Chile - the beginning of a great relation

For those of you who don´t keep up to date with my day to day schedule, I am currently in Chile. On Sunday, January 13th I had an evening flight from Buenos Aires to Santiago de Chile and proceeded to spend that evening and the whole day of the 14th in the capital. My hostel was in an old building on the 6th floor over looking the main plaza of Santiago, La Plaza de Armas. It was quite nice, I must admit, and did make me think about what things would have been like if I had gotten to know the city eariler on in my time in South America, if I would have tried to do 1 semester in Buenos Aires and 1 semester in Santiago, but who knows. The subway system, called the metro here, is much cleaner, faster, more reliable, roomy and expensive than it is in B.A. so there would be pros and cons. On the 14th I walked around the main square, got some ice cream, ate a salad, and really found myself at a loss for what to do, so I went back to the hostel trying to recover from the over 90 heat of the day and get my day in line. I decided to walk to the zoo, about a 1/2 hour relaxed walk, and when I finally got there, I realized how stupid, zoos are closed on Monday´s (just like all of the museums, which thoroughly exhausted my list of activities). The mountain that houses the zoo is also home to the statue of the Virgin Mother Mary, which is the equivalent of the statue in Rio, but Chilean style. I bought a round trip ticket for the tram that takes you up the mountain to the peak, which made me think of going down to the St. Croix with Patty and riding in the tram when we were little. Anyway, the ride up was only about 10 minutes long and then I hung out up at the statue, met two cool guys that are also just traveling around solo, and decided to walk the 6km down, rather than taking the tram. The real bummer is that they wouldn´t reimburse my 800 pesos (aobut $2) that I had paid for the ride down, although I still had the ticket and they could have used it for another passenger. Oh well, shit happens. Then I walked lazily back to my hostel through the beautiful Bella Vista (beautiful view) neighborhood and eventually just made myself a quick spaghetti and pre-made sauce dinner before hopping over to the bus station and taking an overnight bus to Pucon.

Pucon has been GREAT. With a capital G for those of you who are jaded by my and others overuse of caps lock. Although I was cramped into the window seat next to an obese man than as far as I could tell was from California, the bus ride was uneventful and I fell asleep listening to a book on tape on my ipod. I arrived around 9:30 AM, dropped my stuff off at my hostel, and wandered around the small touristy town that is mostly tour companies that want to take you up the volcano, white water rafting, horseback riding, etc. The first day I just walked around and then went out to brunch, where I got picked up to hang out by the biggest character ever. He is a Chilean (half Spaniard) who is rebelling against his UN diplomat parents. He is a pop singer (really, I heard some of his songs and saw his videos on YouTube) and he also is into the management, production, business side of the business (which he has been focusing on for the past 6 years in NYC and LA). I just hung out with him because I was bored, didn´t know the area, am by myself, and though why not, most tours leave early in the day so I just have a day around town anyway. He was originally dining with his parents (who he told me later at 65 and 75) but they left and he then invited me over to his table. I accepted seeing as I was done eating and needless to say, he was interesting. He had to cut our hang out session short and go to the airport because he was flying to Vina del Mar, another city in costal northern Chile in order to sing in a huge music festival that they have there. Its his comeback after 6 years of not singing. But he told me not to worry, because he is going to lip-sync, so there is no need for him to have spent the past few hours practicing. SO I went back to my hostel, he flew off to Vina, and I changed into beach gear and spent the afternoon tanning and swimming in the icy lake.

This morning I got up at 6AM and packed all of the warm clothes I have with me for an excursion climbing up an active volcano, Volcan Villarrica.

It was a questionable day, wind and weather wise after I got into the office but they brought us all to the base of the hike, a 45 minute drive out of town. Our bus went loaded with 12 passengers and only 4 of us actually ended up doing the hike. They still charge you $5000 (Chilean pesos, about 480 to $1USD) if you take the transfer and decide to wait for another day and better weather (being $5000 of the total $40000 price for the excursion). Also, the first 10 minutes of the hike are actually a ride for an aditional $5000Chilean up a chair life, cutting a little over an hour off of your hike. I, not being wealthy, decided to risk it with the 3 Frenchies on my tour and had a great 4 hour hike (with about 3 breaks of 5 minutes each) up a snowy slope through gale force winds just to reach the active crater.

I stole this picture from the internet, because when we got up there we only spent about 2 minutes as the noxious, poisinous fumes were blowing up our noses, down our throats, and into our eyes. Causing extreme discomfort, as you can imagine. On a nice day you can stay up there for up to an hour, enjoying the view but it was all clouded over and the gases made it less than ideal. On the way down, things got really exciting. We put snowpant type deals snapped around our butts and legs, harness style, and descended in luge like ruts down the snowy part of the mountain. AMAZING, the most fun thing I have done in ages, maybe EVER. If you are ever in the region I would highly recommend it. Anyway, I need to go now as I´ve wasted nearly an hour on a communal computer writing in my blog.

Hope you enjoy the update! (be jealous)