Santiago to Valdivia

Uff, once again we kept putting off the blog and now there is so much to tell...
Let's start at the begining, go until the end and then stop.
We tried to leave Santiago for four days. The first day we met up with Armando. He is the crazy Irish-Argentinian whom we met back in Cusco. Over a glass of beer in his office an idea was born to travel together. We decided to go to Argentina, down highway 40 and cross back into Chile at Pino Hachado. Good. He had some work to finish so we waited for him for one day. The next day we agreed on leaving at 2pm, but it did not happen. We walked out of the house at 4:30, missed the last bus to take us out of the metropolis and the only thing we could possibly do was to buy beer and come back to the house we just left. Armando knew of a party happening a few blocks away, so we went there and finished the night at 4 in the morning. The next morning the awakening was hard but we managed heroicaly and were hitching out of Los Andes that afternoon. The first truck stopped in under 20 minutes and took the three of us over the beatiful snow-covered pass into Argentina. We camped outside of Portillo with a camp fire and a beautiful starry sky above us.It took us 5 hours to get a lift next morning though, and even that for mere 50 kilometers until the highway 10. The traffic was speeding by at 120 km/h. In addition, a passing thunder cloud dispersed a good measure of hail above our heads and we had to seek shelter in a road-side chapel. We were expelled from there half an hour later by a pious owner of a near-by business. ¨This building is for praying and not for hanging around in!¨ he said.Ok, we relocated to the near-by gas station and waited out the rest of the storm there. It was too late to travel by then so we made a tour of the surrounding area and located an abandonned church, in which we camped for the night.
It was drizzling in the morning, but the sky cleared later on and we were out on the shoulder again, but nobody would stop. We became bored with the scene and walked to the next on-ramp, some kilometers away. As soon as we installed ourselves there, a truck went by, with a strangely familiar passenger inside. He had his nose and palms of his hands pressed to the side window as he went by. ¨Jonathan!¨ It was him indeed, our travelling companion from Peru and Equador. We got a ride shortly after this ¨encounter¨, and then another one in rapid succesion, which deposited us at the entrance of Malargue. It was late at night and the place for getting off could not have been picked better. We saw in front of us a perfectly half built and then abandonned shell of a would-be hotel. The inside was remarkably clean and we did not even had to put up the tent, but spread our bed-rolls out on the second floor. In the morning we located the super-market, had breakfast and walked to the end of town.
There was very little traffic. After standing there for some hours and seeing no suitable vehicles to take all three of us, we decided to split up. As soon as we walked 200 m past Armando, we got a ride. The energies were changed and we continued our journey, meeting funny truck-drivers, sharing meals with them, camping in unexpected places and witnessing gorgeous landscapes and sunsets. Armando got a lift 5 hours after us and travelled very fast, covering the distance until Las Lajas in two days. It took us four days.
The driver who brought us to Las Lajas invited us to stay in his house, which we surely did. Carlos and his wife Carina were great hosts, we drank mate, ate asado and stayed up late for three days.On the third day Jonathan came to town as well and was also welcomed to the house. We talked late into the night with him. In the few months since we last saw each other, this guy has been to Paraguay, Brazil, Uruguay, Buenos Aires and back to the cordillera. Wow.
In the morning our paths went in different directions: Jonathan went further south to Bariloche and we crossed back into Chile. A traditional group photo and Jonathan gets a ride in a few minutes, leaving us steeping in black envy on the opposite side of the road, waiting for our ride for hours.
We are in Valdivia now. The forests around here look identical to the ones in Canada, until you look closely: it is made up of entirely different species! We went to the botanical garden this morning and spend some hours walking amidst big strange-to-us trees that looked almost like spruces, cedars and poplars, but... different! We are very happy to be in the forested lands once again.

Valpo to Santiago

Well, the long awaited celebrations came and went. There was a huge fair set up steps from our place and at nights the music was booming so loud that our window panes shook. People were drinking chicha and dancing cueca until 4 in the morning. There was also lots of vendors selling traditional chilean food (read - meat). We did not know, but our CS guests told us that street dogs were said to be missing shortly before the feria opened. It did not seem improbable, you just had to get a smell of the meat being fried on coals - it was definitely not fresh, and it did not taste like beef...
During our last few weeks we have hosted a lot of people through CouchSurfing. Our guests were mostly French, and most of them new to the CouchSurfing concept. Among our guests were exchange students from Valdivia, a main-stream travelling couple, a group of 5 (4 girls and 1 guy) law students, and a professional paraglider pilot. All of them from France!
The paraglider pilot took us out of town to try his wing out. The experience seemed more similiar to hitch-hiking than flying - two hours in a bus to get out of the suburbia, a long walk with backpacks looking for the ¨spot¨ and then a sunset on the beach. Gerard did take off and flew for a bit. He then gave us a short introduction and we pulled the thing up in the air, pulling it along the beach.
On our last night in town, Gabriela and Robinson, our Chilean friends, invited us to the ¨bicentenario¨dinner at Gabriela`s parents` place. When we arrived, the empanadas prepared by her mother, were hot out of the oven, the food was plentyful and delicious, and the night was the most appropriate conclusion to our month.long stay in Valparaiso.
Next morning we cleaned our room, dealt with the old grandma running the place and went to see the Navy Parade. The event did not take place since the 1810, so people were very excited. We went to the look-out and waited. The air shook with war planes flying low over the city, and then the war ships motored by the pier, where all the generals were sitting. When the fighter jets flew by and there was no end in sight of the column of the ships, we decided we saw enough of the military ¨defile¨ and headed for the bus station, it being too late to try to hitch-hike out the same day. We do not pretend to be purists, so once in a while we do things we usually try to avoid. The bus departed in a few minutes, and we were in the capital two hours later. Here, we had a CS contact, so we headed straight there (or so we thought). When we were looking for the address on google map, the system pointed us to a street that was nowhere near the real location. Convinced of the reliability of Google, we headed there. An outsirt neighbourhood, 20 subway stations from the true address. Not bad. We asked at a corner store, and the old man scratched his head and told us that we are very far away. He then called our host and put us on the bus heading our way. Shortly after, we were at the door of German and Gemma, our hosts. They live across the river from the downtown, and breathtaking views open from their tall windows. They were having a roof-top barbeque party, so we mingled with the friendly people to be found there and went to sleep pretty late in a room of our own.
We have stayed for four days now with them. We went to see a light-show on the Moneda Palace, helped to move some furniture, went to see the fairy-tale Cerro Santa Lucia, and even witnessed a sword-fencing practice, of which German was the master.

Living slow in Valpo

Valparaiso is a city of contrasts - colours, smells, and most importantly elevation differences. A walk around town is usually a struggle, unless you are going downhill, of course. There are around 30 funiculeurs (lifts like the one in Quebec City) installed around the city - a system dating from the middle of the nineteenth century. Only a few remain in service, but they are nevertheless very popular with the people.We are getting to know our neighbourhood little by little. Our baker addresses us by our names, we meet aquaintances on the street and Anastasia gets presents of empanadas from the local homeless guy.There is a very special gas station next to our house - they play music on the loudspeakers exclusively after 11 pm, and exclusively jazz or some good classical music. We fall asleep listening to Bach...
There are a lot of graffitti in Valpo. Big, small, good and not so good, they cover almost every wall in the city. We have gone on a few ¨graffitti hunt¨ walks - it was like visiting a living art exhibition, with people, dogs and traffic contributing to the experience.Dogs deserve a special note: it seems that all street dogs are purebred here. It is a common thing to see a huge beautiful bloodhound, with shining fur, to be digging in a trash can or, more often, leasurly lying in the middle of the sidewalk, in the sun, meditating on a meatshop window in front of him. German sheppards, cocker spaniels and setters also abound, running around in jolly packs. All of them are friendly and not afraid of people at all. If you were to say a typical ¨pshhh¨ to a dog in Bolivia, it would tuck its tail between the legs and get out of your way in a flash. Not so here. The dog will probably just ignore you, or slightly wiggle its tail and try to lick your hand. Dogs are not used to being kicked here.Chile is a country of good wine that is cheap. You can get a decent bottle for around $3. We are progressively becoming aquainted with the selection of the good and not so good wines available in almost any shop.
One of the late mornings, after breakfast, sipping on a hot ¨ceylon blend¨ tea, we were thinking of all the funny questions we have been asked on the road (all of them many times over). Here are a few that immediatly came to mind:
-Is Canada an island? (Peru)
-Is it in Europe? (Peru)
- I though that it is always cold in Canada... (after an explanation that there is a hot summer) (Bolivia)
-Do you have to stay indoors in Canada the whole winter not to freeze to death? (Equador)
-What do you eat in the winter? (Colombia)
-You are never cold, because you are used to it in Canada, right? (asked in the -5 C morning on the Bolivian altiplano)
-Do you speak Spanish in Russia? (Equador)
-What language do you speak in Canada? It is something strange, you say ¨eh¨ a lot up there... (an American tourist in Chile)
We are very happy that we are living here now. We are resting from the road, reading interesting books, we eat good and make a little money selling our macrame bracelets. We are thinking of getting back on the road after the 18th of September - the 200 year anniversary of Chile. The party is promising to be huge, with a kite flying competition, bag racing, lots of wine and chicha all around, good food, music and lots of dancing. The celebrations will last four days!
Good times:)