Honey, I´m home...

So getting back to Valdivia was so weird and right and hard to explain.   Ha.  So different from last time. This time (even coming from the south) I recognized stuff long before we got to Valdivia.  I got off that bus, and got my taxi to my house.  Made some light conversation with the driver, just like a pro.  It was sunny.  We crossed the bridge.  We passed Terpel.  An entirely different sensation than when I got here in August.  I kind of wanted to explode it was all so familiar and beautiful. 

Got to the house, and it was like I was just coming back from a weekend trip.  My host mom and I caught up in the doorway to my bedroom. 

Nothing and everything is different here.  Pao moved to Santiago.  My host dad is changing jobs.  My yarn was right where I left it.  Astrud Gilberto´s still singing in the living room.  On our street and in our garden there are new flowers for the season, some I´ve never seen before.  Telma was missing.  Vale still talks really fast.  New posters in my room.  One of the water glasses broke.   That sort of thing.

My classes started that next morning. 

• “Bases Teóricas del Lenguaje y Comunicación.”  Whatever that means.  But, I think I´m really going to like it,  it seems to be about language and phonetics and stuff—linguistics, really.  But it is a little scary that it´s with Chileans.   (I would have cried if I had tried to do this last semester, I think. )
• “Francés.”  That´s right, a French class.  Also with Chileans.  This should be funny.  Sure, the class is taught in Spanish, but really, we´re all starting at square one.  (Well, except for those cheaters who apparently studied before the first class). 
• “Comunicación Oral y Escrito.” Another Chilean class.  With “forestry” majors, as far as I can tell.  Anyway, I think we´re mainly just learning how to be good communicators?  You never can be too good at that…
• “Suprasegmental Phonetics.”  This one I just go to, I´m not enrolled.  ( I´m the “assistant.” ) It´s for English Teaching majors, and it´s dealing with intonation and stuff.  It´s super interesting, although funny because when the professor asks me to give an example he often has to correct it… he teaches British English, and I´m just not British.
• “History of Chile.”  The name says it all. This one is with gringos.

• “Conversation and Communication.”  We write papers.  We talk.  She corrects us.  You get it.  Also with gringos.

So speaking of gringos… the new kids from the states just got here!  It´s a way smaller group; (of last semester´s 33, seven stayed, nine new ones came and now we are 16 in total).  They go around reminding us of all the weird things that we´ve forgotten are weird.

Valdivia´s always been nice but it is just so pretty here right now; fall in March never looked so good.  The days are sunny and the nights are foggy.  Also, the homework load hasn´t really started yet, so I´ve been going to Niebla, carving pumpkins, teaching a little swing dance.   Taking pictures, going on walks.  Watching freshman hazing…  “mechoneos,”   which look kind of rough.  (Food and vinegar and stuff being thrown, hair cut off… then that poor train of mechones and their elephant-style walk through campus, I assume being led to another fate.)

En fin, I´m so happy to be back.  I´m excited to do minimal travelling and maximum living.   I´m outta here, and I know I said I´m ready to settle down a little, but stay tuned because coming soon… Chiloé, take II!

What I see if I walk a little past my house.

What I see if I take a micro (bus) a little past my house. (Saturday afternoon adventure, road to Niebla.)

What I see if I go downtown (the waterfront).

What I see right before my house (a giant orange-flowered plant).

He made the mistake of becoming a freshman.

It´s March.  This is so weird to me.

That night of the giant moon!

Our very own murta bush!

The familiar walk into the sunset, going home from downtown. :-)

And that familiar walk across the bridge.

And that one famous, ever-present dog. 

Can´t get enough of these hydrangeas, and they are EVERYWHERE.

The bus era.

So we said goodbye to Rob (who was travelling on his own again until Valdivia) and stood there waiting. We watched the sky, trying to guess where the next good lightning bolt would show up.  Until we saw her.  And she was coming straight for us, just as sure as I´m sitting here.  Coming with those lips like roses and that hair like waterfalls.  If my memory doesn´t fail me, a condor trailed along behind her, both of them shrouded in a rainbow-tinted, dreamlike mist. This very woman was the centerpiece of the airbrushed art on the side of our bus.  Yes, our bus.  We could hardly believe our luck.

Until we got on.  Instantly, Erin nearly lost her teeth.  The guy in front of her quickly and obliviously reclined his seat, coming within centimeters of her pearly whites.  It seemed these seats weren´t quite as spacious as buses in the past.  But we were quickly distracted by the water falling through the roof and into the laps of our neighbors.  Then the bus stopped on the side of the road.  (This doesn’t alarm us anymore.) I am certain that no one knew what was going on, and I am also certain that no one cared. Erin just shrugged, silently handed me one of her earphones and deejayed while we watched the lightning through our foggy window.

We sat there for maybe 20 minutes before the bus got rolling again.  We soon wished that it hadn´t. Now Erin and I were both in danger of losing our teeth, likely to rattle out of our little heads.  Those dirt roads are bumpy.  Then we drove through a cave and forged a few rivers.  It was a lot like being at Disneyland, except that it lasted nine hours and there were no seatbelts and no security that it would end alright. 

It did, more or less.

However, that bus ride combined with the events that followed were not a high point of our travels.  (I think our nerves may have been a little raw.)  The somewhat condensed version involves arriving  at Villazón at 4 a.m. only to have the bus driver point uncertainly when we asked where the border was.  It wouldn´t open "for quite a while, though."  Not having sufficient funds to use the bathroom and then not knowing how to flush once we got in there, anyway.  Missing the bus we had been promised (and had also been grotesquely over-charged for).  Having our luggage held hostage.  Me leaving my camera on that second wretched (although if I´m honest, comfortable) bus, and finally a wild taxi chase after said bus and camera.  But things only went up from here. 

Salta was my first taste of Argentina.  Definitely different than Bolivia.  It was a beautiful city with pretty parks and cafés and trendy little shops.  The surrounding country was so GREEN.  I would love to go back with more time to explore the outskirts. Then we got on 20 hour bus headed for Iguazu Falls.   The humidity when we got off was… shocking.  There we stayed in our first hostel with a pool.  (Also the first one with lizards climbing on the walls.) We may or may not have each eaten 3 or 4 ice cream cones there.  You will never know for sure.

So, the famous falls.  Oh my goodness, the falls.  As we followed the trail towards them there were butterflies floating by and these strange raccoon/aardvark/monkey hybrids playing in the trees.   An occasional dinosaur (or they could have possibly been really big lizards) would scuttle across our path.  Then we turned a corner and what to our wondering eyes should appear but a HUGE LINE OF WATERFALLS.  I guess I do not know what else I was expecting.  (Whatever it was, they exceeded it.)  You can see them from all different angles.  It was so gorgeous… just so crazy.  When you look at them from above it looks like the whole world is being sucked into a hole, just dropping off into nothing.  We also took a little hike to another baby waterfall (fighting off enormous—really, enormous—jungle spiders all the way) where we took a lunchtime swim.  It was a full and beautiful day and I am SO glad we went.

Now, to emotionally prepare ourselves for yet ANOTHER 20 hour bus ride, our destination this time being Buenos Aires, where we will part ways.

Mate.  We´re in Argentina now, folks.

This car is for sale, as indicated by the bottle on top. (No, seriously.)

Erin perusing the Salta selection of street books.

New friend haning out in the kitchen of our Puerto Iguazu hostel.  He was pretty chill.

Foliage as we head towards the falls.

And, there they are.  Well, part of them... (square pictures don´t do panoramic scenes much justice).

The hybrid creature.  They´re called coaties, not to be confused with cooties.

I call it the Eighty Eight, but I don´t think that´s the scientific name.

Some baby waterfalls along the way.

  Erin and I and some serious waterfalls. (That poor man never could get the lighting quite right.)

This is a MASSIVE spider eating an even MORE massive jungle bug.  It made an impression on us.

Dinosuar.

Erin.  Jungle.

Another view.

The saga continues...

So our Puno, Peru experience was pleasant.  We spent just one night there in a chill hostel that reminded me of Grandma Zyph’s house.  I guess there was one complicated moment where Rob shaved all his hair off.   (This followed his do-it-yourself haircut possibly inspired by the terraces of Machu Picchu).  In Peru if you are tall and bald and Caucasian-looking, people stare.  Also, your friends make fun of you.  Anyway, the next morning Eitan and I took a boat out to the nearby “floating islands.”  They´re man-made islands constructed of reeds which last about 20 or so years, and then they just build a new one.   Some have become really touristy, but it is pretty novel to see a cow just walking around on some reeds in the middle of a lake.

Sadly, later that day Eitan took off for Colombia while Erin, Rob and I headed for Bolivia. Border-crossing was not entirely without incident as the Peruvian government tried to smuggle us across and the Bolivian government caught on.  Still, we made it to Copacabana, Bolivia in time for an unreal sunset and the next day we shipped out for Isla del Sol.  It´s just a boat ride from Copacabana, and it turned out to be one of my favorite places yet.  It´s such a pretty, peaceful island out in Lake Titicaca.  And no one wants to sell you anything; they just want to get their pigs out of the lake and get back home.  We spent the days exploring the island with Nacho, our newfound friend and housemate.  This meant making sand sculptures on deserted beaches, rating Incan ruins (Cuzco has made Incan Ruin Snobs of us) and swimming in Lake Titicaca.  While we were there the moon was huge and my evening memories are of Erin singing and Nacho playing guitar on the beach. 

One weird thing is that Spanish was the second language for a lot of the people on the island—a lot of people speak Aymara (one of the official languages of Bolivia).  The kids speak Spanish, too, but several of the adults I talked to struggled with it.  It´s also been fun to hear little differences in the Spanish of these different countries.  Honestly, Bolivian and Peruvian Spanish has been easier to follow for me.   They seem to speak slower and enunciate more clearly.  Anyway, we took it pretty easy for a few days on Isla del Sol--there amongst the donkeys and sheep--before we returned for one more night in Copacabana.  Then towards the Bolivian capital of La Paz!!

I hated it.

Ok.  That´s severe.  But I will say that it was hands-down my least favorite city so far.  It was bad.  (This is probably not an unbiased opinion, however it is still my opinion.)  I got up early the first morning to explore (it is enormous) and either the outrageous altitude or the delicious street food I had for breakfast set out to kill me.  Refusing to believe I was actually ailing until I had passed out and then thrown up all over a quiet little internet café, I finally surrendered to my sick bed.  There I remained more or less the rest of the time.  (Unfortunately for Erin, we were sharing a twin bed.)  Someday I hope to give that city another chance.

La Paz was followed by Sucre, the “other capital” of Bolivia.  Stucco and tile roofs and sunshine through the rain.  Very pretty, but we were only there for one night before we set out for the Bolivian salt flats of Uyuni.  Halfway there the bus (which had been cranking little snippets—never full songs— of terrible 80s rock and reggaeton) stopped.   Just stopped.  In the middle of the nowhere.  A deserty sort of place, with a rundown, little house.  Absolutely nothing else.  Everyone got out.  We did too.  Everyone went into the puzzling little place.  After looking at each other, we did too.  We played the part of unconcerned, expert bus passengers while we slowly gathered that the bus always stops there so people can buy lunch from the people that live in the house.  On the menu that day?   “False rabbit.”   Yeah, we don´t know, but it was good.

But on to Uyuni.  I´m a little embarrassed to say that this was not something that was on my list of South American must-sees.  (That is one of the huge benefits to travelling with other people; you end up in places you just wouldn´t have gone.)  They are… highly recommendable.  On our way out to the flats I was sort of bummed because our jeep just plain died.  (And frankly a little worried, too.)  The thing is those jeeps go through salt water every day of their [probably short] lives, and I just can´t imagine that’s good for them.  The man driving just did some things, though, and we got going again. 

Pretty soon we entered what appeared to be some sort of interactive surrealist painting.  So, the ground is made out of salt.  Like, it´s white and hard and geometric.  It had rained the night before.  That means there was an inch or two of standing water.  Then all the blue from the sky above is reflected off the giant mirror created by all that glistening white ground… and it is bizarre-o.  Your brain just can´t quite figure it out.   I left very impressed, and with salt all over the place.   It was a lovely conclusion to Peru and Bolivia. 

And now? Onward to Argentina!

Street watermelon in Puno, Peru.

Floating Islands of Puno... (they look like they´re attached to those hills, but they´re not. Trust me.)

Oh, Rob. Because we weren't conspicuous enough.

Just another night with a sunset and a moonrise not so far behind (Copacabana, Bolivia). 

Isla del Sol, Bolivia.

Isla del Sol, again. Just a man, his boat, and Lake Titicaca.

Nacho the roomie, just hanging out outside our room with the kids that lived there.

Gorgeous Isla del Sol. Notice the lack of people.

Copacabana street, take II.

Typical of pretty Sucre.

I accidently bought these two giant mangos in Sucre. 

That first rainy night in Uyuni was spent in strange café with mediocre hot chocolate and Lady Gaga videos playing in the background.

Salt flats of Uyuni. See what I mean by crazy?

So, this is the ground there.

Erin and I practicing our best circus routine.

(Salt flats, continued)

Boom, baby.

SUMMER BREAK UPDATE:
     It´s 5 a.m.  I´ve been on a bus all night.  I would like to be sleeping, but the gentlemen in front of me would like to be listening to their travel radio, and freezing me out by keeping their window open.  The Peruvian woman next to me seems warm and unbothered in her thick stockings, a very full gathered skirt and bowler hat three sizes to small.  (She is in the height of fashion around here, I might add.)

     So, instead of sleeping I´ll write my overdue blog.   The last couple of weeks in Valdivia were a swirling craziness of final papers, friends and goodbyes.  The morning after our last final my friend Erin and I started our Patagonia adventure off right with a 12 hour bus ride, followed by a flight south.   5 a.m., in the Punta Arenas airport (after spending a very florescent and drafty night there on the floor) we got down to business: my first cribbage lesson.  Then our first view of the Strait of Magellan and we met up with Siena.    After getting all supplied up by crazy Eduardo, a kind-hearted and somewhat loony hostal owner, he took us to catch our bus to the Torres del Paine launching pad town of Puerto Natales.

     Torres del Paine is an incredible national park in the Chilean Patagonia.  It is BREATHTAKING, and not just for all the hills.  Erin, Siena and I set out with all our best worldy posessions (mainly wool, Gortex, and chocolate) strapped onto us with twine and bungee cords.  We kept meeting up people who looked like serious hiking business (mainly handsome Israeli men), but we successfully brought "serious hiking business" down a notch or two.

DAY 1: Lovely!  A beautiful meadow, gorgeous weather.  Hardly ran into another person. I don´t imagine I could have felt more carefree (except for the enormous backpack full of carrots and apples... maybe Eduardo was right about that.)
DAY 2: We just hiked up to have lunch at an enormous glacier, no big deal.  We started noticing that the wind was insane.
DAY 3: Morning rainbows, incredible blue-green lakes, baby avalanches, and incredible panoramic views.  Parted ways with Siena.  (Also, a long nap on a rock in the middle of the river.)
DAY 4: SO many terrain changes, just so many of them.  Rocky lake beaches, the surface of the moon, meadows, insane rivers to cross.  Wind that threw us to ground.
DAY 5: Hot, hot.  All uphill.  Made it to the campsite right below the famous Torres (towers) de Paine.  Had tea and a bird watching discussion with the camp hosts, received the stink-eye from all the other freezing campers upon our exit of the cozy cabin.  (Sorry guys, benefits to learning Spanish.)
DAY 6: Up at 3:30 a.m. to get to the Torres at sunrise.  Then we began our descent, with the wind and the rain chasing us out.

     Midnight found us in Punta Arenas again, looking for a hostal and a shower, and except for the stinky bunkmates we found a pleasant little place.  We kept running into people we´d met in the park... Argentians, Spaniards, and of course, the many Israelis.  The next morning we visited the Strait of Magellan and hung out with the penguins there.  Those little guys are really funny.  Same day we saw a condor, flamingos, ñandu (kind of like an ostrich), among others... bird watching triumph. 

     From there began the journey to the U.S. where I spent Christmas and New Years.  I hung around the house with the family a lot, and managed NOT to dance... we´re going on 5 months now, and this is becoming a problem.  No bingo, either.  There was lots of snow, though, and everything was the same and different all at the same time.  It was fantastic to come home.

     Early January and in the Seattle airport, waiting for my flight to Santiago: a kind, weirded-out soul let me use his computer to e-mail Erin.  I had realized we bought tickets to San Pedro de Atacama for the wrong date.  Bummer.   Our last minute "change of plans" took us on an overnight bus to La Serena, a pretty beach town.  We spent the whole day there napping on the beach and exploring, and took another overnight bus headed to San Pedro de Atacama.  Chilean buses aren´t half bad, and it all worked out.

     San Pedro de Atacama sure is a desert, and really doesn´t seem SO different from the outskirts of Yakima.  Our days in the desert included the Tatio Geysers at sunrise, INCREDIBLE night skies, a sunset over the Valle de La Luna (incredible), and my first bed after 3 nights of travel.  The last day we went out into the Salt Flats of Tara, just zooming over the wide-open orange-colored desert for hours.  The guy driving told me there was "no right road."  I think he meant "no road at all." It´s so fun to be able hang out with Spanish speakers all day and be just fine.  Travelling here would be different, otherwise... that´s for sure.  Our hostal owner Maria had some insightful UFO/government conspiracies stories for us.  All in all, it was perfect.

    Another night bus to the Chilean border.  Crossing into Peru was pretty painless and we very quickly noticed we weren´t in the same country.  It´s crazy how much difference a border can make.  We spent hours driving through a barren desert in a slightly smelly bus with nothing to divert us but Spanish-speaking Zach Efron on the mini television screen at the front of the bus.  (This was not one of my better bus trips.) A fews hours exploring pretty Arequipa and we headed onward to ancient Cusco!

     Cusco.  So cool, and so OLD.  In fact, the oldest continually inhabited city of South America and the old Incan capitol.  We met up with Rob and Eitan, two guys that were in the program in Chile with us.   Saw a ton of ruins and amazing Spanish architecture, but they really did fade a little in comparison to what we saw a few days later: soaked, freezing and extremely happy, we reached Machu Picchu at 5:30 in the morning.  It was really, really crazy.  Jungle above and below and fog rolling all around it, it was just so big, and the architecture of those loco Incans was INCREDIBLE. 

     We headed back to Cusco for a few more days, and while I´m writing this we´re on our way to Puno, Peru for our first sighting of Lake Titicaca.  The future brings us to Bolivia, except for Eitan, who we´re losing to Colombia.

     My life is surreal right now.  More to come, but until then, I offer you pictures...

Just my first glacier, Torres del Paine.

The whole hike was unbelievably beautiful.

The famous Torres, far too early in the morning.

Home for the holidays, yo.  Uncle Dan teaching me how to beat Erin at cribbage.

Cozy at Grandpa and Grandma´s with the hermanos.

Los Geysers del Tatio, San Pedro de Atacama.

Another San Pedro de Atacama view.

I think this was Valle del Sol, still in San Pedro de Atacama.

This is the infamous Erin the Travel Companion.  Beyond us are flamingos, but it looks like you just have to trust me on that. San Pedro de Atacama.

Llamas.  A salt flat in the middle of the desert.  San Pedro de Atacama.

Arequipa, Peru.

Also Arequipa.  We were just there for a few hours between buses, but it was beautiful.

Hello, Cusco.  The skies were always changing, and there were gobs of VW bugs.

The Incan ruins of Pisac, right outside of Cusco.

Rob, me, Erin and Eitan, the fabulous four.

The hostal life... doing laundry on a rooftop at the base of Machu Picchu. Featuring: Erin and Rob

Me and the ever-popular Machu Picchu.

Back in Cusco.

Rooftops of Cusco.

Cusco streets mean llamas and ladies with hats.

When the sun hits the ridge just right, these hills sing... (The last day, overlooking Cusco)