I had a great conversation with the driver who talked away to me and I had no idea what he was saying so I guessed what he was saying and spoke back in English - he didn't seem to notice until the end when he told me how much the fair was and I look confused so he spoke even faster so I had to say No Espanol - and he looked at me incredulously and said "No Espanol" - very funny as I had been chatting a way in English but making hand signals so that obviously helped. Anyway he got me to my destination safely and on time so I gave him a big tip.
So I met Daniela who is a brilliant friendly guide and we headed off the the Ritz Carlton to meet Christoff who was coming on the trek with us to the San Francisco Glacier. He is french and as it turned out the Flying French Man - oh man could that man set a pace. I knew that if I tried to keep up with him I would only make it half way so I set my own pace - fortunately Daniela was happy to walk at my pace so we let the Flying Frenchman off the leash and he went off at great speed but waiting for us at various points.
The Glacier is 100km outside of Santiago so took us about 2 hours to drive - some of it done off road up a track. When we arrived at our destination I just looked up and gulped - of course its all up hill you diddy I said to myself - I really hate walking up hill but unfortunately having this draw to mountains means I have to walk up hill so I just had to suck it up. So off we set - with the frenchman flying and me at a snails pace (oh shit french people eat snails don't they?! ok the pace of a tortoise, oh shit the french probably eat them too! anyway...) - in the end we climbed 650m - no mean feat whilst walking 8km at the same time. I think we ended up at around 3400m or somewhere around there.
It was a beautiful trek, with lots of spring flowers and lots of lizards running across our path and after 3hrs and 40 mins Daniela and I make it to the Glacier (the flying frenchman had been there for about 30 mins already) - its spring so a lot of the Glacier has melted but you can see the river starting to burst through the ice - this river leads to the Maipo river which is the river that feeds all the irrigation for the wineries I was at yesterday so when you see the water bursting through the ice in this picture its like the start of the process of my bottle of wine...
The orange scarf was my head covering as I had forgotten my hat - it served me well in the 32 degree heat - I only have a slightly burnt nose.
So we headed back after 10 mins at the glacier - there were some mad japanese tourists trying to walk up the glacier - could they not see that it was a really fast flowing river underneath it as the Glacier was melting?! Nutters!
The walk back should have been easy as we had to walk the 8km back but it was all downhill - why is it downhill in these conditions is so much worse - as both Daniela and I slipped about on the stones and gravel, the flying frenchman was off. I hated the walking down part when I was in Nepal and Tibet - my knees just get totally stressed out and fucked and I didn't want to have bad knees for my 2 days of horse riding tomorrow so I took it really easy. Daniela and I had some great conversation about spirituality which kept my mind off my knees. In the last 15 mins or so of the trek back down I really started to not feel well and realised that I hadn't really eaten my lunch - too busy feeding it to the cute wee birdies that were not scared of humans so I stopped and had some sesame snaps - I knew I was close to the end but I really felt like my body was saying no so I stopped for a couple of minutes to eat the sesame snaps. I thought my body would jump straight back into shape after the huge trek I did last year but no it didn't I really felt at times that I was so unfit and also having gained 10lbs on Case Histories didn't help - I did keep telling Charlie to stop cooking me special lunches but he wouldn't listen!
This was the view from where we came from but 600 metres down in the valley - at the bottom of the mountains you can see in the distance. Now that looks quite far too!! YUP IT WAS!!!
At the start of the trek I thought 16km is really not that far - thats like 4 walks from the pub to The Wadlin which is normally easy - but of course I am using drunk when I do it which is why it is easy.
I did make it to the end and hung onto the sign as Daniela took this picture
So we met up with the Flying Frenchman who had been back for an hour before us and we headed back to Santiago - stopping in one of the small towns to get Christoff the cherry's he kept going on about that he wanted to take back to his wife - he says french customs don't care about what comes into the country but I reckon with the full plastic bag of cherries and apricots he bought he is so going to get strip searched!! That will teach him for eating Snails and Tortoise!
So back to Santiago and Daniela dropped me near my apartment but she couldn't get into the main road as it was closed off but neither of us knew why and as I walked in all I could see where different kinds of motorbikes and cars from different manufacturers like Suzuki and then I heard the rumble of the engines and some backfires and knew that it was some kind of race - they had closed the main road in Santiago for a bike race - how brilliant is that. I really wanted to go and see, being a former petrol head, but my feet hurt to much so I decided Cerveza on the roof whilst listening to the throbbing of the engines whilst putting my throbbing feet into the cold swimming pool was just what the doctor ordered so thats exactly what I did whilst the sun set.
Heading off for my 2 days horse riding in the Andes in the morning so my rucksack is packed and I am ready to go - so happy I am riding and not walking - feet are fucked!!!
suzxxx
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