Valparaiso & Vina Del Mar

            After Spanish school I plan a trip with a local friend and some other friends from school to the coastal towns of Valparaiso and Vina Del Mar. A quick 2 hour bus ride and we arrive on the coast where the temperature drops significantly from Santiago. I pull out my jacket for the first time in a couple weeks and start searching for hostels.

            Valparaiso is a unique town with many cerros (hills) with colorful houses packed in tight among the confusing street system. We find a hostel with a dining room on the top floor giving an overlook of the ocean and the surrounding houses. The town reminds me of both San Francisco and a favela (barrio/ghetto) in Rio.

            We spend the days wandering the streets and taking pictures of the colorful landscape and the many pictures painted on the buildings and houses. The city has many cable car lifts that save you the energy of climbing hill after hill for a pretty cheap price. We find another fresh fish market and enjoy some of the local cuisine. I order a Chilean soup that is filled with squash, corn, carrots, rice, and beef . . . delicious.

            We make our way over to Vina Del Mar the next day and take a walk on the beach overlooking the familiar Pacific Ocean. Both towns are pretty laid back and 2 nights is more than enough for me to explore the 2 cities. I leave content to have had a break from the smog in Santiago and the hustle and bustle that big cities create.

Santiago

Surrounded by mountains on all sides is the massive city of Santiago, the capital of Chile. Museums, parks, skyscrapers, San Christoval, music, restaurants, bars, and pollution are among the highlights of the city. The metro (subway) system seems to be the most common way for people to move around the city, but there are many buses and cars as well.

Spending close to 3 weeks in Santiago, I got to explore many different parts. I visited museums, one of which I liked very much. The museum I liked is called The Pre-Colombian museum and had ceramic artwork from different cultures and times throughout South America. Beyond that, I got a history lesson in Mayan and Inca culture.

The sun was out everyday and I enjoyed walking around the city and parks in the 80-degree weather. I joined a gym because I needed some exercise and was feeling restless. I got to strengthen my knee a bunch and after a couple weeks in the gym it feels much stronger.

During my home stay and school I would spend much of my time out of the house exploring the city with friends or my ipod. Visiting San Christoval, a statue that looks over the city, I was disheartened to see the abundant amount of pollution that sits trapped above the city by the mountains.

After school one day we headed to a fish market with a couple locals and a couple friends from school. The waiters’ stand outside their restaurants and do anything in their power to get you to stop and eat at their establishment. The local Chileans did the ordering for everyone and pretty soon our table was filled with creatures from the sea. I love seafood, but was hesitant to eat the shellfish having heard so many bad stories of people getting sick. To not be rude, I ate a little of everything along with ceviche (raw fish with lemon and onions), a popular dish both in Chile and Peru.

            After lunch we head to a dive bar that is famous in Santiago called Piojera. The bar is filled with loud, drunk locals drinking Terramotos (Earthquakes), a drink made with cheap white wine, pineapple ice cream and Brandy. I manage to force one down and then a group of 10 or so Chilean students call me over to their table in English. They are studying to be English teachers and are excited to practice what they are learning in school with me. They all ask me questions at the same time and eventually ask to take pictures with me. Being tall, white and American was enough for them to want to have their picture taken with me.

            The bar itself is quite dirty. The walls have hand written tags on them and all the tables are quite old and dirty. The bar, like all bars and restaurants in Chile, is filled with cigarette smoke and after an hour or two, the smoke starts to make me feel sick. One of the girls from our school who is quite small drank her fair share of terramotos and so we eventually guide her to the exit and lead her safely back home on the metro.

            After I finished the Spanish school program, I moved to a hostel for 4 nights waiting for my flight to Lima to meet up with Summer and Paul. The hostel is one of my favorites so far. It is a huge high-ceiling Victorian type house that has been renovated to become a youth hostel. There is more than enough lounge space and a pool with a swim up bar with grass to lie out on to enjoy the warm weather. I spend the rest of my stay relaxing and reading in the sun, talking with the many other gringo travelers from all around the world.

            Two British girls seek advice from me because they have a 50-year-old Turkish stalker staying at the hostel. The guy invited himself along to travel Chile with the girls asking, “Where are you going next?” The girls responded that they were going to San Pedro and then he replied, “I go with you to San Pedro”. Their plan was to try to get up early and sneak away. We laughed at their predicament and I told them I was going to try the Turkish guys strategy at some point in my trip to see the other persons reaction.

            Santiago treated me well, and now I am sitting here in the airport writing this before I board my plane to Lima, Peru and the land of the Incas! . . . well the Spanish and The Incas!

Spanish School w/ Homestay

I am officially humbled! Learning a new language, even one that I studied in high school, is proving to be tremendously challenging. For those of you who fantasize of traveling to exotic lands for a couple months and returning home with a second language . . . good luck! The amount of time and energy needed to just obtain conversational apprehension is much more than I had planned for. I think learning a language (like learning to play an instrument or painting a picture) comes easier for certain people. I think that I am not one of those people, because I find myself in a state of frustration or utter confusion way too often.

    I signed up for a 2 week Spanish program in which I stay with a local family to further have the chance to practice my Spanish during my studies. I had illusions that after 2 weeks of concentrating on learning Spanish with my background of studies and vocabulary, I would walk away with conversational Spanish. In other words, be able to understand most of what people are saying to me and convey a message and a story with greater meaning than the simple basics. I think this was a little ambitious of me, but if nothing else, it has sparked my interest in staying with my studies after I return home.

    The school is for 4 hours a day in which we study tenses/conjugations/grammar and other than that try and keep a conversation going in Spanish. After the first day I realized that at the least a couple months are needed to really give myself a fair chance at obtaining a good amount of Spanish. Although my Spanish has drastically improved, it is a small step towards being able to be confident in saying that Spanish is my second language. 

    Back to the analogy of playing a musical instrument to learning a new language. Just like learning a new instrument, the beginning is by far the most frustrating and disheartening part. Struggling to put sounds together on a instrument is similar to being able to sound out words in the correct pronunciation. Next comes playing chords or sounding out more words and sentences. Then notes and chords together and eventually part of a song. This is the same as sentences and parts of messages, which do not sound all that great in the beginning. Eventually you are able to nail part of a song or a whole song which would be the same as go to introduction lines like: What is your name? or Where are you from? Then comes the confidence to play songs, tones and chords together in a way that sounds good for the listener or being able to convey a message in a way that the person you are talking to understands. Reading music is similar to understanding what is said or writer. I am around this point in my Spanish and am looking forward to understanding more and being able to have deeper conversations with people and spending less time searching through my dictionary for the correct word or phrase. 

    After spending hours with my host mom I have a new understanding of the word awkward. Carmen, a working-class Chilean woman in her 40's is my host-mom. Her house is in an apartment building in a very nice and secure part of Santiago. Her apartment is small, but very, very clean. I am happy to have my own bedroom and private bathroom with shower for the next 2 weeks. Part of the program includes breakfast and dinner which is where I spend the majority of time talking with Carmen.

    Carmen tells me that she doesn't eat dinner, so instead she sits with me while I eat and talks with me in Spanish. I struggle with the words to explain what I did with my day and what I plan to do in the future. Carmen is very nice and patient, like most Chileans and helps me through trying to express myself in Spanish.

    The school is a starting point to my commitment to learn Spanish. As I travel throughout South America I will continue to practice and force myself out of my comfort zone of English. Hopefully when I return home I will have a solid base of Spanish and will be inspired to practice and travel to other Spanish speaking countries.

Don't Swat The Flies

    Finishing my 2 week Spanish study program in Santiago, a couple new friends from school and I headed to Valparaiso and Vina Del Mar for the weekend. After an eventful day of exploring the artsy city of Valparaiso we headed out for dinner. A group of 7 jolly Chileans were at the table next to us enjoying cocktails and celebrating a birthday. I was among new friends and we were generally talking about our lives back home and where we have traveled. The jolly table next to us was being entertained by a magician who was really good at card tricks. After he left, people at the table did their best to keep the magic going, which in a short amount of time I would be ruining.
      I was enjoying a glass of red wine and admiring the liveliness of the table next to me when a fly kept pestering me and my food. I grabbed at the fly with my right hand only to catch a handful of air and without hesitation swatted at it with my left and sent my full glass of wine sailing across the room. I couldn't believe my eye's when I looked up to see that my glass of wine broke on the chair of a guy dressed in a fresh white button up, covering him in red wine. Let's just say that if I were a magician, then I would have done my disappearing act right then.
    Not knowing what to do, I stood up and tried to offer some help to the irritated gentleman I soiled with wine in Spanglish. The group's festive laughs and conversation vanished from the room as quick as the blood from my heart rushed to my head. The people that did not get hit with wine were nice enough to write it off as an accident and told me that it was no problem. The guy that I covered in wine choose not to look at me, I'm sure out of pure frustration and disgust. I offered to buy a round of drinks for the table, but they respectfully declined and I slowly made my way back to my table realizing that I was all of the sudden at the center of everyone's attention.
    I tried to smile and act like I was comfortable while the rest of my group laughed and slowly drank their drinks. My only thought that was that sure it was embarrassing and painful now, but it would make for a good story later on. I felt a huge sense of relief as we left the restaurant and I made my way back to my hostel. I felt fortunate that I did not have to fight my way out of the restaurant.

Pucon, Chile

            The bus ride from Bariloche, Argentina crossing the border over to Pucon, Chile is amazing. I wish that we had our own vehicle so we could stop and take pictures or camp at one of the many lakes surrounded by lush green forests. Paul and I talked about purchasing a car or truck for our journey, but after weighing all the options, we ended up agreeing that traveling by bus and plane would be less stressful and would save us money. I am still tempted here and there to buy a vehicle, but after bus rides of over 30 hours down dirt roads through the desert I am glad to just be a passenger.

            Our bus pulls into Pucon as the sun is setting over the lake. I exit the bus and am awe-struck by the massive volcano that rises high into the sky just outside of town. We track down a hostel and find ourselves in the midst of a pack of 20 traveling Israeli’s talking (our should I say shouting) in Hebrew as they eat dinner and drink beer. I am tired from the bus ride and try and lay down but the noise in the hostel is overwhelming. I eventually fall asleep when they leave to party only to be woken up again around 4 in the morning when they returned. I made sure to shuffle around in my pack very loudly when I got up in the morning.

            Pucon has around 11 volcanoes in the area, 3 are active. With so much volcanic activity, there are also a bunch of hot springs. Pucon is an adventure guide and outdoors person’s dreamland. To name a few of the activities available in Pucon; Rock climbing, Volcano Trekking, ATV, motorbike, mountain bike, backpacking, canyon/rapel/zip lining, river rafting, hydro-speeding, snowboarding, fishing and boating to name a few. Of all the places I have visited so far on my trip, Pucon and Rio are the places where I would want to come back and spend a couple months working in the area.

            The main tourist attraction in Pucon is the active volcano and there are a bunch adventure companies that take people to the top. The weather has to be good in order for the companies to run the volcano tour. We were not fortunate enough to have full day of solid weather, so we didn’t get to summit the volcano.            

            Pucon is an epicenter for activities. Paul and I tried out hydro-speeding, which is essentially going down class 3 rapids on a custom boogie board. The wetsuits that our guides provided were way too big for Paul and I and we were shivering cold within 2 minutes of entering the water. We soon were rolling over rapids and occasionally hitting rocks because the river was low. We were on the river for and hour and a half and I was more than ready to get out by that time. My feet took a solid 3 hours to come back to life from the cold. I am glad I tried out hydro-speeding but probably wouldn’t do it again unless the river was warmer and there was more water with less shallow sections.

            The next day the clouds were heavy in the sky and it was forecasted to rain. Not wanting to sit around the hostel, we booked an ATV tour planning on getting soaked by rain and mud. Because of the weather we were the only 2 on the tour. Our guide Pedro spoke little English but was a pro on the ATV. A quick safety lesson and we were speeding through people’s backyards and the forest. We crossed a couple streams and then headed up a valley towards a volcano. Going up the valley there were some really fun and technical rock sections. At the top, our guide shot some photos and pointed out where the volcano would be if there weren’t so many clouds in the sky. We were pretty comfortable on the ATV’s at this time and we asked the guide to pick up the pace on the way down. I think he was worried about us messing up his ATV’s because he was going pretty slow. We had to let him get ahead of us and then let loose until we caught up with him. The tour made me want to get ATV we a bunch of land to ride it on. We lucked out with only a few light sprinkles on our tour, the rain didn’t start until we were done.

            The next day the rain was on again and we were feeling less adventurous so we hung around the hostel with some Australian friends and played Uno and hearts. One of the Aussies was a DJ as well and gave me some good tips on finding new free music. I ended up staying up until 4am finding new tracks, can’t wait to drop them in Santa Cruz when I return.

            We were getting fed up with the rain and wanted to check out Pichilemu before Paul headed back to the States for a couple weeks to visit his girlfriend. We booked an overnight bus and then tracked down a local downhill mountain biker to take us for a tour. Diego, our guide and a friend drove us to the base of the volcano and the top of the trailhead. We put on some pads and a full-face helmet and were off shooting down the mountain. Paul hasn’t downhill mountain biked much and took a pretty good fall on the first section but rolled out of it without injury. The trail was much more technical and extreme than I was expecting for a guided tour and we had a blast sailing over rocky sections and steep shoots. My knee is still in recovery mode so I had to hold back a little, but I watched as Diego soared over a jump section with 25-foot tabletop. We both fell a couple times but had smiles from the adrenaline. This was my first time bike on a mountain bike since my surgery 5 months ago, can’t wait until I am fully recovered!