Sorry for the delay...

Bienvenido a la Patagonia!

Hi All,

Somehow it's already been almost 3 weeks since I left Chicago for Chile. My apologies for taking so long to get this blog started. As a recap, I'm spending the remainder of 2011 working for NOLS, an outdoor education organization that leads groups into the wilderness on courses lasting from 2 weeks up to 5 months. In 2010 I took a 30-day NOLS mountaineering course in northwest Washington in the Cascades mountain range. One of my instructors was Marcelo, a Chilean mountain climber who works at NOLS Patagonia during the (North American) winter and leads courses in the US in the summer. He is my connection to Chile and is ultimately the reason I was able to come down here.

Ok, enough of that background stuff...
This is Marcelo on my NOLS course last year :)

Marcelo, will you hold my camera so nothing crazy happens to it? Thanks...

I have a lot to catch everyone up on but I'll stick with just the basics in this post. The NOLS campus (el campo) is situated on a hillside and surrounded by mountains on three sides - and the remaining side affords a beautiful view of yet more mountains in the distance. This is the view that gives my home, La Vista Hermosa, its name. 

The vista from La Vista

Currently four of us live in La Vista: Dave, Martin, Clemente, and I. Dave, the other non-Spanish-speaking gringo here on el campo, is coming from Portland and is the new equipment manager at the branch.

Dave

Martin is from Santiago and is also a member of the equipment team. He speaks English well and is therefore constantly being pressed into service as my and Dave's translator. 

Martin

Clemente, my roommate, is from Mexico and normally works at the NOLS branch there. He is here for a month to help with repairs on our kayak fleet. I don't have a picture yet because I'm working on a way to proposition the Spanish-speakers into letting me photograph them without seeming creepy. Perhaps it's a losing battle...

La Vista is somewhat bare-bones as far as amenities go. Although we do have a shower that sometimes even has hot water, there is no other heat in the building except for two small wood stoves. Even with these, it often gets down into the forties inside during the night. For that reason, we spend most of our free time in the common house (La Casa Común), which is nice and warm, has warm showers (usually), and a full kitchen.

La Vista Hermosa

La Casa Comun

Besides La Vista and La Casa Común, there is a main office, another residence for instructors, two equipment buildings, two buildings for food storage and prep, a small climbing wall, a herd of cows and a herd of sheep. And, although it is indeed incredibly beautiful here, we are still in the tail end of winter. I would be remiss if I didn't admit that very often the incredible views more resemble the photo below.

Snow in September

Martin and Dave on the climbing wall

As far as being productive at work goes (technically I am here to work) I've been trying to be a good intern and make myself available to help out wherever. Since I have some computer coding experience, I've been starting to write a few programs to help track and forecast things like equipment usage. I've also been enlisted to troubleshoot the new wireless network that has been set up down here...a task for which I'm utterly unqualified and, consequently, mostly unsuccessful at. Otherwise, I've been helping Dave, Martin, and Tabatha (the third member of that team) in organizing gear for all the students that will be showing up later this week. It's a surprisingly difficult logistical challenge.

A small fraction of the new gear...

More equipment.

Ok, I have quite a bit more to fill you in on but because I'm in danger of being long-winded and since intrepid writing wasn't the primary skill I picked up in my college chemistry classes, I'll save the other stuff for future posts. Let me know in the comments what else you're interested in hearing about.

Thanks for looking,
-Nathan

Here's another sunset...complete with cows for good measure.

Moo