January 28, 2008
Hey ya’ll,
Just added new links to pics in the blog roll- Buenos Aires, Brazil and most of my London pics, though I still have one more day here.
I also added some more to the Chile album from our Lakes District adventures.
Off to India via Bahrain tomorrow!!! Catchya from that side of the world….crazy. Miss yous!
January 22, 2008
Well, the adventures of Jillian and Dee have continued on to Argentina AND Brazil since I last blogged. When I last left off, we were in the Lakes District on a little road trip. I am so glad that we decided to rent a car and do our own little excursion with complete control of our destinations and activities. On our drive back up to Temuco, a gorgeous rainbow showed up in the sky. It was a nice little goodbye present from Chile to us with love. I still can´t believe we spent nearly an entire month in that country…it just kept pulling us in! It´s a really nice place overall, though it´s very “western” and very expensive.
From Temuco, we had a 12 hour bus ride across the Argentina border to get to Neuquen, Argentina. Crossing the border on a bus was a miserable experience, so we decided we absolutely HAD to fly from Argentina to Brazil and booked a relatively inexpensive ticket. After a night in boring Neuquen, where dinner restaurants don´t open until 9pm, we had a 17 hour bus ride to Buenos Aires- I know it sounds like a lot, but I thought it was going to be 22 hours, so it was a nice surprise when the conductor announced we had arrived 5 hours before expected. Also, they played “Titanic” on the bus (in English!!!) so Dee and I were like little 15 year olds swooning over Leo.
In Buenos Aires (aka BA or Buenos Paris-* it´s the “Paris” of South America), we stayed at my friend Sheli´s apartment in the poshest neighborhood- Recoleta. Sheli and I met along the East Coast of Australia and I am so ridiculously grateful for her generosity. I felt like we were actually LIVING in BA, since we had our own shower with mega-hot water in a private bathroom equipped with a bidet (very handy for washing dirty feet!). Sheli slept at her friend´s apt, leaving us with the run of the house! We hung out a lot with our new Scottish friend Alison, who we met in Cusco and is studying Spanish in BA. She is fantastic and taught me some great new phrases. I think my favorite is a “yup, yup, nupper,” who is someone who keeps saying they will attend something or do something, and then at the last minute, says “nup” and doesn´t show! One night, we went out for steaks at this restaurant in San Telmo called Disnivel, which is supposed to be one of the best, and my steak was delish, but the sauce they put on it was too oily, so didn´t manage to have an INCREDIBLE steak dinner like you´re supposed to while in Argentina. Oh well- I don´t eat a lot of meat anyway, so not the end of the world. The weird part of the meal was that when we got up to leave, our waiter (whom we nicknamed Shrek because he was gigantic) cheek-kissed us goodbye! Never had a waiter kiss me goodbye before! Just looking around, the men seem to be a lot more affectionate in BA than in the rest of South America. In the other countries we visited, the men do THE S.A. HUG, as I came to know it. This is when two men shake hands, pumping their arms up and down 3 times, then hug and pat each other on the back 3 times, then shake hands again, pumping 3 times. In Buenos Aires, however, the men just cheek-kissed hello. Very interesting. Some other interesting fads I noted- fanny packs are VERY much instyle (WTF?!!?!?) and women in their 70´s frequently dress like they´re in their 20´s. Both of these fashions are incredibly disturbing.
One day, I had to go to the international airport to pick up a package that my TWC friends sent me (i love you all!!!) and had QUITE the experience. After first being told that I should probably just LEAVE Argentina since I can´t speak Spanish fluently (ouch!), I made it to the airport. I´ll keep the story short, but basically because I didn´t have my actual passport and only had a copy, I ran into some major problems. My passport was at the India Embassy for my visa to get approved, so had to call them and have them fax me a copy of the page with my Argentina stamp to prove that I legally entered the country. This was a lot harder than it sounds and took over 3 hours. It really gave me a good taste of what people mean when they say that it just takes SO much longer to do the simplest tasks in other countries.
I was ridiculously sad to leave BA, but had to fly to Rio de Janeiro. I was really looking forward to seeing Rio, but it´s been raining here and have spent a lot of my time hiding from the downpour. I am now totally out of my league as far as speaking the local language is concerned because the people here don´t really understand English OR Spanish. After realizing I didn´t even know the Portuguese for “hello” or “thank you” I finally had to just go online to babelfish and look up some necessary words.
Well, tomorrow night we are off to Sao Paulo (another 10 hour bus ride) for one night, then we fly to London for 3 days, and then off to Trivandrum, India! Will be in the ashram from Feb 1-14th, so might be awhile til you hear from me next.
Goodbye South America!!!!!!!!!
*Buenos Aires nickname accredited to Leia.
January 6, 2008
See, that blog title is funny if you pronounce “Chilean” incorrectly, as the Chileans actually do, so it rhymes with Jillian. I feel like the way we pronounce it is probably correct- as in “ChiLEan,” but maybe we are the wrong ones after all.
Just wanted to do some updating on here, as it´s been awhile and if I wait too long, everything just piles up and then I`d have to write a 14 page long blog entry, which I know no one feels like reading. So here goes.
First off, better start with our New Year`s plans and post Christmas fun. We stayed in Santiago until the morning of Dec 29th because we had to wait to get our $140 (evil) Brazilian visas back from the Consulate. I know that all these things are reciprocal, but that amount of money seems entirely harsh when working on such a small budget. Luckily, we were approved and will now be allowed to enter Brazil- good thing since our flight to London is out of Sao Paulo. I also got some great advice from Madison - she said, “I think the next time you run into people that are rude to Americans, you should tell them that America is going to come after them next and that Bush is your uncle and you have a weapon of mass destruction in your backpack and then do the pledge of allegience!” Thank you Mad-dawg!Nothing too exciting about the rest of our time in Santiago though.
We met a kid in our hostel who was actually friends with the people we partied with on Christmas Day (random), so we were going to spend the night with them. We had to check out of our hostel by 1pm, though they allowed us to leave our backpacks there. Since we didn`t want to risk getting robbed, we only brought our money belt with us. We wandered up into the hills again and enjoyed smoothies (they make the BEST ones in Chile!) and read books that the cafe had in their stash, until around 5pm, when we went to meet our Xmas day friends in their hostel. We found our friends who told us they weren`t leaving the hostel until 8 and to meet them at that time, so we wandered down the street and I eyed a little place with books and figured we could continue reading until we were going to meet them. Turned out that this little place was the cultural center of Valpo, run by crazy Professor J, a 65 or so year old gentleman, who also happened to be the independent candidate for Mayor of Valpo and the current “president” of the neighborhood we were in. We stayed at his little house from 5pm until 1030pm or so. He served us Cuba Libre`s (with rum actually FROM Cuba) and we chatted and he had tons of visitors throughout the evening, as he IS the president! The first visitors were this hippie kid around our age, who worked in a sort of artist commune, and an older gentleman who looked like he was from India, but was actually an Indiginous Chilean man, who worked as a storyteller, magician, singer, musician, etc. He told us that the word “indiginous” was actually insulting to him, because it means “Without God.” Interesting. Anyway, they were both very hippie-ish and kept getting up to dance to this crazy music and played native instruments for us, etc. At one point, they went outside to pour some wine on the earth and some other hippies walked by and they all started forming a little circle on this one square of earth that was in the middle of the sidewalk. They called us out there and told us that we were going on the subway, as we all just huddled together on the little square of earth. I thought they meant some virtual subway for our minds or something equally “hippie-ish,” but turned out they were just testing the amount of people that were supposed to be able to fit in each 1 sq meter of the ACTUAL subway. It was pretty confusing, but HILARIOUS when I thought that they expected us to go on some mind-subway. Maybe you had to be there, I dunno… Anyway, the Professor was hosting a big dinner that night, so we helped him prepare the salad (I think I must have cut up cilantro for about 2 hours) and made mashed potatoes without a masher. Around 11pm, we left the professor to go find other friends, and we ended up running into these two guys from Santiago, who were really nice and invited us to their bbq with their family and friends up in the hills. We needed a spot to watch the fireworks from, so we went up there with them. They were all super nice and the fireworks were seriously spectacular- they went on for about 20 mins and covered the entire bay- absolutely gorgeous. I`m sad I don`t have any pictures. Dee tried explaining to one of the Chileans how she was sick of throwing toilet paper in the garbage can next to the toilet (like you have to do in all of South America), and the guy was confused and just like “what do you do with it? Throw it on the floor?!” She then said that no, in the USA, we can throw toilet paper IN the TOILET! He was absolutely FLOORED and actually didn`t even believe her for awhile! It was hilarious. After the fireworks, we went to go find this big dance party that was in the middle of one of the main plazas. There were probably around 2,000 people there and a live band. We made new friends- some Brits, a Colombian, and some Germans, and danced the night away with them. We left the party at 7am, when the sun came up!! Seriously, probably not ONE person left before that…I`ve never been to a party like that in my life- it was really a cool experience. I was absolutely pooped by this time though, so I got a bite and got back to the hostel by 9am, expecting that they´d let me in even though we weren`t supposed to check in until 11. Unfortunately, the mean lady running the hostel made me sit on the street, outside the steps to the hostel, until 10:15am, when her son finally let me in! No one was in our room either, so she was just plain evil making me sleep out there! I felt like a little orphan, but it was a really fun experience and I certainly will never forget that New Year`s!
After Valpo/Viña, we caught a 10 hour, double-decker bus down to the top of the Lakes District to the city called Temuco. We rented a teeensy little car from there and are currently in the midst of a week long road trip around the Lakes District. Our first stop was Pucon, which is a really cute little town by the Volcano Villarrica. Companies all charge you $80 to climb it with them, but Dee and I decided to save money and try it ourselves. We could only get about half way up because from then on it was covered in snow and we did not have any equipment to scale a snow-covered steep volcano. I was proud of us for getting as far as we did though! I`ve become quite the little trekker- who would`ve thought?! A lot of it is thanks to Dee though- she has an endless amount of energy and since she is a marathon runner, always wants to run around and walk for miles and miles UP things! Good thing though, or else I`d probably weigh 200 lbs by now with all the crap we`re devouring. After our climb, we drove to the natural hot springs and soaked for awhile.
Yesterday, after a yummy breakfast, we drove all the way down to our farthest point south for this road trip to Puerto Varas. We managed to buy a used CD for our car, which has an incredible song on it called “Freaky Time” by Point Blank. PLEASE download it- it is ABSOLUTELY hilarious!!!!!
Well, might as well wrap things up for now. I added more pictures- so click on the CHILE PICS link in the blogroll and enjoy!
xox
Happy 2008!!!!!!
