South America Explorations: Week 11 - Pucon

Monday, December 23^rd, 2013

When I arrove on the bus at 8am this morning in Pucon from Valparaiso, I had the good fortune of getting to walk clear to the other end of town with my backpacks. Not only did this give me a nice quick early morning workout, it also allowed me to see the entire town in all its glory. And it was glorious. Okay, not really. It actually looked fairly new and very much like a ski resort town, much like you’d expect to see in Aspen or Utah or one of those west coast skiing meccas.

And yes, I did just make up the word “arrove”. More interestingly, I think every person who reads that first line knows exactly what it means. Which then makes me think we should add it to the lexicon.

The hostel I was staying at is called Chili Kiwi and is on the lakefront, which meant there were some beautiful and unique views to be had for a hostel. The place was brand spanking new too – like two weeks old. There was only one review on hostelworld (the Tripadvisor for the backpacking community for housing), but it sounded interesting so I reserved a bed there – turns out lots of other people thought the same thing because it was packed. Fortunately for me, the other clientele were about perfect – mix of young and old, but all friendly and not just interesting in partying. The hostel mascot, a German Shepherd pup, was even older than the hostel itself. She was wonderfully playful.

James, the owner, walked me and a Spanish/Belgian couple who arrived with me through many of the activities that there were to do in Pucon. Since I had not done much active in well over a week, I was a bit itching to get out and do something. So when James was confirming a reservation for some others a few minutes later, he looked up at me and asked “do you want to join?” – my response “sure!” I joined two girls, Illy and Mari, from the hostel for a trip to go hydrospeeding that evening.

What is hydrospeeding? It’s rafting, but solo on what amounts to a boogie board made of several layers of foam. Well, I guess many boogie boards are made of foam, but I guess this one seemed a little more low-end than I would have liked. It was good enough – it floated and provided a cushion for the upper half of my body, which was the intent. The lower half? You’re on your own!

I’m not joking actually. We were wading through Class 2 and 3 rapids, which was awesome. But more than once, my knees had a harsh and firm introduction to a smooth rock. If my dermii were pansy enough to show bruises, I would have black and blue spots everywhere. And it would have been well worth every spot. So there we were, 9 of us in wetsuits and flippers, trying to go single file per the orders of the guide, who was probably named Marcelo. And that’s the thing that really frustrated me – Marcelo constantly demanding that we stay close together in a single-file. The impact of this is that we were literally on top of one another – my boogie board kept running into the flipper legs of the person in front of me and so forth.

Marcelo also had a GoPro camera on his helmet so he snapped lots of videos and pictures, but since he was in the front and he kept commanding me to stay in the back for some reason, I’m barely in any of te videos or pictures. Many of the cute girls were up front and prominently featured though. I think I need to grow breasts. And maybe transplant some hair around.

When we got back to the hostel, I showered up and went to go get some dinner. On my way towards the town, a stage was set up near the lake and there was some sort of military or police band playing Christmas music. I think this was actually the first Christmas music I had heard all trip – and only 2 days before Christmas. In the States, we are so inundated with it for months in advance (and thanks for that, you capitalist pig manufacturers of toys and gifts) that by the time Christmas actually comes around, I’m most looking forward to the end of the dang music. But this time, I sat and listened and enjoyed a bit. I heard them play “White Christmas”, which seemed odd for them to sing, given that we were in beautiful sunny weather and it was far from “white”. It’s probably a racist song anyway – the author was probably a member of the KKK.

The other song I found peculiar was “Feliz Navidad”, which was sung entirely in Spanish – no “I want to wish you a Merry Christmas…”. So, what was a song celebrating multi-culturalism during this time of joy was transformed into a “screw you guys, we’re in South America” display of defiance.

Wow. I think Christmas must bring out the sarcastic anger in me or something.

On a brighter note, I went to a place called Latitude 39 or Latitude 23 or some other Latitude, which was run by an American chef from out west. The burger was excellent. James highly recommended the place, and he was spot on. There was a young 19-yr old kid working there from California who had been traveling around and decided he really liked Pucon – so he got a job so that he could stick around as long as a temporary working visa would let him (which is 4 months, in case you’re interested).

Tuesday, December 24^th, 2013

So the big activity to do in Pucon is climb the spectacular volcano, called Volcan Villarica. The bus came and picked me up at 6:30am from the hostel and took me to the sister hostel, El Refugio, where I joined the other 9 tourists to get a backpack full of gear that we would carry with us. They provided everything, including the hiking boots – all we needed were clothes to wear under the coat & pants they gave us.

At the base of the mountain is a now defunct ski lodge with a chair lift. They offered to take each person up the chair lift to avoid a portion of the climb for the equivalent of $15. I declined, as did only two others in the group. This ended up being somewhat of a mistake, though I don’t regret it actually. That first part of the climb was the toughest, even though it wasn’t the steepest. The ground was sand & unstable rock and that required a heck of a lot more energy. Of the 100+ tourists on the mountain that day, only 7 of us in total opted to rough it and walk the first portion. I was the last of these 7 to make it to the top of the chair lift.

Since the rest of the groups had taken the chair lift, they started up the snowy/icy portion of the climb well before we did and I was basically the last person to start climbing this much larger and longer section of the mountain. It didn’t take long to start passing people in spades though – the ice was crunched up and perfect for getting in a groove. We took small steps and followed the footsteps of the person in front of us and kept trucking. Before long, we had passed at least 30 other tourists.

That’s not to say that it wasn’t hard. It was tough and we took a break every hour or so to get a drink of water and eat some food. In addition to our own clothes, we also had to bring our own snacks and lunch. A well-timed banana gave me the energy boost I needed to continue trudging forward with my comrades. At the third stopping point, we had caught up with the rest of our group, though we started hiking a good 30 minutes afterwards. My manhood was restored and I didn’t feel guilty for holding up the other two non-chairlift-takers anymore.

The last part of the climb was exceedingly steep. I took a few pictures to try and give the perspective of just how steep it was, but I’m not sure of the pictures really convey how ridiculous it was. We were all pretty pooped by the time we got to the top, so we plunked down and had the rest of our lunches.

But the view was spectacular – the sky was almost completely clear and we could see for miles. Or I guess I should say we could see for kilometers, since they don’t use miles down here. There were lots of other volcanoes in the area too, but this was the tallest and most picturesque. The volcano is also still mildly active and emits a constant stream of gas. For this reason, our guides told us not to walk around the periphery of the crater because the fumes are too strong on the other side. While I was a bit bummed about that, I’m glad he told me. Some of those fumes are not to be messed with.

Come to think of it, we had snow everywhere up there. I guess I ended up getting a white Christmas (Eve) after all. Two of the Brits on our trip had even brought Santa hats up for just the occasion.

The way down was far better than the way up. Since it was snow, we got to slide down. Seriously. This is the reason for much of the gear we hiked up with – ski jacket, snow pants, gaiters, at thick piece of canvas they called “the ass protector”, and a small durable flat dustpan-shaped plastic piece that you sat on. Since thousands of people had sled down in the days prior, there were channels dug out in the snow and all we had to do was try to keep our legs up and use the ice axe to brake. There were about 4 sections to the slides to get all the way to the bottom and it was incredibly awesome. By the end, my legs were frozen – I often unintentionally veered off the existing slide routes and created my own path, the result of which created a lot of icepack between my legs. I was frozen from the waist down. It was totally worth it, and many of us kinda wanted to hike back up to do it again.

 

I learned that for many other countries, the big celebration for Christmas is actually on Christmas Eve versus Christmas Day. Because of this, my hostel had decided to have a Christmas BBQ this evening instead of tomorrow. So for about $13 a head, we would have more food than we could shake a stick at. But in true South American style, they didn’t even get the charcoals lit until after 8pm… the first round of brats came out an hour later and from there, the food continued for the next 3 hours. We all sat outside at a picnic table and talked, laughed, ate, and enjoyed. For easily a month, I was very concerned about ending up in a lame place in a crappy hostel for Christmas – I picked the right time to be in Pucon and I stumbled into the right hostel. It’s a Christmas Miracle!

Dang… I completely forgot to shout that at every little mundane thing on Christmas Day. For me, that’s one of the biggest joys of this holiday that I really don’t celebrate.

Wednesday, December 25^th, 2013

I stayed out until about 2pm, with a full belly of beef and red wine. There was a ton of red wine.,, and it was gooooood. Seriously, it’s hard to find a bad bottle of red wine down here. I’m so very glad I’m not a wine aficionado – as I’ve told many others, I don’t understand the benefit of learning more about wine. I’m pretty happy with most cheap wines as it is. If I learned more, I would then have to spend more money to get the same level of happiness and I’d be much more apt to have what I know deemed as a bad bottle of wine. There are no upsides and tons of downsides. Forget that…

As I learned, a multiplude of others had hit the only read bar in town (called “Mamas and Tapas” – what a great name) and had a smashing good time… to the tune of 6am. While I wish I went, I’m also glad I didn’t – I was pretty hungover as it was this morning. To ease the pain, I went in search of a nice fresh crisp something or other that would ease my stomach. I went to the other recommended spot in town, but the menu was a wee bit hard to decipher… and I ended up with the polar opposite of what I was looking for, a greasy, slimy, heavy sandwich. Argh.

Before too long, I went back to the same place for an early dinner and ordered a salad with grilled chicken – that definitely hit the spot.

Not content to do nothing all day, I had coordinated with a few others to rent kayaks in the evening for a nice little paddle. With me were David & Clemy, the Spanish/Belgian couple who had checked in with me, and Petrie, one of my dorm roommates from Holland. Off we went at about 5:30pm to get the kayaks into the lake. Our idea was to take a leisurely paddle around the peninsula that separated our small section of the lakefront from the much nicer beach around the corner, from where a much clearer view of the sunset could be had at about 9pm.

What we hadn’t entirely counted on was just how difficult it was to paddle the dern things. The waves were rough and clearly just liked to mess with us – no matter what we did, they conspired to turn us sideways because that was the happy spot for them. Unfortunately, that’s not the direction we wanted to go, so we were constantly fighting the waves.

After getting out to the end of the peninsula, we stopped for a break at a private beach for a few minutes. The owner was right there with his young son, but couldn’t kick us out – apparently, there’s a Chilean law stating that the first 6 meters of beach is public. That seems completely wrong to me, so I was itching to go where we were unwelcome, and before long we did exactly that.

After we rounded the corner which never seemed to end, it occurred to us that going towards the shore of the other beach was no easier and that the waves were just going to fight us no matter what direction we were going. So after going halfway, Petrie and I decided to turn around while David & Clemy kept towards their destination.

Two hours later, Petrie and I finally made it back to the hostel, dragged the kayak back to hostel, and ran back out to the lakefront to try and grab as much of a glimpse of the sunset as possible. Even though we didn’t have anywhere close to a perfectly clean view, it was hella picturesque… one of those images that stick in your mind for long time afterwards.

The four of us had dinner at the hostel (thanks for cooking, David!) and then a fairly sizable group in the hostel started playing Pictionary using a newly discovered website to generate words and a white board borrowed from the hostel’s “What’s Happening” wall. It was lively for the next few hours, with lots of yelling, shouting, and laughing. My time here seriously could not get better.

Thursday, December 26^th, 2013

I was completely wrong, it totally got better.

After struggling to get up in a timely fashion because of a second late night in a row, I joined three others from my hostel (Tanja, Thomas, and Brandon) plus a British couple who had been on my volcano hike for a canyoning excursion. We were crammed with our three tour guides (9 total) into the equivalent of a Ford Explorer for a two-hour ride into the wilderness, through some roads that definitely needed 4-wheel drive. I have zero idea where we ended up, but wherever it was, it was about the greatest thing I had ever seen.

Our guides were local Chileans Miguel & Pasquale, along with a Danish girl whose name eludes me but I think was Elise. In addition to assisting the others, Elise also took pictures for everyone. Unless we had a GoPro, we were all cameraless, and for a good reason as we would soon find out.

As soon as we stepped out of the vehicle, we were given wetsuits, booties, and helmets. Additionally, we also got a bright yellow canvas ass protection sheet which, when worn, resembled a diaper. Seriously – we looked like a bunch of ninjas wearing yellow diapers. It was a sight to behold.

The weather was very overcast, which was extremely different from the very bright sunny and clear days that had been present since I got into town (and before). For this, we were told we were very lucky. Apparently, most other days, people were drenched with sweat after putting the wetsuits on. Instead, we were all a bit chilly, so the 45 minute hike we had to the first action spot helped to warm us up.

I didn’t really know what canyoning is, but I suppose you find an awesome canyon and then find creative ways to follow the canyon down. So the first thing we had to do after our short hike was a rappel – this one was a pretty good height – probably 40-50 ft at least, but it was mostly free-rappeling since the cliff face dropped away early on and we just used the rope friction in the Figure-8 device to lower down slowly. The best part was that we landed in water, and then could walk a few feet and celebrate in the waterfall. Which I did. Numerous times. Despite the fact that the water was freezing… after all, this is mostly glacier water coming off one of the mountain peaks, but that didn’t matter. I loved it.

I don’t remember the sequence of all of the rest, but I know we had a several spots where we could slide with the water along the rock faces, often into a 6-ft deep pool that was spine-shivering, yet still ridiculously awesome of course. There really was nothing about this day that wasn’t ridiculously awesome, except maybe the cramped car ride.

We had a great zipline that started above the water, then you quickly dipped into a pool of water just before a large waterfall, and then you ziplined and disconnected in the pool below. I was having so much fun that I let go at the bottom and flipped upside down. Which was ridiculously awesome, of course.

I believe the next big thing we had was a 15ft jump into a pool – the water is clear, but because there is so much aeration, it’s white and was impossible to see just how deep the pool below was. So the first person was always taking a little bit of a leap of faith in what the guides were saying. And wherever we fall, the water also has to fall and this pool had a nice little pool that I got to frolic in.

We had another rappel, this time down a side of a cliff and then we were basically back at the SUV, where we got to ditch our gear and dive/jump/pose off a rock into, yes, another pool of water. And Elise was there to photograph it for us, of course. As you can see from these shots, she is really quite a wonderful photographer.

After we finally removed the wetsuits (and felt just how crazy cold the water was without them), we gathered around a set of rocks and had some snacks and chatted with our guides for the next 30 minutes, before getting back in the car for the long ride back to the hostel.

And after another wonderful meal at Latitude 39, I picked up a large 1.5L bottle of Carmenere red wine from the grocery store and went back to the hostel to share with several of my new friends. I slept well.

 

 

Friday, December 27^th, 2013

This morning, my dorm roommate Tanja and I got up early to catch an 8am bus that didn’t exist. Fortunately, there was an 8:30am bus that did exist and we didn’t have to wait too long. We were off on a hike that James recommended to El Cani, a location which was about a 45 minute drive to a remote area from town, which meant that bus service was not exactly frequent. Actually, it was kind of hard to know when exactly bus service was since nothing appears to be documented and everyone seems to have a different recollection on the schedule.

The hike was fairly strenuous. After paying an entrance fee, we hiked along a flattish road for about a kilometer before the actual trail started. This trail followed a road for several kilometers, except this was a dirt road that only the meanest of 4WDs could possibly conquer – it was really steep. After an hour of following the exceedingly steep road, the trail veered off into the woods and actually got a little easier. An hour later, we were at a structure that was called a refugio (or lodge) where people could stay, but we both had trouble understanding why anyone would possibly want to stay in there because it was kind of a complete and utter dump in every sense of those words. The only redeeming factor was the irrepressibly cute and slightly emaciated little dog – she reminded me of Julia’s dog Claus who she brought over from Australia, except this precious was white haired and loved on absolutely everyone.

After lingering too long with the cutie, Tanja and I continued on our journey, but now the wide path was gone, replaced with a narrow trail in the trees. We followed this for another 30 minutes before we reached what would be a lake in the rainy season, but now just resembled a wide flat treeless spot where an alien spacecraft may have landed (which wiped out the trees, of course). I’m putting my money on the dried out lake idea though.

Thirty minutes later, we arrived at another dried out lake, but this one had some actual lakes right next to it as well. In between the lakes was campsite with at least 5-6 tents pitched. While it would have absolutely sucked to carry a full backpack up to this point, given the steep terrain, the location was gorgeous. Lake, nature, mountain peaks all around, perfect weather… it had everything and Tanja and I were more than a little jealous.

The trail at this point took a steep turn, upwards. We had about an hour hike uphill through a narrow trail alternating between switchbacks and quad-busting vertical ascents. But the reward? Spectacular. The majority of the hike since the “refugio” shack was covered with the neato Araucaria trees, which seem to shed their lower branches as they grow taller, resulting in a very tall trunk of a tree with only an umbrella canopy at the top. But the very end of the hike ended in a fairly large rocky outcrop, which afforded spectacular unhindered views of the surrounding landscape… which in itself was positively spectacular. Volcanos, volcanos, everywhere!

 

The hike down, as always, was much faster and we ended up waiting at the bus stop for almost an hour for the next one to come by. Not to worry – we stopped off at the refugio and I fed the uber-friendly dog half of my empanada. But before long, we were back safe and sound in the hostel, except for one small issue. I was originally supposed to leave this morning on a bus and I extended another day. Apparently there was a miscommunication and they gave my bed away. So James had the contractor work a few extra hours and assemble a bed for me in the attic, which they had already been working on creating into living quarters for their staff. So I got my own private room – score.

Saturday, December 28^th, 2013

The bus to Puerto Varas this morning was supposed to leave at 8am, but apparently there was some sort of accident on the road which closed it to all traffic or something. So they were opting to spend that time here at the bus station instead of jammed up in traffic. Initially we were told it would be 1.5 hours of delay, then I was told 11:15am, then 2pm, and then 3pm. Fortunately, after I was told 3pm somewhere around 2:15pm, I just went ahead and hopped on the bus with a handful of other frustrated souls. Fifteen minutes later, they just fired up the bus without much announcement and warning and we took off – it’s a good thing I hadn’t gone for a quick walk or to get some food or something else. I would have been livid… though that’s how things happen here in Chile. Things don’t run on schedule, so you can’t be 100% sold to your plan unfortunately.

When we arrived to Puerto Varas about 5 hours later, the hostel I booked a room in was only a few blocks away. It seemed friendly, though my room is full of very strangely quiet people who didn’t really acknowledge each other or say much at all. So I went out to get a nice dinner and then buy some groceries for my upcoming trip. Where will I be going? Tune in to the next post to find out!

Tidbits

1.       My very least favorite word in the Spanish dictionary is “claro”. While I think it technically means “clear”, it’s used much in the same way we would say “yeah” or “sure” during a conversation to acknowledge that we’re paying attention. What I hate about the word is that is often drawn out into a “claaaaaaaaaaaaaaaro”, and I just don’t like the sound of it. And you shouldn’t either. In fact, you should smack someone if they say it to you. “Claro.”

2.       I think your head gets fatter when you gain weight. No seriously – I’m sure the bottom part of your face & neck does, but I had always assumed that your scalp was more or less fixed in size since it’s bone. But maybe there’s a good layer of fat too? All I know is that the wool hat I bought on Mt. Bromo in Indonesia 11 years ago fits my head again, whereas 4 months prior, the same hat felt like it was squeezing my brains out. I’ll add that to the list of benefits of losing weight. This is important because I really love my Bromo wool hat. It reminds me of good times.

3.       Every town in Chile has a street, statue, buiding, or square (and often several) named after a fellow named O’Higgins. Given that I’m in South America of all places, I wouldn’t expect there to be an O’Anything since the Irish were not known as a seafaring and conquistadoring type of folk. But as it turns out, Bernardo O’Higgins was one of the founding fathers of Chile who fought for independence a few hundred years ago. And he was half-Irish and half-Spanish. O’Ok-I-Guess-That-Makes-Sense.

4.       Firemen in Latin American countries are called bomberos. When I first saw a bunch of firetrucks, it took me a while to piece together why there were so many “bomb squad” vehicles sitting around.

South America Explorations: Week 10 - Santiago and Valparaiso

Sunday, December 15^th, 2013

After a relaxing morning in the hostel with breakfast and a lunch of leftovers from last night’s steak, I boarded a bus to go from Mendoza to Santiago. This bus will take the same route that I had been on Friday morning for the trip to Aconcagua, so the views were sure to be spectacular on this route. Additionally, it’s a very curvy and windy route, earning the nickname “Road of 365 Curves”. So I did a bit of research to get in a front row seat on the second level of the bus (all of the long-distance buses are double deckers) for precisely this reason.

Unfortunately for me, this bus company had chosen to put a grid-like material on the windshield of the second deck to minimize the impact of the sun, which decreased visibility to the point that you could barely see anything. They had curtains as well, so I don’t know why the grid-crap was necessary. While I did get some wonderful views and pictures from the side window, I was still a wee bit peeved.

The bus ride was supposed to be about 6 hrs, but ended up taking close to 9 hrs due to not-so-surprising delays at the border. Chilean immigration scans all luggage and 3 of the bags (not mine) were deemed suspicious and it took a small amount of time to get that sorted out.

After arriving at the bus station in Santiago close to 9pm, I hopped on the subway. For my time in Santiago, I’m staying with my old friend Michelle and her husband Ed, who had been living in the city the past few years on an expat assignment. I met Michelle during an organized tour to Spain & Portugal well over a decade ago and we kept in light touch over the years, mostly via the powers of Facebook.

The subway here was very clean, fast, and efficient. It reminded me a lot of the Metro in DC (rip BC), except that it was busy like NYC’s system during most of the day and there were lots of trains. It was also so clean that riders felt perfectly comfortable sitting on the ground. I can’t imagine doing the same on most of the subway cars in NYC…

When I finally arrived to Michelle & Ed’s deluxe-apartment-in-the-sky an hour later, they had a burger and some salad & veggies waiting for me. Thank goodness – I was starving and it was excellent. It was nice to have my own bedroom and bathroom as well. After 11 weeks of shared rooms, I was looking forward to spreading out for a few days and decompressing. This stop in Santiago was fortuitously falling smack dab in the middle of my adventure.

Monday, December 16^th, 2013

I slept in a bit this morning. In addition to having my own bedroom, I also was sleeping in a queen-sized bed, which was nice to stretch out in. You know, since I’m so tall and all.

Michelle had recently left her job, and so she was happy to serve as tour guide for me today to give me the lay of the land as well. She’s quite the student and asked & researched lots when she was doing her own acclimatization to the city, so she was generally able to answer most any question I had and then some. It’s nice to hang out with engineers – I think our minds are wired the same.

We started in one corner of the downtown area and Michelle showed me some parks, hills, and neighborhoods that I should walk around later in the week. We also grabbed some sushi at one of the only places she knows of in the city that doesn’t lace every roll with cream cheese. I hate cream cheese in my sushi, so I’m glad she saved me from figuring this out on my own.

Santiago is a very walkable city, but many tourists find it difficult to spend more than 4-5 days here and I could understand why. It felt more like a great place to live and an okay place to visit – this seemed to match Michelle & Ed’s assessment as well. Additionally, a really strong earthquake from a few years back had shuttered many of the museums while they find the money for repairs. The city is expanding rapidly and lots of funds are being spent on infrastructure development. Heck, the metro itself is currently quite bigger than my 2-yr old guidebook would suggest.

One of the things I wish I snapped a picture of was the “café de piernas” or “café of legs”. These are heavily scattered about, much like Starbucks in Seattle, and is a spot where you get your coffee served by women with long legs wearing tight short shorts. It’s perfectly normal for people (both men and women) to stop by these in the middle of the day for a coffee break. Apparently there are some such cafés that have an added random “happy hour”, and when the bell rings the servers go topless for a song or two or something like that.

After walking around for 4-5 hours, we hopped on the subway at about 6pm to beat rush hour back to Michelle’s place and had a home-cooked meal. It seems that rush hour is about 7pm because most people start work at 9 or 10 in the morning. As I mentioned a few posts back, it seems like life in Chile and Argentina is just shifted a few hours – in fact, clocks here are 2 hours ahead of us so they are actually doing everything generally at the same time most of us do in eastern standard time.

Tuesday, December 17^th, 2013

I slept in again today. It was a really nice feeling to do that two days in a row actually. When Michelle and I were coming back to the apartment yesterday evening, we stopped by a grocery store so that I could pick up some oatmeal and lactose-free milk – I had been craving those a bit. Breakfast has generally been my most dreaded meal because there’s only so much eggs and buttered bread you can take. For me, it doesn’t take long before the idea of eating eggs gives me the heebies.

The key thing I did today was head to the Museum of Misery & Suffering (more correctly known as Museum of Memory and Human Rights). This is an important civil rights museum that tells the story of the military junta that took the country over from the leftist president Salvador Allende in 1973 and started a brutal dictatorship under the general Augusto Pinochet for the next 17 years. In the immediate aftermath, the government went about denying civil rights in an effort to rid the country of opposing thought – dissidents were captured, tortured, and buried at sea; a daily curfew was imposed; certain books were banned and burned… and oh yeah, our own US government was supportive of the coup because of Cold War fears on the spread of communism, not to mention the direct benefit to some very large US corporations who were exploiting the mineral resources in the country. Even after Pinochet left office, many of the economic reforms that he instituted remain alive today and it’s no secret that Chile has modeled a lot after what we have in the US. As a result, the country even today remains very divided on their opinion on what took place during the Pinochet years.

I spent about 4 hours in the Museum, and it was obviously some very heavy material… to the point that I got a bit choked up at a memorial set up where framed pictures of all of the missing people are hung on a massive wall in the middle of the museum. I think we often associate democracy and capitalism for freedom of speech and civil rights… and in many cases, that’s absolutely true. In this case, the capitalist government was the oppressive one, and I suppose you could say the same was true in the US during the McCarthy Red Scare years where we jailed anyone associated with communism.

To clear my mind and process the information I had heard (thank you, audio tour), I just wandered around a bit for the next two hours around the city.

That evening, I joined Michelle & Ed at dinner in a nice area of town at a tapas bar with some of their expat friends – this couple is also originally from Australia (like Michelle & Ed) but is leaving to go back home in the next few months. It was nice to have a “normal-ish” dinner with friends, even though I barely knew most of the people at the table. Even on this trip, I often struggle to find people to go have a nice lunch or dinner with since many people in the hostel are on a fixed budget.

Wednesday, December 18^th, 2013

I slept in again. Loved it. Then I got some laundry in the washer since it was free (to me, at least – thanks again M/E).

After another oatmeal breakfast that hit the spot, I headed back into the city to check out some of the spots that Michelle had pointed out to me on Monday. On the northern end of the downtown area is a mountain called Cerro San Cristobal which has fantastic views of the city; at the base of this cerro is an area  called Bellavista where a lot of hostels are located and has a pretty nice bar & restaurant scene. I figured I’d spend the majority of the day there.

To get up the cerro, there were two options: walking up a set of switchbacks or taking the funicular. It’s a wee bit on the hot side in Santiago, so I opted for the funicular route. This also allowed me to say the word funicular more times than were really necessary.

There’s a zoo halfway up the cerro, but I decided against going in on Michelle’s advice. The zoo is very old and the animals don’t have very much space and I think I would have left feeling very angry. I still don’t understand how people can believe it’s ok to treat animals as though they were put on this earth for our pleasure. Anyone who has a cat or dog (and actually treats them with dignity) would realize pretty quickly that they have their own personalities and characters… something merely put on our planet for our pleasure would not have that.

The views at the top were really nice. Even though there was a heavier layer of smog today than in previous days, I could still get a sense of the sheer size of the city. On clearer days, you can see the Andes serving as a nice backdrop to the city. The top of the mountain had a number of religious statues and buildings: from the large Mary statue overlooking the city to a small church to a nativity scene with an amphitheater.

I headed back down the mountain (via funicular) and parked myself at a funky artsy illy café (quite popular in Europe) for a few hours to take care of some things. The only other real thing I did today was walk back into the center city to explore the other cerro in town, Cerro Santa Lucia. This is a much smaller hill surrounded by the center city but is still quite interesting and beautiful despite it’s apparent disrepair – it looks like no one has cared for it in a decade, though admittedly that kind of added to its charm.

There were lots of footpaths up and around this cerro, which had all sorts of buildings and fountains and boardwalks and other such structures built into it. Some of these footpaths were wide and comfy and others were steep and winding – I imagine that as a little kid, I would have loved driving my parents insane by running around and hiding from them. Who am I kidding, I’d love to do that now too!

Thursday, December 19^th, 2013

Today marks the exact halfway point in my trip. The first 10 weeks have gone both fast and slow in a sense. I find myself both very excited for what’s coming next and very nostalgic for my home back in Cincinnati (and my dogs too). One of the people I met in Mendoza was from the US and on a similar length of trip – she decided after several months to cut her vacation short and head back home. As she put it, “I found out that the desire for work/life balance goes in both directions.” I think that’s true – for me, I think traveler fatigue starts to set in somewhere around this two month point. Hopefully I am able to find something to shake it up a little on the second half of the trip.

I packed up my belongings this morning and bid a farewell to Michelle and Ed. Seriously, I can’t thank them enough for their hospitality. Of course, if they ever showed up in Cincinnati, I’d be more than happy to return the favor.

After a few hours on the subway and a bus, I arrived to Valparaiso, a smaller city located on the western coast of the country close to Santiago. The city has a distinct vibe, very different from other areas of the country. It’s a bit of a haven for artists, and the indications are everywhere from unique shops and galleries to the stunning graffiti plastering many walls, doors, alleys, and steps. While the city is located on the coast, it also about 45 hills or cerros that buildings and homes are scattered up, down, and across.

I had picked out a hostel that I wanted to stay at, but unfortunately it was full. They sent me to a neighboring hostel that was also on my list, but unfortunately they were full as well. The third hostel (not on my list) had a ton of space, so I checked in. It looks like I need to start making reservations from here on out. January & February are high season for Argentina and Chile, so it follows that I won’t have the same ease of walking up to anything at the last moment.

I went to a nearby eatery and had a spectacular lunch – while the food was pricier than in Santiago, it was a ton better. Spending $15 in pesos for something that I would have to spend twice as much for in Cincinnati is still a deal, though I definitely won’t be traveling as cheap as I had before. I suppose it’s really no different than Mendoza. Except here, even the restaurants have touches of artistry on the walls.

 

The afternoon was spent wandering the streets a bit – the graffiti was everywhere as were some spectacular views. Cerro Concepcion, the hill I was staying on, has a few boardwalks built facing the sea that were nice for a quick stroll. It didn’t take me very long at all to understand why so many people had told me that Valparaiso was worth visiting, even if only for a day. Valparaiso seems like Greenwich Village might have been in the 60s or 70s back before it was overrun with high prices and yuppies.

The weather was a bit spotty – very cloudy and a bit on the cool side, which was unexpected for this area, even by the locals. This suited me just fine since it made it easy to walk around without getting hot and sweaty. After more walking, I had dinner at a nice Italian pizza place with a nightcap at a tiny café. This café had a great vibe, even though it was empty at the moment – the guy there told me that there’s live music during the weekends.

Friday, December 20^th, 2013

Today, I explored a bit farther out from Cerro Concepcion. The famous Chilean poet, Pablo Neruda, had built a house Valparaiso that was about a 45 minute walk from my hostel. Along the way, I was treated to lots more graffiti and excellent views of the city. Neruda had asked some friends in Valparaiso to find him a unique place with views of the entire city, and this is what he got – it was pretty spectacular.

I haven’t really read any of Neruda’s work, nor do I know much about him at all, but the 2 hr audio tour of the house made it clear that he was a very interesting fellow. He had an extremely odd and quirky set of belongings, and his house had a garden that even had a teeter-totter. There’s a quote he has that goes something like, “A child who does not play is not a child. A man who does not play has lost his inner child.” I kinda liked that.

After the Neruda house tour, I walked down the mountain and had dinner at an extremely overpriced restaurant. A bottle of water was the equivalent of $6, though I must admit it was actually pretty tasty. I was going to bypass it but somehow I’m a sucker for a waiter standing outside asking me if I want to come in to eat. If I’m actually thinking about eating food, somehow I’m unable to lie or tell them that I’m not interested unless I actually know why I’m not interested.

This afternoon, I joined about 40 other people on a free Tours for Tips tour. Since we had so many people, we split into two groups and Elias was our Wally. The tour guides dress in a red/white striped shirt like Waldo of Where’s Waldo fame… except in Latin America, they call it “Donde eres Wally?” instead. So his name tag (and the others too) said Wally.

 

 

Elias was an overly energetic tour guide who liked to yell every    single    word    individually     as     if    that    point    of    emphasis     helped     his     message     get    through    instead     of    annoying      the     hell     out     of     most     everyone. But we learned a lot, including why much of Valparaiso is now a UNESCO heritage site, why there are so many firefighting companies in town, and how the pecking order of graffiti artists works.

After     leaving     the    Wallys, I meandered back to the hostel and then ended up at a fancy-like place for dinner, and it was really quite good. I followed it up with a nice dessert and coffee at a nearby pastry shop. Today was not the cheapest day I’ve had on this tour. I don’t think my waistline can afford too many of these days either.

After swinging by a grocery store for an inordinately cheap but extremely tasty bottle of Carmenere wine ($4 for 1.5L), I enjoyed a few glasses with some others in my hostel. There were two French girls living/working at the hostel for the past month – they invited me to join them to a new bar a few blocks away that had a live Brazilian band playing that evening. “Say Yes more than No” was another good choice tonight – the music was excellent, people were dancing, and it wasn’t too crowded.

 

Saturday, December 21^st, 2013

I took it slow today, deciding after a few hours to stay another day and linger. I got in pretty late last night, and you could say that I felt the impact. I’m not young and spry anymore.

I heard from another tourist that there was a fish market along the coastline north of the city that was worth walking to. Though I’m not a huge fan of fish, I didn’t have a better plan and I thought the exercise and prospect of ridiculously fresh fish might not be too bad an idea.

The day was a bit overcast, so it was perfect for me. Through the next 2 hours, I saw 3-4 large Naval ships (the Chilean Navy is based here), a cruise liner, lots of sea lions, waves crashing constantly on rocks, and lots of joggers and bikers. They even had exercise equipment on the boardwalk in several locations.

As I arrived to the fish market area, the coastline had transformed from a rocky outcrop to a steady beautiful beach, and there was a sand volleyball tournament going on to boot. I picked a restaurant at random and ordered a salmon ceviche… but unfortunately, it tasted a bit on the fishy side. I think I’ve explained my “I don’t like fish when it tastes fishy” feelings before, so I’ll leave that be for now.

The rest of the day was pretty low key for me.

Sunday, December 22^nd, 2013

My bus was leaving late tonight to Southern Chile, so I had all day to kill. After checking out of the hostel and dropping my bag off at the bus station, I grabbed a local bus to Vina del Mar, which is a few kilometers north of Valparaiso. It seems that the local population and the super-wealthy prefer Vina del Mar and when I got there, I understood why. The city is much newer and more modern, with a larger beach and green spaces and multiple posh hotels with prime beach real estate. Valparaiso is too old for the luxury hotels to grab a prime spot, so they went north.

I’m glad I didn’t have much more than a few hours to spend here, but even this was incredibly too much time. I must have circled the main part of town three times looking for somewhere decent to eat, before I spotted a fresh Mexican grill. As I walked in, I realized it was a chain. As I ordered, I realized it was an American chain called Lime, one of which had opened up a few blocks from my house a few months ago.

The only other thing going on of note was some sort of military or police graduation or celebration. I wasn’t much in a mood to watch since they can be a wee bit on the boring side, especially when you can’t follow what they are saying. With still lots of hours to kill, I realized that I could just walk back to Valparaiso and that would solve all of my time issues. Along the way, the clouds started to disappear and the sun came out. It’s amazing how much more beautiful a coastline or a city can look with the sun shining. It's also amazing what the "dramatic" filter does to photos of rocks and waves - can you tell the difference?

Tidbits

1.       Cafes in Argentina and Chile give you a small glass of agua con gas (carbonated water) with your coffee. At first I found this strange, but it is strangely refreshing in fact.

2.       If I ever move to Santiago, I would need to find a place to live that is off of the Tobalaba stop. I like that name. It reminds me of the greatest fictional name of all time, Bob Loblaw.

3.       Even in South America, it seems that black people are better dancers than white people.

4.       Breast feeding in public is completely fine here, and no one stares or anything. Given the high volume of catcalling that goes on in this hemisphere of the Americas, it’s curious how a people can be so disrespectful and respectful in these two (albeit, very different) situations. Or perhaps it’s just our perception of what is respectful and disrespectful that is different – it’s easy to forget that it’s more important how women here feel versus us trying to be offended on their behalf.

South America Explorations: Week 9 - San Juan and Mendoza

Sunday, December 8^th, 2013

The bus had about 10 stops between Salta and Mendoza, and it seemed that it was absolutely jam-packed for the first 4 stops and then was empty all of a sudden at around 2am for some reason. A Belgian couple in their early 40s was sitting right behind me in the bus and we struck up a conversation. They had rented a car in Salta for 3 days and drove around to see the landscape and their plan was to do the same from San Juan, a town a few hours before Mendoza. They invited me to join them, potentially half-jokingly, and I initially declined. And then I remembered one of my goals for this trip - I’m purposefully trying to take advantage of whatever opportunities present themselves on this trip and to say the word “yes” far more often than the word “no”. I think we have a tendency to miss out on all sorts of worthwhile experiences and opportunities because they didn’t fit into the plan we originally had in our heads. And since this vacation is largely unplanned anyway, if I can’t take advantage of serendipitous opportunities on this trip, I have no shot at doing so back in the real world when I get home. So, I checked the calendar real quick and decided to take them up on the offer instead.

Luc and Birgit had already done some homework, of course, and had a car rental company in mind in San Juan. But because it was Sunday, we had a difficult time getting competing quotes. In the end, instead of losing more time this day, we went with the expensive offer we had at hand. This simple 4-cylinder Chevrolet was costing about $80/day but the alternative was to lose a day to wait for other car companies who might have a better deal.

So, we had a late lunch and got on the road and got to know one another a bit more. Luc works in the banking industry in personal finance and has very high net worth clients. Birgit is a tour guide representative – she basically gets hired by tour companies to travel with tour groups and serve as their single point of contact to resolve issues and keep the tour moving, but essentially all she needs to do is be the go-between from the tourists to the local agencies that are handling the detailed logistics. And, of course, she needs to be an extroverted people person, which she definitely is. She had just finished a tour with a large group of Russians in Buenos Aires and Luc joined her afterwards so that they could have a 2 week vacation of their own. They’ve done this a lot, it seems. I think she has quite the dream job, one that I theoretically would love to be able to call my own. But, in truth, while I definitely have my extroverted moments, I am more of an introvert. And I know I wouldn’t be able to keep my mouth shut or maintain graciousness with the jerk tourists that would be sure to come my way.

Within a few hours, we got to our first stop – a small town that was known for an unofficially recognized local patron saint called Difruta Correa. The town had a small compound with a cluster of rooms where people could make offerings to Difruta Correa, who by the looks of the statues & drawings out and about appeared to be a dead lady who was still able to breastfeed a baby or something like that. There’s probably a fascinating story behind this, but I haven’t looked it up. I figured it's better to use your imagination on this one.

The shrine had separate rooms where people had left trophies and other medals, wedding gowns, models of vehicles, models of houses/buildings, license plates and all sorts of other things to “thank” Difruta Correa for helping them with. And for some strange reason, they also left a lot of 2L plastic bottles filled with water. I think my traveling companions found it borderline disturbing that people would seemingly attribute any good fortune received to a saint since that can have unintended consequences from a work ethic standpoint. While I definitely see that point of view, I guess I also saw a lot of hope through the offerings and prayers as well and that warmed my heart a bit.

We continued to drive a bit to the small town of San Augustin del Valle Fertil, which was on the outskirts of a few national parks we wanted to go to the next day. We found a small picturesque bed & breakfast to stay at – this was easily the most expensive lodging I had booked all trip, but it was nice to have a queen bed with a private room and private bath all to myself for a change. And there was a pool and an uber-friendly boxer dog who stole my sandal to chew on while I swam. But I liked him anyway, of course – he was too much fun to play with. I also had a frog in my bathroom and a cockroach on my luggage in the morning. Double the joy.

We walked around the town that night before grabbing some dinner. Birgit is s bit of a photographer, and it seemed she stopped every 15 seconds to take another snap of something that caught her eye. Even in the car, Birgit had Luc stop the car quite frequently so that she could grab a few shots. I saw some of her work later on, and she has an incredibly good eye too. She shoots exclusively in black & white, which reminded me that I need to start trying to do the same.

At the restaurant, I was craving meat since I hadn’t really partaken in the famed grilling that Argentina is known for. So, Luc and I shared a mixed grill platter for two – and this massive plate of random meats appeared at our table 45 minutes later: from steak to ribs to sausage to chicken thigh to blood pudding sausage (ewww!). Birgit ordered a pizza, and I actually liked it a bit better.

Monday, December 9^th, 2013

Breakfast this morning was non-existent – I walked to the main house and they gave me two pieces of bread and told me that we I everything we need in the room to make coffee. That was it. Wow.

So we finished our scrumptious and filling breakfast and headed to a local national park called Ischigualasto. The only option to see the national park is by a guided ranger tour which takes 2-3 hours. We were the only ones there at the time we arrived, so after waiting for 30 minutes for any other potential tourists, a park ranger hopped into our car and off we went.

Our park ranger doesn’t speak English. He’s full of information, but my preference is to have a guide in a larger group so that I can wander and half-listen to the guide. I still got to ignore the guide since his Spanish was way too fast to follow, but since there were only three of us, I certainly couldn’t wander. I found out later that Birgit has the same opinion of tour guides, but since she’s fluent in Spanish, she had to pay attention the whole time and it was killing her.

 

 

Even so, the guide was full of really good information. This area was exceptionally special because you could see three distinct layers formed during the Triassic period and wind erosion was exposing more each year. As such, scientists have been finding new bones and fossils without having to dig. The guide told us that this was unlike any area in the world and there was a constant flow of archeologists to the area.

We headed north to Villa Union to try and get a bite to eat. Unfortunately, we couldn’t find anything open at all in the entire town since lunchtime is apparently a bad time for a restaurant to be serving. So we left a bit frustrated and headed towards our destination town of Rodeo. On the way, we stopped in a small town called San Jose de Jachal and found a small bodega to get a pre-packaged sandwich, the first real food we’d had all day (and it was nearing 4pm). We also found a car mechanic to look at the undercarriage – a heat shield above part of the exhaust system had gotten loose and was rattling around as we drove. The mechanic tied it up using some old wire and didn’t want to charge us for it – this reminded me of small towns in the US where the same will often happen at the mom & pop shops.

We arrived in Rodeo a few hours later but were having difficulty finding any lodging and were getting a bit disconcerted. But finally, we stumbled on a two-room cabin with some beds in the living room – we took it. Since it has a kitchen, we figured we’d run out and get some groceries for some home-cooked meals. Luc made a really nice spaghetti Bolognese that night and we enjoyed a wine nightcap on the front porch. There were a few greyhounds living here too and one quickly became my best friend. She even hopped up into the hammock with me for a little bit.

Tuesday, December 10^th, 2013

Breakfast was wonderful; Luc whipped up some incredible bacon and eggs. After packing up and loading the car, we headed out for another day of driving. But before we left town, we stopped by the Rodeo boat dock – apparently, there’s a growing windsurfing community in this town by a lake, including the laidback owner of our cabanas. The windsurfing community apparently loves this strange large Rasta dude too.

 

We drove for a few hours through some stunning scenery until one of the main roads we intended to drive on turns out to be gravel for 120km or more. After taking a quick double-blind straw poll, we decided to just head back to San Juan. We were all having a little bit of road fatigue, my new Belgian friends even more so since they were doing all the driving and had also done the same for 3 days up in Salta. So they dropped me off at the bus station at about 2pm and I grabbed a bus an hour later to get to Mendoza.

I’m definitely glad I took advantage of this opportunity. It was nice for a change to spend some time with professionals who had been at their career as long as or longer than I have. And perhaps unsurprisingly, we also had a lot of great conversation about religion and society, politics in the US vs Europe, capitalism vs socialism, and so forth.

After a quick 2 hour bus journey to Mendoza, I took a cab to a hostel I had picked out called Punto Urbano which was about 5 blocks from the main square. When I arrived, the place seemed to be buzzing and there were lots of people, which sometimes means that it’s a party hostel, but this buzz felt different. There wasn’t a lot of space left at the dorm, so I got a tad lucky to get a spot – a shared dorm room with a guy who checked in right before me, Philippe from Germany.

This hostel has events each evening and organizes different tours for each day. From reading reviews of other hostels, this seems to be the norm for hostels in Mendoza in general, which is nice since you have a much bigger opportunity to meet people. There’s a free class tonight on “mate” (remember to use your Spanish pronunciation, mate), which is a very common drink in the southern countries of South America – it’s similar to tea, but uses a specific type of herb that gives you energy. There’s also a specific way to prepare it – some of these preparations are necessary to keep from ruining the herb. Some of these mistakes have minor ramifications, like burning the herb or turning it into a laxative. Then there are other rules that have more to do with personal preference and social norm. Everyone in the hostel was more or less in the class (not typical) and so we had a large circle of 20+ people.

I struck up a conversation with an Israeli fellow who lived in Illinois until the age of 8, after which his family moved to Israel. I asked him about the prevalent stereotype of Israeli tourists being cheap and difficult – he readily admitted this, especially the cheap part. But the “difficult” part is something different; his explanation was that everyone in Israel travels a lot, which is very different than many other countries. As a result, you get a very wide spectrum of tourists from Israel including the rowdy and the difficult – this makes a bit more sense. As I think I postulated in a previous post, I think the rowdy Americans go to places like Cancun and the difficult Americans tend to go on cruise lines or pre-packaged tours versus the type of traveling I’m doing in hostels.

It was getting a bit late and I was hungry, so Philippe joined me in search of food. The hostel made a recommendation for “normal” non-budget food, so we walked into the square and headed towards the restaurant. The city is gorgeous and there were plenty of people out and about. It was about 8pm, and for Argentina, that’s actually early for dinner as we would find out later. But for now, we got to the restaurant and each had a really nice steak.

Philippe is an aerospace engineer and works for Airbus, but comically enough works in their toilet division – his group designs and produces the toilets for the planes. More interestingly, he’s here in Mendoza because he is going on an 18-day trek in a few days to summit Mt. Aconcagua, which is the tallest peak in South America at 22,838ft; a good 3500ft higher than Kilimanjaro. In fact, it is the tallest peak in the world outside of the Himalayas. He hiked Kilimanjaro a few years ago, but this peak is both higher and more technical, hence the longer trip. The trip sounds great, but 18 days is a long ass time to be in a tent in freezing temperatures – I honestly don’t know if I could do it.

Wednesday, December 11^th, 2013

Breakfast at this hostel is really exceptional – they will cook you eggs, pancakes, or crepes to order, which is definitely different from the other hostels I’ve been at. They also have a nice variety of pastries to choose from. And the chef is very cute too.

I spent today just walking around town to get a feel for the city and the area. It’s an extremely livable city with nice park squares seemingly every few blocks, several pedestrian streets with sidewalk cafés and a variety of restaurants, and a very large park on one end of the city. When I got to the large park, I noticed locals jogging (pronounced “yogging”) for the first time since I got to South America. I also walked down a few streets that I could completely envision living on. I liked it a lot.

The hostel had an “asado” barbeque planned for this evening – it’s supposed to start at 9pm. I think I mentioned in a previous post that people in Argentina and Chile seem to eat much later than we are used to doing in the States. At about 7pm, it started downpouring unfortunately, so our outdoor barbeque turned into an indoor affair instead. Massive plates of wonderful looking meat passed through the tables – it was good, but honestly, none of it was as tender and juicy as I had imagined Argentinian beef to be.


So far, I’m still unimpressed with Argentinian steak itself. Then again, the amount of food for a reasonable price is definitely impressive.

After dinner, I met some of the others staying at the hostel. Kiran is a British Indian guy who decided he was tired of the corporate world and sold all his belongings and came to South America to find something to do – he’s a bit worried that he’s been traveling for almost 6 months at this point and has mostly just been enjoying himself instead of actually thinking about his future, but I figure he’s entitled to enjoy a bit before figuring out how to be productive again.

And there’s Ft. Lauderdale – my name for the crazy older American lady whose name I don’t care to remember. Her American accent was unmistakable, so I asked her where she was from and she refused to say the United States though it was obvious. She has basically decided to leave the US and find somewhere new to live because she’s convinced that the country is moving into a fascist state. She told me that FEMA was designing concentration camps and would be deploying them to intern our civilization after the next natural disasters. She told me that Obamacare mandates that everyone gets a chip implanted in the skin between the thumb and index finger and that the government could track your every move with this implant. She told me that Obama isn’t even our president’s real name because he used to go by Barry – I tried explaining that this was short for his first name Barack and he went by Barry all the way through high school and college before reverting to his full name, but she didn’t want to have anything of it. Then she told me that the government is trying to control the food supply and is outlawing backyard gardens of all sizes. And she also somehow had irrefutable proof that Obama didn’t actually win the last election. She was clearly nucking futs. A young girl from England who is a policewoman was trying to reason with her to absolutely no avail, so I started just trying to get her to stop talking so that I could try and have a normal conversation with someone who wasn’t insane.

Thursday, December 12^th, 2013

I spent the morning just wandering around a bit more because I liked it so darn much here. But it’s really quite warm here and I ran out of t-shirts, so I walked around with a long-sleeve undershirt and a light short-sleeved button-down. And I was crazy hot. Then I realized something – I’m in frickin’ Latin America and these guys rival only the Italians at wearing button-downs with no undershirts. People around here won’t care one bit about my natural sweater vest (my chest hair, for you slow folks out there). I like South America.

Late this afternoon, I went with a pair of Swedes from my hostel and some others from this hostel’s sister locations for a horseback riding trip. We were 8 tourists in total: me, Tom and Amanda from Sweden, Marissa from DC, Darius and Joe from England, Stephanie and Rachel from Australia; plus our guide Alejandro and our driver/cook Marcelo. Marcelo might not be his real name, but I’ve decided that any time I can’t remember a South American dude’s name, they’re automatically named Marcelo. But I don’t generally like horseback riding because I always feel as though I’m generally keeled over in pain by the end and I’m fairly certain that I’ve damaged the goods substantially. But the description of this trip sounded interesting so I figured I’d have a go.

We drive south of Mendoza for about an hour in the vanbus, and end up on a cattle ranch and a handful of horses waiting for us. The ride was more of a walk than anything else, so the nads are safe for now, but my horse was a wee bit ornery. I think she was a bit older, and I think she was a she – I couldn’t tell from my vantage point at least. But she seemed to be a bit on the reddish side for coloring, so I named her Ol Red, of course. She loved to randomly stop on the trail, turn her head back and try her best to gnaw off my right leg. It was fun – we enjoyed a lot of these touching moments. Alejandro told me to kick her in the head, but I think something with the straps were really bothering her… or maybe she just really disliked my right leg.

Alejandro led us up into the mountains for about an hour and we got to see some nice views of the surrounding landscape. We were following Alejandro single file – I was towards the back. Our group was generally lagging because Stephanie’s horse enjoyed stopping to examine a lot of the local plant life for texture & flavor and she was a bit too scared to give the giddy-up kick.

While we were out gallivanting, our driver/cook Marcelo was busy grilling up some meat for us. Alejandro was only told that there were 6 tourists, but fortunately he bought extra food from the store. Whatever cuts of meat he grabbed were absolutely wonderfully grilled up by Marcelo in this rustic little awkward shack of a dining room we were huddled in. The meat was easily the most tender and mouth-melting that I have had in my time in Argentina thus far… and I’ve actively been searching out to get a killer piece of steak since I got here. So I’ve got a happy belly.

As we quickly worked on the jug of wine that Alejandro brought along, he pulled out his guitar and strummed a lot of well-known songs that we could all sing along to. I’m generally uncannily good at being able to recognize songs early on and tonight was no different… but apparently there are lots of songs that start out with similar chords as “La Bamba” because I started belting out that tune 3or 4 times before Alejandro actually played it. Come to think of it, I think he was toying with me. Either way, we had quite the grand time. As it neared 10:30pm, we loaded back up in the vanbus for the ride back.

On the drive back, we decided to go out on the town together. Unfortunately, the good places to go were quite far, so we didn’t end up getting there until almost 1am after getting coordinated from our different hostels and a good 30 minute walk. The place we wanted to go, called Por Aca, had just started charging a cover, so we walked down to another place a few blocks down called People that was not too busy and had a cover band playing. It was in Spanish and people were singing along, so I figured it couldn’t be original music. After another hour or so, they started clearing out the tables and the bar turned into a club. Just like Spain, the bars & clubs don’t get busy here until after 2am. Well, it was busy but it wasn’t so packed that you couldn’t move… it was perfect. And the ratio was wonderfully perfect here too – for guys, that is. The beer lent me a pair of cojones and I used my rudimentary espanol to strike up a few conversations in this crowd where women outnumbered men substantially. Unfortunately, I had a trip that was leaving early in the morning, so I left a little after 3am to grab a cab to the hostel and get in bed by 3:30am.

I learned later that much of the group stayed out until 6:30am and walked back with the sun already having risen. Joe apparently got extremely drunk and was picking fights with locals, but the locals were very gracious and understanding that he was wasted. Darius, Marissa and Amanda were able to get him outside and back towards his hostel. Ultimately, he got belligerent enough that they had to leave him at the main square because he wanted to go to another bar and wouldn’t budge. I’m glad I missed that part.

Friday, December 13^th, 2013

After hitting snooze on my 7:25am alarm, I swung my feet out five minutes later and tried to figure out how to stop time to get more sleep before my 8am pick-up time. Unfortunately, there was a knock on my room door at that very moment informing me that my ride was here. So I scrambled to get my things together and a bag packed and crossed my fingers that I didn’t miss anything for my day trip to the Aconcagua base camp, called Confluencia. I suppose my brief roommate Phillippe from a few days ago had inspired me and a single day trip was the only thing I could find to join while in town.

I was joining a mother/daughter couple from Colorado, Lisa and Shannon. They are traveling together for several months through South America. I might even bump into them a few times down the road as our itinerary overlaps in a few spots, specifically in southern Chile. We’ll see, I suppose.

 The hike from the park entrance to the base camp wasn’t really too challenging, especially with only carrying a light daypack, but I was muscling through on extremely little sleep and a slight hangover from last night so that wasn’t as fun as it should have been. But even so, the views were absolutely spectacular. Aconcagua itself was frequently covered by clouds unfortunately, but the colors and rock formations along the valley to the base camp didn’t disappoint in the least and held to the fairly high standards that the previous weeks had already set for me.

The views in the car ride back were equally spectacular. I hadn’t seen many of them on the ride in because I was mostly asleep, but my eyes were wide open for the way back. The rain started coming in on the ride back and we were treated to an exceptionally strong rainbow… and at one spot there was even a double rainbow. A DOUBLE RAINBOW!l!! I couldn’t believe it. I should post it to YouTube since that’s never been seen before by anyone anywhere.

After I was dropped off at the hostel, I grabbed some pizza at a highly-recommended nearby joint popular with locals that apparently likes to make dough extremely thick like there’s no tomorrow. I know that phrase makes zero sense given this context, but that’s how thick this was. Actually, it wasn’t thicker than Chicago-style casserole pizza, but you get my point.

Back at the hostel, I met a Bolivian couple who were sharing the room with me this evening and had a good conversation with them. I don’t remember their names, but I’m guessing his was probably Marcelo. The girl was really really cute – maybe Bolivia should notch up a few pegs on my list of countries from which to have a pseudo-awkward women fetish. I remember that she was very interested on my thoughts about Edward Snowden, and was a bit perturbed by my response. I basically told her that it didn’t surprise me in the least because after 9/11, we signed away all sorts of rights in the Patriot Act and other such legislation that we as a society never really thought about. And it only stood to reason that the NSA was doing the same with other countries. And I’m sure that other countries were doing the same. That’s not to say that I don’t completely disagree with the NSA and that I’m not happy that Snowden came along, it’s just that I wasn’t surprised and it didn’t really change my view of anything in the least. If anything, it supported my contention that Obama is not really as liberal as people like to make him out to be – similar to a libertarian, a true liberal would have killed the program quickly because of rampant civil liberties violations.

But yeah, she was really cute.

Saturday, December 14^th, 2013

Today, I delved into the criminal world a bit. Argentina’s government apparently thinks it’s a good idea to control their exchange rate with the USD so the official bank rate is about 6.2 Argentinian pesos to 1 USD. They also restrict how much Argentinians can exchange their own pesos for USD, essentially creating a black market exchange… which for some reason is called a blue market. And the blue market isn’t all that underground either – there’s even a website showing the current blue market rate. It’s pretty substantial and you can often get up to 9:1, especially if you have higher denominations.

For those who don’t have USD cash in hand, like me right now, you can use xoom.com to essentially wire yourself money from home (like Western Union), converting the USD to Argentinian pesos in the process at a rate of about 8.4:1, not as good as the blue market but a heck of a lot better than the ATM rate. Xoom’s Argentinian affiliate is a company called [more], which is closed on Sundays and they don’t have any locations in the south of the country. So I figured I ought to try and get $600+ USD’s worth of Argentinian pesos here while I could and carry them with me for the rest of my trip… and save 30% in the process. I only wish I had figured this out earlier, because I would have brought $1000 in cash on Day 1 and exchanged it all in Salta and saved all along. Oh well.

My hope this afternoon was to head down 20km or so south to wine country, rent a bike and visit some wineries. Unfortunately, by the time I got the blue market stuff sorted out, there wasn’t enough time to do this since many of the wineries close a little earlier on Saturdays. But I was able to book a guided ½ day tour in a van at the hostel so all worked out. Darius (from the horseback riding trip) was on the same trip so we hung out a bit. The tour took us to two wineries at opposite ends of the spectrum – one very old winery and one brand spanking new winery. We learned that the area is naturally a desert, but the ice-melt water from Aconcagua and other nearby mountains has been channeled to the area since pre-Spanish times creating a wonderful farming community. Today, the government maintains strict control of the irrigation channels to ensure everyone gets a fair share, for a price of course.

But anyway, way back when in colonial times, the church needed to source their wine from somewhere because shipping it from the homeland was way too expensive. They tried in many many places, but somehow this land proved exceptional for this purposes and voila – a now-world renowned wine region was born. Because of the church. I would never have guessed that.

In my continuing search for a great piece of Argentinian steak, I stopped by a restaurant called Downtown and ordered a steak and salad. Out came a massive hunk of steak and a massive salad. The waitress tricked me with the salad, because I incorrectly thought it was included as a side. But the meat was soooo very wonderful that it made up for that annoyance. The food was so plentiful that I ended up needing a doggie bag to take some back to the hostel. I’m leaving tomorrow afternoon for Santiago, so I figured I’ll finish it as an early lunch. I definitely couldn’t let them throw that beautiful piece of meat away.

Darius and I met up around midnight for a few beers and had a nice conversation into the wee morning hours. The topic turned to the growing anti-Muslim sentiment in Europe; in England, there’s a pretty prominent almost-KKK-like group that has formed and is creating all sorts of a ruckus. What I remember discussing from the conversation is that while there’s no easy answer, it’s definitely not okay for the Muslim community to turn to the religious leadership to solve disputes and crimes versus the local police. There has to be more acclimatization to the local community by immigrants – as well, there should be some of the same in reverse by the existing community. England is unbelievably diverse, so this shouldn’t generally be an issue – as I think Darius put it, “London IS Diversity”. It’s not an easy issue to tackle, and usually a few generations solves the problem, but it sounds as though this isn’t happening as many Muslim immigrants have created their own insular communities within towns/suburbs across many parts of Western Europe. I don’t think that’s good for anybody.

Tidbits

1.      

The toilets in Mendoza are interesting. For some reason, the upper half (tank + flushing mechanism) is embedded into the wall behind the tiles, leaving the seat & bowl alone to protrude into the room space. In addition to that, the flushing mechanism is a long button at eye level that you push in to flush. I can’t quite figure out why the need for something different. Did the city actually pass an ordinance to make this happen or something? Of course, the real question in my mind is why the people of Mendoza don’t trust their children and the midget population to be able to flush their own dookie down the toilet. You know, the streets have these incredibly deep uncovered sewer ditches along every sidewalk – I guess the thinking is that if children fall and die in those, then it’s just Darwinism. But flushing your own poo? We’ve got to protect them against that.

2.       I’ve often said that learning English is terribly difficult and learning Spanish is terribly easy. Often people will agree with me, but equally often people will disagree and claim the exact opposite. I think I figured out why – I’m a visual learner and I need to see words spelled out to remember them. Spanish is highly logical and is generally pronounced the way it is spelled. But it presents other challenges with verb conjugations and gendered nouns (el vs la) that can be cumbersome. To audio learners, English is far easier, despite the fact that our spelling rules are absolutely atrocious – there are no real rules because English has been sourced by so many different languages and new words never had to adhere to a spelling standard.

3.       Tom (from Sweden) confirmed that the Swedish Bikini Team doesn’t actually exist. He had no idea what I was talking about. I learned from a quick Google search that Old Milwaukee beer invented it back in the 80s for a few commercial spots and it just caught on, before they stopped due to concerns from some women’s rights groups. So another budding entrepreneur stepped in and started making low-budget movies featuring the Swedish Bikini Team, this time with actual Swedish people. So, my Swedish friend Tom, I beg to differ – the SBT does exist. And thank goodness for that.