our talk on the beach, she ended up telling me that she was thinking of being a drug-crimes investigator and was planning on going to school for this for several years. That was the first time I had ever heard any of my kids mention a goal or aspiration for the future, and I was so glad to hear that she was even thinking about doing that, especially considering that her father just got kicked out of her house by the police for being a drug addict. Wouldn’t it be impressive if even just one of these kids could stop the cycle of drug addiction and poverty perpetuated by their families—and not just stop it, but fight it?

. . .

As much as it can be frustrating for me to not see the results of my presence in these kids’ lives, I have to remind myself that I am here to give love and encouragement without an agenda to receive the same. I have to remember that these kids have immature, abusive and sometimes criminal parents; they can’t trust the very people who are supposed to love and care for them the most in this life, so why would they trust a random gringa? I have to believe that trust is earned and that every time I have a good conversation or play a rowdy game of Keep-Away or help someone finish a project or hold a little hand on the way to the park—every time I do these things I will get that much closer to—in my mom’s words— “going up the ladder of trust”. These kids know I’m going away. They know I’m going to leave them. And therein lies the struggle: how do I get them to trust me so I can teach them a little about life and give them hope for the future, and how do they trust me when they know I’m going to abandon them? I don’t know the answer. But I do know that I am so thankful for those little moments I have with them when I feel like they just might miss me if they never saw me again.

Thanksgiving

Chilean food is bad. The drinks are exceptional, but the food is universally lackluster. Therefore my roommates and I decided almost immediately after moving in together that we had to redeem our gastronomically-deprived existences here by pulling out all the stops and cooking a real, honest-to-goodness, no-holds-barred Thanksgiving dinner. We also really wanted to share the tradition of Thanksgiving with all our new foreign friends, so we decided to host a Thanksgiving party at our house. There was only one problem—finding a turkey.

I think we United Statesians sometimes figure that big, fat turkeys just fall out of the sky come late November. We forget how rare of a food staple whole turkeys are (imagine looking for a whole turkey in your supermarket in August). Chileans do, in fact, eat whole turkeys around Christmastime, but because Thanksgiving is a month before Christmas, we couldn’t find whole turkeys anywhere and we were told by many people that we would never be able to find one in the supermarkets. They told us that we really had only one option—look for a live turkey out in the countryside and get someone to kill it for us.

Because I had offered to be in charge of cooking the turkey, I took it upon my self to be the lead on the turkey hunt. I knew that Dennis’ mom had experience with killing turkeys, so I coordinated the details of the hunt with Dennis (a Peruvian volunteer). I realized seconds into talking with him that finding the turkey was going to be way more complicated than I had imagined. I guess I just thought we would get in a truck, go find a turkey, kill it and then cook it the next day—pretty cut and dry. But it so happened that Dennis couldn’t go the night before Thanksgiving to get the turkey, so we ended up having to go on a weekend.

Going on the weekend meant we would have to either kill the turkey that weekend and freeze it until Turkey Day or we would need to keep the turkey alive until the night before Thanksgiving and kill it then. The easiest option would have been to just freeze the turkey and not have to worry about keeping it alive, but I have been trained that eating frozen turkeys on Thanksgiving just isn’t an option. So I stuck to my guns and said freezing the turkey was out.

In light of this we had no other choice but to go to the Santiago countryside to look for a turkey. Dennis warned me that we would need to go door to door at family farms asking for a turkey and that there was no guarantee we would be able to find one. I was a little worried about that, but soon I became more worried about where exactly we would keep the hypothetical live turkey before it went under the knife. Dennis didn’t want to ask his mom if they could keep it at his house because they had a dog and they didn’t want the dog eating the turkey. And I knew we couldn’t keep it at our house because my roommate, Emily, is a vegetarian and I figured she wouldn’t want to see the turkey walking around our patio one day and in the oven the next. So I asked Elliot, my coworker at Domingo Savio, if they could keep the turkey at the volunteer house (a house where eight or so of the volunteers live). Elliot was actually excited by the idea of having a “pet” for a few days, so he said there was no problem with the turkey staying there, he just had to clear the idea with his roommates.

I thought the turkey’s habitation was taken care of, but the next day Elliot came to work and told me that some of the girls in the volunteer house were not so keen on the idea of the turkey staying with them. They thought they would get too attached to it and would be traumatized by its death. I didn’t want to upset anyone but I also really didn’t want to have Thanksgiving without a turkey. I mentioned my dilemma to Dennis one day and he told me he would ask his mom if they could keep the turkey at his house. To my relief, Dennis’ mom pulled through for us. Now all we needed was lady luck on our side when we went and solicited people for turkey.

The turkey hunt commenced on a nice, balmy day the Sunday before Thanksgiving. The hunters were me, Parmella, Dennis and Brooke—the same group that went to Mendoza. We drove to the outskirts of Santiago and then Dennis began the painstaking task of asking where we could find turkeys. The first tip we got was a good one, leading us to a farm that did, indeed, have several turkeys. The problem was that it was breeding season and they didn’t want to sell them. But we couldn’t really stay mad at them for not selling us a turkey because they let us tour their mini-zoo for free, which included a vicuña, (a llama-like animal with the softest fur you can imagine and a penchant for nuzzling humans) a very pregnant donkey, sheep and all different kinds of birds.

A vicuña nuzzling Parmella

After our trip to the zoo I figured we would find a turkey pretty easily at the next farm due to the ease with which we found an assortment of turkeys at the first farm. Unfortunately we had to go to about 15 different farms before finding one, with everyone giving us different directions on where we should look for the elusive bird. Dennis did all the work on the hunt—driving ever so slowly along the rocky, dusty roads as we were jostled around and getting down at each stop to see if they had turkeys in stock (while us girls stayed in the car). Right as we were starting to lose faith in our search, we finally found our turkey on one of the farms. Once we had made our purchase they tied our turkey’s legs together and weighed him upside down, (he weighed about 9 kilos) causing him to throw up on Dennis’ shoes, much to our amusement. I disapproved of the turkey’s transportation conditions—we had to put him in Dennis’ trunk—but we really didn’t have much of a choice because he wasn’t going to be sitting on one of our laps. The turkey hadn’t moved an inch by the time we got to Dennis’ mom’s house and it seemed completely unfazed by the car ride and by its change of scenery.

Dennis, Parmella and Brooke with our turkey

Brooke, Parmella and Elliot all attended the turkey execution, but I knew I wouldn’t be able to see it die since I was the one who had to have my hands all up in the turkey the next day. Although I didn’t attend the beheading, I got very gruesome details about its eventful death. I won’t share all of them here, but let’s just say that chickens aren’t the only animals that run (or fly) around with their heads cut off…

With the turkey in our possession, we moved on to planning the rest of the party. We divided the lion’s share of the dinner amongst the three of us and asked the rest of the people who were coming to bring their favorite side dish/dessert (with the boys bringing things like wine and plastic silverware). I was in charge of the turkey and the mashed potatoes, Brooke was in charge of berry-apple crumble, chocolate chip pumpkin squares, cornbread stuffing and tangerine-glazed carrots (Brooke reaaaaly likes to cook!) and Emily was in charge of making green beans and butternut squash puree. We were all very excited about cooking our families’ respective favorite dishes and although we had trouble locating some of the ingredients we needed (such as pumpkin) we got all the grocery shopping done and somehow packed all the food we needed into our always-cramped fridge and pantry.

We were having a really great time planning the party until we came across an unforeseen sticking-point—the food setup. We knew we were going to have to eat Japanese-style on the floor in our living room because we didn’t have enough tables and chairs to fit the 30 people who had RSVP’d to our event. That was a given. But we couldn’t agree on where we wanted to serve all the food. I figured we would just put all the food on our big dining room table and have people serve themselves buffet-style, just like we’ve always done it in my family. Brooke was very adamant that we put all the food on the living room floor/table in a bunch of separate bowls so that people would not have to get up and go to the next room to get seconds. I thought Brooke’s proposed setup of splitting everything up into a million bowls sounded like it would complicate our lives unnecessarily. We basically had a knock-down, drag-out fight about this (although Brooke insisted it wasn’t a fight) and although Emily was on my side, Brooke ended up winning. We made up like good roommates, though, and I pretty much ate my words when I saw Brooke’s vision come to life.

When the big day finally arrived, I woke up early to welcome the infamous Matías Pablo Pavo (that was the name Parmella and Brooke elected for the turkey—pavo is Spanish for turkey) to our home. To my horror and surprise, Matías still had his neck on and he also had a strange yellowish outer skin that looked very unappetizing. I had to peel off as much of the yellowish skin as I could and I also had to hack, saw, pull and twist the neck until I finally got it off. Before I had even begun to season the oddly-shaped, skinny turkey I was already sick of him. On top of that, I had no idea how much he actually weighed without his feathers, I didn’t know what temperature I was putting him in the oven at because we don’t have a temperature dial on our oven, and I didn’t have a meat thermometer to check his doneness. Because I really had no idea how long this stupid bird was going to take or how I was going to tell if he was cooked, my anxiety level was high as I stuck our turkey in the oven and said a little prayer that it wouldn’t come out either grossly dry or undercooked.

Me hating cooking the turkey...look how weird it looks!

Already fed up with the turkey, I set to peeling the 20 pounds of potatoes that we bought to be mashed. Brooke, Emily and I took the day off of work to prepare for the party and even though I didn’t stop cooking from the second I woke up in the morning, I had a really great time singing, stirring, tasting and laughing with my roommates all day long.

Sooner than we knew it, people started pouring into our house for the party. I was very preoccupied with getting all the food hot at the same time, and when all the food finally was hot, we set it out in the living room per Brooke’s specifications. But in all my preoccupation with heating food, I forgot that A) we were cooking for a bunch of 20-somethings who wanted to hang out and have a few drinks before sitting down to dinner, and B) the turkey needed to be carved. So by the time we corralled all the drinkers and got some turkey on their plates, the side dishes were lukewarm at best. But the smiling faces and merry laughter around me made me realize that the food, while absolutely delicious, was not what people would remember most about the night. What people would remember was the familial sense of togetherness we all shared around our 50-foot-long “table” made out of holiday-colored tablecloths. Brooke’s communal setup was so warm and picturesque, it was like something out of a movie. All in all, our Thanksgiving party was a big hit.

The infamous table setup

"Team Man" getting ready to cut the turkey

Everyone enjoying the spread

In the process of getting ready for my Thanksgiving extravaganza, I was asked by many people why Americans celebrate Thanksgiving—what’s all the fuss about? At first I didn’t really know how to answer them. I bumbled through explanations about pilgrims and Native Americans being thankful for their harvest. But it seemed like my answer was lacking. Thanksgiving means more than that, but I had never really paused to think about why. Well this Thanksgiving, thousands of miles away from anyone who knows what Stove Top dressing is, I realized that for me the holiday is about togetherness. What better way to give thanks than to actively be in the presence of the people who bear witness to your life?

I can’t say that I didn’t miss my family this Thanksgiving, but I can say that I was very thankful for the companions I’ve been blessed with in my journey so far.