Scenario: I am on death row. The prison official asks me what I want for my last meal.
My answer:
“Oooooo anything chocolate please… and preferably in the form of ice cream. Thanks officer!”
By now you probably can get an idea for how much I absolutely adore chocolate ice cream. I can eat it anywhere, anytime, and no matter how full I am from a meal, I always have a little side tummy dedicated to dessert. Some might say I should see a doctor, but I find my ability to house ice cream to be one of my greatest strengths.
My sister-in-law, Maggie, is one of the few people who can keep up with me in this department. She is always down for eating ice cream, which is awesome because then I don’t feel like a complete fatty eating it by myself.
Being the good sister that she is, she was genuinely concerned about my ability to find ice cream in some of the places Tony and I had on our RTW list. Thus, she did her research on Santiago and found a gelato place, Emporio La Rosa, for Tony and I to try out once we arrived down here.
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Meg enthusiastically mocks me everytime I say it, but since getting off of the plane in Punta Arenas, Chile, I can’t help but be overwhelmed by the remoteness of Patagonia… We are at the very end of the world!
There, I said it. Maybe now I can try and get past it.
Yeah… it’s wayyyy down there. And yes, that is Antarctica just below us.
Catching up on the news
After a brief coffee break in Punta Arenas after we landed, we hitched a ride on the last bus to Puerto Natales, which was going to be our launching point into Torres del Paine.
You might have recently heard of about Torres del Paine as a good chunk was burned in a savage forest fire only 3 weeks ago, with many parts still closed to the public. Newsflash: Don’t burn your TP when in a forest… as an Israeli tourist just learned.
While fairly new to me as a must-see destination, it quickly grabbed my imagination as the land that time forgot. For hundreds of miles in any direction, it is mountains, rivers, and shimmering blue lakes.
Torres del Paine – The Towers Trek
Those three peaks to the right are just 5 hours of trekking away....
With the high expense of getting to the park and our aversion to renting camping gear to stay overnight, we thought it best to get the most bang for our buck and do the route to Las Torres (AKA The Towers) as a day hike.
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This past week has been highly entertaining for me and Tony. We traveled down to the Patagonia region in Chile with absolutely no plans beyond the day ahead. We thought by doing this, we would be travelling like true bad-ass nomads…
… Well, the joke is on us now!
Travelling without a plan to some places is perfectly doable, but down in Patagonia, we are learning the hard way that sometimes it is necessary to have a plan.
As our RTW trip progresses, we are learning first-hand lessons on how to travel efficiently. We also have picked up some helpful tips from our favorite travel bloggers. Here were some great reads this week:
You know that look other people give when you accidentally, yet very publicly, let a noxious emission slip from between two tightly clenched butt cheeks?
Look familiar?
Of course you do (don’t lie ladies… it happens at least once to everyone).
Well get ready… because this is the exact same look you will get when trying to stumble through a new language while in another country.
You: “Pardoname… Donde es bus.” (Trying to ask for directions to the bus)
Them: …
You: “Puedo comprar dos boletas por el train.” (Trying to buy two tickets for the train)
Them: …
You: Accidentally letting a fart slip in public… Whoops!
Them: …
Well that last one is universal. Let it go, people! Sometimes it just can’t be helped!
But my point is that no matter where you go, when you don’t know the language you will be greeted with the same face.
Don’t be intimated!
Don’t be shy!
The key to enjoying your foreign travels is to become comfortable with these faces and to relish in the learning opportunities. Travelers that not only survive, but thrive, on their RTW journey’s attack their language difficulties aggressively and with a good sense of humor… ego be damned.
Realize that:
- 95% of most people on planet earth are kind, patient, and willing to help a polite and eager foreigner stumbling through a new language.
- That awkward face being made in your direction is 99 parts confusion at your terrible pronunciation and vocab, while only 1 part is mild judgment at your lameness.
- Nothing bad happens when people laugh at you… especially when you cannot understand what they are saying!
So get over any embarrassment you might have and get humiliated early and often by trying the new language whenever you can. Believe it or not, it is much harder to be embarrassed when you don’t understand the language.
Don’t believe me? Try letting one rip next time you are in a foreign land and see how little you care what others think.
Or just start speaking the new language… whatever you prefer.
