Hello.

The entire Chile thing is not finished yet (oh horror), but the film of it is all done.
Could anybody tell me how I can upload it so that you all can watch if you like?

On another note life is treating me with the same bland indifference as usual, though I'm currently writing, well, co-writing an epic novel called Spiral.

Most of you already know this but, heh.

That is all really,

- Infy

And here is the final bit of chapter four. I haven't written anything beyond this (lazy me) though I'll get right too it.

Enjoy.

- Infy


The weather had not magically changed overnight however, and was still stormy the next morning and so we had to forgo the penguins.
On top of the fact that the tires were all as thin as a pipa toad, the breaks didn’t work and two hairline cracks where slowly growing on either side of the windscreen, converging in upon each other.
So after a flurry of telephone calls with Alamo in Santiago we managed to convince them to give us a new car.
In lieu of this we drove to an area close to Santiago, which we thought would be more scenic. Vina de Mar housed an exhibition, which, in turn, housed a large collection of Easter Island sculptures. It was called Fonk.

Vina de Mar was a small, dirty and smelly city, completely comprised of blocks of houses and streets full to overflowing with cars and car exhaust in equal quantities.
However, we managed to find a hotel going by the name of “Magno” that was comfortable.
We stayed the night and darted off the next morning to visit the museum.
Of course, since everything that can go wrong will, invariably, do so, the museum was closed and only open in an hour.
A word of advice: Never trust Chileans on matters of facilities being open or not. If they say it will be open the entire day, it will be shut and closed down months ago. The opposite applies too.

Anyhow, to pass the time we visited a park nestled in the mist of the city – a beautiful oasis among the smog.
The museum, when we finally managed to enter its gloomy depths, was as interesting as I expected it to be. Not very much.
However, there was a collection of obsidian blades which the population had used to hack into each other after they had cut down every last tree on the island and realized, suddenly, that they didn’t have enough resources to continue living.
The only thing about Easter Island that I found interesting was the fact that it seemed to be what will happen to the world in miniature. The natives spent all their time erecting larger and larger statues to some non-existent deity to even care that they were systematically destroying the entire nature on the island and so, destroying themselves. The entire thing ending in a blood bath.
Sound familiar?
In the not too distant future we will have far too many people on the globe, have destroyed too many of our forests, caused too much terrain to become unusable and so, it will end in a huge blood bath.
I’ll look forward too it. I’ll be suffused with the grim satisfaction of being proven right.
Better stock up on your obsidian blades.



Finding Alamo Rent a Car in the midst of the enormous sprawling city that was Santiago consisted of a lot of shouting, anxiety and frequent questioning of locals that couldn’t escape in time.
Between these helpful mediums we managed to find Alamo. What struck me was that every city in Chile appeared to have exactly the same street names. There was always a street called O’Higgins, a revolutionary who apparently did nothing particularly incredible other then escaping to Argentina after people started to get annoyed with him. Manuel Montt, Sant Martin, Manuel Rodriguez, Pratt and Miraflores were another handful, along with many others that escape my memory right now. Dratted thing.

To cut a long story and a lot of arguments short Alamo decided to give us a new car, even in the face of them having to actually do some work and change the permits on the car allowing the new one access to Argentina. This would take until the next day however, since nobody could be really bothered right now and we were told to return in the morning. This we did.

The new car was like our old one, except black and slightly larger. We all got in, admired its sparklingly new interior and bounced off.
I say bounced in the literal sense. The car seemed to rest on a series of powerful springs and the entire car body bounced up and down at the least bump in the road. I imagined the car leaning to one side in a corner, then springing back into place, lifting into the air entirely and flipping around onto the car hood.
As the car jiggled down the road seemingly training to break some world record at hop skip and jump the mental vision I had didn’t seem illogical or funny in the slightest.

Heya! I just figured out how to work the ScrapBook and I've posted a few pictures up for all of you to look at. Its not much since with this connection I have right now uploading one takes five years.

But more will follow.

Enjoy!

- Infy

p.s. to find the pics you just have to click on my profile and then click on ScrapBook on the option bar thing!

This chapter is short because I haven't been able to write any further and I have no idea when next I can update this, so here it is. If rather prematurely.

- Infy


Chapter Four

A Skulk of Foxes


A fox (Canis fulvipes), of a kind said to be peculiar to this island, and very rare in it, and which is a new species, was sitting on the rocks. He was so intently absorbed in watching the work of the officers, that I was able, by quietly walking up behind, to knock him on the head with my geological hammer. This fox, more curious or more scientific, but less wise, then the generality of his brethren, is now mounted in the museum of the Zoological Society.


- from the lost notebooks of Charles Darwin



And so we left San Pedro de Atacama to retrace our steps back down to Santiago for the next leg of our trip, one that would lead us to the very south of the long noodle that was Chile.
It was a few hours later, at petrol station in the middle of nowhere that Gerd noticed a front tire was steadily loosing air. We were lucky that the car had chosen a gas station to suddenly give out on us, and not in the middle of the desert.
That would have proven slightly inconvenient. That was in massive sarcasm in case you hadn’t noticed.

So we got out of the car and opened the trunk so as to extract the tire changing gear that all cars are supplied with. All cars that is, except this one.
We searched everywhere, removed all the luggage, looked underneath the seats and even rapped against likely hidden compartments with our knuckles in search for some kind of secret sliding panel.
As I expected, this search ended up being fruitless. To extend the metaphor we did find some seeds, in the form of a sort of pouch containing a number of metal objects that were of no use whatsoever.
Nobody in the gas station seemed to have any tools for the job, so we asked some car owners if we could borrow them. We could, in fact, do just such a thing though there was a snag.
The spare wheel was fixed underneath the car with no means of removing it other then dissembling the entire car.
Altercation abounded and the general consensus was reached that we had to pump up the wheel with air and drive the short distance to Antofagasta where, they assured us, would be places where we could have everything fixed.
So we motored to Antofagasta.
Antofagasta was a sprawling city next to the ocean, smelly, dry and decrepit and appearing as abandoned as the desert surrounding it.
It was, however, thriving and before we lost ourselves completely in its bustling depths we stopped at a police station to ask exactly what we were supposed to do and where we were supposed to do it.
I, prudently, stayed in the car while Gerd and Daniela attempted to wrestle with the language and thick minded policemen at the same time.
Then we had our first stroke of luck. Someone came up to me and started to speak, of all things, English. This was very much a first as most Chileneans don’t speak that language. He asked me first if the two strange humans altercating inside the police station were my parents. I admitted that yes, in fact, they were. He then asked what was wrong. I explained at great length and detail what was wrong with our car. Namely the tire that was loosing air at ferocious rate, like a starved dog inhuming a salami. He disappeared and I thought, for a second, he had abandoned me to my fate. But he appeared a few minutes later with a variety of tools and darted off to the police station to help out. And so, a few minutes later, a green and white police van shot out of the station with Gerd, Daniela and Alvaro, that was the English speaking Chilenean’s name, in hot pursuit. They all bundled into the car and with a slamming of doors we shot off after the police van. For a few seconds I had the rather strange sensation of the world having gone topsy turvy, since police normally were, I would have thought, the ones to do the pursuing. But apparently they were just leading us to a repair station.
When we arrived Alvaro spoke a flood of Spanish in the general direction of two orange suited individuals and from then on things set into motion. The car was jacked up, the wheel removed and the spare wheel kicked loose. It turned out to be so old and decrepit that they opted to repair the old one rather then risk the world in general by fitting us out with it.
Half an hour later the nail that had punctured the tire had been located, the hole patched up and the entire thing fitted back on. We paid the modest sum demanded in relief and jumped back into the car again.
After exchanging email addresses we said goodbye to Alvaro and drove off at speed.

A handful of hours later saw us at Pan de Azucar, to see the national park residing in its clammy clutches. The region was, however, utterly devoid of anything other then a handful of forlorn looking cormorants sitting like crows on the blackened rocks overlooking the sea.
After much driving hither and thither we located a park devoted to cacti, and even located the key to access the park at a sort of information centre close too it.
Once we finally drove into it, we knew it had been worth it. The golden sand was richly crusted with cacti that looked black and eerie in contrast. I was eating pistachio nuts at the time, periodically flinging the inedible shells out of the car window, which would prove extremely fortuitous. Since when we stopped to film a particularly beautiful scene a Culpeo, another desert fox darted across the sand to nuzzle at the discarded pistachio shells. I slipped out of the car, my bare feet whispering against the sand as I sank into it, avidly filming the little fox. More appeared, until three were trotting here and there among the cacti and low shrub. When no more nuts were forthcoming they yawned and snuggled down on the warm sand, observing us with a distinctly languorous air. They were beautiful creatures, their delicate almond ears large and perked up, their tail long and thickly furred. Their markings were generally a brownish red, with a streak of silver along their backs and down their tails, enhanced only by a thin line of black, two inches or so long marking the middle of the tail.
They touched noses, nuzzled each others ears and trotted off, disappearing among the cacti.

This more then made up, and even drove the frustration of the errant tire from our minds.
We spent the night at Punta de Chores, a rather lacklustre sort of town but the Cabana we stayed at was not so much a hotel room but more like a hut, containing kitchen, living room and more bunk beds then we knew what to do with. It was right up next to the ocean, white shells littering the path down to the beach. A cold wind swept from the sea and the waves were large and white tipped. This defeated our plans to take a boat and go to watch the penguins at the nearby island, so we hoped we could do so tomorrow.

Hello again!

Internet is getting increasingly rare and we are doing so much driving there is not a lot to write about or enough time to write it. However, here is chapter 3 and 4 (next post)


- your Infy



Chapter Three

The Atacama Desert


There are many very beautiful flowers; and, as in most other dry climates, the plants and shrubs possess strong and peculiar odours---even one’s clothes by brushing through them became scented. I did not cease from wonder at finding each succeeding day as find as the foregoing. What difference does climate make in the enjoyment of life!


- Darwin


We drove off again early the next day. Apart from the respite the day before we had been travelling pretty much non-stop and I was pretty much at the end of my tether. However, the main leg of our journey was now at hand. All the way from Vincuna up to San Pedro de Atacama.
This was however, impossible to do in one day so we opted for a two day power drive with over nine hours of driving every day.
So we trundled from Vicuña to La Serena, then up the highway, Routa 5, to Vallenar.

The landscape around us became spasmodically different. Ores of red sandstone crisscrossed over the rocky surface of the mountains to the right of us, like bloodied veins, beautiful against the pale, creamy ochre of its sandy sides. The mountains mix of grey, light blue and butter white was peppered by green acne, shrubs, their colour faded to a dusty greenish grey by the wind and sun.
The mountains forming a series of ridges that ran the length of the right side of Chile looked as if fat giants fingers were splayed over the ground

A little before Vallenar it became dryer and dustier and the mix of cacti and small bushes became more sparse.
We drove into a series of mountain ridges that rose all around us like huge waves in an ocean swell. A kaleidoscope of colour so vivid and vibrant it defied the senses, copper green flowed between fields of canary yellow while ribs of an almost ruby red rock stood out starkly like a pulmenary artery.
We zipped through Vallenar, which was nothing but a collection of dilapidated huts in the midst of a green oasis and continued to Copiapo.
The landscape now became flat and dusty, not so much sand as strewn rocks and cracked clay, with rocky ridges interspersed by dunes lining the horizon.
We stopped for the night at Bahía Inglesa and then it was off again all the way up past Chañaral, past Antofagasta, past Calama and then right down all the way to San Pedro de Atacama.
The landscape quickly became flat and barren, a mass of browns and yellows as far as the eye could see, interspersed only by the constant line of distant mountains, hazy in the distance. The heat was tolerable in the car, but the road had long since dissolved into a reflective
flickering haze and the peaks rippled and swam out of view as if they were made of liquid.

Along the way train tracks crisscrossed over the road flagged by copious amounts of stop signs at which all cars duly stopped before driving on, even when there was no sign of any train as far as the eye could see. And due to the flatness of the desert one could see very far indeed. A few people had exploited this stopping complex and were selling icecream.
“There are few things one must not do, and to buy icecream in the desert is one of them,” said Gerd, dryly.
This was, in case you haven’t noticed, the first spoken sentence I’ve written yet.
This is because neither Gerd or Daniela had said anything remotely funny until now and even so I had to convert this into English thereby imbuing an aura of intelligence that Gerd does not, in fact possess.
This is dry humour, by the way.

All along the road appeared, with frightening regularity, tiny shrines with a collection of crosses, pictures of Jesus, baby Jesus, Virgin Mary with Jesus and more Jesus. Along with numerous flowers and a collection of sacrificed fruit. In a way I admired the incredible zeal of placing offerings of fruit at a Christian cross in the middle of the driest desert in the world, with nothing other then highway for miles. Even so I would have thought placing these shrines further away in the desert would make more sense. At least the few creatures that lived there could eat the fruit.

We reached San Pedro de Atacama just as the sun was starting to dip down behind the horizon. It was a dusty little town full of adobe huts and buildings, the rusty red fitting in very well with its barren surroundings. It seemed, however, almost an oasis with flourishing green trees and flowering plants in abundance.
The town was a mass of confusing streets and back alleys, and for all its huge preponderance of hotels and cabanas it was horrifically difficult to find one we liked. They were all under partial construction, horrific or so expensive it made our head spin. There was no comfortable middle road. So half an hour later we, in exasperation, asked a person if he knew of any good hotel. By some freak lucky chance he talked English, was a tour guide and knew practically every hotel in San Pedro. So we kidnapped him and bundled him in the car and practically forced him to help us find something.
Bemused he agreed to this and after fifteen minutes of frantic hotel hopping we finally found one. A large complex with an elegant looking house standing in front of a large garden behind which stood various cabanas which were large, spacious and comfortable. Birds fluttered around this haven in abundance and the landlady even had two German shepherds. The species of dog, not actual human German shepherds.
They looked rather moth-eaten though and didn’t inspire any confidence in their protective capabilities.

There were three main attractions around San Pedro. Valle de la Luna, the salt flats and the Tatio Geysers. We had two days to see all three. So the next day refreshed after a long sleep, a first for the frenetic past week, we, bright eyed and bushy tailed got into the car to visit the salt flats.

The salt flats were not as I expected them to be. In World of Warcraft, a 3D online multiplayer roleplaying game there is a region called “The Shimmering Flats” which is white and crusted with salt, cracked and splintered in roughly octagon shapes by the beating sun. It was very beautiful and I expected these flats to be similar, if only “more” somehow.

The difference could not be more pronounced. The salt flats were a wrinkled mass of white salt and brown mud crusted and as carunculated as a walnut. There were two pellucid pools of vibrantly blue water lying in the midst of the salt flats, its shores white with crusted salt. Several small brown birds ran up and down the edges of these pools, looking ridiculously like animated fluffy spherules.
Flamingos of a particularly interesting shade of salmon, the underside of their wings as black as tar, littered the limpid pools like a collection of vibrant lawn ornaments that had all, for some strange reason, come to life. They dipped their heads, immersing their strangely curved bills into the waters, filter feeding on the micro-organisms that frequented the salt-saturated waters.
Some even took flight, looking surprisingly graceful for a bird consisting mostly of leg and neck.

Valle de la Luna, or, Moon Valley was best seen in the evening. And that was when we drove down to see it. The setting sun causing the red rocks to glow golden.
Its name says it all really. The mass of rocky outcrops and mountains along with deep depressions and fissures in the rocks gave the impression of being on the moon; it captured the sense of desolation to perfection. As the golden disc slowly slipped down the sky we got out of the car and followed a well beaten track up the side of a large dune made out of a sort of dusky black sand. The effect was marred slightly by a large sign proclaiming, in lurid letters, “Please do not throw yourself off the large dune,”.

We had to get up early the next morning, around fourish for the tour to the Tatio Geysers. This we could not do alone since the way too it was confusing and took a few hours of driving. Since the geysers were best seen at the crack of dawn driving in the dark would also prove hazardous alone.
Sleepily we stumbled around getting everything ready, moving a little like zombies just arisen from a freshly dug grave. Mouldy around the edges but not at the stage of waving rotten limbs around just yet.
I zoned out for most of the journey there, my brain shutting down into a listless sort of unconscious state while the van jam-packed with people juddered and bumped its way along the untended roads, so unlike the obscenely perfect highway leading through the Atacama desert.

We arrived just as the sky began to turn indigo, streaks of pink already flourishing over the horizon, which was turning aquamarine blue. White pillars of sulphurous smoke gushed out of bubbling pools and hissed out of holes in the ground all over the valley we had driven into. The thick white steam billowing up from all over the hissing ground sent the silhouettes of the hills around us into an incandescent haze, beautifully mystic. We got out of the car, shivering slightly in the frosty air, the night having minus temperatures – an extreme contrast to the blazing heat of the mid-day sun. Streams of the sulphurous water had frozen to a white glazing over the ground, a mass of blackened rocks, rusty reds and sulphurous yellow frosting around the edges of the bubbling pools.
After a while we all bundled back into the van and drove off. A desert fox, a Culpeo trotted up to the van to bid us farewell, and to pose for the cameras that suddenly appeared all around.

Hello again. Chapter two is up. I'm woefully behind but I'll try to catch up in the next few days. I just hope I have internet to pose it.

=P


Chapter 2

An Auspicious Beginning

Two species of acacia, which are stunted in their forms, and stand wide apart from each other grow in large numbers. These trees are never found near the sea-coast; and this gives another characteristic feature to the scenery of these basins. The view was here pre-eminently striking: the dead level surface, covered in parts by woods of acacia, and with the city in the distance, abutting horizontally against the base of the Andes, whose snowy peaks were bright with the evening sun.

- Darwin



I won’t go into much detail about Santiago. There isn’t much to say since I hadn’t slept and had to experience Santiago by being dragged hither and thither for no apparent reason by Gerd and Daniela while being afflicted by a migraine which had managed to lodge itself firmly in my brain and was happy turning it into something that would resemble jelly.
Rinse and repeat for the next day.
There were, however, some highlights. Daniela wanted to get a Chilenean sim card for her mobile phone so she wouldn’t have to pay exorbitant amounts of money just to send an sms to her friends back home. And so we sashayed off and duly found a shop, Claro, that sold such things. We strolled in and were faced with the difficulties of altercating in something resembling a vibrant mix of English, German, Spanish and Portuguese. With a smattering of Japanese thrown in for good measure. We were placed in the jurisdiction of a rather lost looking lady who led us to a booth stamped with the number “42”. Those of you who do not know what this means should buy Douglas Adam’s “Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy”. If you insist in not reading this incredible book then you should just stab yourself in the gut right now. Since life would have no meaning for you anymore.
However, a good few hours later we had, in fact, managed to get a sim card charged with a large amount of pesos. However, we could not telephone or send sms’s back home as we had hoped, no. First you had to telephone locally for some 5000 pesos before you were allowed that luxury.
The reason for this eludes me to this day.

Then, finally, we were off. We rented a car, a large silver land rover (carefully taking photographs of all the scratches and defects so we wouldn’t be charged for them later on) and travelled all the way from Santiago up the main highway to La Serena. From there we took a right turn off, passed Vicuña and ended in Pisco de Elqui.
Pisco de Elqui was situated near the end of a long valley, a charming little village nestled within the greenery that sprouted all around the three streams that wound its way along the valley bottom. Looking through the leafy fronds surrounding the little Cabaña we were going to spend the night you could see the mountain ridge rising high up, the words “barren” and “devoid of life” perfect to describe its dusty peaks. It was really quite absurd, the long ridges rising high to either side sandy and covered with dehydrated bushes counterpointed by the line of lush vegetation winding its way down the narrow valley.
The setting sun filtered in over the basin causing the very tips of the ochre coloured mountain ridge to burst into flames. As the sun dipped lower and the light playing on the summits became an almost blood red, the far mountains seemed to erupt into a spectral bloom of colour, the jagged peaks causing deep tracks of shadows to snake its way down the mountain surface. It looked like a charred vale, surrounded on all sides by the glimmering embers of a very old fire.

The next day we drove to Vicuña. It was a charmless town, nearly all of the adobe houses daubed with lurid paintwork to cover up the cracks in the walls and the roads splintered and littered with plastic offal. Thanks to the help of Nina, a German employee at the hotel in Pisco de Elqui, we stayed at a place one could only describe as “cute”. Bougainvillea sprawled languidly over the rough stone wall separating the house from the street, its deep purple flowers a sudden splash of colour on the dusty road. The house only had a handful of rooms to stay in, with a communal bathroom, but the beds were soft and cuddly, the furniture grandmotherly in an especially nostalgic way and it had Wi Fi. So it was, as far as I was concerned, paradise.
From then on, Vicuña became much nicer. The plastic litter suddenly, and for no apparent reason completely disappeared, the lurid and touristic shops became cute and we found a small little shop that sold the best hot chocolate I have drunk in years. The owner of the shop was an Austrian by the name of Steffani and told us that the locals did not appreciate her chocolate, nor her fresh fruit and vegetables at all. Apparently ecological thinking still needed to be invented.

It was evening before we set out again, this time to take a tour of the observatory. The sun had already disappeared behind the mountains by the time we had arrived at the observatory, the white domed buildings situated on a high plateau overlooking Vicuña. The mountains in the distance were a pitch black silhouette, almost spurious against the blood red skyline. One by one the stars materialized, little pinpricks of scintillating light floating in the congested gallimaufry of dark blues and inky blacks that made up the sky above us.
We were assigned an English speaking guide along with a medley group of assorted people that spoke the same language and after some mild altercation were led up into the white dome which housed the telescope. It was surprisingly small, but that, the guide explained, was because this was a touristic observatory. In the Atacama desert there were telescopes called VLT’s. An acronym for Very Large Telescope. After the laughter had died down he went on to explain that there was a new telescope currently being built called OWL, to be finished in about fifty years. He explained that it stood for OverWhelmingly Large telescope.
I decided to give up any hope I had in scientists sense of originality.

Things picked up from there. We had a good look at Jupiter, a bright white dot joined by four moons, in a perfect diagonal line, two on one side, two on the other. Then the telescope was pointed at Alpha Centauri, another little dot that looked, for all the world, like four pixels constantly flicking through all the colours in the spectrum. When queried the guide explained that this was because of our atmosphere, the star being only a few inches over the mountains that were now almost invisible against the ebony sky.
Then we looked at the smaller of the magellanic clouds, the telescope pointed at a nebula that housed with in. It was only then that the real incredible scope of what I was seeing drove home to me. The swirling, almost dancing smoke like nebula, peppered with stars and open spaces of dark matter was among the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen in my life. It was black and white, since coloured nebulas could only be seen if run through various filters, and it was not as clear as the computer produced images you could download from the internet but seeing it first hand was a completely different matter.
We had a look at a star cluster next, over a million stars all scrunched together in a tight ball, the shining dots becoming more spaced out the further from the cluster they were. Words really do fail to encompass the awesome beauty and sense of exhilaration this inspired. There is really nothing more beautiful then space.
The stars, so beautiful, so tantalizingly close, but so incredibly far away.

Hello all.

I was lucky enough to get a Wi Fi connection seconds after tottering out of the plane and so was able to write down the horrific happenings down to post up here.

Nothing much more to add other then have a nice read, and please overlook and grammtical errors or if its not witty and exciting enough. My migrain and exhaustion might have something to do with that.

It will get better, promise!


Chile

07 – 08


Chapter One

Abominable Airports


It is no coincidence that in no known language does the phrase, “As pretty as an airport,” appear. - Douglas Adams



I have always taken private pleasure in the way airports always seem to find new methods of annoying me. Since it gave me good material to write about. Nobody wants to read about how smooth and amazingly easy everything went, people want to read about annoyances and funny and infuriating happenings that prove interesting and involving.

My parents, Daniela and Gerd, and myself go once a year to some exotic location and traipse all over it for around two months. This time it was going to be Chile.
So at exactly 6 p.m. 22.11.07 we bundled together our luggage, lugged it down the stairs and forced them into the back of the car. Our luggage constituted two bags, a suitcase, two trolleys and my rucksack. My rucksack contained my entire collection of electronic equipment, which was extensive. The entire thing weighed 12 kg, exactly. Which was, in fact, the maximum weight for hand luggage. So that was rather serendipitous.

We arrived at Düsseldorf Airport a scanty twenty minutes after our departure and while Gerd went off to park the car we checked in.
The large terminal board hanging over the main hall showed various flights, followed by various letters behind it.
There was our flight. PARIS – ORLY.
This would prove to be a rather interesting omen.

Usually the personnel who do the check-ins are either cold and efficient or morose and almost suicidal. We, by some stroke of good luck, happened to come across the only one who had a good mood. She was a diminutive lady with mousy brown hair and large glasses perched upon her nose like some exotic butterfly. She was chatty and outgoing and we joked and talked and ended up forgetting we were supposed to check in at all.
However, we did manage to check our bags in and ended up moseying off to catch our plane.
The baggage scanning went without a hitch and soon we had boarded the plane and were lifting off into the sky.

We were headed to Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris as a transfer point before the long jump to Santiago de Chile.
As the plane angled in to land a scant hour later I could see the shining lights of the city in the pitch black night, shining out from under the screen of clouds like some furtive glow-worm hiding beneath a blanket of cotton wool.

I had, in previous reports, gone into ecstasies describing the horrific qualities of Frankfurt airport. Using phrases like, “As complex as a web spun by an inebriated Funnel-web spider,”. I was not, however, prepared for Charles de Gaulle.

It started with the plane landing in the midst of what looked like a small city, which turned out to the airport complex. It looked, from the outside, as if it had been built by a veritable armada of architects, all of which having no idea what they were actually supposed to be doing. The plane, due to the weird structure of the airport, had to stand in the midst of nowhere while a bus was sent to pick up the passengers. We all crammed until there was barely enough room to twitch a toenail and we were off. The bus driver seemed to have homicidal tendencies and careened along a pointlessly twisting road that lead through arches, tunnels and inner compounds while we all went flying from one side of the bus to the other, causing the careening bus to tip dangerously.

The bus finally came to a halt and we all spilled out, practically clawing our way to freedom. Our only option was to walk along a tunnel like path into the building until we came to a fork. One sign pointed to the right and said “Exit / Sortie” and “Baggage Retrieval”. The other sign pointed to the left and said, “Transfers”.
Using our logic we came to the conclusion that left was the correct path to follow and promptly followed it. The current building seemed to be built with a zeppelin’s air sack in mind and so the walls to the left of us curved outwards and up alarmingly leaving very little level ground, between the right concrete wall and the left, to walk on. We passed an official looking lady dressed all in black as if to a funeral and asked her if we were, in fact, going in the right direction.

Apparently, we were not. Even though we were transferees we had to go to the Exit / Baggage Retrieval annex. So we lugged it all the way back and took the right fork noticing for the first time a miniscule sign that seemed to have been recently added which pointed out that the right path lead to Gate E. Which was where we had to go. We entered a wide sweeping hall that meandered in a half hearted half moon until becoming hazy due to the distance. Interspersed at irregular intervals were conveyers belts carrying some very lonely and morose pieces of luggage seemingly carried around and around for all eternity. We turned right into another hall which appeared to be several kilometres long and hurried along it, taking a series of escalators up and into another huge area that would have accommodated several football fields and left room to spare. Here we had a passport check. Then a series of escalators took us down into an oval sort annex with steel and glass windows arrayed all around. Here we waited until a train slid along the right side of the oval, coming to a humming stop next to the steel and glass, which slid to one side with little hums and clicks. Bemused we stepped in. After a few more minutes the electric automatic train set off with a slightly disturbing “Boing!” sound and we whistled away along a track that dipped up and down crazily like some sort of joy ride. After passing through what looked like various prison compounds we finally stopped at one and piled out into a roughly triangular room, with the roof at the tapering point sloping upwards to a higher level.

By this time the huge pack of people had thinned somewhat and the few that we saw meandering around had lost and hopeless expressions on their faces. Reminiscent of sheep separated from the heard and currently deep in wolf infested territory.
We ended up in another line, the right hand saying transferrals, the other saying exit. Of course, the exit line turned out to be the correct one and we were finally told too follow the orange line to the baggage check area.
It seemed to me a very small step away from following the yellow brick road.
However, we did manage to get to the baggage check, sailed through there and into a mall, found our way out and finally piled into the plane, which was just leaving.

Some fourteen hours later we landed in Santiago de Chile.
We followed the flood of people along the path to the baggage reclaim and duly managed to find all our pieces, though one of our bags had been set aside and plastered all over with stickers proclaiming SAG. I didn’t know what to make of this.
That was, until I spied a few sniffer dogs wearing green jacket type things with the words SAG emblazoned on the back.
Apparently our bags had been snuffled thoroughly and the green sticker of suspicion had been plastered all over our bag.
Sure enough that bag was thoroughly disembowelled at customs and two apples, a packet of cranberries and a huge collection of boiled sweets were promptly confiscated with the encompassing excuse of “Hazardous to Agriculture”. This made little sense and even though we offered to eat the offending materials right there and then they didn’t let us. Apparently boiled sweets being able to take root and grow with such astounding rapidity they took it upon themselves to snarf the lot. Not to mention the cranberries.

Santiago, when we finally managed to extricate ourselves from the airport we took a taxi and cruised to our hotel, the Vegas Hotel in the Avenida Londre.
Santiago de Chile is hot, dusty and so full of people it seemed reminiscent of a termites nest. Apparently a quarter of the Chelonian population lives there. Which made for quite a lot of congestion. However the hotel was small and cheap, the rooms comfy and shower hot and steamy. And it had wireless internet and a lot of electrical outlets, which was enough to make me feel glowy inside no matter what the surroundings.

So, in short, it was an eventful first day.

To be continued...

Oookay, here goes.

Firstly, an update to this barren wasteland that I just happen to call my journal.

Finally.

The main and groundbreaking reason for me to update this thing is the fact that I'm off to Chile. For two months. Starting next Thursday and coming back around the 8th of January.

However before I extrapolate upon that I will give a short review of what has happened during the time gap between this post and the last one.


Nothing.

Actually, this is not strictly true, since I have, at long last, received my long awaited laptop.
After you have finished stumbling over the plethora of commas that peppered my previous sentence I will now move on.

We are off to Chile. Last year it was Mexico, now it is Chile. Firstly we will land in Santiago, rent a car and go trundling off north into the Atacama desert. Then we will go all the way south.
That is our trip in a nutshell.
Now, I will be writing a report of my movements daily, and update this up onto here each time I'm blessed with an internet connection.

Now, I would like to point out that this report will be written in my eclectic, if flowery, writing style and will, I hope, be an interesting and entertaining read.

I have nothing much more to add, since everything will be written in the travel report and so I'll come to a premature end.
To make sure you will actually check for updates and read this painstaking report I will write, I'll send various reminder emails.

So ya boo sucks to you.

... I never thought I would be driven to actually -write- that...


Whatever. See ya all when I get back from Chile (if I don't end up hospitalized due to Internet deprivation).

- Infalle

Well hello again.

It has been quite some time since I last wrote, I know. Again, things have happened in my life that is worth recording.

Firs and formost, I've finally switched my internet provider to Arcor. Now I have 16000 kbit connection. Finally. Woot. Yippie... and other such jocular ejaculations. Speech ejaculations, you get me, not the other kind. Jeez...
Now I just have to cross my claws and hope that T-Online has canceled my connection like they promised to do so.

I've been away all of last week on a trip to Sardinia with my mother and my grandparents. It was... to say the least, interesting.
The flight was short, only one and a half hours or so, though we did need to wake up at five a.m. to get to the airport on time.
I had made drastic changes to my rucksack. Instead of stuffing it with a plethora of electronic equipment, I had done something I never would have thought myself cable of doing. I packed only sketching equipment and books. Sure, I still took my laptop and iPod but those don't really count.
The books were an Agatha Christie and three DnD books.

Blood heck but those things are heavy. Who would have thought DnD books combined with all the other stuff I put in would be enough to make an elephant pause for thought before slinging it over a shoulder.

However, I'm digressing.

The flight went well and passed in no time, mostly because I was trying to get my brain around the intricate rulings of DnD and failing miserably.

Sardinia, once we arrived there was dusty, dry and very hot. The landscape was a wash of reddish earthy colours and, like some sea of pimples, green bushes of many different hues. That was the upshot of the entire landscape, it having few trees, and those that were there were small, stunted, and bush like. The bushes on the other hand were large, round and tree-like. So it made a good and, once you got used to it, rather pretty combination.

My mother was driving for the first time in like, years, and this brought with its fair share of hair-raising occurrences. The car was a Fiat Chroma, large, silver and about as user friendly as an automatic door. In other words, it was useful while being annoying at the same time.

I won't elaborate - I'll leave that up to your imagination. I just can't be bothered right now.

*grin*


Anyhow, the hotel was large and luxurious and I had a lot of time to myself to rest and sleep and of course, sketch.

We went on various expeditions, but none were noteworthy. One we drove around the base of the mountains there, which were completely white due to the chalk.

So all in all, it was an okay holiday. Though by the end of it I was close to biting something I was so bent on getting back to my internets. *snuggles internets close*

My internets... how I love thou... *coughs* Ahem. I digress.

The day I will finally get my laptop with Windows, allowing me to play such delectable games as EvE and CS is coming closer, October to be exact, along with the dates when my English friend Jamie will come to visit, the release dates of Pokemon Pearl and Diamond, Zelda for the DS and the date I will finally get my Wii.

Of course, also the dates I'll get back the results for my Biology GCSE, so I will finally find out if I'm a complete and utter moron or not.

Wish me luck.


That is it for now, I'll put in some sketches that I made on my trip later.


Snugs to and lickkisses to you all...

Your Infy.

Well hi again!

Its been a long time. Well, a very long time. Well, an extremely long time. Well, pretty much a fantastic time span which would make a trip to the far reaches of the galaxy seem like a walk in the park.

Well, maybe that is an exaggeration.

Anyhow, I digress.

Lots has happened since I last posted, and I guess I'd better fill in. Its been really hectic lately, what with my Biology GCSE coming up faster then I could have believed possible and more internet troubles.

I still haven't found out if I have a 16000 kbit connection or an 8000. I guess I'll have to tackle that next, and decisively too.

My Birthday has come and gone with the rapidity and tact of a rampaging rhino. I'm 18 now. Yay, go me. Now I can do stuff... which I'm doing already. Just legally.

Great.

Preasents, well. They consist mainly of money, a few hundred euros worth, a coupon for a driver's license (thoroughly selfish of my parents, they just want me to drive them around. Lazy buggers...) and a coupon for a cat! A real life, fuzzy, furbally cat. With claws and fangs.
I haven't got it yet and with my pessimistic side I think I will never have one, but I'm hoping to be pleasantly surprised.

After my Birthday was over I realized I had only a week to prepare for my exam and so it was a huge rush ending in Biology notes nearly oozing out of my ears as we got into the plane to fly off to London.


The flight went smoothly, which was a relief, as usually my mass of electronic equipment in my rucksack made the poor customs officials think I was lugging around some sort of disemboweled doomsday machine.

London was alternately rainy and cold, and sunny and far too hot, sort of swinging between the two extremes on a daily basis. We came there two days early of my exam, so we spent them going into bookshops and meeting up with my old tutor, David Garratt.

Nothing really exciting happened, other then Mum somehow managed to get tickets (how I have really no idea. Must be osmosis.) for a concert given by Anoushka Shankar, the daughter of the famous Ravi Shankar.
I must say that I was not exactly thrilled, as I didn't much care for her music, having struggled through her album "Rise".

I turned out to be correct. The first song, where she alone played the zither was actually amazing. But it got worse as she added more instruments into the fray. After two more songs a brass band, piano, flute and vocals that sounded as if somebody was brutally strangling a goat all joined in creating a cacophony of sound that made me break into a cold sweat and rock too and fro on my seat in agony.

At least I can say that I've been there.

The exam went rather well, the examination hall was nice and cosy, and my desk was hidden away in a small alcove, much to my pleasure. I love sitting next to a wall. No idea why.

I think I got most of the questions correctly, the results come next August.

Anything else happened worth mentioning? We went to see the musical Stomp, which was pretty awesome and a great way to recover from the ravages of Anoushka.


I just arrived back home today, and since I have more time now I can finally devote more times to my friends, which really are my entire world right now. And rightfully so.

Well, hope you enjoy this small account, those of you who actually read my LJ after I tell you that I actually updated it.

Anyhow.

Love to you all, -hug-


-- Infy

Well, time for some good news for once!

Firstly, I've got internet again. My provider deemed it prudent, after our spammage of complaints, to finally fix it and so everything is ok again.

Secondly, my laptop, which died, miraculously revived again when I brought it to the laptop equivalent of a checkup. It got stage fright and refused to cooperate, and promptly decided to work fine earning me an evil eye from an irate surgeon. But I'm glad its working.

I'm going to have a slight lull in my work after the 14th so I'll be more active after that.

I've got nothing more to say, so bye and until next time.

Infalle

Well.
I'm back from my short holiday to Bruges. I'm a bit late with writing this but I don't think anybody will notice anyway. *grins*

Anyhow. One interesting thing. Bruges is in Belgium (if you didn't know) and has a few good points. One is the pralines you can buy there, and secondly is the beer, which is amazing. One restaurant had over 400 different kinds of beer and that is no exaggeration.

Another thing, I was lucky enough to witness the filming of a scene to the upcoming film "In Bruges". This is, again, not a joke. Apparently there really is a film coming out, staring Colin Farrell. And we watched a filming of a scene in the market square. They picked random people out of the crowd and started blasting smoke onto the wet cobbled streets and a white haired man called "Action!" sporadically and they all moved from one side to the other and back again.

http://www.ropeofsilicon.com/movies.php?id=3447

You can see the overview of the film here.

And I got drunk for the first time in my life! Well, not drunk, but definitely woozy after drinking two bottles of Kwak (a type of beer and also a species of bird). So you can congratulate me there... or not... whichever.


Other news:

My internet is completely fucked up (nothing new there) so I'm going to change the Internet provider tomorrow. I'm, hopefully, going to switch to Arcor which I hope will give me less troubles.

Either way I've had sever emotional swings which I don't usually have as I try to keep everything bottled away and under control. But taking internet away from me is a sure way to get me annoyed =P.

Then of course my laptop... my hated and loved laptop finally died. It won't boot. I'm going to rush it to the laptop equivalent of a hospital tomorrow and see what happens.


Well, wish me luck.

Infalle

Well. Prompted by a letter from T-Online stating that I could upgrade my current connection to 6000 kbits I smelt a rat. Since that was what I was supposed to originally have.

Well, I finally went to a T-Online store and, full of vim and vigor marched up to give them a piece of my mind. Since I had already gone there twice before.

You see, I returned from Brazil to find a veritable deluge of documents stating I had applied for online bills, and the T-Home packet. T-Home is a mix out of a flat rate 2000 kbits connection and Premier television. As we don't watch television and the connection is worse than the one I had already I, full of indignation, marched to T-Online to give them a piece of my mind.

Of course, they were apologetic, promised to change my connection back to normal pronto.

So there I was, in T-Online, asking nonchalantly what my connection was currently. They told me it was the T-Home package. I nearly had an apoplectic fit. Well, I told them to take their T-Home package and stick it up their ass.

Well, not really =P. Anyhow, they checked and found out to their horror that I had TWO internet conncetions active. A V-net thingy with 25000 kbits which would was too powerful for my router and the T-Home. So I was paying for both connections all the time.
Added to that, internet does not work, neither does the telephone as somehow my router or the connection is fried.

He sent a code red alarm to the T-Online central and told me to await another document telling me how sorry they were, a large compensatory bill and the connection I had wanted all along, the 16000 kbit one.

But.. somehow... I don't think it will happen. I'm pretty sure that when I get back from my holiday the entire bloody thing will still not be working.

If it doesn't, I'll switch to a different provider, which is something I should have done a long time ago.

Anyhow, that's all folks!

...

Infalle

You scored as Darkness. Darkness isn't a bad thing at all! So don't worry. Just like darkness you like to be independent and to do things by yourself. You tend to turn a blind eye to things you don't want to see, or things you don't want to change. You can be brutally honest, its good in some ways, because someone has to tell these people. You can be self-centered and mostly concerned about yourself, but if anything happens to anyone you love, your right there defending their honor. You tend to dominate a room, and people who love everything tend to bug you, or annoy you. More than anything you want to be wanted and recgonized. </td> Darkness 75% Air 63% Water 56% Ice 44% Light 44% Earth 31% Fire 19% What Element Are You? (BOY GIRL ANIME PICS & DETAILED ANSWERS) created with QuizFarm.com

Out of shear boredom I resorted to taking another of these tests. By some absurd fluke I managed to take a test that got results that I agree with for once.

Darkness is my main element which I guess is pretty much correct. Air is right next which is also true. I thought air was my main element before darkness thrust its way in. I enjoy flitting from one thing to the next and take life with a carefree, have-as-much-fun-along-the-way
-as-possible attitude. So I guess I'm airy darkness? Does that even make sense?

At least I'm pleased with the results!

Well, here I am. After hearing so much about this Live Journal thing I thought I should, or even must, try it for myself.

So here I am again, trying ineffectually to think of something interesting or specially witty to say for my journal entry. I still have a limited view of how this is supposed to work and I suppose that when I finally press the "Post to" button something will go terribly wrong and I'll have to write it all again.

Such is life.

However, on the upside, I managed to get my user pic and the journal style up and going to my liking, although it was a tough choice between this depressive antsy thing and a style called, appropriately, "Cuteness attack," which was pink with feathers and kittens.

I'm not, currently at any rate, in the right kind of mood for pink kittens though that will probably change sooner or later. So I chose this antsy one which reflects my mood as much as my user pic which is called "Unruhe". This is German for unrest.

I guess the real reason for my mood is my internet. T-online servers seem to hate me and for the past two days my internet has been switching itself on and off like a set of traffic lights with a sadistic and abnormal long time on the red.

I'm going there tomorrow to complain, as I've planned to do anyway since they downsized my internet connection for no reason at all.

Ah well, I've written enough now, I guess. Time for a witty end to a boring entry.

I can't think of anything.

Infalle