Serenity Now, Part I

Where we last left off, I mentioned that I had planned to start a sleep-induced coma after my weekend cat skiing at SkiArpa. Unfortunately, that coma had to be postponed as I prepared for the long anticipated weekend of Fiestas Patrias, Chile's biggest national holiday.

Fiestas Patrias itself falls on September 18th, but in true Chilean style, no one works the day before, and the day after is another holiday: El Día de las Fuerzas Armadas. Not really sure how it normally works, but because the 18th was on a Tuesday this year, that basically meant a 5 day weekend for all, which of course then translates to a full week off, because let's face it, two days of work in Chile doesn't really mean anything anyway.

Brief history lesson: although many Chileans believe September 18th is their Independence Day, it isn't. Rather ironically (at least in my opinion), Chile's biggest, most celebrated national holiday commemorates the foundation of a quasi-autonomous government in Chile. In reality, said government was overthrown a year later, and even on the beloved 18th of September, the government still swore undying loyalty to the Spanish King. In essence, Fiestas Patrias celebrates the establishment of a government subservient to Spain that no longer exists... Woo-hoo! Let's all get drunk!

My gringo predilections aside, Fiestas Patrias IS the biggest holiday of the year, and the celebration primarily entails lots and lots of drinking and dancing the cueca (Chile's national dance), which really, if you've seen it, goes hand in hand with drinking.

Needless to say, the week of teaching leading up to Fiestas Patrias was not terribly productive. In addition to my suspicions that many of my students were arriving to class drunk (I should say, in even greater numbers than normal), I also had to compete with the eardrum-rattling, really annoying bands that were brought in by the school to play in the central courtyard around which every classroom is situated. Apparently, in a competition between Cueca and Class, Class takes a back seat.

Acting on advice from a number of Chileans, Ashleigh, Meghan, and I had plans to break out of the Santiago melee by heading north to La Serena for the weekend. Frisbee, swimsuit, and a couple flasks of rum in tow, I canceled my last Friday night class (that no one would have showed up for anyway) and caught the overnight bus up north. Not knowing how close our hostel was to the bus station, we caught a cab about a block up the road, during which the cabbie laughed the entire time at our stupidity. Apparently, our fatuity so delighted the cabbie that he didn't even charge us for the 2 minute ride.

Our timing couldn't have been better. We arrived at the hostel minutes before they "powered up" the doorbell, dropped off our bags, grabbed a bite to eat, and then set out on a tour of Valle Elqui.

The tour of Valle Elqui wasn't the most amazing thing I have done since I have been in Chile, but it was certainly made more enjoyable with the help of a pretty interesting tour guide, a few samples of pisco from the piquerias along the way, and of course, the bottle of Monkey Tail (kind of like Baily's but sweeter, stronger, and made with pisco) we bought at our first stop. In addition, we had an INCREDIBLE lunch prepared au natural. All of the food was actually cooked by the sun. That doesn't mean that solar panels powered the building or the kitchen where the food was prepared, but rather the food was placed in reflecting boxes which used the sun's energy to heat the food. According to our guide, a black kettle centered around a giant reflective disk could bring water to a boil in about 15 minutes. Now if only they could use the same sun to heat their
houses...

After a long day of touring, we returned to our hostel exhausted and ready for a break. In my room, I dozed for about an hour listening to Shakira, who, at the other end of the recording process, was no doubt gyrating her legendary hips in perfect rhythm to the backup music being produced by her under-appreciated (and likely underpaid) colleagues.

We wrested ourselves from our slumber shortly after, and still dusting the cobwebs from our minds, set out to find some fuel for our corporal carriages. It turned out to be much more difficult than we had anticipated. After a few failed attempts, we finally found a place that seemed to be serving what could potentially pass as a meal. A slight misunderstanding was exacerbated by poor math skills, and a minor debate ensued about the check (primarily because we had to pay it BEFORE we received our food). Nevertheless, in the end we accomplished our objective and set out for a botellón in Coquimbo.

The hilarity of the situation was not lost on the cabbie as we mixed our drinks en route to Coquimbo. And while he was not much of a talker, I truly believe his reticence belied the sheer ecstasy he must have been feeling upon listening to our ridiculousness for the 15 minute ride across town.

Our botellón concluded in a plaza in Coquimbo next to some Chileans doing the same, and we took advantage of our kindered spirits in order to solicit a recommendation for the rest of our night. We left our new friends in the plaza, seeming somehow less exciting in our absence, and headed over to Mr. X. A cheap cover included one drink, which translated to a warm can of beer.

Now the beer in Chile doesn't really need any help in its quest to be inferior, so when a hot club is serving warm Chilean beer, that's not exactly any easy situation to swallow (pardon the pun). Granted, we are in Chile, so expectations must be tempered in order to survive the day to day. Still, there is only so much a man can bear.

Of course you know by now that I would not be partaking of this warm beer. Instead, I engaged in pleasant, if somewhat beguiling, conversation with the barkeep, explaining my plight with just enough pathos and melodrama so as to make it seem like the most tragic of situations. The bartender responded to such abject abuse of his clientele by proposing I trade my unopened can of warm beer for a 3/4 full pitcher of cold beer from the tap. I eagerly accepted the trade, which turned out not to be a trade at all because he forgot to reclaim the original collateral. As you can see, the pitcher was well received by all.

We spent the rest of the night spreading cheer and attracting randos until even the moon got tired and called for back up from his brighter celestial cousin.

I´m TRYING

There are three fundamental ingredients necessary in order to keep a blog updated and interesting: 1) Material, 2) Time, and 3) Internet.

Unfortunately, the accumulation of material with which to fill said blog tends to have an inverse relationship with the amount of time available to write about the material. And while a solid and consistent internet connection should be independent of the two other factors, for some reason, every time I have the first two factors in excess, there always seems to be a paucity of the third (and vice versa).

Nevertheless, I am urging you, faithful readers, to take heart! For I am committed to the entertainment (or at the very least the distraction) of all my readers as long as I am here in Chile, and irrespective of my heretofore inability to stay abreast of the many stories that have been multiplying in the annals of the unwritten, I promise to liberate my mindless ramblings just as soon as my stinking landlord can figure out our current internet mess. Until that SNAFU is worked out, I must resign myself to typing random nothings in my free time between class from the sticky keyboard (covered no doubt with some dilectable syrupy concoction comprised of Chilean finger grease, avocado resin, salty vegetable oil, and mayonnaise, all of which are found in copious amounts in the Chilean diet) in the teacher`s lounge at the school where I teach.

So that today´s visit is not a complete waste, I will leave you with a tasty morsel of information. The word SNAFU actually arose from a military acronym beginning with "Situation Normal: ..." I am assuming the clever can deduce the rest.

Cliff's Notes

After nearly a month of silence, I have decided to get back on the blog bandwagon. Reading through some of my latest posts - which, indeed, can hardly be considered late - I am realizing that there are so many huge gaps in my coverage over the last several months, that I am just going to have to leave some unfilled, like the Aurora potholes in the winter time.

Still, there are a FEW things that I would like to include. For starters, let me try for a quick summary of what I am so far missing:

-After my trip to Machu Picchu, I went to Easter Island for a few days. In sum total, my three weeks of travels were filled with back to back to back wonders that really cannot be done justice by any meager attempts on my behalf to describe them. In light of this fact, I will simply suggest you look at pictures, and maybe one day book a trip of your own.

-Upon my return, I alternated between skiing, partying, and saying goodbye. Both Nayara and Heloísa (the Brazilians) left the first week I was back, which was a HUGE bummer considering they were my two closest friends in the Casa Andacollo. Meghan's birthday party helped the cause quite a bit with a little dancing at Punta Brown. In addition, during that time, I managed to grow a little closer with Nora (the Colombian) mainly on account of snow: I skied with her boyfriend for a day and then when it was snowing in Santiago for the first time in 20 years, I helped her build a snowman in the front yard. There was less than a centimeter of snow on the ground, but our house was perhaps the only house in all of Santiago with a genuine snowman, brown, grass-ridden, and emaciated though he was.

-Before heading home to Colorado I almost bailed on the CIEE weekend retreat in favor of a weekend of cat-skiing. However, after a complete white-out on the mountain one day, I took a short skiing hiatus, and opted instead for a little weekend getaway with what few members of the CIEE posse still remain (big shout out to Menelike and Amanda... We miss you guys!!!). Turned out to be a great decision. Free beer coupled with kick-ball, volleyball, choripan, and ping-pong was just what the doctor ordered to chase my Santiago blues away.

-Quick on the heals of the weekend extravaganza described above, I saddled up for the 14 hour trip back to good old Colorado. After a mandatory stop at Chipotle, the NEXT thing I did was accompany Josh to buy $1,000 worth of alcohol for his wedding. The loading and unloading of copious amounts of the Sumers' greatest legacy provided the perfect segue into a weekend of much of the same. In spite of the email string comprised of more words than Quixote, we all managed to pull together an incredible weekend of beer-drinking, cigar-smoking, burger-eating, gore creek-tubing (or tube-popping), salmon-grilling, shot-pounding, poker-playing, sleep-depriving goodness.

-Most of the week following the bachelor party was spent hanging with friends and family, catching up on life in the US, and golfing, so essentially, everything I could have asked for from a vacation back home. Of course, the icing on the cake was my sister's and Josh's beautiful wedding, which really needs no elaboration.

-I arrived back in Chile, half-reluctant, half-excited to return for the final stretch of what has so far been an incredible adventure. On the insistence (and bankroll) of Lauren and Josh, my first order of business upon my return was to book my cat-skiing trip at SkiArpa. All my failed attempts to lure another skier into the fray left me hiking through the cold Santiago streets at 5:30 in the morning lugging a ski-bag, a backpack, and a small duffel replete with helmet clunking along the outside. Needless to say, I did not exactly blend in. The snow turned out to be less than epic to say the least, but never in my life will I ski more incredible terrain in succession. Due in large part to a small group of the nerdiest adults I have ever met who kept us a little more conservative on Day 1, we only logged about 9,000 vertical feet of skiing (over 4 runs). Day 2 however, we were joined by a group of 3 brothers from Utah, and we hiked for every one of our 4 runs, which left us at a best estimate of around 12,000 vertical feet for the day.

-I caught the bus back to Santiago on my own and tried to sleep off some of the last 2 months of accumulated exhaustion. I have not yet been successful, but then, if you aren't tired at the end of the day, you're just not doing enough.

I will try to write a more reflective, engaging, or inspiring piece soon. For now, know that I haven't forgotten that this page exists, even though most of my readers have.

Good night, and God bless.