Dude, Where's my Life?

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OK, my screen name on OK Cupid is DanNomad. You should totally take the test. I am a "The Mixed Messenger", which I think is pretty accurate...

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posted by Dan, Lover of Dim Sum @ 7:13 AM 2 comments

Ushuaia 2 - Tierra del Fuego

I know I bitch about people recounting their travel stories in email, so I promise to keep things short, but today was awesome.

I know its completely out of character, but I decided to spend my weekend hiking and canoing here in Tierra del Fuego. Today I went with a small group of people to a remote river, where we paddled in canoes through parts of the Beagle Channel until we got to a random beach. Then we took a boat to a random island where we hiked for a long time. We also to the boat to a beach full of Penguins!!! They were so awesome. We also randomly saw one lone emperor penguin on a totally different beach. It must have never seen people before, because we could literally get right up next to it and it wouldn´t so much as shit! It just looked at us knowingly. I can only imagine it thinking to itself "Where the fuck am I, and why is it so fucking hot here?"

Meanwhile, I was freezing. I was also the most painfully urban person there. First of all, I was the only one without a polar fleece. My $10 fleece that I bought in Australia had somehow "disappeared" from my office in NYC when I was working there. Because my seat was so freezing cold that I would LITERALLY get sick from a cold by sitting there. Long story short, the fleece disappeared, and I have a feeling it may have been stolen. I know Vinay didn´t steal it, because he already had his perma-fleece that he also wore. Hmmm...maybe Phil Winiecki? But he ALSO had his own perma fleece! Maybe it was one of those random women who worked in the little glass room in the corner...they always hated me because I would always ask them what numbers I needed to write on my checks when I deposited them to my brokerage account. Blast them!!! But I digress...

So everyone else had the following items (Ammad, I know you own all of them)

1. Polar fleece
2. Trekking shoes (you can tell they are trekking shoes by the thich laces)
3. Waterproof gortex shell jacket *WITH WATERPROOF HOOD* (thats key)
4. Gloves
5. North Face hat with earflaps
6. Digital camera

Meanwhile, I had brought the following "equivalent" items, which you can see are quite comparable but nevertheless identify me as a total "City Slicker" dork:

1. Black t-shirt that I had already worn on the two flights to Ushuaia from Bariloche
2. US$20 reeboks that I bought yesterday after purchasing my tour tickets and thought to myself "Hmm, maybe my FREE suede LL Bean slip-ons won´t work from this trek/canoe thing"
3. Dickies Garage Jacket - I´m not sure if its waterproof or just very UNbreathable.
4. Pockets in above mentioned jacket
5. Fleece-like hat that I bought in Bariloche for US$2 thinking it was grey when in reality its sort of purple and gives me a bad case of "hat hair"
6. Kodak disposable camera (with flash, I felt like splurging)

Anyway, the day was amazing, I saw the penguins, walked across a real beaver dam (and decided that beavers are really just a metaphor for humanity, but more on that later...or never), did my trekking, saw some other birds, drank some wine, experienced some hat hair, and got a lot of cold salt water on the crotch of my pants from the conoe. All in all I´m proud of my accomplishments today! How rugged (and sexy) I have become!

posted by Dan, Lover of Dim Sum @ 6:35 AM 0 comments