Bad Hair, Chileans, and lots o´ Tea

Thursday was busy. I joined another class to tour famous Chilean poet Pablo Neruda´s Santiago house, La Chascona. La chascona means "bad or crazy hair," for which Neruda´s third wife Matilde was known. Neruda designed and built the ridiculous house on that premise. There are roughly 4 sections which are completely disjointed, akin to Matilde´s hair. Neruda was fascinated with the sea and the house shows it. I mean the guy only wrote in blue or green ink because those are the colors of teh sea. All of his houses were designed after boats in some way. Very small doors, a slanted floor specially made to creak when walked on, etc. And he collected everything: glasses, pictures of hands, African statues - I mean everything. It was a great tour. Very interesting. I don´t know if Neruda was actually as egotistical as his former house makes him appear, but he was slightly obsessed with himself if that was the case.

Later Thursday I swallowed my pride and decided to go with the easy way of meeting people...Language Exchange! There´s a little café where english and spanish speakers come together to have very jumbled conversations. The topics were everywhere from a Bart Simpson comic to the war in Iraq. I met tons of Chileans and gringos alike. And after the café kicked us out I joined about a dozen Chileans at a jazz club where one of their english professors was singing. An odd but good time. It ended up that they would speak english and I would reply in spanish. I´m hoping that I can start making it more often, but my schedule only allows for Thursday nights.

After jazz I caught a taxi with 3 friends from school and went to a disco until 5 in the morning. Wow, I felt old. The majority of the people there seemed about 16, which just made me feel dirty. However, we danced like crazy and I am so thankful that I do not have classes on Friday.

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I slept Friday. But Friday night rolled around and I finally got to see my brother Berna´s band play. This was the first real heavy metal concert I´d ever been to. There was no way of getting around this, I mean simply metal. Berna´s band, Motor, started off the evening close to midnight. They are a Latin American version of Rage Against the Machine style spitting lyrics and some mixture of loud, belting music. Needless to say, I have no idea what any of their songs are about. But Berna was fun to watch. He has the most hair and the most spirit up there on stage. His hair was everywhere. And he is a really good guitar player, which unfortunately could only be noticed from time to time when he was allowed to solo and the singer finally shut up.



That´s Berna in action above. And below the mixture of cool guitar in the background with unadulturated screaming in the foreground.



After Motor Berna came out to join me and our "cousin" Leo and his wife. My friend Scott also made the trip to southern Santiago for the concert. Berna hadn´t wanted me to attend other concerts because he thought the locations were far too dangerous. And I take his word.
We mainly talked during as the second band, Silencio, tried to break the Guinness Book of World Records for worst band ever.
It was painful. Imagine screaming. Imagine harmonizing. Imagine trying to scream and harmonize simultaneously. It doesn´t happen, but they tried to prove me wrong.
The final act was called No Longer Music, which isn´t far off. I honestly don´t remember the music because the theatrics were so crazy. I do recall that the singer did a lot of talking and yelling and little singing. But I could understand this one because they were an American band, or at least had Americans and New Zealanders and other english speakers with them. They were a lot of fun, though, because they employed everything under the sun to keep you entertained: fire, water, zombies, electric chairs, fake blood. They must be exhausted after a show.

This was one of the better spectacles.



I headed home at about 2:30 because I wanted to get an early start on traveling the Saturday morning. As usual, I walked a ton before catching a bus. Luckily, I got to see a guy getting arrested for trying to pick up hookers. Then as I walked by the hookers tried to get me. I quickly realized I was looking at adam´s apples, obviuosly as I was kindly excusing their generous offers. So the guy was going after transvestites. I knew they seemed like especially tall prostitutes! I got home at about 4.

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The Weekend

So my early start was only delayed by sleep for a few hours. Then Scott and I were to begin our trip south from the bus terminal. But the Metro was having work done and I had to make several line switches to arrive in one piece with both Scott´s and my baggage - which was annoying and cumbersome.
The bus system here is awesome. The problem is that you don´t want to buy in advance because you might miss the bus, like I did last time I took a large trip south after that debacle at the soccer game. But if you wait until you get there you will find that the only one you can get tickets for leaves several hours later. AHHHH. I haven´t figured out how to win yet. I guess maybe I´ll start buying advance tickets for about an hour or two after I want to leave, but before I know I´ll actually have to leave if I wait to buy them. I think that confused me.

We evenutally arrived in Molina, which is the center of the largest wine producing area in Latin America. That means I was in the area with the most wine in Central and South America and I did not even take a tour or taste any of the local flavor. And I like wine, too. Come to think of it, I have no idea why I didn´t take advantage!

We arrived too late to make it up to our final destination, but we took a few erroneous bus rides that evening just to make sure because for some reason we didn´t believe the local guy who told us we would have to wait until the morning. It was probably best that we had to return to Molina for the evening, seeing as how we had forgotten to buy food up until that point. When we get to the hostel Scott loudly bangs through the door with his pack and tent, says hello and embarissingly realizes the landlord is in her pajamas in the adjoining room, quickly and clumsily comes barging out through the door he has just entered only to discover that she is standing there in her pajamas to let us in by the time he has made it all the way out of the door. And then he went back through again! We went to bed early in order to get our even earlier start in the morning. And we lost an hour in the middle of the night thanks to a time change with Spring. I was 1 hour ahead of central time before, now I´m two, and when the the States fall back another hour at the end of the month it will be 3!

We actually got up to catch the 8 o´clock bus to Radal, which was about 40 kilometers up toward the mountains. You wouldn´t think that about 30-ish miles would take 2 hours, but it can somehow.



Me being weird and screwing around with the camera after I woke up.

We started hiking with Jannina and Marsella, two girls who had stayed in the room next to us the previous night. Jannina is a doctor from Ecuador and Marsella is a nurse from northern Chile. They work together now in Santiago. We luckily had the 11 kilometer hike shortened with some hitchhiking for about half of the distance. We first stopped at the Veil of the Bride Waterfall on the Río Claro. It was a great view, but we couldn´t get very close. However, we did see a really cool lizard.



And a little later we arrived at our last hitch stop, Las Siete Tazas, or 7 teacups. They were the main attraction, but the Lioness Waterfall was also amazing. But before that, we saw a wild tarantula. It was awesome!


Then we trekked the kilometer loop or so from the road to 7 Tazas and then onto the Lioness. The weather was perfect, so Scott and I decided to display our young age and go swimming in the snow-fed river. I was pink in about 2 minutes. And I couldn´t breathe. I haven´t been whitewater rafting in over a year, so I had forgotten the inescapable way your body just shuts down in several cold situations. I quickly remembered, though! I tried to swim all the way up to the Lioness waterfall, but there was no way in hell I was gonna get there. So instead I let the current take me through a little rapid as I struggled to swim back to shore. Then I did it a few more times.

Scott at Las Siete Tazas. There wasn´t a vantage point to ever actually see all 7 teacups or pools, so here are about 3 of them.



After swimming and lunch (which was ham and cheese sandwiches...for like 6 straight meals) we started the 6 km hike up to Parque Ingles, where we were camping. Wow, those 6 km hurt.

It was a good thing that I started off with a small camping trip. We had planned on two nights but only ended up with one, which was probably a positive thing. We forgot a few things. Nothing major - just vitals like utensils, proper warm attire for a night in the mountains, stuff like that.

Parque Ingles was beautiful, set right by the Río Claro at a higher point. The river was constricted to a miniature canyon of mafic rock, which made for fun climbing and pretty views. After dinner Jannina and Marsella joined Scott and I for some wine and several hours of conversation. It was a great week in terms of meeting some locals. Spending just a little more time with native speakers has helped immensely. And they´re more interesting.

Then Scott and I froze all night. It was horrible. I neglected to bring my tent or sleeping bag and I am now regretting it. I´ll have to buy better gear than what I borrowed from my family if I want to do some larger trips in the future.

Jannina, Scott and Marsella



I slept on numerous buses Monday, which was Columbus Day (or the Anniversary of the Discovery of America!)