Chile’s Torres Del Paine National Park
I’ve done a bit of bushwalking in my time, but when I set off on a four day hike into the Chilean wilderness with nothing but my backpack, tent and some dried food, I felt about as intrepid as Edmund Hillary. The Torres Del Paine National Park, at the southern tip of Chile, has to be one of the most beautiful places on earth. It’s like something out of a picture book: picturesque aquamarine lakes, snow-tipped mountains, raging rivers, and impossibly romantic fields of wild flowers.
While you can choose to sleep in heated refugios (serviced cabins) along the way, there’s also something remarkably liberating about freezing your butt off in a nylon tent, while packs of hungry pumas roam the park in the early hours looking for breakfast. The highlight of this famed trek is a dawn ascent to the actual torres (or ‘tower’) which involves scrambling up an absolutely enormous pile of boulders to watch sunrise spread over the park. And trust me – the lactic acid you’ll feel for the next week is all worth it.
Tagged: Chile, Torres Del Paine National Park
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Traveling through the north of Chile, I found a cool place to stay for a couple of months: San Pedro de Atacama. San Pedro is located in the middle of the Atacama Desert, the most arid desert in the world. With no more than three thousand local population, which increases to six thousand with foreign workers and tourists, this old Atacamenian village mixes five star hotels with small backpackers, trekking excursions, volcano climbing and trucks, with which to cross the amazing alti-planic landscape, looking for archaeological pre-Inca locations and geological formations that give us astonishing colors and unique formations. Read more
Also by KATRINA WHITEHEAD
Spending a huge amount of money is easy when you’re without a mortgage, kids or a full time job. To ease my financial guilt, I recently put together this list of fifty fun, bizarre and slightly mad ways in which I managed to blow $50K over the years — buying myself nothing but amazing memories and the odd persistent stomach bug.
Sun, tapas, and more tapas in the Basque Country
For a seriously good summer holiday destination, it’s pretty hard to beat San Sebastian on Spain’s Atlantic coast. Set on a gorgeous piece of coastline in the heart of the Basque region, this buzzing seaside town certainly packs a punch. It’s got three divine beaches, hundreds of tapas bars (apparently more per square kilometre than any other city in the world), a vast selection of historical buildings and churches (if the urge to sightsee takes over), clubs, boutiques and countless festivals all year round. Plus, if you’re really into your tucker, the area surrounding San Sebastian is arguably the best in Spain for gastronomy – boasting several of the world’s finest Michelin-starred restaurants. Read more
Living the high life in Biarritz, France
Seriously, is there anywhere in the world more glamorous than the French holiday town of Biarritz? I recently visited Biarritz for the second time, and this visit, was even more wowed by the endless array of buffed, leggy, chain-smoking Europeans — each of them dripping in jewellery, swanning about in their caftans, and sipping champagne like it was water. Read more
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There’s some awesome new work up on New York-based illustrator, Sam Weber’s website, including this one above which is did for the Soulpepper Theatre. We asked him a little while back about what his studio workspace was like: ‘I am fairly particular about where I like to work, and what sort of stuff I like to have around me. There are things that I look at often — a book of Max Ernst collages, one on Yoshitaka Amano, and a big stack of clippings from magazines and the Internet that I will periodically leaf through to get inspired’. Read more
Just a few days ago, Benjamin Verdoncke climbed out of the human-sized nest he’d been residing in for the past seven days. The Belgian artist took six weeks to build the nest, which hung fifty metres high against a skyscraper in Rotterdam. Read more
The original Lomography Sidekick bag has had a revamp. Though it still maintains its 2-in-1 design, it now houses a smaller section to comfortably hold compact cameras, and a larger compartment for all the other things you need. It also fits your laptops. Oh, and the exterior is made from 100% water-resistant TPE. Fun!
Aurie Ramirez’s elegant watercolors have something outsider-y about them, with a slight nod of Henry Darger, but the fantasy world she depicts is less manic and angry — the whimsical and characters that inhabit her work seem more playful and less tormented by religious repression. Read more
Our favourite fiction quarterly — the Australian produced Torpedo — is soon to release its second issue, which is jam packed with well-written, independent fiction. Read more
Produced by our talented friends over at Miami-based studio, Common Machine, this is the first installment of a new bi-monthly series of exclusive Lost At E Minor videos that they will be putting together for us. This one is on marionette maker, Pablo Cano, who uses ‘mundane objects to create magic on a string’. And he does. We hope you enjoy!
Three piece, cLOUDDEAD, who formed in Cincinnati at the tail-end of the last millenium, fuse traditional hip hop beats with indie, electronica and psy-rock overtones. Doesone and Why?’s layered, poetic vocals cover the personal, political and social elements of their lives; and, above all, their flatout rejection of traditional musical boundaries makes them a quirky and unique act.
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Amazing cake designs by Charm City Cakes
Baltimore company Charm City Cakes produces the most innovative wedding and party cakes on the market. Inspiration for these creative bakers comes from everywhere: art, fabric, furniture, architecture, landscapes, science, and music, and each cake is individually designed to match your personality, and the theme of the occasion you are celebrating. Don’t miss these cakey engineering masterpieces. Read more
Wheeeeee! This game is so freaking fun! You move your cursor over each dot to make them split into four smaller dots ad infinitum.
Forget battery powered vehicles. Cars made from ice are the future of transportation: no pollution, no honking horns, no painful rap music blasting out of souped up stereos. And if they melt, they melt. You just swim the rest of the way down the slipstream.
Hong Kong-based illustrator Man-Tsun draws dark and beautiful painterly images that look like they are straight off a high-end Japanese animated film. Read more
With the recession still biting, it may be time to whip out the glue and the cardboard and make your next pair of cool kicks. Don’t know how they’d manage in the rain though? Read more
Thanks to Sony Australia, four Lost At E Minor readers will win personal audio prizes, including the new 8GB Walkman S series video MP3 player and the MDRXB500 Extra Bass headphones. Read more
These Fan earrings are finely etched stainless steel on sterling silver hooks (nickel and lead free). The thin metal sheets allow the earrings to be light to wear while still being elegant and striking. Designed and made by Polli in Australia. Purchase now. Read more
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Zac said | 22 April, 2009
Love the photos, Kat…makes me feel like I’m there.