“There is an art, it says, or rather a knack to flying.

The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss.

Pick a nice day, it suggests, and try it.

The first part is easy.”

On Monday, I decided to take that advice to heart. I’d been looking for something big I could do to cap off my travels, and jumping out of an airplane seemed to qualify. What follows is a collection of photographs and observations from that experience.

The company I jumped with is called Skydive Rio. They actually weren’t that professional. It took them several days to get around to replying to my initial email; half the time they didn’t answer their phone. When I asked about how to get to the Jacarepaguá Airport where they’re based, they were like “oh, just take a cab,” but eventually agreed to pick me up from a shopping center at the edge of town. I took the bus out to the mall and spent about 30 minutes waiting for them. They finally did come get me in the crappy little red Fiat pictured above. It was stuffed to the gills with skydiving gear.

Unloading all the parachutes. Skydive Rio seems like it’s almost less a money-making business and more just a bunch of guys who like to jump out of planes and figured out how to get other people to pay them to do it.

Me, trying to look really confident about everything.

Yeah, that's pretty sweet.

Bookstores come in basically two varieties. You have your large, well-lit chain bookstores with broad shelves and fancy displays of the new soon-to-be bestsellers. They smell like fresh ink and are filled with employees who will look your request up on the computer because they’ve never heard of that author. These are your Barnes and Noble’s, your Borderses.

On the other hand, you have your small, dusty, independent/used bookstores, with books stacked to the ceiling on all sides, and no room for special displays. These stores smell like musty, yellowed pages and their employees will not only recognize your requested author immediately, but suggest somebody else who is actually much better, really (they will then quietly judge you for your inferior taste). Exemplars of this variety include City Lights, and Quimby’s Books, but the best ones sometimes don’t even have a name.

I think most readers tend to have a strong predilection for one or the other variety of bookstore, but I actually like them both pretty well. To me, the two are each enjoyable in their own way, but not directly comparable across categories. Today, in Sao Paulo, I wandered into what may be my favorite bookstore of the large-and-corporate type.

As you can see from the photo above, the Livaria Cultura (“Cultural Bookstore”?) is huge, with 3 or 4 different levels, and wide, sloping ramps connecting them. The selection of books was quite broad, although they didn’t have what I was looking for in English. They seemed to stock books by genre, with little regard to the language of publication. Portuguese, English, Spanish, and even a few French and Italian titles all sat next to each other on the shelves, evidence of the patronage of a well-educated segment of the Brazilian population.

There was a nice little starbucks-inspired coffee bar, and the beanbag chairs and staggered risers were super comfy as well. Oh, and there’s that pretty awesome articulated dragon, too.

Yes, you can sit inside this dragon and read.

This quixotic figure stood just outside the main entrance.

Here’s some photos from Cerro Santa Lucía, a park on a hill in central Santiago. It’s a really interesting place, with dozens of different levels, narrow passageways, crumbling stone stairways, fountains, statues, a cannon, a church, and lots of secluded corners where Chilean couples go to make out (PDA is huge in this country). The whole place has kind of a Love in the Time of Cholera feel, there’s lots of shady courtyards with ice cream stands, and it’s probably my favorite place in Santiago to hang out and read a book.


There’s a bunch of entrances to the park, but my preferred one is this elevator. Both for the number of stairs it saves me, and for the friendly old elevator operator who runs it.

The trip was much less strenuous than I had expected. People had told me that walking with the crampons was really tiring. It was harder than regular walking, but the seven hours of hiking included one hour walking through the woods to get out to the glacier, and one hour coming back, so we were actually only hiking on the ice for about five hours. The crampons did add a bit of weight to your feet, and every step you took, the teeth would bite into the ice and require a little extra exertion to extract them, but it wasn’t that draining once you got used to it. At the end, I came away from the trip quite tired, but not absolutely exhausted like I expected to be.

Looking back, I’m not sure that the expedition really needed to be a guided tour. I had assumed that it would be difficult to navigate: a white void with no landmarks and crumbling, treacherous ice. In actuality, there were enormous, distinctive mountains on either side of the glacier, so it was exceptionally easy to orient yourself. There were some crevasses, shafts and fissures in the ice, but they were fairly easily spotted and avoided. Most were ankle-rolling, or at worst, leg-breaking sized, not plunging-to-your-doom, in any case. Before we headed out, the guides had us put on safety harnesses, so that if we did fall down somewhere, it would be easy to attach a rope and haul us back up. The guides were exceptionally paranoid about letting anyone get close to any kind of edge or shaft. The crampons provided such excellent traction that I felt like you’d have to be pretty stupid to fall down any holes. Then again, the guides probably deal with plenty of stupid tourists, so perhaps their caution was justified.

One thing that surprised me was how hard and sharp the ice was. For some reason, I expected that there would be a soft fluffy layer of snow, or at least soft-packed ice on the top. There isn’t. They told us to wear our gloves all the time, not so much because of the cold, but so that if we fell, we wouldn’t cut up our hands on the ice.

Strangely, walking on the glacier reminded me most strongly of hiking on the lava fields in Volcanoes National Park in Hawaii. Except for the fact that one was bright ice, and the other dark rock, they had a lot in common. Both involved walking on a sharp, hard surface that was completely desolate and almost totally devoid of life.

One thing I found really interesting was the degree to which the forms of the ice seemed to mimic land formations: there were ridges and valleys, peaks and and streams. I’m not sure how much of the apparent similarity is simply the result of the human mind imposing a familiar pattern on an unfamiliar landscape, and how much it reveals an underlying similarity. It would be easy for me to believe that the flow of tectonic plates over millions of years and the flow of glacial ice over thousands of years could lead to analogous formations.

The other thing that was really striking was the beautiful, translucent blue color of the ice. It’s a color I had never seen before in nature. Somebody suggested it was a result of minerals dissolved in the water that formed the ice; I hypothesized the color was the result of optical properties (defraction/refraction) of the ice itself. It turns out I was closer to being right, but the real answer has to do with vibrational bond energies and the absorption spectrum of water.

Anyway, photos:

A condor circles high above. These birds were the only animal life we saw near the glacier.

This boat took us across the lake to a small base camp where we gathered gear before starting the hike.

Yeah, lens flare makes anything cooler.

Sunset over Lago Argentino in El Calafate

My cabbie on the way to the airport was quite chatty. Among other things, we had the following exchange (in Spanish):
“How long have you been in Buenos Aires?”
“About a month now.”
“It’s a beautiful city.”
“Yes, very beautiful.”
“And the Argentinian women?”
“They are very beautiful as well.”
“If you want to meet some girls…I know a place we could go.”
“Thanks, but I really need to go to the airport.”
“They’re whores, you understand?” [He clarified in explicit Spanish, to make sure nothing had gone missing in translation. I'd gotten it the first time.]
“No, I need to go to the airport. I have a flight.”

I’ve heard that in a lot of places, it’s common for cabbies to help people find hookers, and they’ll even receive a kickback from a pimp or madam for bringing clients to certain brothels, but I have no idea what was going on here. It’s hard to think of a worse prospective john than a guy headed to the airport at 10 am on a Monday morning. Maybe business is slow in the mornings?

In any case, I made my flight sin prostitutas, and arrived in El Calafate. Everyone had been warning me to hurry up and get down south because winter is fast approaching, but it’s still surprisingly warm here—around 18° C (65° F) during the middle of the day. After so much time in big cities, it’s refreshing to be someplace this rustic. Most of the roads are gravel, and there are horses and dogs just wandering about. There were packs of stray dogs in Buenos Aires, but these dogs seem well fed and looked after; some are sporting collars. I think many people just let their animals roam. There are also a lot of tourist shops here, because it’s the main jumping-off point for visiting the Perito Moreno Glacier. Taken together, El Calafate reminds me very strongly of Estes Park in Colorado or perhaps Moab, Utah.

A slightly larger horse just walked up outside and started chowing down.

Tomorrow, I’m going to hike the glacier. I’ve signed up for the 7-hour “Big Ice” trek, which seemed to be the most hardcore of the excursions offered. Apparently we’ll be strapping on crampons and everything, so I hope I’m up to it. They said to bring waterproof gear in case of rain, so I spent a couple hours today trying to track down an inexpensive poncho. All the shops wanted to sell me stylish, expensive gore-tex jackets with built-in harnesses and other flourishes. I did finally find a place that would sell me what amounts to an unfashionable plastic sack for more than it’s worth. I expect if it rains tomorrow, I will appreciate it. Oh, one thing I thought was cool is that they told us we don’t need to pack water, because we can just melt and drink the glacier itself! So that’s pretty sweet.

I also got a haircut today, but I might post photos of that later. I need to sleep now because our trip leaves bright and early at 7 am tomorrow.

One of the first things we saw after arriving at the park was a family of coatis. They’re basically like diurnal South American raccoons. However, I think they’re much cuter. One of their nicknames is “snookum bears”. Seriously.

Like raccoons, coatis are experts at stealing your garbage. They also have no fear whatsoever of people.

“Kitty? … Doggie?”

Our first glimpse of the falls.

Rainbow in the spray of some of the smaller falls.

Typical tourist shot: Look, we’re near a waterfall!

Los dos hermanos (the two brothers)

It’s actually a brand-new holiday, first celebrated in 2006, intended to commemorate the memory of the victims of that regime, especially los desaparecidos. It seemed to be pretty popular, though. There was a huge parade and street demonstrations. It was an oddly festive atmosphere for such a somber occasion.

There were a ton of people out in the streets

33 years from the genocidal coup

Given the South American reputation for machismo, there were a surprising number of feminist groups marching. This sign reads: We feminists demand, not one more woman victim to prostitution networks.

This puppet of a woman represents negative stereotypes of women, or something like that. The face has slurs written on it; I can't read the sign it's carrying.

Of course, it wouldn't be an Argentinian demonstration without Che Guevara!

This kid's rocking the Che-cape. Guaranteed to attract the chicas

These guys might be taking it a bit too far...

Almost every group of marchers had brought some drummers along.

Jupiter and Semele by Gustave Moreau

The whole museum is devoted to one artist, Gustave Moreau, who I’d never even heard of before. It’s too bad he’s so un-famous, because his work is really quite spectacular. Most of it is executed on a very large scale, with deep, rich colors and an intricate attention to detail. I also found him fascinating for the way he mixes imagery from different traditions. The painting above features the story of Jupiter and Semele, from classical mythology, but quite clearly draws on Hindu and Buddhist iconography. In another of his works (which I’ll try to find an image for later), he mashes together the story of Prometheus with the Christ narrative, representing Prometheus with a crown of thorns, as a sacrificial martyr for humanity.

The museum itself is really cool, too. It’s located in Moreau’s former workshop, and the lower floor preserves the apartment where he lived.

Moreau's Apartment

I want a staircase this cool in my house.

Shot looking West from the Dragon Bridge toward the Triple Bridge.

No, I didn't start flying a sign for Graz in front of the opera in downtown Vienna.

It’s also (for me at least) an emotional rollercoaster. As you’re waiting, you’re being rejected by dozens and dozens of cars passing. It’s easy to start getting bummed out and dejected. I even got as far as starting to mentally compose the blog post about how I failed at hitchhiking. It took me almost 3 hours to get my first ride out of Vienna. Although for part of that time I was waiting in the wrong place, and I spent about 30 minutes getting a coffee and warming up in McDonald’s.

Then, when somebody does pick you up, you feel totally elated and awesome. It certainly didn’t hurt that both of my rides yesterday were reasonably attractive women in their late 20s/early 30s. My first driver (from Vienna to Graz) had a really nice little Garmin GPS navigation device (with a less impressive suction-cup mounting system). We didn’t use it much since it’s basically one autobahn straight from Vienna to Graz, but I’m a fan of expensive electronic gadgetry on principle. It’s also reassuring because if your driver has her own fancy gizmos, she seems less likely to try to rip you off for yours.

My second driver was super nice—the kind of nice that doesn’t seem like it exists outside of books and movies until you occasionally encounter it. I must have gotten very good at giving off the friendly/harmless vibes, because within about 5 minutes after picking me up, she took me home to her house to meet her two sons (8 and 9). She didn’t strike me as a crazy, irresponsible mother, either. Her kids were friendly and well-behaved. They seemed amused when I introduced myself in English and shook hands in a grown-up fashion.

She told me she stopped because her mother is Slovenian; when she explained to her boys that she was going to help me get to Slovenia, the younger one asked, “Is he going to visit grandma?” which was cute. She actually made me dinner (!), and then drove me (out of her way!) to Maribor, which is the first town over the border big enough to have a real train station.

By then, it was starting to get  dark, so I didn’t think I’d get another ride. I bought a train ticket from Maribor to Ljubljana for €7.73; even with the added cost of a sharpie marker, it’s still a lot better than an €80 Austrian train. The whole trip took about 9 hours, but, crucially, none of that time was spent on a bus.

Hitching out of Graz ('SLO' is an EU abbreviation for Slovenia), I'm impressed I managed to get the leaving-Graz sign in the background.

On A2 headed South. I hastily made this more-general sign when "Graz" didn't seem to be working.

Austria is crazy-beautiful, and warm(ish)!

My first driver and car