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.