On the Road

Hi everyone. I will post soon about my final days in Valdivia. It was a week of goodbyes and extremely difficult to leave. Ashley and I are now in Concepcion staying with a friend of mine. We will be spending two more days here, visiting the beach, and relaxing. Next, we head to Santiago on the 21st to meet with two others from my program where we will all head to Mendoza, Argentina.
More to come later!

Leaving Valdivia

Finals are done, grades are in. Just about all the gringos have left. Ashley is on a plane at this moment headed towards me. I cannot wait to get on the road and do some real exploring. I've had an amazing time in Valdivia. (Has it really been four months??) But I'm ready to get going..hopefully towards some warmth. Here's our projected itinerary:

Concepcion 7/18

Santiago 7/21

{Mendoza, Argentina} 

Valparaiso 

Vina del Mar

La Serena

Antofagasta 

{Copiapo}

Calama/San Pedro de Atacama

Iquique

{Salta, Argentina}

Arica

---Cross into Peru---

{Arequipa, Peru}

Cuzco, Peru 8/18

{Ayacucho, Peru}

Lima 8/28

PORTLAND, OREGON 9/1

The dates in between are tentative. Going to Mendoza depends on whether the Copa America is still going on (soccer tournament). And for the rest, we will play it by how feel about the town..

Off We Go!!

San Martin Part 3

Finally, on Sunday we got up and made a big plate of eggs before picking up our bikes. We headed out of town to what we had been warned was the worst part of the bike ride. They weren't joking. We alternated walking and wobbling while trying to shove our pedals down. The ground was well covered with ceniza in the hills and we used our scarves to cover our mouths. We quickly got hot and regretting our multiple layers (but later appreciated them on the way down in the evening). 

The Wolf Pack

The trail evened out and it became colder the farther we went up the mountain. The trail wound around high above the lake Lanin. We went through a Mapuche village and found a great sunny lookout spot for lunch.

Yogurt, apples, oranges, bread, garlic, cheese (mozzarella), ham.

But we were soon shooed away by a herd of hungry goats and had to retreat quickly out of sight with our food.

Doing some yoga.

In the evening, we went to a nice restaurant so the boys could have some Argentinean steak. We had met one of the owners of the restaurant the night before and received a 15% discount and a bottle of champagne! The boys had steak while Jess and I shared some amazing squash ravioli with herb sauce and a yummy salad. We also had some Malbec wine of course!

The Wolf Pack goes classy

Wolf Pack 2011

We were all exhausted after dinner from the bike ride and good dinner. We headed home and the ceniza started falling like snow. After 10 min of trying to watch a movie, we all headed to bed. Monday morning we were up by 5am to catch our bus home. A great surprise were the leftover medialunas above the fridge that we grabbed for a quick breakfast. All went well on our ride home.

San Martin Part 2

We had wanted to do a hike or something of the sort of Saturday, but instead had to stick around checking in with the bus station for Jess's backpack. We went there in the morning, as directed, and no bus had come in yet and they still weren't sure if they had recovered it. We decided to look around for a new hostel, one closer to downtown and with more guests. We found two that were promising and ended with one called the Puma. Clean, other guests, a big kitchen, the right price, and to our surprise after booking: a golden lab puppy called Violeta! We made the right choice!

Nothing better than puppy cuddle time

The fridges were covered in signs saying the same thing, but in every language that had come across it!

"Your mom doesn't live here! Please wash, dry, and put away your dishes right in their place!"

"Write your name on your food! Thanks!"

We decided to walk around San Martin: shopping, exploring, eating. I finally caved into my jewelry wants and bought two rings {one of the national stone of Chile: Lapiz Lazuli (dark blue) which is only found in Chile and Afghanistan and the other of the national stone of Argentina: Rhodochrosite Inca Rose (pink) } as well as a bracelet with serpentine stones in it (turquiose). All were hand-made by the owner of the stand in a little feria in one of the plazas. I also got a bombilla, one of the special straws to drink mate out of their cups, but didn't find a cup to my liking. We headed back to the bus station where we were told to again come back in an hour. We went to check out the lake nearby and eat some lunch.

Covered in ash, but still pretty

 Next, bus station again. The people at the counter in the office had no idea. Jessie went straight outside to take some sort of action and look for herself. It was there!!

Victory dance!!

After this wonderful turn of events, we continued walking around for the rest of the day. We discovered that the next day, Sunday, most of the town would be closed down so we ran around to the different tourism shops and fortunately, finally, we found a place with very nice bikes and a great route to try out the next day. After setting that up, we went back to our new hostel, napped, showered, had dinner (apples, bread, cheese, wine), and celebrated the boys' birthdays. Max's being on Sunday and Todd's being on Tuesday. The celebration involved more wine and some delicious birthday desserts complete with trick candles!

The evening was a crazy one. We headed back to the bars where we met some awesome people and also saw two guys from the old hostel that we tried to explain why we weren't staying there anymore..We ended the night with a little dancing and then headed back to our warm beds to get some sleep before the mountain biking adventure on Sunday!

San Martin de los Andes: Part 1

After much indecision, a few of us decided to risk the ash and head to San Martin de Los Andes in Argentina for our long weekend. There were hopes of skiing, but the ski resort there pushed their opening day back to the next weekend. Our bus left at 7:30am on Friday and we, that is, myself, Todd, Jessie, and Max, were all concerned about making it on time. To our chagrin, we had a friend's birthday to celebrate Thursday night. It was a close one with Jessie and Max running part of the way from their houses to the bus station, but we made it! We threw our backpacks in the storage under the bus, found our seats, and went back to sleep. My trip through the Andes was better this time as the views out of the window wasn't distorted by rain. 

 Max's first snowball ever in June.

Scrabble on my Kindle. Guess who's player One!

When we got to San Martin, we uncoiled our stiff bodies and collected our heavy bags..except Jessie's backpack wasn't under the bus. We had slips with a number that matched the slip number stuck to our bags, but the backpack on the bus that was unclaimed was not a match, in number nor in appearance. There had been a side-of-road transfer of some passengers during our trip who got onto a bus headed for Bariloche which we hoped meant that her backpack could still be recovered. Fortunately Jessie only had clothes in her bag, but nonetheless, there was value and sentiment in it as well. We spoke to a lot of people trying to confirm that they would recover the bag when they got to Bariloche, but for the time being all we could do was wait. If it was going to make it back, it wouldn't be until the next day anyways. So we headed out onto the streets to look around and make our way to the hostel. We stopped for some delicious sweets and preparations for dinner.

Cleaning up ceniza. 

Pre-made dough, sauce, 2 cheeses, sauteed onions and garlic (with egg!), tomatoes, and meat for the men. We also all bought a different bottle of wine (Malbec-the wine of Argentina) to try throughout the weekend. In the end my selection won: Hereford. I picked it because I liked pronouncing the name in a British accent.

We also drank Fernet, which is a popular alcohol in Argentina. It was Max's first time and he found he wasn't much of a fan. It has a strange bitter taste that, even mixed with coke, doesn't disappear. 

To end our first night in San Martin, we hit the hot spots in town. Our first spot was a really cool place in a house with white walls and bright accent colors. There was a roaring fire in the corner and it was hard to leave, but we were craving a snack. We then spotted a little place with delicious and Cheap empanadas. The girls got veggies and the boys, meat of course. Since we were out, we decided to make a last stop at a place called Alcatraz. It turned out to be a chill snowboard guy type place. Not many chairs or tables, surfer videos on the tv, and lots of underdressed guys chilling out, drinking beer. We stayed for a bit and then headed out for our looong walk home. We al hugged each other close and slipped on the ice as it was absolutely freezing. We set our alarms for the morning, praying that Jessie's backpack would be at the station in the morning

*Saturday and Sunday posts to come

Por fin, la ceniza ha llegado

This post may be a bit old news as I know everyone has heard of the Puyehue-Cordon Caulle volcano erupting in Chile. The bigger news is that yesterday we found the first layer of ash (ceniza) coating our cars and park benches. The volcano erupted June 4th, about 50 miles SE of Valdivia. On clear days we could actually see the ash cloud in the distance. My friend snapped this picture from downtown Valdivia:

One month later, we are finally feeling it's effects. What is amazing is that this ash landing in our city isn't just million year old volcano ash, but world-traveler ash. 

I would like to make a shout out to my friend Samantha Kracaw and apologize to her for delaying her flight home from New Zealand to the U.S. for three days. Oops.

**The next post will be on my experience in San Martin de Los Andes in Argentina where the ash had already been falling like snow for a month. 

Isla Mancera

The other day twelve us gave up our free Friday to go with our history professor to the old spanish fort on the Isla Mancera. The isla is just across one of the rivers from Niebla, the beach 20min outside of Valdivia, that we always head to. We took a micro out of town and then a boat over to the island. In the summer, the population of the island is over 1,000. Currently it is about 300. 

Yes that is Max pouring us the first cup of mate for the day..on a boat

We didn't find out about this until later, but while the fort was just up the hill and to right from the boat dock, we were led up the hill and to the left. The walk was nice though, the houses eclectic, the sheep roaming free.

            

We finally made it up to the fort. It was built in the 18th century by slaves and indigenous persons for the Spanish who then sat around and waited for attacks from England, Holland, and pirates. The attacks never came. A neat story of history there. The ruins are of the governor's house, the church, the ammunition storage, and the prisoners' cave

Nice digs, gov'ner

Church:The triangle of stones on the ground used to be above the arch but fell in perfect formation during an earthquake 

subterranean ammunition storage

No prisoners left in the hole, aw shucks.

Guard Tower

 We played "How many gringos fit inside this tiny tower" 11.

 The half-moon erosion you see on the beach is from the tsunami waves the beach has received over the years on account of earthquakes. Interesting fact: a wave caused by the Japan earthquake this year reached the beach 22 hours after.

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