Farewell Chile!

It’s time to say goodbye to Chile.  It’s about 11:30pm Sunday night as I write this.  Tomorrow at about 4pm I’ll be boarding a bus with my entire luggage to head to the airport in Santiago.  My plane leaves at 9 pm.  It’s about an 11-hour flight to Toronto, where we have about a 3-hour layover before flying for 2 hours to Minneapolis.  If all goes as planned I’ll land in Minneapolis at 10:30am Tuesday. 

 

We got back from Buenos Aires safely on Thursday.  Most of the others in our group have either gone home already or are still traveling, so it feels kind of weird to be back in Vina alone with no one to hang out with.  It’s been kind of nice to have a couple days to just do whatever without having to worry about classes or anything.

On Thursday, after I got back to Vina, there was a temblor (a tremor), but it was kind of strong and kind of freaked me out.  More continued during the afternoon and evening. There was another pretty strong one at about 5 am.  They don't last more than a minute usually, but they are strong enough to make the pictures on the wall sway back and forth and the whole house creaks and moans.  There were some more on Friday, but I haven't noticed any since then.  This whole time in Chile I only noticed a temblor on one other occasion when I was reading in my bed and it was pretty weak.  These ones were stronger.  At least if an earthquake is coming I won't need to worry about it!

On Friday I walked around town a little and went to the Feria Artesenal to look for some last minute gifts to bring back.  I packed up a good portion of my stuff so I would have an idea of how much room I have.  Surprisingly, it looks like everything is going to fit no problem, probably because I’m leaving some books behind and some clothes that didn’t survive the trip.  Saturday I was really lazy and didn’t do much of anything except do a little more packing and talk to a bunch of people on Skype.  Today I wandered around town some more.  Went to the beach and browsed for gifts at the little vendor huts that are along side of the beach, and got a little sun burnt in the process. 

 

Then I went to the mall.  I felt like I was back in the US doing last minute Christmas shopping.  It was busy as hell; there were Christmas decorations everywhere; there was Christmas music playing in the background; signs announcing Rebajas de Navidad or Christmas sales; kids waiting in line to see Santa (or El Viejito Pascuero as they say here).  Many of the stores in the mall are the same as in the US.  It’s very easy to forget you’re in South America when in the mall.  I went directly to the food court and got a personal pizza from Telepizza.  It took a long time to get and after that I just wanted to get the hell out of there because I knew what the rest of the day would entail—it was busy and I didn’t want to have to deal with lines and crowds of people.  But I also wanted to find a Chile shirt.  This whole time in Chile I have not come across any type of sweatshirt that says Chile—only soccer jerseys and lame t-shirts.  The mall wasn’t the place though; it’s so North Americanized that the only clothing stores they have are just like US clothing stores filled with overpriced brand name clothes that are made in Indonesia or India.  So I decided to go to the super huge supermarket that’s attached to the mall (this place is like sam’s club size!).  There I bought some Alfajores, a packaged South American dessert, to bring home.  I also bought a bottle of wine for the host family.  The checkout lines were really long.  Fortunately I was able to be in the express lane for 10 items or less, so that sped the process up a bit.  If there is one thing I don’t miss about Minnesota right now, besides the weather—that’s too obvious, it’s standing in lines and dealing with the crowds of people that I usually associate with Christmas shopping.  It’s funny how you can’t escape some things, even 7,000 miles away.  After that, I caught a collectivo, a shared (and cheap) cab, for my ride home. 

 

I brought my camera with me today so I could take some last photos of Vina.  I’ve realized how few pictures I have taken of the city that I’ve been living in for the past four months.

 

I’m not gonna lie, I feel like I could stay here another semester, probably because the weather is so beautiful and I feel comfortable living here by now.  That, and I know my next semester at school is going to be a pain in the a$$ with having to write a thesis in Spanish, having to teach two introductory psych. labs a week, and take 4 classes. I’m excited to see every one though and am glad I will be home for Christmas!  I just may complain a lot after the holidays about how I would rather be back in Chile! Just offering that as a fare warning to everyone.  Well, I’m off to get one last sold night’s sleep before home, since I probably won’t sleep very solidly on the overnight flight tomorrow.  See you all soon!      

 

 

 

Day 5 (Tuesday December 16, 2008)

Today we walked by the Ecological Center, a large section of the city that’s preserved and undeveloped.  Then we went to the immigration museum where we learned about BA’s immigration history (the two largest immigration groups here are the Spanish and Italians in that order). Actually the Argentinean accent kind of sounds like Italian, I think.  There is also some German, Celtic and other European groups, but a smaller number.  Most immigrants came during late 1800’s/early 1900’s—the last big wave of immigration was in 1914.  There was a hotel where immigrant families could stay for 5 days for free, and it included meals.  During that time they looked for work.  The stay was extended in cases of illness or if they were unable to find work.  Pretty generous immigration policy, huh! 

 

Then we went to the Holocaust museum.  The other big and more recent wave of immigration in Argentina was during and after World War II.  I’ve heard that many Nazis escaped to Argentina after the war, but the museum kind of downplayed that aspect and instead had a lot more information about the victims who came to Argentina after being persecuted and watching members of their families being killed and/or tortured.  It seemed like many came from Poland. 

 

Anyways, we got dinner at a barbecue place that was pretty good and relatively inexpensive and now we’re just chilling at the hostel.      

 

      

Day 4 (Monday December 15, 2008)

Yesterday we did a tour of the city on a bus.  It took kind of a long time but the tour guide had some good info.  The only annoying thing was that she did the tour in English and Spanish so she would say one thing in one language and then say the exact same thing in the other language trying to hurry because she was commenting on stuff as we drove by in the bus and having to explain in Spanish and English made it so that she was still explaining stuff after we drove by it and then would have to cut it short to give an explanation of the next sight.  I understood the Spanish just fine so the two languages thing was really annoying to listen to. 

 

During the evening for dinner we went to the Hard Rock Café.  It felt like I was back in the U.S.  We took a bus to the Hard Rock.  BA has a real problem with having coins in circulation, especially the dollar ones, which makes taking the bus kind of a pain in the ass because the buses only take coins.  When David and I took the bus to La Boca the other day we ended up having to buy unnecessary soft drinks so we could get change to use on the bus.  Luckily at the Hard Rock the employee at the gift store had two of her own personal dollar coins that she gave us in exchange for a 2 peso bill so we were also able to take the bus back to the hostel. 

 

On the bus we learned the importance of keeping the ticket that the machine gives you.  The bus was full and apparently someone didn’t pay, or the bus driver thought someone didn’t pay, because he stopped the bus and said, or rather, yelled, “we’re staying here, what do you prefer that you pay or that I call the police?”  Someone must have paid or got off because we started moving again.  

Day 2 (Sunday, December 14)

Slept in again today!  On Sundays there’s a big market not too far from our hostel that takes up a good number of blocks of this one street, so of course the girls were planning on shopping there in the afternoon.  David and I thought that it would be cool to check out a soccer game instead.

 

 The night before we had asked the person working at the front desk if there were any excursions to the soccer game in the neighborhood of town called La Boca.  I’ve heard that La Boca is the rough part of town and that it is better to go in groups to the games.  The dude at the desk told us to check back with him in the morning if we still wanted to go.  He told us that there are always tickets to the games and that, with this tour, we get to go and get some drinks before the game and then eat afterwards.  He also explained to us that this tour company buys their Boca game tickets from a gang and that it’s much safer because then apparently other gangs won’t mess with you.  “You are untouchable” is what he kept telling us.  This conversation was in Spanish, but David and I understood the same thing, which makes me confident that we did indeed understand him correctly.  When we went down in the morning to check to see if there were tickets left, however, we found that there were no spots left on that tour.  But they did have 2 tickets left for the game without the tour.  These tickets weren’t much less than the entire tour was so we decided not to do it.  We went back up to our room and within 10 minutes changed our minds and went back down to the main desk to buy them.  Apparently within that 10-minute time frame the 2 tickets had been sold.

 

The guy gave us some numbers of other places that sell tickets to Boca games, but they didn’t have any either (it was a championship game so they sold out quickly).  We were kind of frustrated at this point and we knew we didn’t want to spend the rest of the day walking around shopping.  So we decided that we would just take a bus to La Boca and see if we could buy some scalped tickets outside the stadium.  I was half expecting this strategy to fail, but figured it would be better than shopping. 

So we went to the stadium and walked around for a little bit until we were approached by a man asking if we were looking for something.  We nonchalantly said yes not saying exactly what it was we were looking for.  Then he said “tickets.”  Unfortunately he only had one, so we kept walking.  We encountered another man outside a store who seemed to be standing around for no good reason.  He also approached us asking if we were “looking for something.”  He brought us inside his store grabbing a shirt that was on display in the front and bringing it with him to the counter as if we were inquiring about it.  I thought he may have totally misunderstood us, but apparently it was just a cover-up so in case the police happened to be looking in or something they would think we were inquiring about a shirt instead of illegal tickets.  He showed them to us but we had no idea how to tell if they were actually real or not.  So we said we would come back shortly and went outside to try and get a glance of real tickets before buying them.  From what we could tell they looked the same and they were only 80 pesos anyways, which is about 22 dollars (compared to the 200 pesos the hostel was charging for their tickets) so we decided to go with them.

 

They ended up working, even though I was a little bit nervous with all the police at the entrance to the stadium.  Even though we were in an upper deck and had to stand and maneuver a lot to see the game, it was totally worth it!  Especially since we were able to rub it in to Hannah and Susan, since they thought we were crazy for going (Susan said they weren’t taking our stuff back with them if we didn’t make it out of La Boca).

 

In retrospect, the La Boca neighborhood didn’t even seem that bad.  There’s a section called El Camenito that is actually rather touristy. 

 

Tomorrow we’re going on a city tour.  I’m happy that it doesn’t start until 2pm so yep, again, get to sleep in. 

 

      

 

 

Day 1 of Buenos Aires ( Saturday, December 13)

We all woke up at about noon today—sleeping in was awesome!  We went out exploring the town a little bit taking the metro (subway) across town to the holocaust museum realizing that it was closed when we got there.  So we got lunch and went to another part of town to see the Evita Peron museum.  After that, we went to a big park and rented a four person peddle cart and drove around this path that went around the park.  After dinner, we hung out at the hostel playing my FAVORITE game, 500.  Note the sarcasm.  

The End of Chile (Friday, December 12)

My last day of classes was Thursday.  That night we also had our group good-bye dinner with our program director and our Chilean professors.  It was then that it hit me that the trip to Chile is coming to an end.  Many in our group our traveling afterwards—some are going to Machu Pichu, others to the south of Chile and others to other parts of South America.  But some are heading home, which means I won’t get to see them until next semester some time.  It was kind of a bittersweet final get together. 

 

I am actually writing from our hostel in Buenos Aires, Argentina (BA).  I’ve got a small group of friends I’m traveling with: Hannah, Susan and David.  We just got here around 9 tonight (it’s like 1:30am local time right now).  I brought my laptop with, which I was kind of nervous about, but I think it should be safe here at the hostel.  We had another slight problem in the airport.  We were running a little bit behind schedule and ended up missing the plane!  The girls lamed David because he showed up to the bus terminal late, which made us take a later bus than we were planning on, which made us get to the airport later.  Although I think we would have been late anyways because there was a really long line at the airport’s international gate anyways.  By the time we got to the terminal to board the plane the lady told us that it was full and we would have to wait until the next flight.  Fortunately the next flight was an hour and a half later and we didn’t have to pay anything.  David and I just grabbed some food at the airport while the girls shopped.  I was actually kind of glad I could eat before boarding the plane. 

 

We landed in BA and took a taxi to our hostel.  We went out and got some dinner at this pizza/pasta place at like 11:00.  It was pretty good.  BA is well known for having excellent food, especially beef, pizza/pasta and ethnic foods.  Not sure what the plan is tomorrow but we are thinking of doing a tour of the city.  I just don’t want to have to get up early!  It’s really hot here and it’s humid also.  I’m not complaining though—it beats the blizzard in Minnesota!  There’s a lot of street noise right outside our room window, but I’m gonna try and get some sleep.  

 

What a Trip!

The trip to Punta Arenas (PA) was filled with a lot of unexpected curve balls.  First of all, before even going to PA we had a dilemma with purchasing the plane tickets.  There were 4 of us in all traveling: my friends Susan, Hannah and Emily and myself (I know, lucky guy traveling with 3 girls! Bound to happen when there’s 22 girls and only 6 guys in our group)  Susan is our designated travel agent and she was the first to buy her ticket.  I tried to buy the same roundtrip ticket she had through airline “A” a couple weeks later but discovered the return flight was full.  So I bought a one-way ticket going to PA on the same flight through airline “A” and a return ticket through a different airline, let’s call it airline “B.”  Hannah and Emily bought roundtrip tickets through a completely different airline.

 

Anyways, long story short, airline A went out of business so airline B took responsibility for airline A’s flights.  So, Susan and I ended up having our flight to PA changed from 8:00 in the morning to 10:30—ate away at part of the day but not a big deal.  The bigger problem was the return flight.  Since I had already bought my return ticket through airline B, nothing was changed with my flight.  But the return flight Susan had (the original roundtrip ticket through airline “A”) did get changed and she ended up (supposedly) on the same flight as me going home.  When we got to the check-in counter however, we realized that this wasn’t the case because her flight somehow didn’t get confirmed.  The lady told us that there was no room and she would have to wait until the next day to fly out.  This was a bit of a problem since Hannah and I had our flights all set to leave that afternoon (Emily left PA a day earlier).  We talked to the lady at the counter in Spanish to see if there was any other option but she said the only option was to go on the next day’s flight, which was at 9pm, which means that it would be too late to get a bus back to Vina from Santiago when the flight arrived at around midnight.  I even asked about changing my ticket to the following day so there would at least be 2 of us together but there were only high class seats left so it would have been uber expensive. 

 

We ended up having to board our flights leaving Susan at the PA airport by herself in tears.  Hannah and I felt terrible!  We were planning on spending Monday in Santiago since we didn’t have class due to a national holiday, but when Hannah and I met up in the Santiago airport we just decided to get a taxi to the bus station and take a bus back to Vina after all that had happened.  Susan went back to the hostel that we were at in PA (fortunately it was a pretty sweet hostel, keep reading to hear why) and spent another night there.  Now we are all safely back in Vina, thank God. 

 

I don’t want to make it sound like the trip sucked, because I actually really liked it.  It’s just the whole airline issue part was pretty lame.  The first 2 nights (Tuesday and Wednesday) we spent in Puerto Natales, a city about 3 hours from Punta Arenas.  Susan and I were travel companions the whole way there since we had the same flight.  We had to take off and land 3 times because of two stopovers on the way to PA, the southern most city in the world apparently.  Then we had to take a 3-hour bus to Puerto Natales where our hostel was (Hospedaje Maria)—Maria even came to meet us at the bus drop-off point.  Emily and Hannah were already at the hostel.  We were pretty wiped out from traveling so we all just went and got some dinner and went back to the hostel. 

 

I was surprised how late it was when the sun finally went down—around 10:30 or so.  PA is like 53 degrees south, so it’s farther south than Minnesota is north (MN is about 45 degrees).  The first full day in Puerto Natales we went to Torres del Paine national park. We had an option to do a full day hike to the top of the Torres (towers) or do a drive around tour from below.  I pushed to do the day hike to the top, even though I think some of the girls may have rather done the drive around tour (not to name any names COUGH COUGH, Susan and Hannah). I give them credit for going on it with me though.  Emily was at the other end of the spectrum—I had to work hard to keep up with her.  The hike to the top was almost 4 hours and then another 4 hours back to the bottom.  I thought the view was totally worth it, except we didn’t get to stay up there very long because we had to make sure we made it down in time to catch the bus back to town, since we were pretty much in the middle of nowhere. 

 

At the top the climb got rougher and rockier.   Hannah decided she had enough about half way up the rocky part and found a rocky seat where she waited until we came back down.  Susan and I kept going while Emily was ahead of us almost out of our site.  We found out that Susan’s the accident prone one in the group; she endured a few minor injuries during the expedition.  We took the bus back to Puerto Natales and went to a Pizza place where we met some Australians.  We each ate an entire pizza, and they were fairly generous portions! 

 

The next day, Thursday, we left our hostel in Puerto Natales and bussed it back to PA.  Before catching the bus to PA however, the girls (minus Hannah who stayed back at the hostel) made me go shopping with them.  Well, they didn’t so much as make me, as much as there really wasn’t anything else to do so I just went with.  I’m not going to complain because they came with to Torres del Paine without fuss, so I’m just going to zip it!  The hostel that we had in PA was more like a house with extra rooms than a hostel.  It was run by this older woman and she lived there (she wasn’t really old, just old to me—like 60’s).  The first night we were there we met these other two travelers: one from San Diego and the other from Boston.  They accompanied us on the tour to see the penguins on Friday.  On Friday in the morning we went on a historical tour and saw a reconstructed military fort and some other stuff.  It was kind of relaxing compared to Torres del Paine, but I thought it was kind of boring.  After the tour we had lunch in PA and then went on a tour to see the penguins with our new hostel friends.  These were the Magallanes penguins (I saw the Humbolt penguins when I went to La Serena in the north).  They were in a natural habitat and there was a path constructed for viewing.  It was super windy too. After the tour we went with our hostel friends to a Chinese/international food buffet.   

 

The next day, Saturday, Emily left in the morning and the 3 of us slept in and went to the centro, or the main plaza with our hostel friends in the afternoon.  We got some lunch and then our friends had to leave for the airport.  We went back to the hostel and relaxed for a while.  Saturday was also Susan’s birthday, so we went out eat at another Chinese place for dinner.  We tried to rent a movie afterwards, but they wouldn’t rent to us because we didn’t have a local address.  It worked out OK though because we had some free entertainment back at the hostel. It ended up that this woman’s family came to visit from Argentina, including two ten-year-old twin grandkids and they were fun to have around.  They entertained us with these little puppets and then they came into our room and got into our cereal and we somehow ended up having a sort of a contest to see who could catch the most cereal in their mouth and in the process made kind of a mess.  They were up until about midnight and then their mom made them go to bed.

 

The following afternoon, Sunday, was when we were all supposed to leave PA.  Once again the twins were our entertainment.  I brought out my camera to take some photos and I let them have it for a little while.  They had fun making goofy videos.  We also had a pillow fight until their mom put a stop to that.  I may or may not have been the culprit there. 

 

Susan, Hannah and I took a taxi to the airport and that’s when that whole drama began. 

 

This week we’re finishing up classes—have some papers to write but it’s so damn nice out I have 0 motivation!  Friday the 12th is officially the last day of classes, but I don’t have class on Fridays so I’m done on Thursday.  I’m leaving for Buenos Aires Argentina Friday and I’m excited!  Come back to Vina the 18^th and then my flight home leaves the 22^nd.   It’s going too fast!  I’ll see everyone very soon!  

Photos

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I’m #$%&ing tired!

As I write this it is almost 11pm and I haven’t slept in like 30 something hours.  I had a final in my Chilean history class today and an essay that was due for my Latin American cinema class and, since I’m kind of a procrastinator, I left writing the essay and studying for the test until last night and ended up not going to bed.  My bad.  I’m glad to almost be done with classes.  Tomorrow I’m leaving with 3 others to Punta Arenas, a city in the way south of Chile.  I’m really excited to go!  Our bus to the airport leaves from Vina at 5am so I have to get up at about 3:30, yay!  Sleep is overrated anyways!

 

I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving!  Our group had our own Thanksgiving down here with our host families on Friday.  MY host dad and host sister came with me.  We each brought something and shared a part of our American culture with our Chilean friends and families.  There was like 90 people, so it was a pretty good sized thanksgiving dinner.

 

This past month of November

the six of us guys here participated in a “no shave November.”  I also got a tattoo, but it’s fake—just henna, and I shaved so I no longer look like a bad-ass.   

 

I’m gonna have to be done because I’m exhausted.  I just wanted to post before leaving.  I come back to Vina on December 8^th.   

I'll post sometime soon after I get back.