A Farewell Song for Chile

05. Apr. 2014
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Life in Chile
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Author: Pete
Location: Santiago, Chile

Wrote and recorded a song about the mountains and friendships in our time in Chile. Wrote and recorded the son and set it to video of an ice climbing trip. Check out the final product. The back story and such are below.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ebAMFLl13kw

Wrote this during/about an ice climbing trip with my friends Sergio and Casey. I knew it would be my last trip to Cerro Plomo, and it was a touch bittersweet. Preparing to leave Chile, and all the great friends who have become family, has been difficult indeed. It’s the way of the expat life. It’s one of the difficult parts in this path we’ve chosen. So I guess the song is lamenting the loss of the mountains when we move, but really, my mountains and my friends are one and the same.

So I wrote the song roughly on the trip and then fleshed it out at home. Sergio and Casey recorded it with me in the Blackbox Theater Studio at the International School Nido de Aguilas, where we work, with copious help from the Fine Arts Academy tech director, Juan E Vidal. He also mixed the music for us. We didn’t give him much to work with. It was the end of the year and everyone was scattered.

Neither Sergio nor Casey had seen or heard the song, and they blindly recorded four takes with me. Thanks for the musicianship, friendship, and adventurous spirit fellas.

Set it to video of the three of us ice climbing on Cerro Plomo, but the song is really about the way exploration of the mountains makes connections.

Plomo Icefalls Song

[VERSE]

East through the foothills and up through the bends,

Packed in the Pik-Up, let’s go my friend,

Climb on… climb on….

Trade in the weight of our worries all week,

For these packs and these paths, it’s off to the peaks,

Climb on… climb on….

With our sunburned lips and our frost-nipped toes,

Got a flask full of coffee and a tent in the snow,

Climb on… Climb on….

Up and chasing shadows well before dawn,

Catchin’ up with ourselves we gotta slow things down,

Climb on… Climb on….

[BRIDGE]

Down in the city smog we lose our way,

So we’ll climb until we can see again,

We’re no mountain men with heroes’ goals,

We’re pilgrims out to save our souls,

[VERSE]

Sunrise breaks we’ve been climbing for hours,

Boots baptized in the spindrift showers,

Climb on… Climb on….

Beautiful life that you and I live,

18,000 feet of perspective,

Climb on… Climb on….

[BRIDGE]

The cold and snow we ain’t here to find,

We climb to seek what’s deep inside,

Though we’ll find no air on this rocky crest,

We breathe in life with every breath.

Audio:

Chords:

Verse: C Am F G

Bridge: Am C Am F G

Climbing Cerro Plomo Ice Falls

04. Apr. 2014
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Life in Chile
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Author: Pete
Location: Cerro Plomo, Santiago, Chile
[S 33° 14′ 13”, W 70° 12′ 50′]

Back on Cerro Plomo. As we retreated from the storm just five days prior, Sergio remarked that the ice falls just below camp Federación hadn’t been so well formed in many years and that we should go back the following weekend. I thought it was a dehydrated, altitude-delirious bluff, but there we were the following weekend.

Casey Overton in tow, we drove up early Saturday. At Tres Puntas we loaded packs and waited for a new mulero to ferry our heavy ice climbing gear. No show! After an hour we set out with heavy hearts and heavier packs. In three hours we were setting up camp below Federación.

After lunch we slogged gear up to the base of the icefalls to help Queso acclimatize and make our climb day a bit easier. Played with the gear a bit , climbed a touch on the low-grade stuff unroped. Casey used Darlene’s axes and I used a nice pair of sponsored Petzls!

The ice as plasticy and forgiving. Hero ice. As we hiked back down through the steep scree we hoped it would be the same quality the next day. Queso and I slept in the tent, which was plenty big enough for three, while Serg bivied outside. Doesn’t like our smelly feet, I think. Actually, I’m sure he was trying to soak up the mountains. He’s off to Dubai next year. Nido will miss him, and so will all his friends.

We slept long, maybe too long, but it was glorious. I hadn’t had a chance to catch up over the week. So we slept, and I didn’t mind. Loaded light packs and scrambled towards the icefall we were eyeing. An hour to the base in sucky scree, then some time outfitting.

First picks were sunk at ten-ish, at a respectable altitude of ~12,000 feet. Sergio legged the lead. The first part of the pitch was low angle, then turning more vertical. I belayed as he swung picks and his fancy center-point crampons. Show off. He made it look easy, like most things he does, placing ice screws along the way.

Showers of ice chunks of varying size and destructive capacity plummeted down at us. At first it was fun, a bit like frogger, but eventually I lost the game and got cracked with a baseball size fragment from 100 feet up, right in the belay hand. Owwie. I dodged and weaved more apprehensively. Serg climbed unhurriedly, and in the afternoon sun the rain of ice began to mix with rocks, cracked off gully face some 300 feet up by the expanding, sun-lit face. By the time your eye would track them they’d be already going 200 mph, dark streaks embedding into white snow around us. Glad to be wearing helmets.

When Sergio had set a top anchor Casey and I were ready to climb. Happy to warm up from standing in the snow! We climbed simultaneously on either side of the twin ice ropes. Queso a bit above me, raining ice shards down my neck. We climbed slow. You end up in an easy rhythm. Kick, kick, swing. Kick, kick, swing. That, mixed with some heavy breathing from exertion at altitude.

The rock rain increased and by the time we were all at the belay station a quick assessment made descending a good call. We were too late, climbed too slow, and had too much fun in the process. Tired and happy with our success, we set about making a V-thread, two ice-screw holes meeting in the ice with a loop of webbing that we rappel off of. As the clouds cruised over our heads just outside the sheltered couloir we rapped down off the ice. I was last, and therefore the only guy trusting only the ice. I slapped it a kiss for good luck and descended the 150 feet. So fun.

Packed up and trudged back to camp, our gear stained white from the minerals in the ice. Our bodies melted a good deal while kneeling on the climb.

I’ll be very sad to leave the people and places that have come to mean so much to me. This is likely my last hurrah with Sergio and Cerro Plomo. Goodbye my good friends.

An Introduction to Boat Brokers

04. Apr. 2014
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Planning the Trip
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Author: Miranda
Location: Santiago, Chile

His name is Scott, and I desperately want him to be my new friend.

He is our broker. Our “buyer’s broker,” to be exact.

This is one of those ways in which the boat buying process is actually similar to that of buying a house. Now for those of, you like, me who’ve never purchased a home, this analogy may not work so well, but most of us understand that the process involves an agent working in the best interests of the seller and a separate agent working in the best interests of the buyer.

In the boating world, this is called the listing broker and the buyer’s broker. Some folks who have many years of experience around boats choose to go without using a buyer’s broker when looking to purchase a boat. They know exactly how much the models they are considering should go for. They know when they’re getting a deal and when they’re getting swindled. They are patient and know how to hide their excitement when they are viewing the perfect boat. They can deal with pushy listing brokers and know the buying/selling process well.

We aren’t one of these folks. Yet. Maybe someday we’ll be. But, for now, while we have to hold down our day-jobs, are new to the process, and are still perfecting our poker faces, we’ll use a buyer’s broker. To be honest, I don’t know why people would pass it up. The price is definitely right. Free. Yup, the buyer’s broker will get paid out of the commission made from the sale of the boat, with no fee or payment from the purchaser. It doesn’t change the final price of the boat, and if you’ve got a good broker, they’ll be saving you money in the end by helping you negotiate and make a smart decision. How often, in this world, can you find free, expert advice when you’re up the creek on something totally new? We feel so blessed to have a new friend in Scott, the boat broker.

So, we skyped with Scott today. He works in the South Florida area, and he was a breath of fresh air to someone who’s dug though the depths of the Internet looking for what to expect in the boat buying process, and hasn’t landed anywhere fruitful. He answered all our newbie questions without judgement, nor did he caution us that any piece of our plan was ill-prepared or ignorant of how things work. He was a wealth of knowledge, and he seemed genuinely excited about working with us. After we got of the phone, we both looked at each other and said, “What a nice guy!”

After chatting with Scott, we have much better idea how long the process will take and how we might set up the precious few months we have stateside this summer to ensure we leave at the time we’d like, come fall. We set up a tentative plan for when we’d be spending time in South Florida to scour the market for a boat that will suite our price, our sailing itinerary, and the accommodations we’d like.

Trying to plan such an endeavor while living a continent away from the boat market we’d like to get our hands on can be quite frustrating, at times. Therefore, it feels great to have someone on the ground, working for us in the mecca of ocean-going cruisers for sale!