It's almost all over. Time to go crazy.

Recuerdos?

Another older entry I found, from the first part of the trip. It's funny looking back on everything now, from this vantage point almost-at-the-end. Have we changed? That remains to be seen, I'm my money is on yes.

Taking a break from my mountain of homework for class tomorrow to indulge in English. Yes, ENGLISH. After three weeks of homework completely in my secondary language, English has been transformed into something of a luxury: in class, a forbidden but often necessary vice, our gringa indicating index and my somewhat ugly-sounding mother tongue. Ah, the ease of being able to write something in English! The constant flow from brain to fingertips, the electrodes snapping in synergetic harmony to the rhythm of fluent speech—I’m terribly jealous of the bilingual and trilingual, and the simplicity with which they dance between languages.
So much is happening all the time, yet upon reflection it seems like the de rigueur for life here: a constant adventure. My journal is filling up with random accounts of the more colorful aspects of life here, documenting my battle with the waves of nostalgia I feel after dreams of palm trees and Manhattan. In my room with the view of the ocean stretching forever forward, the same color as Chilean lapis lazuli (a sidenote: Chile and Afghanistan are the only countries in the world that can boast large deposits of this beautiful blue stone)—I just wish for home and for what I consider to be normality. Even ordering coffee here is a nightmare.
But despite all of my griping, I still love it here and I’m learning with much more fluidity than I thought I would. I went out to Valparaiso with El Colombiano, and we spent the night waxing poetic in a small jazz bar (where the median age was well over 60), and two old, drunk former merchant marines complimented me on my Spanish, even for being a gringa. It’s a marvelous thing to realize that you can express your ardent beliefs on leftist politics in another language, albeit haltingly (another sidenote: Mark would be proud).

It ends rather abruptly, probably as I realize how much homework I have to get done. But isn't that sort of a metaphor for life?

disfrutar:
Spanish, I verbo intransitivo
1 (gozar, pasarlo bien) to enjoy oneself


It´s our last night in Buenos Aires, and I finally got up from a long nap, shaking off sleep at 9 in the evening, belly still faintly aching from the tenedor libre (all you can eat) lunch Lilia, Alicia and I had stumbled upon. We had nixed Uruguay in favor of a cheaper time in Buenos Aires, and found ourselves with 3 extra days to wander around the city of Good Airs and enjoy the sweetness of the springtime here. Everything feels different in Argentina, almost like you´re in an entirely different continent. The stoic reserve of the Chilean character is a joke here, as the amorous and friendly Argentinians sweep you into their genial embrace of "Che! Que bonita es la vida!". The plazas and the architecture conjure images of Europe, erasing the bloody and violent history of the South American colonial conquest. The cobblestone streets of San Telmo would be completely ordinary in Paris, and seem a universe away from the dusty roads we traveled in Perú.
I ended up spending entirely too much money here, but our motto of the trip has been ENJOY THE NOW, or translated into Spanish, DISFRUTARLO! We splurged and bought tickets to a proper fútbol match, between La Boca and Racing Club, two of the biggest soccer teams in Argentina. La Boca is a poorer, working class neighborhood situated at the mouth of the river in Buenos Aires, and fans of La Boca´s soccer team are renowned for their fierce displays of pride. We had heard rumors of the La Boca stadium going up in flames after one particular match, leading to a battallion of riot police being stationed at every subsequent match. At this game, the fans were more well-behaved, perhaps in part because of the policia´s night sticks and riot gear. But that didn´t mean that the fans lacked spirit or vigor...imagine a stadium filled with 40,000 fútbol fans, each cheering and jumping and waving flags in favor of their team. Truly memorable.
Last night, we decided to properly go out and enjoy the famous Buenos Aires nightlife. This meant taking a nap after dinner (which was homemade guacamole we had concocted in the hostel kitchen) until 12, opening a bottle of whiskey and drinking together until 1, then hopping into a cab and arriving at the club around 2, when things start to get interesting. Some fellow Americans had recommended this club in Palermo, which was smoky and filled with twisting bodies, a transvestite dance show, and the requisite fashionable Argentinians. It felt like only a few hours, but when we finally emerged from the smoky clamor the sun was coming up and the city was finally going home. We enjoyed the sunrise from the terrace of the hostel, finding sleep and rest around 7 in the morning. Disfrutarlo!
Tonight, I think we´re all too tired to pull another all-nighter, but I´m sure we´ll find some way to enjoy the nighttime, which is only now starting to come alive, and make the most of our last night here. Going back to Chile means school, tightening the budget and eventually saying goodbye as our last month in Viña draws near. Until then, we tell ourselves to live entirely in the moment, abandoning doubts to enjoy what we have all around us, the warm air and the cobblestone streets, the city of Good Airs shaking off the day and coming back to life this Friday night.

Good Airs

We spent our first full day in Buenos Aires today, and everything that I heard about the Argentine capital is true. The city is vaguely reminiscent of both New York and Paris, but with that distinctive South American feel. We´ve settled in temporary residency at Hostel Carlos Gardel, a charming old buiding with red painted walls in the heart of San Telmo. Our compañeros are a thoroughly international bunch, including a friendly Spanish character and a long haired Italian.
Today we through caution to the wind and throughly acted the part of the touristas, snapping photos of the monuments and the European architecture, chatting in English and sampling shoes at the many stores in the Microcenter. It was hot and the sunshine was a welcome respite from the last two days of pure rainy misery in Viña, so we peeled off the layers and reveled in this sense of vacation.
We wandered the streets of Buenos Aires today, getting lost and finding our way again, through San Telmo and the bustling Centro, up into Recoleta (which is just as ritzy as the guidebook promised, in an Upper East Side sort of way). We´re awaiting the arrival of our fourth blonde-haired travel mate, the always interesting Lilia, in which time the drunken splendor of this party capital will come into full effect.
Uruguay is on the horizon, and it´s likely that next week we´ll cross the water and find ourselves in the little country sandwiched between Brazil and Argentina. I think this will be one of the things I miss the most about this whole experience, the ease with which we travel and move around the continent. "Pinche gringas!" the mexicanos always say, "Siempre estan viajando a todos partes!" And its true, that we´re blessed with the ability to pack our bags and go, disfrutarlo y tener grandes experiencias. Our classroom, quite literally, is the South American continent, and the infinite variety of the land here.
Que suerte, si?

Old(er)

I found this on my computer last night, and it rekindled some old memories of places I´ve been. I thought I´d post it for a little DC love.

At night, Baltimore effuses an incandescent glow, rising up out of spires that oddly sprout out from the low brownstones and industrial machinery. In the daylight, the city appears dirty and somehow incomplete: a block of brightly colored doorways offset by the boarded-up wreck on the corner. The slope of Charles Street, born in the bright glare of the Inner Harbor, past knots of black youths on the street corners, rises upward towards the sedate, tree-lined promenades that surround John Hopkins University. This is a city marked by its differences, black and white, poor and rich, somehow stitched together to form this patchwork city that alternates between seemingly-safe and frightening, eliciting a nasty reputation that makes visitors from Bethesda lock their doors as they drive down these streets.
Today, I bought a ticket at Penn Station, boarded a train bound for DC, and watched as the Baltimore brownstones gave way to the lush green of early Maryland summer. I find it funny how these trees and vines all look the same as they did two years ago, still sedated despite their natural disorder. This is not the explosion of chaotic fauna that somehow harmonizes in the Hawaiian tropics; this is the oppressive air of disciplined order. This is Maryland.
It’s no better in DC. What once I took to be completely natural now seems stifled, as if a giant hand is slowly pushing down on the entire city. Everyone looks pressed, pressured into his or her respective compartments: DC professional, DC-East Coast college student, DC poor, DC anti-establishment rocker/bike messenger. Even though they are different, they are each carbon copies of their peers.
Perhaps it’s like this everywhere, simply replaced by paradigms that seem more natural and acceptable to me. But walking around Dupont Circle, despite the racket of the DC Guerilla Poets in the Circle, the chatter of the metro/homo/fashionista men in sunglasses on cell phones, the general flow of traffic from work-to restaurants-to home-to Metro-to wherever, I couldn’t help but feel that this is a place completely devoid of diversity.
Which is silly, I know. Walk the half-mile to Adams Morgan and you see the colorful neighborhood dynamics reflected in the restaurants: Ethiopian, Mexican, Middle Eastern, Chinese, McDonalds Team America. We settle for the Diner, tip extravagantly as our own personal thanks for the simple human friendliness of our tag-team waiter and waitress. I eat French toast for dinner because, dammit, I can. My own rebellion in the heart of American conformity? In some weak way, perhaps.
I’m exhausted beyond reason, but my mind is chewing and mulling over the whole day. I love talking with Mark, who bubbles over with anecdotes and ideas and a pure, unadulterated excitement for life and his work. I can’t help but be enchanted by his contagious enthusiasm, and passion for politics. We go by Poets and Busboys after a marathon walk around DC, I buy James a present and lovingly open the pages of these radical, revolutionary, fervent books. This is the most segregated city I’ve ever seen, a weirdly repressive and stagnant one, but you can’t stop flowers from growing through the cracks. The cacophony of the streets nourishes this quiet, somewhat stunted revolution. But it’s what I’m here to bear witness to, what I’m here to do. And I’m thankful for every minute of that.

Back

We're back in Chile, bid our farewells to Peru and are back to the rolling cerros of Valparaiso. But not for long...I think the reality of the fact that our trip is already halfway over has set in, so we're frenentically traveling the continent, experiencing and drinking (literally) it all in, trying to make the most of this Southern springtime.
Last weekend, we crossed the Cordillera and ended up in Mendoza, Argentina. I had been told (by reliale sources) that all Argentinians are beautiful, but I was utterly unprepared for the jaw-dropping beauty of the people there. Imagine Gael Garcia Bernal, Gisele...then drop them down into more relateable models, and you have the image of Argentinians (at least in my experience). As well as being gorgeous, Argentinians are friendly and more boisterous than their Chilean neighbors, lounging and chatting animatedly in outdoor cafes under the umbrella of Mendoza's tree-lined calles. The food is amazing and ridiculously cheap, the shopping better than good and the entire atmosphere dripping with life and sensual beauty. I love Argentina. Already plans are in the making for a trip to Buenos Aires, the Argentina capital hugging the Atlantic, and possibly to Uruguay.
I'm in my friend Ti's house off Calle Valparaiso now, eating popcorn and half-watching Amores Perros. We're trying to pick out all the Mexican slang, and it reminds the girls of the way I talk, with my faux-Mexican accent. Better than a Chilean one, I figure, since words just sound better and fuller, somehow, in mexicano.
There are so many little idiosyncratic things about this place that I'm going to miss when I go back...the stray dogs, the agua con gas (carbonated mineral water that is the norm here), the jotes en las calles, the pisco, the sunset over Valpo, the crazy dude with bandaids on his face on the corner. All of the things, some ugly and some beautiful, that compose the urban landscape of Vina, and of my Chile. Sometimes, as much as I hate it, I remember how much I'll miss the omniscient "Siii po," the quintessential Chilean saying. How lucky we are to be part of our families, part of the cultura, part of life here. I'm going to miss it, even if I do find myself holed up in Mexico, like I've always dreamed I could be.
But the movie is calling me back, the sound of the streets and the eventual walk back home by the ocean, up Balmaceda. I'll pass Cafe Journal and the stray dogs, the lights and the smells. And it will be my Chile, if only for a little longer.

Cuzco

We´ve spent the last two days exploring the islands of Lake Titicaca (pronounced Titihaha in Aymara, as we learned) and have left behind the Lago and dusty Puno for Cuzco, Perú. Cuzco is different than I thought it would be, with more white people per square foot than Peruvians, and more touristy bad fashion than I thought possible for such a seemingly remote place.
We visited the floating islands of Uros people in Lago Titicaca. These people have created a whole community of islas flotantes, fashioned out of the spongy, slightly squishy reeds that abound on the Peruvian side of the lake. Now, they main industry that supports the communities is tourism, as people like us traipse around the delicate islands, riding on their traditional boats and snapping photos of everything. From the floating islands, we took a slow-moving boat to the island of Amanteni, nestled around the peninsula. Amanteni is crowned by two twin temples, one to Pachatata and one to Pachamama (the madre tierra, the mother earth goddess of the indigenous people). We hiked up the terraced mountainside, watched the sunset from over Perú, and contemplated the generally larger mysteries of life in the growing shade of the evening. As we hiked down in the darkness, the entire skyline off the island was illuminated by a spectacular lightning show, fat stabs of electricity highlighting the infinitestimal quiet of the island. We spent that night in a small brick shack, complete with a goaty smell and outhouse, sharing the company of Faustina (a shy, smiley indigenous woman) and her family. They have a ´discoteque´on the island in which they dress all the tourists in the traditional clothes of the native people, and have us all get drunk and dance to a traditional Andean band. We passed on the Cuzqueño (Peruvian beer) in favor of water, in an effort of offset the ill effects of debilitating altitude sickness.
The next day, we set off in our little boat for the island of Taquile, which has been thoughly capitalized by the tourist industry. We hiked up the Plaza Central, which boasts one Catholic church and one Adventist. Who knew?
After lunchtime, the boat made its lazy way back to Puno, and we spent the 3 hour journey lounging on the top deck in the sun, talking and listening to our iPods (like good little Americans). Back in Puno, we ate a fantastic dinner and met up with the English girls, and the Argentinians (who are probably two of the most afuera de mano, or out of hand, people I have met on this trip). We drank beer and sang songs and started a dance party with the willing help of the Peruvian bartenders, called it a night early and turned in for bed.
Today we left Puno for Cuzco, and after 6 hours traversing the awe-inspiring valleys in a spiffy tourist bus, we reached the city and our friendly little hostel. We´re planning on checking out the local nightlife here in Cuzco, spotting as many tourists from as many different countries as possible. It´s crazy to come to Cuzco after Puno, which is dirty and bustling and full of Peruvians. I´ve been thinking about alot of different things during this trip, which I hope will solidify into something a bit more cohesive when I get back to Chile. Until then...te vayas bien y buen viaje!

Bienvenidos a Perú

As I write this, I´m at the bus terminal in dusty Tacna, the southermost town in Perú. My compañeros de viaje (ahora, Kevin, Kristina and the always effervescent Alicia) and I are crowded into the small bus company office, using their free internet and second floor vantage point to contemplate the bustling terminal (complete with random bangs and explosions, a regular South American cacophony). We´re on the first leg of our journey, jumping off from the north of Chile into the heart of Perú, Lago Titicaca and, ultimately, Machu Picchu. This is where we begin to truly feel the spirit of adventure, as we try to adhere to the warnings of DON´T DRINK THE WATER and STAY AWAY FROM FRESH VEGETABLES, keeping a close eye on our belongings and feeling the espiritu of carpe diem that surrounds this whole trip.
Peruvians, in my immediate and extremely limited experience, are nice and excellent speakers, enunciating their Spanish calmly and easily (the complete opposite of the frenetic Chileans, who drop letters and syllables like it was going out of style, rushing their words and gesticulating wildly). We all stick out like sore thumbs here, the light skinned gringos with the fancy backpacks. Our taxi driver cautioned us to be careful in Tacna, since there´s little police presence and we´re complete strangers to the dusty brown hills of Southern Perú.
We crossed the border, got the stamps in our passports, and continue forward. But far more than physical borders, this is a journey into the heart of our experience, as we cement experiences that will, I sense, later define this era of our lives.

It’s 10:30 pm in Chile, and homework can wait until tomorrow, as I pour over my Lonely Planet guide to South America. We’re leaving for Peru in a week, gearing up for the Big Mission to Machu Picchu, complete with Incan ruins and border crossings, train rides and the Peruvian frontier. And yet, it still seems surreal that this is my life, this is my twenty years of life put into action. Is it? Is it? Is it?
Last weekend:
We left Vina still feeling hungover, and an hour and a half later woke up in Santiago de Chile. It was one of those glorious, once in a lifetime days. The torrential downpour we felt in Vina had washed the city clean of its usual pollution, leaving the sky sparkling, arcing over the crown of the Andes. Santiago is surprisingly hip and modern, with a distinctly bohemian element that reminds me a little of Brooklyn. We staying in a very English-speaking friendly hostel, smack in the middle of the Bellavista district. Alicia and I wandered down across the Mapocho River, discovering along our way a little city playground. We wandered towards Cerro Santa Lucia, and accidentally discovered the park atop the Cerro. Santa Lucia is an incongruous hill right off the center of Santiago, converted “back in the day” into a spiraling city park. There’s a tower at the very heart of the hillside, leading up to a stunning view of the city. On that day, it was particularly beautiful, with hardly any of the stifling pollution that usually plagues Santiago’s skyline. We spent hours in the Feria de Artesanos en Santa Lucia, wandering around the little vendors’ stalls, picking out pieces of jewelry and exclaiming over the smooth pieces of lapis fashioned into rings, earrings, necklaces (how fun it is being a girl). Eventually, we found our way to the Plaza de Armas, and the crowds that flooded the streets on this warm springtime day. Later, back in Bellavista, we took the rickety ascensor to the top of Cerro San Cristobal. The towering statue of the Virgin of the Immaculate Conception big farewell to the sun with arms outstretched, as Santiago was transformed in hues of gold and orange. That night, “our” Bellavista was transformed into wild party district, as young Chileans spilled into the streets and out of the discoteques. We made friends at our hostel’s barbeque, and in mixed Spanish-English-Portuguese, waxed poetic over bottles of wine and Escudo (a cheap Chilean beer that’s perennially on special).
The next day, we met up with Lilia and took a bus down to Pichilemu, a five-hour journey south. All of our Hawaiian-gringo friends were staying in a trio of cabanas up in the hillside, so we trekked up the dusty hillside to our weekend homestead.
Pichilemu is beautiful. That’s the only way I can really describe it. From our cabins, the entire coastline fanned out below, framed by the soft undulations of the Chilean hillside. There is amazing surf in Pichi, eternal left-hand pointbreaks and faster beachbreaks. We walked to the beach at sunset, shared an Austral (a much better cheap Chilean beer), allowing the ocean to cover our footsteps as the light faded into the endless Pacific. The entire Hawaiian crew spent the night singing around the campfire, trading jokes and stories and food. I woke up early the next day, and we spent the morning lounging in the sunshine, enjoying the crisp air and the absolutely pristine skyline. Katie and I opened the box of Gato Blanco (cheap Chilean boxed white wine) around 10:30 in the morning, and started a truly memorable game of charades. We passed the day idly, eating and lounging, eventually packing our backpacks and heading back to Vina.

So many of my companeros here are saying how they could easily stay here for another semester. We’re each running towards something, I think, and in turn running from something else. For me, however, I think my journey here is more of a realization of my capabilities. I'm having dreams of New York and of Mexico, of places I've seen and loved, and places that are calling me in some weird transcendental manner. I fear that I've awakened a perennial wanderer inside of me, the spirit of the expat, of the traveler, of the "global citizen." And perhaps this is my pais inventado, as Isabel Allende says, forever invented in my dreams and my experiences.

The Hostellers Life (or, What Happened on the trip to La Serena)

We (we, of course, being Alicia and I: friends and quickly becoming favorite traveling buddies) started our journey to La Serena on a whim. As dinner trailed to an end and the urging of our companions and fellow Hawaiians reached a fever pitch, we came to the sad realization that a weekend alone in Vina del Mar would fall short of the spectacular, lifechanging experience that we so craved in Chile.
“Alright, they’re going then!” And so it was: we bought our bus tickets that very night, packed our backpacks and prepared to leave for La Serena the next morning.
La Serena: heralded in my Lonely Planet guidebook as being the second-oldest city in Chile, humble home of 29 churches, positioned on the Northern Chilean seaside. Most popular in the summertime months of January and February, but cheaper in the off-season. A perfect trip for our long weekend? So we thought.
The six hours on the bus went by quickly, as our freshly-charged iPods composed the soundtrack to our excitement and anticipation. But as darkness fell and, now seven, eight hours into our journey, we realized that we were not going to get to La Serena on time. Furthermore, our friends were already up there, at a remote camping and surf spot an hour away from the bus terminal. What to do? We resigned ourselves to a night in a hostel and a prompt trip to the beach the following day.
We finally found lodging at a humble hospedaje after three of the Lonely Planet recommended hostels turned us away. Adriana, the plump little senora who owned the place and assured us a nice bed with a good bathroom, let us into our room. No backpackers paradise here. Instead, a dusty room with four questionable-looking beds (each vacant) bathed in the glow of the enormous Packard-Bell billboard outside. We paid the 5000 pesos ($10US), killed the ants in the bathroom, stowed our backpacks, and hurried down to the surprisingly modern mall in La Serena for a hurried dinner and a well-earned Corona.
The following day found both of us tired and grouchy (that fucking billboard somehow managed to keep me up all night, its fluorescent glare disturbing my dreams of a warm bed in Vina), determined to find a new place to stay for the night. A few phonecalls later, we found lodging at Maria’s Casa. Maria turned out to be an extremely pleasant and affectionate little woman with a slight hearing problem, who promised us a bed in one of the colorful little cabins around her home for a mere 4500 pesos (about $8US). Score.
Our beach-bound friends left vague text messages with nebulous directions, so we spent the larger part of the day exploring La Serena, which, for the most part, is a shithole. To be fair, La Serena boasts a pretty Japanese garden and some impressive churches, but on a Sunday morning, little to do for the young and American in Chile. We wandered around the Iglesia Catedral, and Alicia educated me on Catholic decorum in such places. We ignored the NO FOTOS POR FAVOR sign, decided God would probably still be okay with us, and snapped a photo of the beautiful stained glass window devoted to Saint Bartholomew, and chanced a photo of the shrine of the Virgen de Guadalupe.
In the main plaza, we were accosted by Gypsies. I’m not even kidding. Gypsies. I thought gypsies were relegated to archaic parts of Europe, but apparently not. Feigning ignorance and no understanding of Spanish whatsoever, we shrugged off the women and endured their muttered curses. Gypsies, despite popular belief, are no fun at all.
After a brief nap at Maria’s clean and friendly abode, we finally decide to chance it and catch a bus to Totoralillo, where are friends are supposed to be. An hour later, we’re dropped off on the side of the Panamerican highway, with vague directions to walk toward the water. The view was absolutely stunning, huge green hills rolling down towards the blue expanse of the Pacific, white-capped waves hugging the rocks and the curvature of the coastline. A truck of friendly Chilenos picks us up and offers us a ride in their flatbed down the dirt road to the campsite. We eagerly accept, and in a matter of minutes, are embracing our long-lost friends that have set up camp at Totoralillo.
Totoralillo is gorgeous. There’s a little hotel and restaurant on the point, and waves break on both sides. To the left, it’s a fast little pointbreak that empties out into a little channel. Beyond that, a fun looking beachbreak that was hosting a surf contest upon our arrival. Music played, friendly Chilean surfers cruised the beach, and our friends thanked us profusely for bringing down a bag of charcoal. Funny how necessity makes the most commonplace things sacred.
Alicia and I split a liter of Heineken, sit on a huge rock and laugh with our friends about our (mis)adventures from the weekend. The sun sets lazily, the wind picks up, and the clouds speed crazily toward the hills. We share our meager meal of bread and cheese (and ham for the meat-eaters). Oddly, my bread tastes like dogfood. I guess it’s a bad idea to buy the cheapest bread you can find in the supermarket (about 700 pesos, around $1.20US). Finally, 6:00 rolls around and Alicia and I bid our farewells, heading back up the dirt road to the highway to catch a bus back to La Serena and Maria’s Casa for the night. We bring along two other weary travelers, Julia and Megan, who’ve had enough of camping and are ready for hostels.
After a good 45 minutes of walking, we finally reach the highway. The busstop. We wait. And wait. And wait. It’s dark along this lonely stretch of the Panamerican highway, and the buses seem to be bypassing the stop. Conversation between the four of us becomes strained as we all become scared: what are we going to do if this bus never comes? By this time, it’s dark and deep into a chilly night. Frantically, I call the bus station in La Serena. In poor Spanish, I explain our predicament and understand that we’re supposed to wait on the side of the highway, because apparently buses don’t go to busstops here. Shit.
We run up to the highway. Stories of kidnapped American girls discovered dead and gagged come to mind. I’m scared. Shit. Fuck, our bus! We wave our arms, scream, run after it, and finally chase it down. On the way back to La Serena.
Alicia and I sleep in the next day, snug in Maria’s Casa, with the sounds of American students also on hiatus awakening us the next morning. We each pancakes at a friendly little restaurant with real coffee (none of this Nescafe stuff that’s so popular in Chile). We pack our stuff, get lost trying to find the bus station, and at long last, are on a bus back to Vina del Mar.
Seven hours later, pulling into the dirty bus station in Vina, I nearly cried for joy at being back in, oddly, what feels like my home. Never before has the dogshit on the sidewalk, the speeding colectivos, the catcalls of weird guys, the highrise buildings all seemed so pleasant. Vina, Vina, preciosa Vina! And it feels so good!
Today, our last day of the long weekend, we ate ice cream in the Plaza and walked along the ocean. We took a ride in a horse-drawn carriage and cruised down the boardwalk on Playa Ocho Norte towards the pier. The people and the bustle and the familiar streets of Vina felt like a welcome homecoming, and Alicia and I relished this sense of sentimentality. A fitting end for the weekend (though I have to mention that, for the first time EVER, we actually saw gypsies in Vina and they, indeed, harassed us for money. Fucking gypsies).
In conclusion, backpacking and hostelling is serious business. I have a newfound respect for the people who make this their bread and butter. As for me, I’ll be sticking to Vina and shorter trips to Santiago for the next few weeks. Although you never know, something wild could come up and I could find myself running from gypsies and stray dogs in the wilds of the Chilean South all too soon.
Oh Chile: and it feels so good.

Manana con la lluvia/Chilena Training

It's morning/afternoon on the ocean, a grey looking day that edges towards evening even as I wake myself up. The hedonistic tendencies of the young and responsibility-free in Vina make for long nights and rather short days, thought it's a welcome change from the langor of little Hilo. Even with the rain softly blanketing Vina, the day seems full of possibility, infinite.

I've been here only a week and already I find myself slipping into the grooves of a well-worn life here, savoring the newness of experience but already feeling the familiar paths of routine. When I leave here, will it feel like I've spent my whole life here? What a terribly adaptive predicament, the wonderful transience of our lives making every new place feel like home, every journey a homecoming. Are there any lines between anything, or does it all blend and mix? Will I wake up one day at the sunset and remember everything like a dream, Spanish-speaking characters intermingling with my earliest history, the ocean connecting all my paths?

But enough musing. It's a good feeling to have the whole country spread out beneath your fingertips. No school Friday, no school Monday, nor Tuesday....and we're only limited by the depths of our pockets and the breadth of ingenuity. We're thinking about going up to La Serena (the second oldest city in the Chile!) or maybe Santiago, San Pedro de Atacama, or even just more Vina and Valaparaiso. It's exciting, it's new. But we're learning. The other people on the program are all lovely, and we discover more things about each other as we try to figure things out here, which micro to take and how much the colectivo really should cost. Alicia (my neighbor and fellow Chileno enthusiast) and I have developed a plan for fully experiencing Vina and the rest of the country: CHILENA TRAINING. The young people here are veritable South American hipsters, cool kids that sport outrageous haircuts (the infamous chocopanda: a sometimes in, sometimes out take on the classic mullet) and slick clothes. After some initial observation, Alicia and I decided that Chilenas:
a) Do not speak loudly on the street, especially not in English. Note #1: Speak softly in public places, in passable Spanish or even English with a Spanish accent.
b) Always know the best places to go out and migle with fellow Chilenas.
c) Have the most fashionable accesory: a Chileno boyfriend. This means an instant companion to walk you home when it's dark and scary at night, a personal bodyguard to keep the greasy, weird men at bay, and a trusty make-out partner.
d) Wear boots. Cool boots. Slouchy suede boots, with the pants tucked in. It's terribly cool.
While Chilena Training is still in the observatory phase, we'll likely be moving on to direct action within the next few weeks. Alicia already has boots. The Spanish needs to get better and I need to keep quieter in daily public settings. But we're trying, and plan on unveiling the Chilena versions of ourselves upon returning to Hawaii.

I've drank and danced more than I did during a whole summertime in Hawaii, which is a fun change for now but will probably get old fast. I'm trying to live as fully as I can without killing myself or getting sick. Some days are better than others, but for the most part, I'm falling in love with this completely enchanting place.

Bienvenido Perros

It’s the second day of my Chilean adventure, and I’ve decided to throw open the windows of my little room, letting in the fresh ocean air and the sound of the dogs.
The dogs:
There are stray dogs everywhere here. Seriously. Everywhere. And not just the average looking mutt that one might expect, but huge, glorious (albeit dirty) animals that travel in well-mannered packs. They drive the “legal” pets crazy, as those safe behind the gates defend their deserved territory, proving that segregation is not limited to animals of the two-legged sort.
At the urging of my Chilean host mother, I went for a walk around Vina. Actually, she suggested that I take a colectivo, a sort of group taxi that will take you wherever you need to go for about $1US. However, the thought to facing a car full of native Chileans (thus native Spanish-speakers) with nothing but a rudimentary knowledge of Vina del Mar scared the shit out of me, so I opted to walk.
The house that I’ll be making my home for the next few months is in El Recreo, a neighborhood right outside the center of Vina del Mar (in the direction of Valparaiso). The streets slope down towards the sea, little avenues and passages crisscrossing houses that spill down toward the Pacific. A five-minute walk down my street brings me to a busy intersection, and beyond that, the vast expanse of the ocean (I like to imagine it as the same water that hugs the shores of my birthplace, a sort of aqueous umbilical cord). Turning right from the intersection and moving away from the water, I reached what I can only assume was Vina proper, filled with bars and stores and people. The young people are more fashionable than I expected, the atmosphere is more European that I imagined, and the boys (on occasion) are cuter than I hoped for. Imagine the fading glamour of Paris, subtract the outrageous prices and clean streets, and add the Latino flavor of East LA barrios (plus the stray dogs) and you have my initial impression of Vina’s center. I never did succeed in finding the University, but I passed by Café Journal (cited in my guidebook as a hip, happening spot for Vina’s young people, SCORE), a strange sort of mall, Payless Shoes (es espanol!), and about a million kids in Catholic school uniforms.
As I headed home, leaving behind the main thoroughfare for the windy streets of El Recreo, I had a sudden, strange craving for something I almost never crave: COCA-COLA. Everywhere there are signs for Coca-Cold, trucks filled with the caffeinated paradigm of Americana cruising the crowded streets. Was the advertising have a blatant effect on my stomach? Or was it something more…a yearning for something familiar, a piece of home (Wal-Mart, McDonalds, JCPenney’s, fuck, anything!). Or maybe a residual craving considering I haven’t had any coffee or caffeine for two days now. I finally worked up the courage to go into a little store across the street from my house. The sign outside declared, “Pan! A toda hora! Bebida, Lacteos, Cecinas!” I knew bebidas meant that somewhere in that dark little store, a glorious bottle of Coke was waiting for my little gringa hands.
And now, half an hour later, my Coca is gone and the sun is setting over the ocean. The stray dogs are still hustling up and down the street, and the pampered pets are still going crazy. Ah, Chile: que rico!