Arte de la Calle

 

 

They say a picture is worth a thousand words so I hope you liked my 6,000 word introduction.  Now on to the main essay (14,000 words) on some of the strange, beautiful and interesting street art I've found across Chile.  

Enjoy :)

 

1. Iquique 2. Valpo 3. Arica 4. Valpo 5. Santiago 6. Valpo 7. Iquique 8. Iquique 9. Iquique 10. Iquique (obviously)
 11. Iquique again 12. Iquique... 13. Arica 14. Yup, Iquique again 15. Santiago 16. Santiago 17. Santiago 18. Santiago 19. Iquique 20. Santiago

Feliz Cumpleaños a Mi Querido Chile

Cumpleaños feliz
Te deseamos a ti
Feliz cumpleaños Chile
Que los cumplas feliz

 Just ten days after Chile's celebration of 202 years of independence, I celebrated my monthaversary with Chile once again.  I'm up to eight now and my passport now has six Chile stamps for the cops at the border-crossing in Peru to eyeball suspiciously (much like they did last night).  I'm just a tourist, I swear!  

For el dieciocho (Independence day), Jeff and I had three days of vacation from work so we decided to chill in Iquique for the weekend and hit up a few asados with friends.  Then on Monday, we headed up north to Arica in hopes of visiting Lauca National Park  and popping into Bolivia to do a little visa renewing.  Unfortunately the tours were closed for the holiday.  I couldn't bring myself to go to Tacna yet again so we stayed in Arica and tried to make the best of it by exploring some different areas, vising the Fondas and day drinking on the beach (pictured below).

This weekend we returned to Arica with the same intentions but once again plans fell through.  We ended up crossing back into Tacna, Peru for a few hours and then going to Arica for the night.  We decided to forfeit the other half of our flight and took a bus down this morning.  Overall it was pretty disappointing considering the money we spent on the both trips and the fact that we still haven't seen Lake Chungara or anything else in Lauca.  We're thinking about hitting it on our way down from Machu Picchu at the end of October (which by the way is this month...can you believe it?!) if we can swing it.  

On the home-front not much has changed.  I'm still really liking my job although I'm getting considerably fewer hours which is a little worrisome financially.  Our lease is up on the 13th of this month and after that our living plans are still a little up in the air.  We're planning to store our luggage at a friend's house while we're on our trip and move into a new apartment on November 1st.  We have a place in mind but we still have to check it out and figure out the details with our friend who is the owner.  Meanwhile, I'm going a little stir-crazy in Iquique and have recently been thinking about moving back to Santiago.  As I've mentioned before though (and as Jeff loves to remind me) I change my mind and thus my plans a lot so don't hold me two it.  For now, I'm here in Iquique and trying to focus on the short-term plans: get the apartment cleaned up and moved out, find a new place to live and have the most amazing trip/birthday ever. Beyond that, vamos a ver.  Happy October everybody!     

Diga Ahhhhh

After 5 months of (almost) perfect health in Chile, I can now officially say that I have been sick in a foreign country; navigated my way through Chilean laboratories, a lime-green doctor's office and a crappy 24-hour clinic;  been pricked by Chilean needles and peed in Chilean cups (well ok, just one of those).  Although none of these things were necessarily on my South America bucket list, I have crossed them all off nonetheless and come out on the other side, relatively  unscathed.

It all started about three weeks ago when I suddenly felt nauseous and lightheaded in the middle of one of my classes and had to leave work early.  When I got home, I promptly went to bed and knocked out for 16 hours.  In the morning I felt a little out of it, but overall okay.  For the most part I was functioning alright at that point although I had a few more weird dizzy spells over the next few days. Then on Saturday, when I was walking home from work, I started to get a pain in my right side that felt like a cramp from running.  After a few hours, it went away and I forgot about it until it came back with a vengeance Tuesday morning at 4 am.  I woke up freezing with an extremely intense pain on my right side.  I spent almost the whole next day in bed and finally caved and went to urgent care the day after that.  A few hours and 20 thousand pesos later, I had a prescription for pain medication and an appointment for an echogram a week later.

Luckily my boss was not too stoked about the idea of me waiting a week to know what was going on and immediately made me an appointment with his doctor.  I went the next day and was recommended for 8 diagnostic tests.  48 hours later I had the results to all of them (drum roll please).  Turns out it was salmonella, e. coli AND a kidney infection.  The dynamic trio had me completely out of commission for about a week total but now I'm pretty much back in action.  I finished up with my cocktail of antibiotics and alphabet soup (pictured above) on Monday and tomorrow I'll retake the e. coli test.  Once I'm sure all of the bacteria is gone, I can finally get back in the water after 3 weeks of not surfing. 

The recovery process has been kind of lengthy but after a few days of antibiotics, pain killers and fever reducers, I started to feel much better and went back to work.  In the midst of my recovery, Jeff and I made a quick trip up to Arica/Tacna to renew our tourist visas last weekend.  Like I've said before, Tacna is nothing to write home about but Jeff was excited to get his first taste of Peru (in the form of fast food pizza and tocino del cielo no less) and spend some more time in Arica.  We had a nice time but I'm hoping my next border hopping mission will be something new and a little more exciting.
 

 

Amor en el País de las Maravillas

Well hello there.  Long time, no blog (per usual).  I guess I should start with the most exciting news...Jeff (pictured above) finally made it to Chile, yay!  He got here on May 27th and just passed his one-month-a-versary in Iquique a few days ago.  Since he arrived, he's been keeping busy learning Spanish, meeting new people, surfing and eating all the churros in Iquique.

He got his first chance to see Arica a few weeks ago when we bussed up with our two roommates and a couple other friends.  The original idea was to do a border hop so I could renew my visa but Jeff really liked Arica and we didn't want to rush things so we just opted to spend some extra time there and do another trip in a couple of weeks.  We checked out a few bars on Saturday night, and went to the Maui and Sons World Star Tour at El Gringo (although we woke up late and really only caught the last few waves and the award ceremony) on Sunday.  The runner-up ended up being a 16-year-old kid from the North Shore, which was pretty cool.  We ended the trip with one of Schopdog's famous beer rockets and hopped back on the bus around 9:30 pm for a 2:30 am arrival in Iquique. 

Back on the home-front, Iquique life hasn't changed all that much.  Kate and I are still working nights at the same English Institute (although she'll be gone for the whole month of July...wahhhh!).  Ruby just got an awesome new job this month so she's been pretty busy as of late.  The three of us have a few private students, which is great (although it can be a little unreliable at times).

So far no more news on future travel plans or when this Chilean adventure is coming to an end but I will definitely have a better idea of both of those things by the end of July (details to come).  In the meantime, hope all is well with all of you lovely friends and family members that care enough to keep tabs on my little blog. Que estén bien.  ¡Cuídate! ¡Chaoooooooo!

Como un Piedra Rodante

Since my last blog entry, I have traveled over 2,000 miles (3218.88 kilometres) up and down the cost of Chile, exploring the northern parts of the country and searching for a place to call home.

The Thursday after our IDELT program was finished, three friends and I began the trip that I have talked about in so many blog posts before (yes, the one that seemingly changed routes pretty much every day). Our plan at the time of departure was to hit up La Serena for a few days, spend some time in Viña/Valpo and then come back to Santiago to grab our stuff and move back to one of those two spots. We took an overnight bus to La Serena (which is about a six hour trip) and got there on Friday. We arrived pretty early in the morning and wandered around the dirty streets near the bus station, in the fog, trying to find our hostel (not the best first impression but what can you do?) The place we ended up staying was called Aji Verde Hostel and we absolutely loved it; awesome staff, buena onda and a bedroom named "Puta Madre". What more could you ask for in a hostel?

As we explored La Serena more, we found that there was a lot to love there (neat architecture, pretty beaches, big central market and a cool little surf school where I had my first surf lesson). However, there were also things that we didn't care for. Overall, it was hard for me to put a finger on what it was, but something was definitely amiss. Though I could imagine myself living there, I hadn't fallen in love with it in quite the same way that I had imagined/hoped that I would. Ruby and Kate were seemingly even more disenchanted with the place than I was so we reverted back to one of our earlier plans (God knows which version at this point) and bought a last minute ticket to Arica. We parted ways with Alex on Monday and started off on the next leg of our trip.



After over twenty hours in a bus, we finally reached Arica. Maybe it had to the do with the fact that we were greeted with sunshine instead of fog, or that we had the good sense to hop into a taxi instead of ambling aimlessly around the streets for so long, but our first impression of Arica was significantly better than La Serena. We spent the day exploring and we really liked what we found. The hostel we stayed in was great and we actually started talking to them about a possible work/stay exchange in the event that we did end up moving to Arica. We swam in the ocean both days and on the second day, we climbed the morro and got a good view of the city. After our two nights there, we decided that we could be happy living there but we still kept our minds open to Iquique which we had also bought a ticket for.


We got to Iquique (five hours south of Arica) on Thursday afternoon and left Friday morning for Santiago. Although we spent such a short time there, it was just enough for us to fall head over heals in love. As we were planning our fact-finding mission to the North, the three of us had a number of discussions about what we needed in a place where we were going to live. There were lots of ideas thrown out: a good intermediate wave to surf, cultural activities to attend, people our age, proximity to other countries for easy traveling etc etc.

It's easy to generate these kinds of lists and I'm not trying to say that they aren't a useful and important part of the process. However, at the end of the day, I knew that the determining factor in whether or not I would be drawn to a specific locale, wouldn't be any kind of hard statistic with regard to the percentage of my list's criteria that it met. I knew, that at the core of my decision, would be a feeling; the "this is it" feeling. I wish there was a more logical, or even poetic way to describe it but what I've found seems to the be the most succinct. The last time I had this feeling I was seventeen and very confused about my search for the perfect college. I had all the facts in front of me but there didn't seem to be a overwhelming pull to one place or another. When I got to Chico, I just knew. That was it.

That instinct brought me to the place that I called home for the next five and a half years. It brought me to life-changing opportunities, beautiful friends and amazing memories. Once again, this feeling has pulled me north, this time to Iquique. Who am I to question it?

Disculpa...

Sorry for the lapse in blogging there lovers and friends. The past few weeks have been pretty intense with school and I’ve been trying to sneak as much fun into my schedule as possible, so I haven’t had much time to peruse the interwebs. What have I been doing? Well, I’ve taught three of my six one-hour lessons so far. Typically the group is two to three adult students and I’ve worked with pre-intermediate to intermediate levels. This coming week, I will teach Monday, Wednesday and Friday (beginners and advanced students). I really like teaching so far which is awesome. It’s so cool to be doing something I’m passionate about.

Other highs and lows of the past few weeks include…exploring some new comunas, watching a friend’s boyfriend perform some awesome live music, playing with puppies AND kittens in the same night (pups pictured above), almost having to tackle an old Chilean man who was attempting to steal my laptop (luckily, he handed it over before it got to that point), writing a 2,500 word paper in one day (bleck), stumbling upon an amazing little health food store, learning more about the smog in Santiago (and thus contemplating moving elsewhere), attending my first intercambio (where you practice Spanish and help Chileans practice their English), making it home from the bars before six am (for once), cooking a big group dinner at a friend’s house and going to an organic farmer’s market today. As you can see, there have been more ups than downs. It’s been a good time overall. Tonight, it is our teacher’s birthday so a few of the students in the class and I are going to swing by her birthday party and say hi and then (hopefully) wrap it up early enough to catch the metro home.

Right now, plans for the future are pretty up in the air but all signs are pointing north. After our class ends in early March, some friends and I are planning a trip to La Serena, Antofagosta, Iquique and Arica to scope out possible places to set up shop as teachers. I’m really excited about the prospect of living in one of these beautiful places. Our plans are to travel for two weeks, including a short detour back to Valpo and Viña to kick us off.