Locks With Longhorns

When I was making plans to come to South America, from last April (April 2013 for those of you reading this 2027, long after I'm dead) until, well, up until the day I left, and then when I was making further plans in Buenos Aires (and I guess other places?), I never thought I'd hike in Patagonia.* Before this trip, to me Patagonia was a place with like little streams and flowers (I saw like a 2 second clip on The Discovery Channel about it once or something and THAT was the clip: some flowers around a stream. REVEALING.) and, you know, stuff to look at. Okay, I didn't really know what Patagonia was. Or what was there. Or where it was, except south in South America (still guessing). I just thought it was supposed to be some pretty place to go look at and people wanna go to and blah blah blah. I didn't know what you did there.

But I have since learned.

People talked about in hostels in Buenos Aires** and the more I learned, the more I was like "Hey, that wasn't just some bullshit from TDC. It's a thing." As I met and spoke with more travelers, Patagonia was a recurring theme, er, well topic. Theme doesn't make sense here.*** My interest was increasing all the time.

But then came the tipping point (cue dramatic music. And/or lawsuit from Malcolm Gladwell). Really, the flood gates were opened. Other metaphors. I met a group of three American students, studying abroad***** in Santiago, Chile, visiting Buenos Aires. And, I'm not sure when I met them, i.e., I'm not sure if they'd gone to Patagonia by this time, but I stayed in touch with them.

One of these students was (well, is, she's still alive, but for the sake of the past tense (is this the imperfect?) just let me say "was" here) a girl named Paige Rylander. Female, from Texas, like 20 years old******, with a great smile and who is shy for about 10 seconds and then displays a wit as sharp as a...sharp, pointy thing. She is kind and generous with a radiant personality. Everyone (ok, not everyone, smartass) is instantly or shortly thereafter attracted (platonic sense) to her. And she seems to be about as from Texas as I seem to be from Alabama.

I stayed in touch with Paige after our chance/fateful encounter in Buenos Aires. It was mostly via fighting with snarky comments over Facebook, but, still counts. We hadn't spoken for some time (who knows how long) but basically out of nowhere she messaged me and said the next time we spoke (and that I should remind her to tell me), she'd tell me all about how to get to this fabled "Patagonia" and go hiking, step by step, from Santiago to Punta Arenas to Puerto Natales (I swear you have to have a reservation with Bus Sur from the airport in Punta Arenas now) and then to Torres del Paine, including the talk at Erratic Rock/Base Camp. And she came through in fine style. Paige held to her word and laid it out in such a straightforward manner even I could follow it. No "when you come a fork in the road, take it" nonsense.

For posterity's sake, I have formalized and addendumized (yup, it's a word) her Facebook message and encased it in a blog post on, ahem, my blog (winks at camera) as a shrine, a commemoration for all the word to see of Paige's contribution to humanity: How To Hike The W - Straightforward Instructions For Travelers.

But, it didn't stop there. It would be unfair (to whom, I am unsure) to stop the story there. To say this would be only Paige's only contribution to humanity (not that we've seen others AHEM get on it) but also to say that this was her only contribution to my life. Paige has been a really great part of my trip in South America, albeit most of it has been virtually (not like that, you assholes) via Facebook messages. When we are talking about serious things, she always has kind words and advice. When we are not being serious, which is literally all of the time, she is unleashing her pent-up frustrations on me in the form of clever insults and backhanded insults (no, that's not a typo. Backhanded insults. Figure it out.). I do seem to be the target of her barbs, but it's just as well, it means I have someone to send some back to as well. Everyone needs a sparring partner, and Paige readily agreed even though I insisted I already had too many.

Oh, I guess, I should also mention that I visited her and the other girls in Santiago in the first week of December of 2013 and she showed me around and took me to bars and parties and I had an ABSOLUTE BLAST. So thank you, again, for that, O Texan One. For this and all the reasons above, I give you, until someone comes up with something better, the nickname "Locks with Longhorns". It's a Texas reference, ya see, combined with her combative personality.

Everyone raise your glasses. To Paige.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

*Spoiler alert: GUESS WHAT I DID?!

**Gee, Brennan, some internet research might have served you well here as Patagonia is one of the most-visited places on earth, but hey, Google sure is struggling these days CUZ IT HAS NO INFORMATION. Right? Whatever. Go read The Collective Memory Of Travelers by one Brennan A. Wheeler.

***Sis, you remember that time in the car, we were on the way to school, and Mom was helping Tommy with something, and she goes "Casey, what's a thematic map?" and you deadpanned, "Um, a map with a theme." BAZINGA! I'm sure you weren't trying to be ornery**** but god that was funny.

****I don't know what this word means

*****Juvenile abroad/"a broad" joke

******She was AT LEAST 18, I swear/hope. Also, how old are you, Paige? It doesn't matter. You were in college at the time of this happening. People get the idea.

Straightfoward Instructions For Travelers: How To Hike The W In The Chilean Patagonia

Hello everyone,

I wanted to share directly, albeit in a slightly edited manner, the instructions that were given to me by one Paige Rylander (ahem, Paige, shoutout, holler) for hiking the W. I find that for the uninitiated, there is never enough information on traveling, hiking, how to get things done, even if there is in fact an absolute overabundance of information on a topic. People just don't really know but it helps when something comes from somebody they trust. And so Paige continued the cycle of being a good person and helping out other fellow travelers and gave me these awesome words below, which I now pass on to you, dear reader, in the hopes of continuing the cycle of generosity and people enjoying Patagonia. This was cobbled together from Facebook messages as I recall but the message has remained true even though this is a transcription. Paige was very thorough (giggidy). The main thing I did was format and correct numerous typos, while adding typos of my own.

"Here's whats up:

1. Fly to Punta Arenas (advice: if you plan to camp, buy camping food in whatever city you're in before hand.  I recommend canned tuna, pita bread, and a lot of spaghetti noodles and packets of tomato sauce)
2. There's a bus from the Punta Arenas airport (no one will tell you that it exists but it does and it's called Bus Sur) if you wait long enough in front of the airport it will come and it is cheap to Puerto Natales
3. In Puerto Natales there are millions of hostels, I don't really care which one you pick, but at 3:00 PM go to Erratic Rock Base Camp* (Erratic Rock is a hostel, Base Camp is the bar they own next store) for a talk on how to complete the hike without dying. Make sure you go to this because you should follow the girl's instructions exactly**. And you should rent whatever gear you need there.***
4. Hike the W from west to East and enjoy the most amazing landscape ever. And then tell me how it went.  You'll meet awesome people, too.

I think you would get a good feel for patagonia in about 10-11 days. You do the treck. Stick around in Puerto Natales and see a glacier, take a horseback ride, or something.  Head back to Punta Arenas and see the penguins/some more glaciers. Enjoy the city ect. Then fly out."

From Brennan: Now get ya buns down there and go hike!

*Comment from Brennan, not Paige: say this name fast and see what you get. Just try it. You'll laugh.

**Paige was like "exactly EXACTLY" and I be like "How exactly?" and she like "EXACTLY bold CAPS italics" and I be like "Exactly exactly?" and she be like "Exactly MOTHERFUCKER, I will KILL YOU!" and I be like "Damn, Paige, I'm just playin, don't playerhate, hate tha GAME!" Ok the end.

***You can rent pretty much everything you need there except pants. Their sign with all the items they rent and the price per day says they have pants but they don't. Or maybe they were out of rented pants that day. I don't know. But you can always ask. And I found poles cheaper by $1000 Chilean pesos (about $2 USD) a day.

The Collective Memory Of Travelers

I recently read "The Tipping Point" by Malcolm Gladwell. Yes, yes, it did come out, like, four hundred years ago. Shut up. But I read it. Amongst many other various topics, he talks about these kinds of shared memories. In one case he mentions "transactive memory" but I'm not sure if that's the term here. Basically, I'm talking about shared memory across multiple persons. No, no, not like ESP. It's more like, well, I know my friends Spencer and Dillon are more car buffs than I am. So, I don't learn a ton of information on my cars because, in addition to not being that interested, I really on them for knowledge and recommendations on cars. Spencer's pretty much driven ever car ever made since he's rented 401,638* cars over his lifetime. I'm not sure why he was surprised he got pulled over for doing under 95 in that Model T on 285. So, you see, I am sharing memory with Spencer and Dillon. I don't know all about cars, but I know they know all about cars and I know them so I go to them when I need information. People do this all the time. I mean, really, our contact list on Facebook, on our phones, Google accounts, etc, are all shared memory. I don't know Spencer's phone number by heart, but I know where to get it.

I mention all this to say this: the collective memory, the collective knowledge, or travelers about traveling, and really kind of the world in general is ASTOUNDING. Let me try to describe it, but I'm sure I'll fail miserably. What do you do when you try to plan a trip? How do you a pick a destination? You throw a dart at a map? You heard about a place from a friend? Read about it in a book? Then what? Why you plan it, of course. How? You Google it? Lonely Planet? TripAdvisor? Wikipedia? Travel Agency? Then what? Book flights, hotels, hostels? Ok, so you get there. You research some more. Talk to a local tourism office. The hotel front desk. The friendly hostel staff. So you've some idea of what to see. And you go out and see it, or at least some of it, and ultimately you are the judge of what is good or bad. Maybe on your list you've got some museums but the first few things you say sucked and you're like "I don't want to walk my ass through some boring museums** after that nonsense. Let's find some lunch, booze, and a futbol match."*** So, now what? Lonely Planet and the rest have let you down. Talk to travelers. Talk to them. Seriously. Where have they been? When a second person mentions a place without you mentioning it first, it's like getting the second source in journalism: IT'S GO TIME.

When you talk to people who have traveled, who are traveling, who have been traveling, you learn SO MUCH. You learn about places you've never heard of and you learn more about places you have heard of. You learn more about places you've been to. You really find the right way to do things. Guidebooks don't have all the information, and even if they seem to, it could have changed. When the traveler says "Go here, take this bus, no one will tell you the bus exists, but it does", LISTEN TO HER****.

These people have been there. They know about it. They know some of the best and most unique ways to experience places. It's not intuitive and they have learned by experience. Learn from them.

When I was hiking the W in Torres del Paine National Park in the Chilean Patagonia, on December 9th one of the girls I was hiking with mentioned "Navimag". It immediately registered with me, though. I, today, December 21st, the day I am writing this article for the first time, I found the e-mail I sent myself the day I first heard the word Navimag, I word hadn't heard since. I sent that e-mail on September 23, 2013. I heard it from Ryan Springer, an American from Pittsburgh traveling in Buenos Aires at the time. We were at Hostel Estoril, on the 6th floor, on Avenida de Mayo in the middle of Buenos Aires, one block from the National Congress building. The e-mail was titled "Navimag" and the body was empty. I sent it as a reminder to myself to Google it. It's a cruise you can take, well, it's the company I suppose, from Puerto Natales to...somewhere. Or maybe multiple places. Puerto Mont and Chiloe are my guesses. Ryan had also told me about going to see the Gray Glacier. I didn't know at the time, but he was describing the first leg of the W.

Do you see? Do you see that?? The things he's talking about, one of them I was currently doing when I heard about the second thing, independently, from another traveler whom I was trekking the W with. I heard about it and said, "That's two sources. Two independent sources. It MUST be good."

I suppose the most important thing that happens when you listen to these people is trust, trustworthiness, and confidence. When you get to a know a traveler, a person really in this case, and you get to trust them, you end up trusting their recommendations. You're going to trust what they say over what the guidebook says.

One more thing: how do we capitalize on this? You can't. Or, at least, I don't know. I don't know how you market trust like that. I'm sure someone in marketing has, so get on that.

*Approximately

**Not all museums suck. Just most. The Louvre and the Smithsonian are exceptions.

***This has never been my experience, I swear.

****Sneak preview of my post on one Paige Rylander