She Left as She Came; in the Rain and with Too Much Luggage

Sunset south of Iquique (taken from the window of my bus)

After innumerable warnings about the quantity of rain in the south (supposedly regardless of season), I experienced exactly two days of it.  First there was the beautiful misty morning that greeted me upon my arrival to Puerto Varas.  Then, after almost a month of uncharacteristically high temperatures, the south of Chile granted me one more beautiful day of rain in Temuco before I set off on a 25-hour bus ride northward through the driest desert on earth. 

My decision to leave Pucón was a combination of push and pull factors.  For now, I´ll keep it classy and leave the details of those push factors off of the internet.  In all honestly, I really would have loved to spend more time in the south but, to put it nicely, the stars just weren't alined this time.  I will say that met some genuinely amazing people during my trip and I have no doubt that I'll be back to visit them before my time in Chile is up.  However, for the time-being, my place is in the North.

It seems strange to call a place home when, a year ago, I barely knew it existed.  However, upon my return to Iquique, there was no denying it; I was home.  I've done my fair share of running around since I left Iquique in late December and, after six weeks of being away (and 95 hours on a bus), it feels sweet to be back.  For all the things I love about traveling and being in new and exciting places, there's something undeniably comfortable about familiar places and faces.  After running into several friends on the street this evening and popping in to visit a few more, my decision to return to Iquique was reaffirmed.  It feels good to be with my peeps.  Some reassuring news from work also helped sweeten the deal.

For now, it looks like my near future will involve a little waiting and thus require a bit of patience but I've become pretty accustomed to that.  Unfortunately February is vacation season in Chile which means everything runs just slightly worse than usual.  Luckily, I have surf, sun and good people to keep me distracted while things get organized.  The picture is a little foggy but it looks like my career in mining will be taking off after-all. I, as usual, will keep ya posted.

On Family Life & Fleeing the Country

"Well, transience always carries with it an air of possibility" 

-T.H. Watkins

I snagged that little gem of a quote from a PBS special about the gold rush a few years back and am recently finding that it's becoming increasingly applicable to my life.  

One thing I've noticed about that so-called "transience" is that the speed at which it can change your day-to-day reality is remarkable.  Unknown landscapes become your backyard overnight and complete strangers become your family in a matter of hours.  After a few days, something that was so recently foreign to you, becomes the new norm and you slip seamlessly into routine, just in time for everything to change again.

That's a pretty accurate way to sum up the past few weeks of my life.  In Santiago, I spent 3 days with a friend of a friend and her roommate and daughter.  They were absolutely lovely.  I spent my days doing job research and load after load of free laundry (uh-may-zing after 3 months without a washing machine) and my nights eating onces with the family and talking with them until the wee hours of the morning. Their kindness and generosity overwhelmed me.  They not only put me up but also fed me and offered to help me find a job in Santiago, a place to stay in Valdivia and even to loan me money.  I didn't accept any of those offers but I did take them up on a suggestion to leave a bag at there house for the time-being and thank God I did.  Next time I go abroad, all I'm bringing is a change of clothes and a tooth brush, that's it.  Ok, maybe a stick of deodorant...maybe.  Lugging around all of this baggage has seriously been the bane of my existence on this trip.

And I've been doing a lot of lugging.  As I mentioned, I kicked off my summer in the south with a few days in Puerto Varas where I couch surfed for the first time.  If you're unfamiliar with couch surfing, it is an amazing site that connects people from all of the world.  Travelers can contact people who live in the areas where they're traveling and be hosted in those places for free (have I mentioned lately that I'm broke...pinch every peso!)  I'll admit, I was slightly sketched out by the whole thing at first.  I'd be lying if I said I didn't have my valuables hidden and my pepper spray handy upon arrival.  There's always that initial suspicion of someone who wants to do something nice for you for no good reason but it didn't take me long to loosen up.  

My second couch surfing experience in Caburgua was even more amazing.  The girl who hosted me was renting a lakeside cabin in Playa Blanca with her family.  I spent a couple of nights with them there and then went back to their house in Temuco (about an hour away) for one extra night.  The whole family was such buena onda.  I had an amazing time with them.  Not only was the place beautiful but the people were tons of fun.  Great location, awesome company, good food & drinks and all for free?!  Holllller.

To be honest, these random little encounters I've had with now four different individuals/families (in Santiago, Puerto Varas, Caburgua/Temuco and now in Pucón) have been some of my best experiences in Chile.  Hooray for talking to strangers.

Now, I find myself right smack in the middle of a completely different family; complete with a mom, dad, two small children (6 and 9), a few dogs and twenty-something foreigners from all over the world.   

After my night in Temuco, I bid farewell to my new adopted family and headed back to Pucón where I had landed a job at  La Bicicleta; a hostel/restaurant in the central part of this cute little city.  For now, my plans to work in the mine are off, or at least postponed for the time-being.  In the meantime, I'm going to take advantage of being in this gorgeous (although, right now, hot as hell) place and try to do all of the outdoorsy stuff I can.  Bring on the hiking, kayaking, rafting, canyoning, biking and whatever else you've got for me Pucón.  

Tomorrow I'm off to do an (insanely expensive) border hop to Argentina to renew my visa and earn my ninth Chilean passport stamp upon re-entry.  I'll be hanging out in San Martin de los Andes for the day (maybe day and a half) thus bringing my total bus time for the past month up to a record-breaking 58.5 hours (ew).  I'll be setting off around 10:30 AM and returning either later in the same night or the next morning depending on the bus schedule, available accommodations and, frankly, how I feel.  Who knows, if I really fall in love with it, I may never return.  Crazier things have happened.  I guess that's the beauty of transience, anything is possible.

Solo ida

Iquique > Valparaíso (25 hours) > Santiago (2 hours) > Valparaíso (2 more hours) > 

Santiago (Yup, 2 more) > Puerto Varas (12 hours) > Valdivia (3 hours) > 

Pucón (2.5 hours) > Caburgua (.5 hours) > Temuco (2 hours)

Subtract the 2.5 hours I traveled by car between  Pucón, Caburgua and Temuco and that leaves a whopping 48.5 hours that I've spent on a bus this month (given that my calculations are correct...feel free to check).  If I believed in bad omens, this trip would most definitely not have happened. As I mentioned, the trip down to central Chile wasn't quite as smooth as we'd hoped it would be.  

We bought our tickets with a few weeks of anticipation, got everything ready (with not so much anticipation...can you say, last minute?) and rushed down to the bus station on Saturday night.  We got there pretty much right at the departure time but they were still loading people onto the bus so we figured we were fine.  When they saw us and all of our luggage (ok, MY luggage...still haven't quite mastered the arts of traveling light), they took one look at us and said, no way in hell (in not so many words).  We (I) had too much luggage.  They weren't going to take us, no way.  

Time to go to the register and change our ticket time.  Wait, what's that you say?  You have no more tickets until after Christmas and you don't want to give me back my money (Almost $200 USD).  

Oh.  hell. no.

Enter enraged gringa (me) vacillating between calm rational discussion and screaming concha tu madre at the saleswoman, who couldn't have been less helpful.  She sent me back to the mercado where I bought the tickets only to talk to another saleswoman who was nicer but equally unhelpful.  After two hours of arguing, crying and running (literally) back and forth between mercado and the bus station, I finally surrendered.  We paid to store our bags at the station overnight and bought two new tickets (110 USD a pop) with a different company (screw you Pullman) for the next morning.  I asked the vendor from the other company about the sobre equipaje (excess luggage) fee and, taking pity on me, he told me he would talk to the driver and make sure I didn't have to pay anything else extra.

Feeling defeated, we started walking home.  About four blocks from the station, I got a call from one of my best friends in Iquique who I had called to vent somewhere in the midst of the chaos.  He asked where we were and told us to stay put until he could get there.  The three of us made our way back to the bus station together.  I was doubtful anything good would come out of it but Luis was determined.  After five minutes, FIVE MINUTES, of talking with the same saleswoman I'd just spent the better part of the night with, Luis had the name of a manager and a promise that, if he came back the next day, he could get our money back.  Enter equally enraged (but knows when to keep her mouth shut) gringa.  If it was that easy, why couldn't we have got that settled two hours ago?

The next morning, we got the bus station earlier than I've ever arrived before a bus in my Chilean life.  There was no way we were going to risk anything going wrong.  A bus from our company was just arriving but it was still a good 45 minutes before our departure.  Paranoid (and rightfully so), I showed the man loading luggage on the bus my ticket and asked him if it was this one or the next.  Sure enough, he told me that it was our bus and started putting our bags on board.  We hopped on and, to our surprise, the bus took off within ten minutes...about a half an hour before departure time.  We thought it was a bit odd but were stoked to arrive in Valpo a little ahead of schedule.

When the guy came around to take our tickets, he gave us the ultimate stink face.  We were on the wrong bus.  Our conversation (roughly translated) went something like this:

Ticket Collector: You're on the wrong bus.

Irritated Gringa: Really?  Because I double-checked that this was the right bus before we got on.

Ticket Collector: (talking to me like I'm an idiot) Who told you this was the right bus?

Even-More-Irritated Gringa: (pointing) Ummm...your homie right over there.  I showed him my ticket and he said this was the bus.

Ticket Collector: Well, it's not.  We're going to drop you off in Bajo Molle (aka middle of the nowhere) and you can wait for your bus there.

Livid Gringa: Are you #$%@ing kidding me?  We're like five minutes from the station.  Drop us off here and we'll walk back for god's sake.

Ticket Collector: Nope, we're dropping you off in Bajo Molle.

Livid Gringa with smoke coming out of her ears: But I DON'T TRUST THAT!  Drop us off here!

Ticket Collector: Nope.  

So there we were, with all of our (my) baggage, in the middle of the dessert at 8 in the morning, cursing Pullman bus, Condor bus, and Iquique for plotting a mastermind plan to keep us trapped there forever.  Luckily I had the foresight to snap this picture as a lovely keepsake of our morning.

Twenty-something hours later, we finally made it to Valpo...but I've already told you all about that.  After Christmas, we headed back to Santiago where we spent five nights before New Years and then returned for Jeff's last two nights in Chile.  I'm glad that he had the chance to see a little more of Chile before setting off since his experience has been primarily limited to Northern Chile which is completely different from the central and southern parts of the country.

We did lots of typical tourist stuff; hiking up cerros de San Cristobal and Santa Lucia, tasting strange flavors of ice-cream at Emporio La Rosa, strolling down Pio Nono, shopping in the artisanal markets and stopping by La Piojera for some typical Chilean food and (of course) some terremotos.

 Chorrillana at La Piojera

 Terremotos: The National Drink of Chile

 Cerro Santa Lucia

 Cerro San Cristobal

Kenita and Jeff

On Calle Estados Unidos

In addition to all that "typical Santiaguino" stuff, we also took advantage of being in a city and indulged in some typical (north) American stuff.  Usally I try to avoid seeking out stuff from the US while traveling but it was good to have a little taste of home after almost a year abroad.  Iced coffees were sipped, muffins were snarfed and cravings were quenched...Sorry, not sorry.  Overall, we had a great time.  Yay for ignoring the signs and forging on ahead anyway, bad omens be damned.

Since Jeff left, things have been a little unstable (yes, even more-so than they were before).  I spent one night in a hostel in Santiago and then a few days with a friend while I was waiting on a response from my boss in Iquique about the position in the mine.  Sitting around playing the waiting game was starting to get me down so I decided to bite the bullet and by myself a one-way ticket south to Puerto Varas.  I already had an interview there so I figured it could either be a job opportunity for a fun little vacation.  Since then, I've been taking things (quite literally) day by day, going where the wind (and my very limited travel funds) take me and buying "solo ida" (just one-way) because God knows if and when the vuelta (return) will happen.

I have been more or less living with the bus company's website open, checking different routes and playing with different travel/work plans.  One awesome thing about the south is that the distances are much shorter between cities than in north of Chile.  In the past week I've had the chance to explore five different beautiful cities and with a little more time in the south, I'll be able to see so many more.  It's also getting to be about visa renewal time so it looks like a mini-trip to Argentina might be in order.

Meanwhile, my life, much like my new favorite website is esperando respuesta, awaiting an answer.

 A much-needed cold beer on a hot hot day in Valdivia 

(Kunstmann Torobayo to be exact, one of my favorite beers)

 Valdivia from the bridge

 Me, melting in the hot Valdvia sun

More beautiful lakes (in Valdivia)

 Sheep crossing our path in Caburgua

 At the dock in Pucón

 Park in Central Pucón

 Vocano View from Pucón

 Cabin in Caburgua

 Inside View

Me & Paula on our last day in Caburgua,

about to head to Temuco

 

21.12.12

All of this recent talk about self-driving cars has got me thinking, why on earth has no one invented self-packing suitcases yet?  Driving a car is really not an inconvenience.  Moving is a nightmare.  Since I left home at 17, I have gone through the process of moving all of my earthly possessions an innumerable amount of times.

Ok, maybe not so innumerable.  I have done the official count (using almost of my fingers and some of my toes) and the grand total is fourteen.  FOURTEEN times!  I've moved fourteen times in the past seven years.  Tonight, for the fifteenth time, I find myself slipping into the old routine.  It goes something like this:

Step One: Wait until the last possible moment.
Step Two: Drink an ungodly amount of caffeine
Step Three: Find any smaller and seemingly more manageable task to distract yourself from the actual task at hand
Step Four:  Organize and pack every item possible before your heavy eyelids refuse to tolerate any more resistance and you are forced to submit to sleep
Step Five: Push all remaining clutter off of the organizational epicenter (aka, bed)*
Step Six: Crawl in
Step Seven: Pass out

*If exhaustion is too strong and you are unable to clear off the bed, just push the junk over and make a little space for yourself to sleep in.  Finish packing in the morning.

Although, like most, I consider the process of moving a special kind of hell, there's also something undeniably therapeutic about it.  While rifling through old keepsakes, we are reminded of so many good times and good people.  Moving also gives us an opportunity to take a good hard look at the objects we are lugging around and determine whether or not their essential in our lives.  If not, we (hopefully) chuck them out, simplifying our lives (and making room for new junk).

The last night in any apartment always feels a little surreal and tonight is no exception.  Tomorrow evening, Jeff and I will head down to Santiago on an extremely long bus ride through the Atacama desert.  We will spend about a week and half bouncing back between Valparaíso, Viña del Mar and Santiago.  On the third of January, Jeff will sadly head back to the USA and I will...well, as usual, I don't know what I will do.

I've become accustomed to dealing with a certain amount of uncertainty in my life as of late and, although it is a bit overwhelming at times, I'm trying to roll with the punches.  I'm still waiting to hear from the academy about my possible contract up in the mine.  In the meantime, I'm keeping my options open and considering either coming back to Iquique to teach Summer school kids' classes or heading South to explore (and possibly find work there).  As usual, I'll keep ya'll posted as plans progress.

As for now, I'm just glad to say that we all officially made it through another apocalypse.  This may be the end of another chapter, but it's certainly not the end of the word.

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

Capítulo Dos

Why hello there everybody. As you may have noticed, blog entries are getting fewer and further between. However, I AM still tryyyiinnnggg to keep you all updated with what's going on with me in Chile. Tomorrow (well, I guess TODAY since it's almost one in the morning) is my last official day of my IDELT certification course. After that, begins capítulo dos of my Chilean adventure; finding a job and a place where I want to live here. My plans have changed a little since my last entry and my friends and I are cutting our trip to the North down to just La Serena and the surrounding areas. We will be taking off (hopefully sometime before noon) on Thursday. Our trip to the Valpo/Viña area will be moved to the end of our trip (probably somewhere around the 12th, 13th and 14th) and then back to Santiago for a few days to pack/clean up my friend's house before her lease is up and (if we like it, of course) get ourselves situated to move to La Serena. We're also toying with the idea of going to Bariloche to visit and renew our 90 day tourist visas but we'll see how that ends up working out. We're all a little anxious to get things situated in our new home (wherever that might be) and figure out the housing and job situations before we make any serious travel plans. A lot is still up in the air but I'm really excited for the challenge and adventure. In the meantime, time to celebrate graduation. Parrrr-tayyyy!

¡No, nos dijo CUATRO mil!"

A Canadian, a Brit, three (North) American girls and a Chilean.

On our first day of classes, they filled our heads with a all kinds of ideas about the various ways that Chileans would try to manipulate, rob and take advantage of us (slashing backpack straps with knives and snatching bags; throwing yogurt on tourists so that they will be distracted long enough for the thief to grab their wallets; lingering outside ATMs, ready to pray on unsuspecting foreigners, and so on and so on). Although I see the obvious necessity in being cautious, I'm not prone to paranoia and I don't intend to spend my entire time in Chile living in fear that everyone I meet in this country is trying to get me. I believe in a balance of being aware without being tense on edge all the tiem. Thus far, all of the Chileans I have interacted with have bent over backwards to help me out in any way possible.  One man literally gave me his shirt (albeit not the one off his back) to help me clean up some orange juice I spilled in the train station.  I have come to find that Santiagans are lovely people.  All of them, that is, except a certain kind of Santiagan...the taxi driver. Now, to clarify, my experience with Chilean taxi drivers has been limited and I haven't completely given up hope that there are some perfectly decent and honest taxi drivers somewhere in this beautiful country...I just haven't met one yet.

Last night, we just barely missed the metro AGAIN and we're forced to take a taxi to our friend's apartment after we attempted and failed to figure out the bus system (which runs much later than the metro). I already learned (from our last experience) to always ask, "¿Cuanto va a costar?" or "How much will it cost?" before you get in the taxi at all. He told me that, for the three of us, he would charge $4000 (about eight dollars USD) for a ride from Bellavista to Provedencia. It seemed a little high by Chilean standards, but it was going to work out to less than $3 USD each so I wasn't that worried about it. When we got inside, we noticed that his meter wasn't even on. He claimed that it was "dead" but who knows if that was true or if he just turned it off so we wouldn't see how much the ride was actually suppose to cost.

When we got to our destination, we took out some money to pay and he looked back at us and said "Cinco mil"...five thousand. "No" I said, "You told us four thousand..." He started to argue with me, claiming that he had even been holding up five fingers at the time. Then, after sternly telling him a second time, "No, nos dijo cuatro mil." He finally threw his hands up, "Ok, cuatro mil.", as if to say "Okay, you caught me."

I guess living here will be a good lesson in standing up for myself when it comes to people (so far, just taxi drivers) trying to take advantage of the fact that I'm so clearly a gringa. I'm sure having my 6'4" tall roommate with me didn't hurt either. "I have a giant Canadian man...and I'm not afraid to use it."

The rest of our night was really fun, we hung out at a friend's for a while and then went back to Bellavista for drinks and dancing. We finally got home around seven this morning, just in time to catch a few Zs before forcing myself out of bed for farmer's market this afternoon, which by the way was AMAZING. Produce here is SO cheap, it is fabulous.

I basically spent most of my day laying around, eating fruit and messing around online. Oh yeah, and napping. I also started reading a book called The Geography of Bliss by Eric Weiner which is really great so far. Tomorrow, hopefully I'll be able to muscle out my entire lesson plan for my first day of teaching on Tuesday (eek!) and get all of my reading done and my visuals for the lesson made up. Time to get some rest. ¡Chau!

"Meu nome é Alicia, e você?"

Today was my first official day of the IDELT program at Bridge. Maybe on the second day, they'll teach us what the acronym IDELT actually stands for...in the meantime, I'll describe it as a certificate that qualifies me to teach English as a second language (if you haven't picked that up yet, that's why I'm in Chile). Above is a picture of me, Ruby and Gordi (my two roommates, who are also in the program). My third roommate's name is Brett and he just finished the program that we are now starting (stop me if you've heard this before).

Our class is pretty big by Bridge standards, ten students. Everyone seems pretty cool, I think we'll help each other out a lot as the course progresses. It feels weird to be back in school again. I have mixed feelings about it for sure. I definitely have a challenging four weeks ahead of me but I think I'm ready...ish. Hopefully I will gain a lot from this course and feel totally confident in my teaching by the end. Vamos a ver.

As part of today's class, we did a beginning Portuguese lesson. The idea was to put ourselves in the role of a beginning foreign language learner again so we could develop empathy for our future students. After stumbling over "Meu nome é Alicia, e você?" about a hundred times, I think I got the point. I would like to learn Portuguese for real one day, maybe go back to Brazil and live for a while. The thought was kind of lingering with me for the rest of class and afterwards I promptly bought myself a caipirinha to temporarily satiate my Brazil craving. Hopefully I'll go back at some point when I'm in Chile. Tickets from here are only about $300 USD round trip and I DO have a ten year visa...

Anyways, back to Chile and back to homework for now. I have about forty more pages to read before tomorrow and it's already 11:30 PM. I guess my procrastination skills didn´t get rusty during those nine months that I wasn't in school. Whew!

A Day to Recover- 6 de Febrero

Today is a day of rest and recuperation after two days of sightseeing, sun soaking and cerveza sipping in Valparaíso and Viña del Mar. Things didn't go quite as planned and my roommate and I ended up leaving Santiago considerably later than we'd hoped for. We didn't make it to Valparaíso until about five pm on Saturday but luckily it gets dark pretty late here. We got a little lost because we didn't have the best map (yes, it was the map's fault...not ours). The wind was crazy strong and it was blowing up all kinds of dirt and rubble into our eyes as we wandered around trying to find our barrings. Finally, windswept and covered in dirt, we found Hostel Licanantay, where we had already reserved two beds. We cleaned ourselves up and headed out for dinner and some bar hopping. Our hostel was surrounded by restaurants, bars and discotecas which was very convenient.

After the bars closed at five am, we headed back to the hostel and hung out with a bunch of new friends that we met there. The next morning, we took a little mini-tour of Valparaíso with some of them since they were more familiar with the area. It is a cool town with lots of neat street art but it is also pretty dirty. After that, we rode in one of the ascensadores (small outdoor elevators that go up and down the hills) which completed our to-do list for Valparaíso, so we hopped on a bus to Viña.

When we got there, we walked along the beach and checked out a little bit of the downtown area but we didn't have much time to explore beyond that. Our plan was to go to the station, buy the latest return ticket possible and then go back out into Viña until it was time to leave. It didn't work out because when we got to the bus station, all the later trips to Santiago were booked and our only option was to buy a last minute ticket for a bus that was leaving right away. We were a little bummed but super relieved because for a while it was looking like we wouldn't be able to find a way home at all. Luckily the guy working one of the ticket booths was super helpful. Six other companies had already told us that there were no more tickets to Santiago for the day before we talked to him. When we came up to his booth (probably looking a little panicked), he locked up the ticket booth where he was working and took us out to the terminal where we paid the driver for a last minute ticket right there on the bus (and no, we didn't get ripped off. It was actually cheaper than our ticket there). Thank God everything worked out but I wish we had had more time in Viña. It is so beautiful. I'm already thinking about moving there after my program in Santiago wraps up in March. Obviously, I'd like to spend more than two hours there before making my final decision though. We're already thinking about going back next weekend :)

Los Terremotos y El Daño que los Puedan Causar- 3 de Febrero

This morning I woke up with my first Chilean hangover. The culprit, as you may have guessed, is pictured above. We call it El Terremoto, and much like natural terremotos (earth quakes), it is quite capable of shaking things up a bit. Luckily, we managed to survive the damage with only an (albeit, overpriced) taxi bill and a rough next morning. Los Terremotos are made with a sweet white wine (and yes, that is a liter and a half of it you see in the photo) mixed with pineapple ice cream and sometimes rum or cognac. Deliciously dangerous. If you're brave (or stupid) enough, you can follow your terremoto with una réplica (an aftershock), which is just the same thing but "only" half a liter. You can bet that after two liters of alcohol, the earth will be a-quakin'.

Despite my better judgement to sleep off the hangover, I actually pulled myself out of bed at about 7:30 this morning to go get a sim card for my Chilean cell phone. As luck would have it, the department store that I needed didn't open until eleven so I guess I should have just taken advantage of that extra hour of sleep. Pues, asi es la vida.

After my last Spanish class, I went and got sushi at a restaurant by my school que se llama "SushiGREEN". It was muy delicioso and I have been craving sushi for about a week so it really hit the spot. Afterwards, the three of us went on another school field trip with Marisol to Concha y Toro, a vineyard about an hour out of Santiago. There weren't enough people to signed up to justify renting a car so we took 2 metros and a bus instead. This was my first experience riding the bus. On the way there it was fine, but on the way back it was a little rougher since we didn't have seats and had to balance ourselves standing up in the very narrow aisle. It felt a little like we were tourists on display at a zoo, with a guy playing guitar and singing in the background who announced us as we got on the bus, " ¡LOS EXTRAJEROS!"

We paid $8 for a tour of the winery which included two glasses of wine glass. We also got to keep a souvenir Concha y Toro glass which I was excited about because I don't have any at my house here and it feels weird drinking wine from a coffee cup. Overall, I was really glad that I went. I got some great pictures and my SLR survived her first venture into Chile and returned home unscathed.

Now I'm planning my weekend trip to Valparaíso/Viña del Mar. The hostel is booked and now it's time to pack. We take off at ten tomorrow morning! iChau bellos!