Brooklyn to Bogotá

So far South America has been exactly what Tom Robbins led me to expect...and I´m not even in the middle of the Amazonian jungle. However, I can´t really imagine a place much prettier and more vivid than the lake districts of Chile and Argentina. Really stunning. Very familar in many ways. Sorry to all the New Yorkers for bragging about my home state....but a lot these lovely mountains remind me an awful lot of Colorado. It is indeed a beautiful place to call home.

The last week has reminded me over and over again that the best part about traveling alone is the ability to change your mind and direction in an instant, which leaves you open to lots of possibilities you may have discussed your way out of with another person or group.

Monday morning I arrived in the town of Temuco after a twelve hour bus ride, tired and a bit depressed to have left my new friends in Viña. Upon arriving in the dimly-lit bus station I decided that what I need was a bit of exercise and some phyiscal adventure so I hopped the next bus to the town of Pucon, the adventure tourism capital of Chile´s lake district. The next morning I found myself with rented ice gear climbing Volcan Villarica with a couple of Quebecois and a local guide that may or may not have been listening to his iPod while pretending to lead us up the volcano. I swear I saw his earphones under his ski hat. Though our attempts to summit the volcano and peek at the magma were thwarted by rain (what is it with crappy weather and volcanoes and me?) I had a blast descending the glacial parts of the volcano on my heinie. I forget the correct term for it...something something french. The Chilenos call it eskier en el poto, ski on your ass. It was great, but because I left my microfleece on a bus in Viña del Mar...I was a bit chilly. Must buy one more layer....getting colder as I go south.

I met a very nice German girl in the hostel in Pucon and had a nice couple of walks around town but felt a bit stifled by the crowds and too tempted by all of the pricey adventure options. Lucky for me, as I pored over my book the next morning trying to decide where to go next, who should appear but an interesting and rather happily eccentric American fellow and his German compañero to whisk me off to a remote hot springs owned by the American fellow in the mountains just an hour away via a very crappy dirt road. In a short time I was laying my backpack down on the bed of tipi in the middle of a quiet, solitary forest. After lunch of Pasta Pechuga del Pollo (chicken breast paste?) and cheese sandwhich in the meadow and a soak in the hot springs I chatted with the owner about his plans to bring five Sri Lankan elephants to the land around the springs for sanctuary and species protection. With the rather surreal image of Asian elephants munching on the green fringe of the native bamboo plants and spindly pines now blanketed in snow...I sauntered off to bed very early and slept beautifully under the weight of about five very heavy woolen blankets and the sound of utterly pouring rain sloshing the sides of my tipi, waking only now and then to eye the top of the tipi for impending drips, which surprisingly never appeared.

With plans for hiking and bicycling with the German fellow to an ostrich farm nearby canceled by the rain, the few guests in the hotel and me and the German guy in the other tipi ate loads of breakfast and sat in front of the fireplace (no electricity or heat) reading and petting the cats until the rain turned into an amazingly beautiful snow. Snow in this area in February is like snow in July in Breckinridge, not impossible, but pretty unlikely. I spent the rest of the afternoon soaking in the hottest pool with massive clumps of snow falling on my head and melting like sugar in the water beside me.

Later that afternoon, the driver for the hot springs, Raul, drove me into the small town of Curarrahue (really hard to pronounce Mapuche name) to a bed and breakfast run by a charming older couple so that I could catch the bus back to Pucon in the morning. On the way, we stopped by his own farm so he could show me his eleven new piglets. Eleven new piglets. Eleven baby, stripey piggies. Aw, they were so cute.

The town of Cuararrahue is small, interesting, colorful and not another gringa in sight. Raul told me that about 85% of the people in the town are of Mapuche descent and the lifestyle is simple sustainable agriculture and a tiny bit of tourism. I really liked being there and getting the chance to get off the gringa trail and took tons of pictures.

After chatting with the operator at the bus terminal in Curarrahue, I decided to head into Argentina instead of back to Pucon because he told me there was a puestero festival on in the small Argentinian town of Junin de los Andes. Great I said, ticket for Junin please.....what is a puestero?

I spent the afternoon, well part of it, staring out the window of the bus with my mouth open at the gorgeous landscape. The verdant greens and dramatic heights of the Chilean mountains blending gradually into the more earthy hues of green and brown on the Argentinian side with its massive Colorado blue skies and clouds that seemed so low and close that you could poke one if you were standing on one of the higher hills. The other half was spent waiting a ridiculous amount of time at the border for god knows what. We spent about an hour and a half on the Chilean side and another two on the Argentinian side. Oy!

I arrived in Junin a bit surprised by the popularity of the festival and also by the drastic difference in accent between the Chilean and Argetinan spanish...crap I speak Chileno now and can´t understand a word these folks are saying, it´s like starting over. I also forgot I would need to change money and was momentarily confused by the price of my accomodations, which in Chilean pesos wouldn´t even be the price of a soda.

However, with the help of sister Ernestina of the local catholic school, I have found a bed for the night, well a mattress on the floor of the school with a room full of other women and hot showers and a kitchen along with a bank and the festival. Sister Ernestina is adorable and showed me around town herself. She is about four feet tall and walks faster than I can keep up with. And now I am off to see what kind of music a puestero festival has to offer. Back in Viña they are getting ready for the biggest music festival in Chile with headliners Tom Jones and Ricky Martin....pretty damn vivid.

(I promise I will post photos soon...the next rainy day! They take a bit of time but I have lots I want to share!)

Well so much for saving the best for last. The friend of a friend system has really been good to me on this trip so far. After mentioning a desire to travel to the nearby town of Viña del Mar to go to the beach, I was passed from the hands of the cousin of my sister´s friend in Seattle.....into the care of the husband of the sister of the friend of my sister in Seattle and his family....whew! But that is now just a formal description of how we were connected because now I´m just going to call them my family in Chile. There are really no words to describe my time in Viña with this family, too much kindness and patience and affection to explain. It was such a genuine pleasure to spend time with this happy and loving family and all of the aunties and uncles and kids. It was kind of overwhelmingly wonderful. I left with a heart more full because of them, but also with a new bit missing and an already missing bit feeling freshly missed. Spending time with this family made me want to go immediately home to Colorado and have sixteen babies so my parents would have as many chubby little cheeks to kiss as I had this past week. The children were so polite and sweet and affectionate with their parents and with each other. I was a bit envious of their uninhibited affection and also astounded at how they so easily bestowed the same on me, how each person in the family made an effort to understand my terrible (but improving...) Spanish and to speak slowly and to make sure I wasn´t hungry or bored or lonely or tired. In Viña I slept well, ate great Chilean homecooking, was taken to every point of interest in the town and nearby, was invited into many homes and parties, had the best conversations in Spanish I have ever had or ever thought I could have, and fell in love with this whole family. This time I didn´t even have to jump to experience the exhilaration of being caught. I can´t say enough thank yous and it is only with the thought that I will find a way to return soon that I could release myself from the hug of my new favorite ten-year-old in the world to step onto the bus and out of the world into which I was unexpectedly welcomed.

In coming to South America, one of my goals was to be immersed in the language and culture. Instant immersion has taken on a new meaning. The evening before I left for my trip, my sister called to say that a friend of hers from work was going to be in Santiago visiting her family this weekend. After a few phone calls from Seattle to Santiago it was decided that I should stay with the family in Santiago, in their apartment in Provedencia, near the center of the city...and even better, that a cousin would pick me up at the airport while dropping off his wife there the same morning.
The only catch was no one in the family speaks a word of English. This of course, pleased me because I thought, I will learn quickly.

Details were a little vague. I arrived in Santiago bleary-eyed after three 4 to 5 hours flights and some napping in the airport in Lima with one eye closed and the other watching some little girls play with a brand new puppy that was running all over the place. It was about 3 am after I cleared customs and paid the reciprocity tax. I had about 4 or 5 hours to wait for the cousin so I found a bench and promptly went to sleep, waking when the wobbly bench seemed to collapse under me and I found a smiling fellow sitting next to me expectantly waiting for friendly conversation and offering me a drink of his apple juice. The last hour of my wait went pretty fast as I tried to converse with the kind Punta Arenas native on his way to Mexico City.

Now, the moment I was dreading slightly....I had to call the cousin and try to make him understand in my very basic Spanish from airport payphone to cell phone (with the cleaning crew´s loud pop music blaring in the background) where I might be found and what I look like.

It took two calls and I was nearly certain that I would be taking the bus into town instead, but by some miracle the cousin found me and in no time we were speeding down the highway, across the Mapoche river and into Santiago.

At the family´s apartment I was greeted by another cousin, who has become my guide and companion for the last two days. It is difficult to accept the idea that you are speaking like a five year old child, but it really is the best way to learn....just a bit exhausting. I can actually feel the wheels grinding in my brain right now.

It is hard to believe the kindness and patience of this family to take a complete stranger into their home, giving me the biggest bed and making sure I get my bus tickets OK, that I see what I want to see and that I am not hungry or tired.

The best part though is just to spend some time seeing real life in Chile, which I suspect is harder to see from the bunk of a hostel. And where else can you spend the evening watching Teen Wolf (El Hombre Lobo Adolescente) with hilarious Spanish voiceover and try to appreciate the humor of Michael J. Fox playing basketball as a werewolf in two different cultures?