Hello to everyone! I’ll have you all know that I’m safe and sound at mi casa in Vina del Mar. I’ll give you the low down on what I’ve been doing since I last posted…
My compañera Lisa and I met up at Seatac airport and made the flight together to Dallas where we met up with our travel buddy and body guard “Juanito.” We spent the night on the plane headed towards Chile and said “Adios” to English upon touchdown in Santiago.
We were chauffeured from the airport about an hour and a half away to our separate houses in Viña del Mar and spent the next day and a half with our host families, or in my case a host abuelita (grandma) that never stops talking—and that’s the nice way of putting it. Anyways, I can see myself spending a lot of time over at Lisa’s house playing cards with her little host brother and sister.
The next day we took a 15 hour-long bus ride south from Vina to Puerto Montt. There we stayed for two nights at a really beautiful, homey hostel (Hostal de los Navegantes). We made a day trip to Puerto Varas and found that the freest thing to do was to hike in Parque Phillipi. We followed that with a not-so-free trip to the island of Chiloe the next day. We forked out the pesos to take a three hour tour of Ancud and fulfill Lisa’s dream of seeing penguins in Chile.
From Puerto Montt we took the most gorgeous busride through the Andes to Bariloche, Argentina. If any of you were following my Facebook posts, it was here that we spent two nights in the Bob Marlyesque Greenhouse Hostel. Bariloche is set right on a huge beautiful lake and we arrived during the last week of South American summer vacation so the city itself was just packed with tourists. Lisa, Juanito, and I ended up hanging out with the hostel owners, spending the day on the “plajya” (Argentine for beach), and enjoying the slower-paced Spanish.
We crossed back into Chile instead of making the more expensive trip to Mendoza in Northern Argentina and we spent the next two nights in Valdivia, Chile which Juanito lovingly renamed “Fomelandia” (“fome” is Chilean for “lame”). The hostel we stayed at was beautiful (Albergue Latino) and we met people from all over. We shared a room with a guy from Spain, a chica from Sweden, and an older guy from Brazil. There were also girls from Austrailia and three guys from Israel. It was very cool to have people from everywhere coming together in broken Spanish. Beautiful, buena onda.
Being very much ready to leave Valdivia we hopped on the nastiest bus we had been on during the whole trip and 13 hours later ended up back at home in Viña. Since then, I’ve spent my time listening to my mama Chilena, avoiding mi casa, getting to know my way around the city, crying (I miss you guys! Se lo juro), somehow deleting all of my pictures from the trip, and getting ice cream with mis amigos. Tomorrow, gringo orientation starts and hopefully I’ll have dependable internet access.
Keep sending me emails and updates my friends! Hopefully the posts from here on out will be shorter and not so scattered. Besos a todos!
My compañera Lisa and I met up at Seatac airport and made the flight together to Dallas where we met up with our travel buddy and body guard “Juanito.” We spent the night on the plane headed towards Chile and said “Adios” to English upon touchdown in Santiago.
We were chauffeured from the airport about an hour and a half away to our separate houses in Viña del Mar and spent the next day and a half with our host families, or in my case a host abuelita (grandma) that never stops talking—and that’s the nice way of putting it. Anyways, I can see myself spending a lot of time over at Lisa’s house playing cards with her little host brother and sister.
The next day we took a 15 hour-long bus ride south from Vina to Puerto Montt. There we stayed for two nights at a really beautiful, homey hostel (Hostal de los Navegantes). We made a day trip to Puerto Varas and found that the freest thing to do was to hike in Parque Phillipi. We followed that with a not-so-free trip to the island of Chiloe the next day. We forked out the pesos to take a three hour tour of Ancud and fulfill Lisa’s dream of seeing penguins in Chile.
From Puerto Montt we took the most gorgeous busride through the Andes to Bariloche, Argentina. If any of you were following my Facebook posts, it was here that we spent two nights in the Bob Marlyesque Greenhouse Hostel. Bariloche is set right on a huge beautiful lake and we arrived during the last week of South American summer vacation so the city itself was just packed with tourists. Lisa, Juanito, and I ended up hanging out with the hostel owners, spending the day on the “plajya” (Argentine for beach), and enjoying the slower-paced Spanish.
We crossed back into Chile instead of making the more expensive trip to Mendoza in Northern Argentina and we spent the next two nights in Valdivia, Chile which Juanito lovingly renamed “Fomelandia” (“fome” is Chilean for “lame”). The hostel we stayed at was beautiful (Albergue Latino) and we met people from all over. We shared a room with a guy from Spain, a chica from Sweden, and an older guy from Brazil. There were also girls from Austrailia and three guys from Israel. It was very cool to have people from everywhere coming together in broken Spanish. Beautiful, buena onda.
Being very much ready to leave Valdivia we hopped on the nastiest bus we had been on during the whole trip and 13 hours later ended up back at home in Viña. Since then, I’ve spent my time listening to my mama Chilena, avoiding mi casa, getting to know my way around the city, crying (I miss you guys! Se lo juro), somehow deleting all of my pictures from the trip, and getting ice cream with mis amigos. Tomorrow, gringo orientation starts and hopefully I’ll have dependable internet access.
Keep sending me emails and updates my friends! Hopefully the posts from here on out will be shorter and not so scattered. Besos a todos!
LINZ tu pieza es blanca. estoy contenta que tu estas mas feliz que mas primo. Ti amo mi amiga!!
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