By tHe WAy

¡Hola Amigos!

Remember the photo I posted earlier of the Andes from the top of La Campana? I mentioned that there was one peak that shoots up above the rest. I learned a few days ago that that peak is Aconcagua, the highest peak in South America at a hight of 6959m (22,831 feet). Really tall, in other words.

ya me voy
Andrius

Club Atletico Boca Juniors

¡Hola Amigos!

One Sunday evening in Argentina, I witnessed probably the most impressive sporting spectacle that I will ever see: a Boca Juniors game. We had a little trouble figuring out what time the game was. You've all been in the situation where everyone you ask gives you a different time; we had start times ranging from 4:00pm until 9:00pm. We were starting to get desperate when we walked by a noisy sports bar in some back alley. I popped in and asked the first gent I saw if he knew the proper time. He did, ("it's at six-thirty and you'd better get there quickly if you want tickets!"), so we dumped our stuff at the hostal and jumped on a bus for the stadium. There had been some heated debate between the two of us about which bus to take, and weren't a hundred percent sure that in the end we had taken the correct one, but the minute we boarded our worries were allayed. I'd say that 50-60 percent of the people on the bus were wearing some form of Boca Juniors apparel, and there was barely standing room. We and everyone else got off at La Boca, and because we didn't know where to go, we followed three teenagers wearing jerseys to the ticket line. I didn't bring my camera to the game because although La Boca is touristy during the day, it is a rather dangerous neighborhood after dark. To illustrate my point, when we were walking to the ticket line I watched as a man taped the passenger window of a sedan, turned around and used his butt to break the glass, then reached in and tore out the stereo. The whole thing took about 30 seconds. We reached the ticket line (heavily supervised by the police), and bought our tickets. I can't remember if they were seven dollars or seven pesos, but the price was irrellevant. The spectacle was worth the price of the plane ticket.

The home stadium of the Boca Juniors, the Bombonera, resides in La Boca, Buenos Aires. The stadium was built in May of 1940 and seats 57,400. It is very large, very imposing, and very concrete (i'm not speaking figuratively here--it's constructed almost entirely of reinforced concrete). We entered the staduim at about quarter till 6, and were subjected to the most thorough pat-down of our lives. I think a pat-down equally thorough in the states would generate a number of harassment suits. Not that I'm complaining; to the contrary I was quite glad for the security. We entered the concrete behemoth and headed up the steps to our seats. We had intentionally purchased tickets in the "popular" section (general seating) because we figured it would be more interesting. Boy were we right.

The stadium has three main levels that span three sides of the stadium. On the fourth side are the box seats. As in most stadiums, the upper levels overhang the lower ones. The popular section is located on one end of the field behind the goal, middle level. We walked around for a while trying to find a place to sit, and eventually worked our way to a seat. What I really mean by this is that we peered over a railing into a pit of blue and yellow for about 10 minutes, then pushed and shoved our way down through the masses to a vacant patch of concrete the size of a large book. In the popular section there are neither seats, nor aisles (that's not entirely true, there are aisles but they are virtually indistinguishable from the seats and therefore are completely disregarded and used as extra seating). Scattered intermittently throughout are large yellow railings that run horizontal to the stairs. (They´re not vertical like a railing you would expect to border an aisle; more like one that would separate the walkway at the top from the seats--you know, the one you lean on when you eat your hot dog at the ball game.) More on the railings later. Anyway, we sat and waited for the game to start.

As we sat I looked across the length of the field to the section wearing red apparel: the "away" section. It is located on the second deck of the opposite end of the field from the "popular" section, and the location is not coincidental. Surrounding the visitors seating are ten-foot high walls topped with a 5 foot steel fence with sharp points, and above that circular razor and barbed wire. During the game the section was surrounded by about 20-30 police officers in full riot gear. Clearly, there have been some incidents in the past. After the game the visitors were let go immediately, and the "popular" section was released about 20 minutes later...the last seating section allowed out of the stadium.

At about 6:10, the majority of the popular section got to it's feet and began to sing. Things didn't really get going though until 6:20, when the already high energy stadium was infused with the heart-hammering vibrations of a 7-8 man bass drum core. Standing and singing had been a mere suggestion until this point, but once the heavy thudding of the straight-eighth bass drum beats began it suddenly became mandatory. Four guys stood up on the railing in front of Luke and I. To keep balanced, they grabbed hold of a huge banner that ran over the tops of the railings from top to bottom of the popular section. Led by the brave (or crazy) folks on the railing, the whole section began to sing. Keep in mind that this started 10 minutes before the players had even come onto the field. Anyway, I'm up to my neck in this sea of blue and yellow. Standing on a railing in front of me are at least 4 crazed porteños (a porteño is a resident of Buenos Aires), and there are so many bloody banners everywhere I can hardly see. I'd estimate that at any given moment, I could see about 60% of the field. There was no scoreboard, and if there was an announcer, I couldn't hear him. Clearly this experience would not be about watching the game. In fact, one kid in front of me didn't watch a single minute of the game. He stood the whole time with his back to the field singing at the top of his lungs and waving his arms.

So back to these songs. Each song is led by the bass drums, and each is sung for an average of 7-10 minutes. Usually by the time we changed songs I had caught on to about 90% of the lyrics. Now I need to be clear with this; we're not talking about some wussy C-H-I, L-E, ¡Viva Chile! chants. From ten minutes before the players came onto the field until fifteen minutes after the game had ended the entire popular section was on its feet, singing at the top of its lungs. The volume never diminished. Nobody sat down. It was ridiculous. At one point, there seemed to be a bit of a ruckus to my right. I thought maybe a fight had broken out or something, so I asked the girl next to me what was going on. Her reply? "They're not singing." We both cracked up. (Luke thought this girl was just about the most beautiful thing he'd ever seen in his whole life. Problem was he was standing directly behind me and directly next to her thug-looking boyfriend. Sorry Luke.)

What really got me were the lyrics of the songs. This one was popular, and illustrates my point well (I didn't remember all these lyrics, nor did I catch 100% of them when they were sung by thousands of rowdy Argentinian soccer fans. I looked them up online.)

Boca mi buen amigo esta campaña (Boca my good friend to this campaign)
volveremos a estar contigo, (we will return to be with you)
te alentaremos de corazón, (we will encourage your heart)
esta es tu hinchada que te quiere ver campeón (this is your fans that want to see you champion)
no me importa lo que digan, (it doesn't matter to me what they say)
lo que digan los demás, (what the others say)
yo te sigo a todos partes y cada vez te quiero más. (I follow you everywhere and every time I love you more.)

The translation on that is not perfect, but I think it captures the gist---these are some diehard fans we're dealing with. Most songs begin with the declaration that the singer is in fact a Boca fan. Following is a series of statements that about the never-ending support of said fan, the committment to the team, the unimportance of winning versus losing, and the promise to follow the team wherever it will go. Usually there is also a statement about how inevitable it is that the team will win; my favorite says something along the lines of "if you play with huevos (balls) you can't lose". At the end is another statement of undying love/undying support/etc. I'm not sure if its a conincidence or not that the Boca Juniors play every SUNDAY.

Also while I'm here I'd like to make the point that I didn't see a single drunk fan the entire game. I have witnessed all too many times the drunken crowd dynamic that comes with college football, and this experience was absolutely the opposite. These fans didn't need a BAC that resembles Shaq's free throw percentage to get excited about their team; all they needed was a Sunday afternoon and a bass drum core. Case in point: one of the guys on the railing in front of me looked like the type of bloke that has probably beaten someone senseless with a blunt metal object, or at the very least been present when the act was committed. He was about 24, very well-built and wearing a white wifebeater. He had three prominent scars on his face: one above his left eye, another on his cheek, and a gigantic chunk missing from his chin. I never saw him smile, and the look of ferocity in his eyes never really left. Nevertheless, he was completely sober and he stayed on that railing for 90 minutes of play, shouting at the top of his lungs and encouraging his fellow fans. I really wish I had his photo, but I don't really think I would have been comfortable asking this bloke to pose for a picture.

By far the most impressive Boca fan was the 50 year old guy about 8 rows behind us. He had fashioned a rope to support himself on the railing (instead of using the ever-popular banners). He would alternately whistle loudly (the really deafening finger-in-mouth-whistle) the melodies of all the songs and sing. Why does he win most impressive? When was the last time you saw a 50 year old man with ONE LEG standing on a railing supported by nothing more than a rope for 90 minutes? I bet never.

Anyway, Boca Juniors won 3-1, although I'm not absolutely sure on the score. Like I said, it didn't really matter. Between the people on the railings and the huge banners blocking the field, I could only see about 60 percent of what was happening. I grabbed some photos from the internet to give a general idea of what a spectacle these games are. Enjoy.

This shot of the "popular" section gives a pretty good perspective because you can see the guys standing on the railings. We were sitting right smack in the middle of this section.

Popular section once again. When we went, instead of flying the flag from the top level to the bottom, it was simply used to cover all of the middle section. Luke and I were underneath it with a bunch of sweaty Argentinians for about 4 minutes. It was a riot.

Popular section, again. The banners from the third deck down to the secondblock quite a bit of the view.

Looking at this photo you might be able to figure out why it was that we were only able to find seats on the second deck, middle. All the absolute madness eminates starts there.

ya me voy, Andrius

¡Buenos Freaking Aires!

¡Hola Amigos!

These blogs are getting more and more difficult to write in light of the fact that my English grammar and spelling have gotten progressively worse since I've been here. I don't know if anyone but myself has noticed, but I really am having more difficulty speaking English. Last week I found myself saying "I were going to go, but I couldn't." Yeesh.

The picture to the left is of the widest street in the world, 9 de Julio in Buenos Aires, Argentina. (The pavement you see in the photo is only one part of the road. In this photo the buildings on the far side of the street cannot even be seen.) The white tower in the middle of the shot is the obelisk that stands in the middle of the street. It is very, very tall.

Last weekend I flew to Buenos Aires for a short three-day vacation. (I love saying that because it makes me feel like a high-roller.) "Andrew, what did you do last weekend?" "Oh nothing really, I just hopped over to Argentina for a change of pace." The deal was that Luke (you'll remember Luke from the camping trip to the Elqui Valley) was going to go in September, but was hospitalized for about a week and thus missed his flight. He changed the ticket to last weekend, so I looked into ticket prices and found a rather cheap fare with an airline called "Gol" (it's Brazilian so the flight attedants all spoke Portugese), and decided to tag along. We flew out Thursday evening (on separate flights) and arrived in Buenos Aires, Argentina at 9 o'clock on Thursday evening.

Buenos Aires is a massive city, and I believe the population (including surroundings) is about 13 million, a couple million shy of the 18 million New York City boasts for the same statistic. From the plane window, there were lights as far as I could see in both directions. We took a bus to the hostal, dropped our bags, and immediately went out in search of some food. While I'm here, let's take a minute to talk about the food in Argentina. I feel this can be best described by illustration, so here goes. Sunday night, our last night in Buenos Aires, Luke and I decided to be high rollers and buy a meal in the mid-upper price range of 25-35 pesos (3 to 1 on the dollar, so that's about 8 to 12 USD) that we had avoided like the plague all week. (It's amazing how fast one loses perspective on what a reasonable price for a meal is....we were absolutely appalled when we looked at a menu and saw anything over 7 bucks. In the States you can hardly buy freaking McDonalds for that price anymore). We walked around until we found a restaurant that was packed to the gills with people, and went in. It was a relatively nice place with white tablecloths, free bread with anchovies, and a 100 dollar bottle of champagne on the menu. We began by ordering a mid-price bottle of Cabernet, and a large bowl of onion cream soup with floating toast (delicious). Argentina is famous for its steaks, so we ate them all weekend. This night being no exeption, we followed the soup with two large, juicy, and perfectly cooked steaks alongside real mashed potatoes. I'm not good with ounces, but each steak was the size of a potato and I'm sure we would have paid 20 dollars in the States. After that, we ordered a desert each; Luke got a pear baked in wine and I got tiramisu. We also tagged on a glass of champagne each (hey, I said we were being high-rollers, right?). I should mention that by this point we recieved the champagne on the house. Between the two of us, and including a tip of 30% (our waitress was very patient and helpful during our 3 hour eating extravaganza) our bill was 80 Argentinian pesos. I'll leave the math to you, but the point I want to make is that Argentina is CHEAP! Ok, back to Thursday night. Short story short we went out, ate steak, drank wine, ate dessert, and went to sleep. (It really would be comical to leave the spelling errors in here; I just tried to spell sleep s-l-e-a-p.)

Friday we woke relatively early and armed ourselves with maps and a bus/subway guide, and went to see the sights. We started off in the very touristy neighborhood of La Boca in the morning, then moved on to the presidential palace, La Casa Rosa (it's pink), a really cool cathedral, and a pedestrian avenue called Avenida Florida. It doesn't sound like much, but that pretty much ate up the whole day, and we were beat. That night we ate another steak dinner (for the price of two Junior Bacon Cheesburgers™ and a box of chicken nuggets) and headed back to the hostel. The hostel was a positive fiesta of nationalities: Swiss, Australian, Brazilian, Bolivian, Welsh, English, German, Argentinian, Chilean, United States citizens (Luke and I), and one girl from Israel. (Side note: When someone here asks me where I'm from, it doesn't work to say "American" because the if the person is from anywhere in Latin America, he/she will promptly respond "oh, me too! What part are you from?" One has to say "Estadounidense" or "Norteamericano" to get the point across.) We sat and talked with everyone, and eventually decided to go to a jazz concert that a number of people were going to. It was a blast, the band was great, and we went dancing afterwards at a club in San Telmco, one of many cool neighborhoods in the city.

Saturday we did more tourist stuff including an arts market, MALBA (Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires), and a really cool cemetery where Evita is buried. The cemetery is actually better described as a small city for dead people than a cemetery. I guarantee that some Argentinians live in structures that are much smaller than the majority of the tombs. The art museum was particularly cool; we saw Van Gough, Renouir, Gaguin, Degas, Picasso, Monet, Manet, etc. I even recognized many of the paintings (which is saying something because I'm not exactly very "cultured"). The museum has a sculpture entitled "The Kiss" by August Rodin and according to Luke, whose mother is an art teacher, is very famous. We also walked down to a famous pedestrian bridge in the port, which is better described by the picture below. That night we ate another rediculously extravagant meal for the price of a burger and a coke.

Sunday we went to another arts fair in a much wealtier neighborhood, and the Buenos Aires zoo. After the zoo, we went to a soccer game, and it was so much fun and such a cool experience that it will actually be posted as a separate blog article. The rest you already know; we ate a large dinner, went to sleep, and caught our flights back in the morning.

Argentinian flag.

Luke and I by the harbor.

The famous footbridge. As far as I can tell, it really has no purpose other than aesthetic appeal. In case you're wondering, however, the design of said pointless footbridge is actually functional. To let boats through, the whole thing rotates on the large pillar at the base of the spire. The wires are in place to support the weight of the bridge when it is unsupported.

Feeding the camel. I actually fed this same bactrain camel a delicious compressed pellet of hay. It was a very whiskery sensation.

On the left: Luke. On the right: "El Beso" ("The Kiss")

A small city for the dead. The only two visible buildings that are NOT part of the cemetery are the two large, white apartments in the background. The rest are all tombs.

Don't let the picture fool you. This is an intersection of two very busy streets at sunset. I took the picture from the window of the taxi, and I don't know how there aren't any cars in the shot.

ya me voy, Andrius

¡Vacaciones en Chile!

Hello, all!
Given that I am uncertain of this blog's audience, there is not a way to properly address the masses of you who are keeping up with Andrew's shenanigans abroad. This is Kelsey writing; I apologize for my tardiness in publishing an entry here. (As much as Andrew has chided me to write about my trip, my professors are remarkably more pushy and thus my attention has been concerned with school.) Also, recognizing the fact that I am merely a guest author here, I'll try to keep this as interesting as possible, because, frankly, you didn't sign on to hear what I had to say. That said...
I had an amazing time in Chile. (That feels like a rediculous, silly thing for me to assert because I can't imagine not having an amazing time in Chile...it's CHILE!) Although the trip in itself was not without its highlights, I think the most important thing I took away from my week was how very different the culture was than I had expected it to be. In so many words, I'll try and illustrate for you what my "grand adventure" was like. I've never subscribed to the notion that a picture is worth 1000 words, because I think the two (words and pictures) are nothing without the other, so I think the best way for me to portray my trip is to show you my trip. In my opinion, Andrew has done a swell job of defining the Chilean experience thus far, but while I was there, I tried to capture the things that he has perhaps overlooked so that you can get another view of everything.

I'll start with the cities themselves. I was shocked at how large both Viña del Mar and Valparaíso were. I'm not sure how I arrived at this thought, but I had presumed that each of them were slightly smaller than Fort Collins, and roughly 30 miles apart. That couldn't have been further from the truth: practically one city, together they constitute an area roughly the size of downtown Denver with eight times the density. I was agape at the aggregation of humanity everywhere, even late at night. High rises line the streets, which are all as bustling as any major thoroughfare in the states. Busses are omnipresent. The only difference I could sense in the design of the city was that businesses and residences were practically next to each other, as opposed to being separate sections of the city.

This photo gives a sense of the architecture and development in Valpo: everything is built right into the hillside, which rises up from a large half-moon bay. The city is not even remotely accessible; even if a wheelchair could navigate the traffic (noted for its total disregard for pedestrians) and forty-five degree hills, the pavement and sidewalk system are, well, asymmetric at best. (Andrew can attest to the VAST number of times I tripped while we toured the cities. It was absolutely pathetic.)

This photo shows a hill close the the hostel I stayed in. Shortly after I arrived in Valparaíso, Andrew took me down to the ISA office to meet his friends, and then took off to take an exam - leaving me to find my way home. He gave me pretty clear instructions as to how to navigate the system of micros and other public transport in my quest to make my way home, but I was so overwhelmed from a) lack of sleep, b) lack of a way of expressing myself, c) lack of understanding of cultural norms (greeting people, initially, was really hard for me) and d) lack of ability to read street signs and such that I decided it was in my best interest to walk home. This was against Andrew's wishes, but I armed myself with a map of the area and a positive attitude and set out for the hostel. It took a little more than an hour to walk an area of about three square miles, but I was so lost for a chunk of that time that I passed by one particular road about eight times.
Not be deterred, though, I even stopped and asked a lady on the street for some directions. That turned out to be a rather large mistake; not only did I not understand a word that came out of her mouth, I think I may have offended her by not responding. I discovered fairly quickly that, as Andrew's friend Luke puts it, learning Spanish in Chile is like learning English in the Bronx. Chileans commit virtually every language offense in existence: no one pronounces an "s" (ever), so phrases like "mas o menos" come out sounding something like "mahomenah," which is totally unrecognizable to a foreiner; they speak very quickly and slur most of their dialogue; a sizable chunk of their vocabulary is unique to Chile, meaning that words like "aguacate" ("avocado" in English) that exist elsewhere in the Spanish-speaking world are replaced in Chile with another word (in this case, "palta" - that's one I'm not going to forget for a while). I boarded my flight to Chile with total confidence in my Spanish abilities after a total of two and a half semesters of learning the language; needless to say, I was humbled very, very quickly. It is little wonder to me that Andrew was so overwhelmed at first. On the other hand, however, I am absolutely shocked and impressed with the amount of Spanish he has learned in just two short months. He is fully capable of communicating with virtually anyone on virtually any topic; I would call him fluent, though I'm certain he'll protest. I couldn't believe how fast he's picked up the language - complete with accent - after only three semesters of Spanish here in the states. Almost everywhere we went, native Chileans told him that he spoke excellent Spanish for a foreigner, and I think the only reason they knew he wasn't native was because I was with him (and the blonde ponytail kind of gives me away).
The climate was interesting, too. Like most oceanside cities I have visited (all five of them), palm trees abounded, but unlike those other four cities, so did evergreen trees. The ocean breeze kept me rather cool for most of my visit. It warmed up a bit during the day, but I often ended up wearing a down vest by three or four in the afternoon.


I spotted this on my walk back to the hostel on my first day: talk about a slice of home! Other than the McDonald's in Viña del Mar, this was the only piece of modern-day Americana I could find. Even the cars are all more European than American. (I guess no one really has use of an SUV there...but then again, most people in the US don't, either, but that doesn't seem to have halted consumption.)
This picture scares me just to look at. The famous ascensor is truly one thing that I would die happy to never see again. Like an outdoor elevator from the '60s, it's basically everything that I've ever been afraid of, rolled into one: heights, confined spaces, and rickety engineering that hasn't been inspected since its inception. It also, as Andrew explained a bit ago, has a track record of coming off its rails and plummeting downhill. The two times I took it (while taking my life in my hands) I was against my will, and truly the only thing that could have made the experience worse was to be confined in one with a serial killer. Andrew tried to distract me by explaining that one has an unparalleled view of the city out the window of the ascensor; while I agreed, I countered that one would have the same view on the stairs. Most of the time, that was my preference. Obviously.
As I wandered around the city that first afternoon, I noticed that a lot of the little houses - which were almost more like apartments in the area of Valparaíso I was exploring - were quite small, but people certainly made the most of their space. Here, the residents have turned their 5'x5' patio into a garden terrace, which I thought was striking. The house that Andrew is staying in is quite similar. His host mother, Maria Teresa (he just calls her Mamá so I'll call her that, too), has a rather large house for the area of Viña they live in. It's quite nice by Chile's standards, I think. I don't want to describe it as cluttered - I think a better word would be excessively decorated - but I was struck by how many more things there were in her house than there are in the typical North American house. Every surface had some kind of painting or dish or trinket on it. Being the bull in a china shop that I am, I was actually a little bit afraid that I was going to break something the whole time I was there. :-)
There were Chilean flags everywhere I looked! I noticed this particularly in very poor areas outside of the city - even when people were living practically in cardboard boxes, they had giant flags waving proudly from the front of their dwellings. Andrew recently informed me that it's an actual law that people have to fly the flag for the 18th of September, their independence holiday.

One of the coolest cultural differences I noted was that in Chile, most of the graffiti was somehow politically motivated. Unlike in the good ol' US, Chilean graffiti has something to say. Sure, it's still destructive, but at least it's not just senseless.
Here, painted on the retaining wall next to the Metro tracks: "Socialismo Sin Estado=Comunismo Libertario" (Socialism without state=free Communism").
Another bit of pointed graffiti: this one says, "DESTROY TO CONSTRUCT." (You probably didn't need a dictionary for that one, though. Cognates.)







Not all of the streetside artwork was benign, though. This is what a typical stairwell, bus seat, and alley looked like. This is sort of the image I have in mind when I think of Chile as a "developing country."





One for posterity.








Alright. By now hopefully you have a taste of what the cities are like, and I can move on to what I really, really enjoy most: the BEACH. I realize that I already posted this photo, but I need to tell the story behind it and I didn't want you to have to scroll up and down over and over between the picture and the story. (I really do have your best interest, dear reader, in mind.) One day, while we were walking down this boardwalk - which Andrew tells me is often packed with people but which we found completely abandoned - a couple of gypsies approached us. (Gypsies! I didn't think they actually existed anymore, or, quite honestly, ever.) They looked exactly how one might expect a gypsy to look, particularly if you've only ever thought of them as fictional characters. (What would you expect a UNICORN to look like if it approached you on the street? Yeah, me too. You get the picture.) Anyhow, they thrust a few tarot cards into Andrew's hand and then demanded that he pick one so they could read his fortune. And I really do mean demanded: when he refused, one of the two of them told him that she was going to read his fortune on his palms. When he refused THIS, she told him, "Okay, then I'm going to read the fortune on your FOREHEAD." (Keep in mind that throughout this interchange they're speaking rapid-fire Spanish and I don't have a clue what is going on; after two minutes of this, I was convinced they were performing some kind of curse on Andrew and I was absolutely freaking out.) In the end, no crime was commited, Andrew paid them something on the order of 20 cents and we continued on our jolly way, being more careful of avoiding the rest of the gypsies on the rest of the boardwalk. (They were everywhere! I couldn't believe it!)
So. The next few shots are from the beach in Reñaca, which is just on the other side of the large bay from Viña and Valpo, and a rather long walk down the boardwalk from where we encountered the gypsies. (We didn't walk. We took a micro.) Now, granted that I'm a bit of a city slicker, but I've spent a reasonable amount of time (considering I live in Colorado) watching the waves roll in off the Atlantic Ocean in Cape Cod, so I wouldn't consider myself a stranger to a large tide. Given that, I COULD NOT BELIEVE HOW BIG THE WAVES WERE IN REÑACA. It was INTENSE. From our vantage point some forty feet from the actual tide line, it looked like the waves were at least ten to fifteen feet high. Take a look at the next few pictures:














(Note the surfer in the right-hand corner.)










Again...see the boogie boarder on the left-hand side, just below the wave? I'm happy to report that he lived through that.



The highlight of my whole trip was just hanging out in the sand on this beach, watching the tide roll in at sunset.








So. Since I've returned, everyone's favorite question to ask is "What did you do in Chile?" I'm having a hard time answering, because I don't feel like Andrew and I really did a whole lot of interesting things...we walked around, we ate out a bunch, we spent some time on the beach, all of which sound like typical activites. (I thoroughly enjoyed every minute, mind you, and since it was Chile, it didn't feel "typical" - but it's hard to describe such commonplace activities with much verve.) It was hard to really get out and explore beyond the cities when I was only there for a week. That said, we spent a day in Quintay, which was rather noteworthy. Allow me to explain.
As you'll remember, Quintay is the little fishing village that Andrew thought looked like New England that he visited a couple of months back. One morning we took a collectivo down there with two goals in mind: watch the tide and eat some fish. It was BEAUTIFUL, and really rather different than I had expected it to be. As you can probably already tell, ¡las olas me fascinan! (The waves fascinate me!) Most of the pictures I took here are of waves, and while I took a bunch, they won't look like much without the full effect of sight+sound+spray, so I'll only post a few.

The photo doesn't do it justice, and the lack of sound doesn't help, either.








This is one of my favorite shots, although, sadly, my camera strap decided to make its debut in the upper corner of the picture. Ah, well, I won't quit my day job.
This was pretty much all I got to see of the village that was Quintay, but it was lovely, rather picturesque; as you can tell by the picture on the left, several clapboard (is that the word?) restaurants lined a small bay where native fishermen caught the day's menu. Andrew and I even got to see them sewing up their nets during the noon hour while several stray dogs chased each other in the surf. We ate lunch on a balcony overlooking the bay, and our view is what you'll see in the picture below.
This is one of my favorite pictures from the whole trip - I think it captures an idealized South America, one that is all coastline and small fishing boats and dirt roads and happy foreign travelers and natives who are kind to them. (I also like it because Andrew is in it.)

After our trip to Quintay, we had one more day of tooling around Valpo before I had to board a plane back to the states. As it turned out, I got incredibly sick on the way home and spent the vast majority of my nine-hour flight in the bathroom. I think my body was just reflecting how my heart felt. Needless to say, I wasn't exactly excited to come home and leave Andrew behind, but there wasn't much way around it.

And now...I think I've reached the end. If, by some miracle of God, you're still reading this and even mildly interested, THANK YOU for putting up with my incredibly long-winded recount; I appreciate your patience. I apologize for my tardiness in posting this entry as well. I'm happy to report, first-hand, that Andrew is alive and thriving in the south and that he's going to come home a better person for this experience. I am very lucky to have gotten to visit him and I wouldn't trade it for the world.

El Valle Elqui

¡Hola Amigos!
I am rather proud of this shot, and feel that it captures the essence rather well.Welcome to the Elqui Valley.

This past weekend three friends and I took a bus 8 hours north of Viña to La Serena, inland of which lies the Elqui Valley where the vast majority of pisco is produced. I don't believe I've mentioned pisco yet, so here's the long story. Pisco is a clear brandy made from the distillation of wine. A good pisco is smooth and has a perfume-like aroma. In general, the higher the alcohol content of a given Pisco, the higher the quality. High-quality pisco can be consumed plain or on ice, and lower quality piscos are used to mix drinks. In Chile, pisco is very very cheap, usually half to one-third of the price of the nearest whiskey, vodka, rum etc. A very high quality bottle of pisco costs about 18 dollars, and the cheapest costs about $2.50, to give an idea. Many drinks are made with pisco in Chile including piscolas, pisco and sprite, pisco and tonic, etc. The most famous, however, and the drink for which Chile is known is the Pisco Sour. Contrary to the name, there is nothing sour about a pisco sour. There are a plethora of recipies for this concoction, but generally it involves some combination of pisco, lemon or lime juice, sugar, an egg white, and ice and is served in a glass with a powdered sugar-coated rim. When ordered in a bar/restaurant, these taste like an oversweet margarita with bad tequila. (The first time I ordered one I was expecting a salted rim...needless to say it was severely disappointing to encounter powdered sugar.) In very select places, and when they are homeade, they are quite refreshing and easy to drink (hence the popularity), but still generally too sweet for my liking. I toured a pisco distillery while I was in the valley, but more on that process later.

Thursday at 11 pm we took a bus from Viña to La Serena, and from La Serena caught a bus to Vicuña, a town 2 hours up the valley. We arrived in Vicuña at 7:30 am Friday morning, and absolutely nothing was open. Vicuña is a small town home to the Capel pisco distillery, and not much else. Capel is a cheap brand of pisco, and subsequently very popular. We carried our bags to the town plaza and rested on the benches for about an hour while waiting for the supermarket to open. We took turns watching the bags (read: sleeping on a bench hugging a backpack) and walking around town seeing the sights. Because we planned on camping farther up the valley, we waited for the supermarket to open and then bought the food we'd need for the weekend. (Jeff bought 18 eggs, 10 of which survived to be eaten the next day.) After we had our supplies, we caught a bus up the valley to the town of Pisco Elqui, population 1,000.

Although small, Pisco Elqui is quite an interesting town, and obviously has tourist traffic during part of the year (evidenced by the presence of expensive restaraunts and a discotheque). The climate is that of a desert--days are dry and hot and nights are dry and cold. The micro dropped us off in the plaza (beautiful, see photo below) and we began our search for a campsite. Eventually we found a really nice one down by the river, and set up camp. The next day, we had the awesome idea to go for a hike. The previous day, Kevin and Jeff had selected a mountain to ascend, so we set off for our hike immediately after waking up, at the ambitious hour of 2 pm. Turns out hiking up a sandy desert mountain 1000 meters up without a trail, in the heat of the day, with 6 pounds of water is an ambitous undertaking. It was hard, and at times very sketchy, and after about 3 hours we turned around and headed back to the campsite. That night we had an awesome barbecue (a steak apiece and a whole chicken) and met some other campers.

Sunday we picked up camp and headed up to the town. There was some strange religious festival going on, so the town was crowded with chilean tourists. It was a blast, and very relaxing. In the afternoon, I took a tour of a pisco distillery with two other people. I learned a lot about pisco, and since I find the information fascinating, I am going to share it with you.

Pisco is made from one of many varieties of white grapes. The sugar content of the grapes is very important, since the yeast fermentation produces alcohol from the sugar in the grapes. The more sugar per pound of grapes, the more alcohol is produced. High sugar content = high productivity = high profit margin. The desert conditions of the valley somehow combine to increase the sugar content of the grapes, hence the rampant pisco production. (It has something to do with the temperature difference between night and day, as well as the arid conditions, but I didn't really catch this part of the tour.) The variety of grapes used by Tres R(the distillery I visited, pronounced "tres erre"), uses a variety of grape called Moscatel for just this reason. The grapes are harvested, and brought to the distillery, where they are juiced in a number of complicated steps. The juice is then fermented 10-12 days to make wine. Theoretically, this wine could be sold and distributed as well, but according to the tour guide the color is not very appealing and it probably would not sell. After the fermentation, the wine is placed in a large double-distiller, and the pure alcohol is separated from the water due to the difference in boiling point. (Thank you Organic chemistry lab.) At this point, the alcohol is placed in large casks and left to age for 2 months. After two months, water is added to dilute it to the proper level (Pisco ranges from 30 to 50 percent alcohol, 60 to 100 proof), and the whole thing is aged another 4 months. It is important to age the water and the pisco together in the casks so that the water takes on the same flavor/scent as the alcohol. After the 6 month aging process is finished, the pisco is bottled and shipped out, ready to drink.

After the tour, the group split up. Kevin and Jeff decided to stay another night in Pisco Elqui, and Luke and I headed back to Vicuña to go on a tour of an observatory. Why an astronomical observatory? The night skies in the area are amazlingly clear, and since there is no water to make clouds, the view of the stars is very rarely obstructed. Unfortunately, when we were there the moon was full, so the stars were not as brilliant as usual, and only the brightest stars were visible. Anyway, we had made reservations with an observatory, and at 9 oclock we got on the bus and drove out of town. The tour was really interesting. We got to see Alpha Centauri (the closest star to us--with the naked eye it looks like one star, but through the telescope you see that it is actually two separate stars. We also got to see many of the astrological consellations: sagittarius, capricorn, scorpio, etc. Most of them require quite a bit of imagination to see, but scorpio is really cool (and gigantic) and it actually looks like a scorpion. Bacan. Unfortunately, that night Kevin and Jeff were robbed of everything but the clothes they were wearing and their wallets. They had been talking with some Chileans and when they left their backpacks for 20 minutes the Chileans took off with all their stuff. They had to travel back in their shorts and t-shirts.

Luke and I spent monday riding buses, and because it was a long weekend we had to find a very creative way home. Oh, did I mention the bus broke down? It wasn't nearly as traumatic as the micro failure, but I'm still adding it to the list. (ascensor---check. micro---check. bus---check.) Hope all is well at home, here are some photos of the weekend.

The plaza in Pisco Elqui.

This photo gives a good idea of the valley. Because there is so little flat land, many vineyards extend up the hills on rediculously steep grades.

Vineyard, mountains.

See the peak to the left in the background? That´s the one we tried to climb up.

The double distiller. The wine is put in the big steel thing and heated. The steam moves through the copper tube and re-condenses into the small glass jar on the left of the picture.

Bus break down.

ya me voy
Andrius

¡Kelsey!

¡Hola Amigos!

Kelsey came to visit from Thursday until Tuesday night. We had a great time, and it was great to show her around Valparaíso and Viña. Rather than write a blog about her stay, I thought it would be more interesting for you folks to see the city through someone else's eyes. That said, the next blog entry will be guest-written by none other than the one and only Kelsey L. Schleusener. Enjoy!

ya me voy
Andrius