Santiago and Valparaiso

Checking in with you during hopefully what is the last few hours here in Santiago--starting to feel that northen pull that keeps us moving...
The last few days have been great. Our first two nights in Santiago we stayed at this nice hostel that was modern, clean, fun, and served a great breakfast--which is the first time we have stayed at a place possessing all of those characterstics. It might also be considered progressive in the ways of hostelling as the bathroom was just a bunch of co-ed stalls together, making # 2 a whole different experience. Santiago was interesting enough but nothing really out of the ordinary--the only experience of note was the street fight we witnessed during a night on the town. It was actually more of a mini-riot which Petro accurately described as scene out of Westside Story with men posturing and dancing around each other with broken glass bottles. The only visible sign of harmful intent was the continuous hurling of rocks by the hooligans. As participating in a South American streetfight is not on my to-do list, watching at a safe disctance was about all that experience entailed. But it is good to know that if someone in the future breaks a bottle and makes threatening stabbing motions at me, they are most likely not going to actually go through with it. That should be an interesting bluff call...
Experiences got a little more authentic a couple of days ago when we got into communication with a girl who is a fellow couchsurfer from Valparaiso. For those of you unfamiliar with CouchSurfing, it is basically a service where people can offer their couch for travellers to sleep on with the intent of meeting people from all over the world. And so, if you have no qualms about having absolute strangers sleep in your house, you may want to look into this website. Lucky for us, we do a pretty good job of disguising our creepiness on our Couchsurfing profiles and email correnspondence. In this case, Paz, who lives with her mother and two sisters in Valpariaso, agreed to meet us at the bus station and eventually extended the invite to stay with them for a few days. Home-cooked meals, funs times around the city, and awesome seafood defined the experience. During our two days there, we were in a perpetual hang-out with Paz and her friends, which involved an interesting progression of meeting up, setting out for some sort of purpose or experience, parting with those friends, only to meet up at the same plaza to meet up with other friends and start the process over. This circular pattern of hanging out occurred about 5 times one day and was quite interesting as something new and fun came about as a result of each meet-up. On Sunday night we went to a Chilean movie theatre--which consisted of a neighborhood street corner, chairs, a projector, and a pirated movie. We saw The Pursuit of Happiness with Will Smith for the second time, but this time was much better....

Now we are in the process of trying to get ourselves way north to San Pedro Atacama--a 20+ hour bus ride, which is something really to look forward to. It will probably be our last stop before Bolivia.

Enough said,
Q

Got any Jelly for this Hotdog?

Hey there kids, Happy Friday--i bet you´re excited, I know I am. Just happy to be alive actually and I will tell you why here in a sec but lets get caught up.
On Wednesday back in Pucon, I left our boy Petro to climb the volcano while I made my two day northern ascent towards the capital city Santiago. With the uncertain goal of visiting nearby vineyards I took a bus to Chillan, which is a mid-sized but non-descript city about 5 hours south of Santiago. After getting off the bus with an aching foot I settling on the first guest house I toured, which possessed a small degree of seediness that made me wish I had my bodyguard Petro with me. With a bag full of dirty clothes and wearing pants for the 7th day in a row, I was in desperate need of laundromat or just a park sprinker. I found neither. Later, during a self guided tour of the city I stumbled upon yet another town festival--either by strange coincidence or the fact that towns must hold mid-week festivals every week--- this is like the fourth time this has happened recently. But having already witnessed the same old hoopla of traditional dancing and candy apples, I was not long in attendance. I had a date with a completo and a beer. A completo in Chile is a hotdog. I ordered a "italiano completo" thinking I was going to get something at least resembling a sausage but instead I received a hotdog in bun with diced tomatos, crushed avacodos, all topped with a thick bead of mayonaise. Disgusting? No, it was delicious...which makes me wonder what other ridiculous ingredients you can mix together and produce that heavenly taste...next up--hamburgers and marshallow fluff (master food mixologist Matthew Kopp can probably give us some suggestions).
And so, having discovered the nearby vineyards are nearly impossible to do by public transport I ditched the idea and made plans for Santiago. In an effort to switch up my mode of scenary intake, I decided to take train to Santiago in lieu of the bus. Sprawling vineyards turn into sprawling suburbs and then arrival into the city.
And here is my first story of almost being killed.
10 minutes off the train in Santiago and I sauntered on over to a street vendor selling huge empanadas. Ravenous from the long train ride, I was not paying much attention to exactly where I was standing while I was trying to negotiate my food purchase when I heard a loud gasp followed by what I perceived was a semi-violent push in my back. Feeling the side of the swiftly right-turning bus push my big pack and me forward and seeing the terrified look of the gasping bystander help me absorb exactly how close I had been to a premature departure from Mother Earth. Shellshocked I told the vendor to just give me the damn empanada, whatever freaking kind she picked out--just get me off this street. It turned out to be a delicious empanada but having another go at life tasted just a little bit sweeter.
After having just narrowly missed getting creamed by a bus my first 10 minutes into Santiago, I thought I should not push my luck with my full pack anymore. Off to the hostel. So far, the low expectations of Santiago that other travellers had conveyed have been proved unfair. The city appears clean and the people friendly (yesterday, there was a group of people with yielding signs saying "Abrazos Gratis" or Free Hugs, which I enthusiastically acccepted in light of my earlier experience..that hugger wasn't prepared for the breakdown that ensued.
And so Santiago has been just great, they try to kill ya then they try to hug it off. This is obviously a premature initial analysis of Santiago but we´ll see if it holds up...........


Yours,
Mr. Invincible

I really hope there is no future irony in that sign-off.........

Rafting the Trancura

Shuewwy, things have become a little more exciting around here--which is exactly what was needed after a couple of more tranquil past weeks. Yesterday, Petro and I decided to do a little whitewater rafting in the river nearby to Pucon. It is noted in the area for some class IV rapids, so it made the idea of parting with double our daily budget a little easier (actually, alot more than double as out "entertainment" budget is somewhere around $5-10 dollars a day--mostly spent on things like wine, useless trinkets, and the occasional back alley craps games with the locals). The process of going about an adventure excursion around here is slightly comical--the day before we tried to sign up for the rafting trip and were told just to "show up." When we did do that the next day, instead of filling out loads of paperwork, signing our lives away, and actually paying for the trip, we were just quickly shuffled onto a bus. The only company document that would even link us to trip was a piece of paper that they asked us to write our names on--which wouldn´t even really link us because we had used our standard false travels identities of Andy and Mike Tiehen. Once again Mike is probably going to get blamed for something he did not do--sorry in advance Mikey--please raise it as your own....

Anyways, so we were off for a little fun. We lucked out with our rafting trip as our guide was great, our group was small (only Petro, I, a German, and a Swiss) and the rapids were often intense. After one particularly exhilarating plunge off a small waterfall where I narrowly stayed in the raft, I was feeling particularly badass until my sense of personal achievement was mildly stifled when I saw the 12 year old girl in the raft behind us conquer the drop right after--nevertheless, the rafting was pretty exciting--part of this excitement stems from the fact that the company seems to possess no liability. The only hint of their acknowledgement of some liability for our safety was the "safety kayaker" who shadowed our rafts. I did get the company to admit that the rescue procedure in the event of emergency went as follows--save in this order: the sue-happy Americans, the Europeans, and then any nationals who haven´t already drowned. With this news I felt assured. In terms of emergency procedures, none had to occur, however, much to Petros amusement, during the last 10 meters of the trip, our raft hit a rock in pretty stagnant water and tossed an unsuspecting me overboard. Good fun for all. And how does a rafting company with no liability congratulate their clients after the trip?--with free beer of course. There are some great pics of the trip, which you can see in the pics section.

Today is a big ? for me. Peter is currently on what should be an amazing trek up Volcan Villirica and sadly I decided to sit this adventure out due to a nagging pain in my ankle/foot that I acquired last week. Stayed tuned to Petros blog because Im sure he will soon have a great account and some pics of the hike.

No Ride for You!

First off, I appreciate all the suggestions so far for places to visit, all will be considered except for the wiseass who suggested Hell, because I´m sure I´ll get enough of that place later in life.
So heres the last couple of days:
After my last email, we packed up our bags with the idea that we were going to head 3 hours north to Pucon, a little lakeside adventure tourism mecca in Chile. So we set off hiking out of town with the solid notion that we were going to be able to hitchhike there. Well, lets just say my romantic vision of hitching the whole way through Chile was crushed that day, but not until after 3 solid hours of standing by the highway and giving our best ¨we wont kill you if you won´t kill us faces.¨ During this experience, our opinions of Chileans were starting to seriously wane when a man who lived in the house across the street from our hitching spot came out and told us we would have better luck with bigger sign---then he went into his house, made one, and brought it out to us. Then, another neighbor in the midst of a barbeque brought us out some Choripan (sausage sandwhich) and water. I guess watching two gringos doing monkey dances for a ride was pretty entertaining because everyone seemed to enjoy our honest effort. At one point a woman, with child, was next to us and she successfully gained a lift, so there was brief talk of dressing in drag and stuffing some clothes into our shirt. But, after 3 hours, we gave up and made the walk of shame back into Valdivia. But as they always do for the chosen ones, things got better...
We ended up taking a local bus to the nearby coastal village of Niebla, where as luck would have it, we obtained a camping spot at a site situated on a bluff overlooking the pacific. The price was right and the owners friendly, so we toasted our fortune. Our camping neighbors, Chilean students from Santiago, showed us the local fare at community food stall area, where there are basically 40 different mini-kitchens with old women cooking up delicious seafood empanadas and the like. It was the closest thing to an all-you-can-eat buffet I have seen so far, so we treated it as such and gorged. The Chileans, noticing the way we were attacking the food, inquired about the last time we had eaten and I told them the half truth that we skipped lunch that day (we actually ate a snack only 3 hours prior). Gluttony is an American deal, they wouldn´t understand.
We loved the camping location and local fare so much we decided to delay our departure by another day.
Speaking of camping, I have yet to talk about or equipment. We are pretty much the laughingstock of any camping area whenever we set up shop. This is due to our last minute purchase of equipment right before our ranch experience in Argentina. The ¨equipment¨ is sleeping bags that I am pretty sure are lined with pencil shavings and have the temperature rating of about 55 degrees Fahrenheit. But these at least pass the visual test. Where our credibility takes a serious hit is in the tent department. Basicially, we purchased, albeit slightly unknowingly, a kids tent that makes the ones that Fischer Price makes look sturdy. It doesnt quite cover us fully, so we sleep with our feet sticking out. This hasn´t been too bad, until today when I woke up under the hot sun and realized I was getting a reverse farmers tan. That thing isn´t going to last the first storm--which I´m sure will be something to write about when it happens.

Chile has been great so far but a little pricey. Another downside is the dollar to peso exchange. Here it is 466 Pesos for every U.S. Dollar, meaning that in addition to the 5 second delay for translation in our dealings, we now have the added 5 second delay for computation of high numbers. Needless to say, we probably look ridiculous standing there in silence for 10 to 15 seconds before ever responding to questions or answers. Just write the number will ya!

Today we arrived in Pucon and are signing up for some type of adventure excursion for tomorrow. Vamos a Ver!

Lifejackets are for sissies,
Q

Hey You!

Alright, so we´re in Valdivia, seen whats needs to be saw, done what needs to be done, and ready to go. Its early here at the time of this writing. Well actually, the funny thing about the time is that we have been in Chile for 2 days and just now did we realize that there has been a time zone change--a little ridiculous, I know. So, if you were wondering if lives can operate without a watch, yes they can. But, only lives that are productive in terms of playing mad amounts of gin, drinking endless bottles of wine, and doing some creepy people watching--all day long.
Anyways, today I wanted to enlist YOU for a little game of Play With Our Lives from the comfort of your desk or home. Come on, stick it to the man and waste about an hour or so doing a little research for our trip. You see, we are ready to bolt SOMEWHERE and have several ideas where but plans are really up in the air. So fire up Google, keep in mind were are in Valdivia (in the south) and see whats going on for us. Also, we take mode of transportation requests so include those. Obviously, if you write go the the ____ Western Union and use all the money I just sent you guys--we are going there and toasting to you all night long.
Any friends or family that participate, will be spoken fondly of during the rest of the trip (Erin P. and Mark S. hold these statuses for past research done). Also, I encourage Johnny and Sally Stranger to voice their opinion as well--we will speak fondly of meeting you someday--well, maybe. And so, please post your suggestions on the ¨comments¨ section and we´ll se what happens. Granted, since we need to leave today and with the time zone difference, we´ll be using your suggestions from whereever we end up tonight.

Just your puppet,
Q