Today was a special day in many ways…..
Francisco our jeep tour driver and guide picked us up from the hotel at 7am (7:30am Chilean time).
Into the Andes we drove, the mountains which frame the Santiago horizon, making it so unique. The tallest mountain around Santiago , the Tupungato mountain standing at 6,570m.
Francisco is one of the worlds special people – born in Chile, lived in Italy between the ages of 10 and 15, studied fashion design, produced films, lived in various other countries, a passionate surfer and an all round entertainer, now owning a company doing the tour we did today.
We stopped to make coffee, but unfortunately he’d forgotten his stove, so we gathered dry sticks for our barbecue later and drank water instead.
The Andes are truly amazing and Francisco when not telling us his life story told us many interesting mountain stories.
Our barbecue had to be the absolute highlight of the day – Francisco lit the fire with the gathered wood – the table decked with meat oozing blood (almost made me want to become vegan) a bottle of red wine, cooked salmon and tortillas.
Dani the vampire tucked into the meat, me slipping a few sneaky crisps in my mouth inbetween a polite mouthful of bloody meat washing it down with the wine.
Daytime wine makes listening to people’s life stories a lot easier and when he got to the part about how he originally wanted to become an actor as he had seen John Travolta in Grease – cue me to take over “oh Grease, John Travolta, Olivia Newton John, Bee Gees, lurv lurv lurv and who didn’t want to be her, wear the satin pants, the leather jacket, those red shoes and have that cigarette hanging out of the corner of your mouth, stubbing it out at John Travoltas foot and say, tell me about it stud ” ……
Oh daytime wine, I was possessed, I could’ve given a talk at a TED X conference, my passion being the 70’s – disco, Saturday night fever, denim, lip gloss, first love, first kiss, heartbreak, flared jeans, cheesecloth blouses, lashings of blue eyeshadow, lager and lime, lager and black, cheese and onion crisps, chip butties and cigarettes
– and so on…….my passion, my guilty pleasures.
But then it was Danis turn, when he had tried to continue about his acting career and him choosing fashion design instead – Dani then mentioned fabrics in India and then Indian history and then continued with China and Chinese history.
After this, the conversation got really deep and philosophical and I had to go and wee behind a rock to stop myself from singing “ain’t no mountain high enough ain’t no valley low enough” as it was all very mountainous and deep all at the same time.
Soon after this we cleared up – but there was more…..
I spotted some Condors eating a dead horse and the jeep halted to a sudden stop and I found myself thrust against the back of Francisco’s chair once more. Now let me just say, since I have been on tour my bird spotting skills having developed enormously. However this particular coup, was like winning the lottery, in Franciscos eyes, I was propelled into the top ten bird watching persons of all time – I actually think I was position number one at this point and I seriously considered asking for a pair of binoculars for Christmas. Condors are the lions of the Andes – there was a whole group feeding off a dead horse – we approached with stealth and caution like bird watchers do – Francisco avidly filming the whole episode – I tried to be nonchalant about the whole thing – but really I was dead proud of myself and my bird spotting abilities. 😄😄😄
After this Francisco spotted the spider – I let it crawl my anorak – because really I would like to have spotted it first 😉
However this is where the story take a tragic end and it really does – Francisco received a call to say his mother was about to die in the hospital and we drove like hell to get there – Francisco was crying and kissing a picture of his mother on his mobile and it was so tragic I felt like crying too – that and trying to hold onto something as the seatbelt was broken 😱
That’s where the story ends – a day of highs and lows – mountains and valleys, condors and dead horses and poor Franciscos mother – it’s the circle of life 😔