Party like it's post 1999

[BeanDip4All]

You look on top of the world!

I love this TR... so jeal that I couldn't make it down this season... your write up is awesome, too- loved reading it! Thanks, Trayc

[shmerham]

Su amiga es caliente.

Is that John Egan getting some tata love?

[bklyn]

Day 7 continued

Once again I'm at a loss for a proper response. The butler has come to my hotel room door in Santiago. He wants to know if I need assistance unpacking and if there are any clothes I need pressed. I thought this was a Sheraton, but I've been upgraded to a ridiculously large deluxe room in "the tower". So big that my first NYC apartment could fit into the bathroom with room to spare.

A complimentary bottle of champagne and selection of chocolates is on it's way to the room. Cold comforts considering my travel agent has let the last available room in Portillo slip through her hands. Frette sheets and towels are nice, turn-down service is nice, the seafood dinner is excellent, but I'm looking for a guarantee that I'll be back on snow soon. I tap my local connections, to see what my options are. Arturo will see what he can do, but the answer will not come until manana. This morning I was skiing, but skiing tomorrow is looking like a bust.

I have no choice but to take a bubble bath in the built for two tub, eat bon bons and sip champagne.

Penitentes is a little resort about 16 miles away from Portillo in Argentina, and one of the options Arturo is pitching to me if there are no cancellations in Portillo. A quick search on the web reveals that it is the avalanche capital of South America. Hmmn. I could switch plans and leave for Las Lenas early, but I have already missed the buses leaving Santiago. It looks like at least one more night in this city ringed tightly by snow-capped peaks. I make the best of it with some more delicious seafood and flirting with the waitstaff en espanol.

Day 8
At 6:30 pm I am about to give up hope on Portillo. Arturo has been calling all day. I have been calling all day, using different accents to no avail. I'm prepping for an early morning bus ride to Mendoza and possibly 2 days of travel to Lenas when Arturo calls. I'm in. A single room is available in Portillo for a reasonable price, he has called in the hookup.

Days 9 & 10
A quick early AM departure and Arturo and I are in the "Hummer" on our way to Portillo. The road to Portillo is also the main international highway between Chile and Argentina. We pass farms and orchards in the valley, fruit stands, and people walking barefoot in the mountains doing religious penance to the blessed virgin. I am stoked on my unbelievable luck, getting to this point. I should be sending up a prayer of thanks with them. I want to stop and take pictures, but Arturo will only have the afternoon to ski, so on we go. Check in, drop bags, change, ski.

Portillo is compact and steep, chairlifts cross the highway, the Chilean army trains alongside us. We ride the crazy 4 and 5 man poma lifts and zoom around the place. I spot Jim S shadowing one of the superstars down a chute - 'garganta' en espanol. Later I meet Jim S and girlfriend D. My knees are swollen my legs ache but when the snow is under my feet I'm not noticing these woes.

I am here. Life is good.

Tonight I do some slightly more advanced planning for Lenas.


Food & Drink Chilean style






Yea! Freebies.


Arturo & the 'hummer'.


Chilean army on the 4 person poma.


Top Secret operations on the lift.


Working across these lines


Coaching D into a carved turn.


Lake view.

[bklyn]

...so jeal that I couldn't make it down this season...

Sorry you couldn't make it, it would have been fun. Seems like your career is heating up instead.

Is that John Egan getting some tata love?

Si.

[PNWbrit]

Don't eat the crill soup!

Have a drink at the Postada for me.

[shamrockpow]

Arturo will see what he can do, but the answer will not come until manana. This morning I was skiing, but skiing tomorrow is looking like a bust.

Mañana, mañana, when will mañana come...

Food & Drink Chilean style

Strong to very strong beer. A rarity in South America. Try the bok if you can find it. The food and wine only get better/cheaper as you cross into Argentina!

[bklyn]

Days 11 & 12

This morena is still a novelty here. People stop, wait and stare as I ski by. I get a million questions on the lift. Do you speak English? What do you do for a living? Where are you from? Where do you ski in the states? Most of the guests are Americans. It seems many live within 50 miles of my house. Some of them show some ugly American habits. You'd think, if a person wants skim milk with their cereal every am, that they'd learn to say it in Spanish by the 4th morning. How about learning to just say leche?

One day of sunshine blurs into another, as I learn to time the corn cycle here. Warm afternoons and cold nights.
4 meals a day = Portillo Pot Belly. They have fruit sorbet for deserts, which are much more refreshing than muy rico Tres Leches. The tightly scheduled dining arrangements lull you into a routine. Te, huevos y queso por breakfast. Your mind wanders to find any distraction. You note that there are a disproportionate amount of red headed people here in Portillo. It's a ginger kid convention this week. You find an infinite number of differences in the snow from one aspect to another. You find that you always have an involuntary little cough on those morning chairlift rides over the road, must be the exhaust from all the trucks. Ride the crazy 5 person poma up, look for those last patches of pow on the way down. Pavlovian response kicks in, you are already conditioned and it is lunchtime. Appetizer, entree, desert. Flashback to Grey Rocks, deja vu. Ski a few more hours, come back in for tea time. Chill out, then it's the bar and dinner.

Clouds have begun to form on the horizon. I hope it means fresh snow soon.


Giant steps are what you take, Walking on the moon
I hope my legs don't break, Walking on the moon


Feet they hardly touch the ground, Walking on the moon
My feet don't hardly make no sound, Walking on, walking on the moon


Some may say, I'm wishing my days away
No way, And if it's the price I pay


Some say, Tomorrow's another day
You stay, I may as well play

[snowdreamer]

What a life...

Very nice.

[Vets]

Great TR Trayc! Wonderful.
Keep the pictures, words, and lyrics coming.

[PNWbrit]

Great stuff Trayc.

Portillo - swarms of red coated waiters and herds of camo clad soldiers. Seen any Vie-a-vent carnage yet? Don't forget to hit the Postada across the other side of the street from the hotel for great steak and eggs dinner. The show put on by the little guy handing out towels by the hotel hot tub is fun but I wouldn't want to be his dermatologist. I have dress shoes less leathery than his face. St Bernards chasing kids on the bunny hill are often another amusing distraction.

I'm flying to BA in the morning and hope to be able to post a little summer stoke for everyone next week from Bariloche.

[erica_z]

FKNA! Git on wit' yo bad self!



Maybe some day when I finally make it up from the little leagues, I can join you guys on these rad adventures into the wild blue yonder. Keep it coming, and thanks for the awesome stoke!

[snowsprite]

Me siento como si estoy con tigo, disfrutando este viaje!

Coño, la proxima vez...me meto en tu maleta si es necessario!

Sprite

[train07]

i think sprite wants to get in the suitcase??

[snowsprite]

Something like that!

Sprite

[splat]

Does this girl git 'er done - or what???

Schhhhwaaaaank!

[smitchell333]

Huevon!!!

No es "Poma"

Es una "va et viente"



Did you ride it? Its quite a ride.

A pulley system is anchored in the cliffs and there are two seats of 4 or 5 and one is coming up with passengers while the other goes down. It then stops at the top with the passengers facing uphill to then dismount in synchronized fashion.

[Oarhead]

I ahve been tuning into this TR for the last week and there is no sign of the Stoke slowing down. Awesome writing T.


I can't wait to go skiing.

[bklyn]

Days 13-16

Birds flying high you know how I feel
Sun in the sky you know how I feel
Reeds drifting on by you know how I feel

Its a new dawn
Its a new day
Its a new life
For me
And I'm feeling good

Suddenly I'm feeling really good.

I've been getting by with a little help from my friends, most of the time - Alleve, Advil, Tylenol, St Josephs, Glucosamine, Theraflu, Sudafed, Alavert, Vicks Vapor Rub... It's a pharmacy up in this piece. After two teeth chattering runs this morning my knee was giving up the ghost. They've been swollen since day 4 and clicking to beat the band. I couldn't press my right foot into the heel piece of my bindings without assistance. The last two days I've been skiing with some futuro supports, but around 11:15 am (day 13) I'm feeling good like Nina Simone. Really good, like something clicked into the right place and I've got a whole new leg. The final two days of skiing I hit all the lines I wanted to at Portillo, ones that I didn't feel well enough to tackle previously or beatered on. So I went for these two, but decided against the second due to some mandatory air on the exit. It's too early in this trip for an injury.


Go. (va)


and no - go like a chevy. (no va)

I brought the camera out to take some more top secret photos. Ever the covert agent I had to have a cover. But then someone bumped my arm at the crucial moment. Yes, that's his pair, yes those are markers, yes the pic is blurry.


Meet you at la discoteque later, mi amigos.


Evidence.


More military precision.


Some lake runs to cap the final days in Portillo.

"esquiar todo el dia, partido todo la noche"
Ski all day, Party all night sums up the remainder of my week in Portillo.
Bailar (dancing) en La Posada, with the locals until the wee hours Pisco y Sprite, Pisco y Coca Cola and 'dolor de cabeza' (hangover) in the morning. Great fun. Sergio, complemented me on my proficency in latin dancing por a Americano. Mucho salsa dancing with Claudio, and reggaton with Juan. Explaining to Juan (alternately San Juan o Don Juan) that he couldn't spend the last night en mi habitacion when we both speak very little of the other's language was hilarous.

Porque no beso? Porque?
Amigos solamente, mi amor.
Porque? Te amo!
No.

Adios, Jim y D. I had fun meeting and spending time with you.

Due to some unexpected problems with guests of south america ski almost expiring, I left Portillo with no idea where I would be staying in Las Lenas or Mendoza if necessary. I just knew I was on a bus to Mendoza. Valle Nevado -> Portillo -> Las Lenas, makes a nice neat loop on the map, but transportation is not simple without fluency in espanol.

Luckily I met two French Canadian brothers from Winnipeg, Daniel and Miguel on route to Mendoza. They've been traveling between Chile and Argentina for almost a month and these sweet guys hooked me up with a hostel in Mendoza, taxi rides, dinner, a movie and rich conversation. We had a comedic moment (2 hours, actually) at the customs point on the Chile/Argentina border crossing. Would they search our bags? Would we have to dump our... medications? Luckily, no.

When the younger brother wrote 1981 as his birth-year in the hostel I just cracked up inside. I'm glad I never had to mention how much closer I am in age to their parents. We ate at the recommended 'best' pizzeria in Mendoza, walked all around the city, watched V for Vendetta in the hostel's AV room and enjoyed our chance meeting. Note to self: trying to watch a dialogue heavy movie while a lively conversation is going on behind you in Spanish, is a lesson in futility. I was able to reciprocate by giving the guys a valuable bottle of body lotion I swiped from the fancy Sheraton. I tiptoed out with 4 hours sleep to the bus station in the hopes of catching the 6 am bus to Las Lenas, and slipped a note into their suitcase with my email. They're great people I hope to hear from again, I was impressed by how open they were to meeting new people. Is it youth or being Canadian? Have I met a Canadian I didn't like? No not yet.

Chaos at the bus station in Mendoza - 5:30 am. Luckily for me, these grifters have nothing on the salty dogs at Port Authority in NY. My man was about to drag my bags out of the taxi, but that NY "NO!" stopped him in his tracks. He skulked around a bit, but when he saw me drag off 150+ pounds of skis, boots, bags, clothing and camera equipment with energy to spare to kick ass if necessary, he went off in search of more vulnerable prey.

I was able to find the right bus and make the proper transfer at San Raphael with about 10 hours of sleep in the last 3 days. Arrived in Lenas today and scored a ridiculously cheap (and comfortable) accommodation for the first week. Settled in and had a Quilmes and sandwich at the Innsbruck and have found out that Aries hotel has free wireless for a two drink minimum. Otra copa, por favor!

After this post, it's on to the market and then a planned early night, for much needed rest before skiing Lenas.
Hasta Luego.

[klar]

oh damn damn damn. i was kind of resigned to going back home tomorrow and now i read this! ***** airline wont change my flight. f**k!!!!

and: yeah, very cool trayc.
saludos & suerte for the rest of your stay!

[Ubersheist]

FKNA, FKNA, FKNA!!!!

16 days in and it's "too early in the trip for an injury?" Jesus! Just how long are you down there for?

I am so jealous right now that it's not even funny...

[sculhane]

Cool,

Sounds like you're having a good time, despite the fact that it's despejado every day. And I finally have a fast enough connection to read some posts

Will be back in LL by the 30th (and I am French Canadian too )...

... But unfortunately, a lot older than 1981

Steve

[splat]

Jeezuz, T, I thought you'd be home by now, so I sent you a FKNA in the front tee shirt as a thank you for all the tata inspiration you've provided.

[tex1230]

Now that you're quoting Nina Simone I have to post in this historic thread. Pics are great - can the army ski well?

[bklyn]

Day 17
Battery is running low, so today's report is short. Great day getting the lay of the land.

This is the lineup at Marte at the end of the day:


Do not stare at the cute lift attendant standing near the back of the line. You will knock people over like bowling pins, and earn the disdain of the pretentious BroBrahs in line. I did. LOL!

[Mtn Man]

16 days in and it's "too early in the trip for an injury?" Jesus! Just how long are you down there for?

I am so jealous right now that it's not even funny...

My sentiments exactly when I read that. This is quite a trip. I stopped reading this thread after a week because I though TrayC was back in the states. This is a pleasant surprise to read more into the SA adventure

It's quite funny that she run into a few maggots during this marathon too, keep on rockin' in the free world....or whatever world it is down there!

B)