Eeyore, Navimag, and Jackass.

Now this is the exact reason blogs are so stupid. I looked back to see where I left off, and it was literally forever ago. If you took the quantity forever, doubled it and added 55, thats the last time I wrote something significant on here. Hopefully you enjoyed pictures. I´m not going to be able to recount everything thats happened since, but i´ll do my best to note some highlights.

My travels have taken the following path.....Iquique (where i was last post)-La Serena-Vicuna-Coquimbo-Valparaiso-Santiago-Valdivia-Pucon-Puerto Montt-Punta Arenas-Puerto Natales.

I arrived in Puerto Natales yesterday after flying to Punta Arenas from Puerto Montt. This was not my original intention. I originally planned on taking a 4 day 3 night boat trip from PM to PN. Ah yes, this was a fun set of events.

Rumor had it that this boat trip, pending good weather, was incredible. I had been told by a british couple (seldom reliable) and a french girl (never reliable) that the boats left once a week. They were mixed cargo/passenger boats where for about 350 dollars US you could get a bunk and three meals a day. The views were supposed to be quite breath-taking. Recalling my encounter with the "breath-taking" sport of bodyboarding, I took this with a grain of salt. Actually a few grains of salt..some peppers, onions, tomato and steak. It was a pretty delicious dinner. But I digress...
Taking this advice I did some online research and looked in my guidebook, and yes, they were correct the boat left from Puerto Montt on Mondays at 4pm and arrived in Puerto Natales on Friday around 10am. I was in luck, as this was the beginning of low season, the price had dropped to 300 dollars. Including all meals, this was expensive but not a budget breaker. So although I had planned on heading from Pucon to Puerto Montt thursday night, I instead opted to stick around and go mountain biking Friday, and left saturday Afternoon. When I got into Puerto Montt I went to a Navimag (the company that runs the boat) office and asked the lady what time the boat would leave on monday. She told me that it would be best to check in monday morning, since sometimes the boats were delayed by weather. On sunday I checked the website, and it said that the boat had in fact been delayed and to call the phone number. When I called, they said that they hadn´t updated the website, but the boat was back on schedule. Sweet. Cruise me. Monday morning and I´m STOKED. Gonna get on this boat, sail the high seas, or lakes, or whatever they wanted. Didn´t care, out of my hands. Skip on down to the navimag office. This is where details become important. I walk up to the SAME LADY I SPOKE TO ON SATURDAY and in a fashion somewhat similar to a 12 year old girl buying the last ticket to high school musical 3, say "I´ll take a ticket on the boat please." "You are early" she says back. I know...it doesn´t leave till 4, I didn´t want to buy the ticket at 3:59. She responds "alright, well the boat leaves friday at 4pm, make sure to check in at noon, Cash or credit." (mind you, this is all in spanish. She said a lot of things...this is what I got. Boiled down.) Hold on...back up. Friday? But you told me....but the books said...but the website said..."Oh yeah, this is the first week of the new schedule. Now we leave on Friday." Dinesh "But, when I asked you on saturday, you said it left on monday." Lady "well, last week it did leave on monday..." Yes...I realize this, but last week monday was already 5 days past. That information isn´t really all the applicable now is it? Maybe I asked incorrectly, I mean my spanish isn´t amazing. Yes..Maybe I accidentally asked "excuse, i´m sorry, but if I want to travel backwards in time and take the boat that left 5 days ago, what time would I need to be here"...very possible. Anyway, there was glass between us. Thick glass. Apparently Navimag has had this situation before.
So i´ll fly. I walk around for a while looking for a tourist office and ask them how much it will cost to fly. After they try and sell me a few packages, I leave and go online. I buy a ticket to Punta Arenas, but it won´t accept my credit card. Its 12:47pm and it says that I´m booked on the 5pm flight pending I go to the Lan office and pay for the ticket beforehand. No problem. I´ve seen the LAN office. Its only a couple miles away...stroll up to the office. Its 1:04. Typically ´not an issue. OH WAIT, latin american NAPPY TIME. EVERYTHING closes from 1-3pm. Everything. South Americans have their own circadian rhythm. At 1pm, their bodies literally stop functioning and they fall asleep. On the spot. That or the cocaine they use to talk to fast finally wears off. Nope, can´t work for 2 hours. Want to, but can´t. Nappy time. I asked a guy at one point what most chileans do during that time period. His response "facebook". So I head off to mcdonalds and grab a double cheeseburger to make it all better. It only had one pattie, but that was fine, it was probably the most delicious cheeseburger i´ve ever had. Go to the hostal, get my things, and head back to the Lan office. I get there at 2:55, and set up shop. They are all inside, sitting at their desks, as a line starts to form behind me. They have a big clock on the wall with the time prominently displayed. The line continues to form, and they keep looking at the clock, even as 3pm comes and goes. At 3:10, they open the doors. I walk up to the lady at the desk, who promptly points back towards the door. Ah, yes, I forgot to take a number. My fault. Walk back, take a number...she calls my number immediately. It was like something out of a movie. I explain the situation, and she resolves it, albeit, very slowly. At one point she even says "Oh, your flight is at 5, you better hurry!" Yeah...ya think? Glad I got to watch you paint your nails till 3:10...thats making it very easy to hurry. We finish up at 3:45, and i run to the bus terminal about a mile away. I get there just in time to catch the bus to the airport. Arrive at 425, check in, fly into punta arenas. All in all, worked out alright. But it sure wasn´t easy. Lesson learned: Don´t trust anyone. They will lie to you, and you will miss the boat."

Television is hilarious here. More hilarious than the keyboards. ¿Ç€. booyah. So yeah, television is completely unedited here. And apparently, South Americans don´t think that tv images or violence will have ANY effect on their youth. Which has been shown to be true, since it is a well known fact that there isn´t a drug problem in south america. I am making these comments based on the general opinion here on 1)Violent bus movies and 2) Jackass.
1. On bus rides over two hours they will typically show a movie. This is nice. Even when its an 18 hour trip, and they have purchased the spanish dubbed "Top Speed" five pack, so you are forced to watch the fast and the furious, 2 fast 2 furious, the fast and the furious 3 tokyo drift, torque, and some other motorcycle movie. In a row. Without any english subtitles. (Luckily, I know all 3 fast and furious´ by heart thanks to Timmy´s love of all three. Props buddy. I was reciting lines to myself.) However, you figure that they would show movies appropriate for all ages.

Nope.

On a recent bus trip I was able to watch the movie scarface. This was sweet, I really like the movie scarface. However, so did the six year old kid across the aisle from me, also watching scarface. Now i´m not saying video games make people violent, or movies for that matter. But a six year old kid watching Tony montana blow lines and kill people with a machine gun, I don´t know about that. This kid was STUCK on the movie. Like I said, good thing south america doesn´t have a drug problem.....

Jackass. South Americans LOVE jackass. For those not familiar its a stunt show on MTV where people do ridiculous, and often painful stunts. (ie. kick each other in the groin, shoot themselves off docks on rockets). Its hilarious. To a 12-30 year old dude it is hilarious.

NOPE, WRONG AGAIN.

Here, jackass is a family event. South Americans sit down to watch jackass like your family might sit down around christmas to watch Its a Wonderful Life. It was on last night in the family run hostel where I am staying, and the father actually went upstairs and woke up one of the daughters who I presume had been sleeping, so that everyone could sit and watch jackass. It was beyond amusing.

So today is my birthday. Wheeeee, Im a quarter century old. grand. Although if you asked me a year or two ago where I thought I´d be on my twenty fifth birthday, Patagonia Chile probably wouldn´t have been my first response. If you told me that I´d be blogging in Patagonia Chile on my 25th birthday, I´d probably have punched you in the face and said blogs are stupid. Talk about your all time hypocrites.

I had an eeyore moment yesterday, as it was raining pretty hard, and it was dark and cloudy. I basically was walking through the town square and realized that for the first time in a very long time I wasn´t going to be with my friends and family for my birthday. I had a small pity party thinking no one would remember my birthday. That was a little sad. However, a lot of people remembered my birthday, even being all the way down here, and that made me really really happy. (thanks everyone for the cards, messages, emails. You guys are great) And better yet, I woke up and it was a beautiful day with the sun shining. Its been a good chance to reflect on things, making this probably one of my best birthdays yet. Ive thought a lot about where I´m at, where I want to be, where I want my life to go, and how to go about doing that. I realized that I´ve learned a lot in life, and its mostly been from all of you, so thank you for that, I appreciate it a lot. Came to the conclusion that nothing makes more sense that doing something you love, being in a place you are happy and being around people you care about. No earth shaking revelations here, but important thoughts all the same. Lessons learned? Fruit tastes way better when it is cut up. Exponentially better if someone else cuts it up for you. A smile can make a terrible day better. Don´t leave your clean clothes on the foot of you bed before you go to sleep. I can grow a sweet beard now. Ferris Bueller says it best, "Life moves pretty fast, if you don´t stop and look around every once in a while you could miss it."

Heading on a 4 day trek through patagonia tomorrow. Forecast is for rain, and temps of 35 during the day and 25 at night. Pretttyyyyy excitttedddddd. Well see how it goes.

Miss you all, thanks again for the birthday love.

Here they are

Alright, so I finally found a computer with picasa and a decent connection. So after 4 hours of people in this hostel glaring at me for being on the computer so long....here they are. They are out of order...no video...but if you want to waste some time, here are like 500 shots of South America thus far. Hope you like. Its been wild.

South America Pictures March 1st to April 18th

Finally a couple pictures

South America Pictures

Smile, Laugh and Si

I thought that I could sort of, kind of, in some odd way get by on spanish. After taking about 3 spanish lessons in cusco, I had complete command of such powerful phrases as "This road is wide!" or "but tomatoes are red, Im looking for a bed with two rooms. Can I, I take, room with 2 beds." I was killing it. Sometimes I would throw in a feliz navidad just to get a smile out of people. But all kidding aside, I could listen to and understand most spanish conversations in Peru and at least get by with the spanish that I knew combined with words I would make up.

Enter Chile.

In Chile, they don´t speak spanish. This is a common misconception. Sure, things are written in Spanish. But in Chile, they speak Chilean. Chilean is similar to spanish, but it is spoken after blowing three lines of cocaine. Chileans can move their mouths so fast, and speak a sentence so quick, that you´re not even really sure that they said anything at all. This is accomplished by dropping the second half off of every word...then staring at you like your an idiot when you don´t understand. If you ask them to say it slower, they try to explain it using DIFFERENT words...but just as quickly, and still dropping the second half off of each word. Its fantastic. I love it. It is based on my inability to speak Chilean that I have adopted the following policy for this country...smile, nod, laugh, say si. This is all I do in most conversations. I smile while they tell me the story, when they pause I say "ahh, si si", then I smile when they are done, and laugh at the end of the story. Chileans think that I find absolutely everything hilarious. At breakfast the other day I realized after about 10 minutes of a story that I was smiling, and laughing and "si-ing" at...that the lady was in fact telling me about a terrible earthquake which had struck the region about 3 years back. This is only one such occurence. I´m sure this is happening other times, I just have no idea. The other major drawback is you get yourself into things un-intentionally....the Smile, laugh and Si method doesn´t take into account if they ask you a question. I accidentally volunteered myself into trying some random chilean dish doing this (although it actually turned out to be quite delicious.). When in doubt...Smile, Laugh and Si.

So yes, I am now in chile. We left arequipa, which was sad, because I loved it, and was subsisting on 2 dollar falafel...and headed to tacna at the base of peru about a week ago. In tacna, we were hustled into a taxi to cross the chilean border (a trusty 1989 ford taurus with 4 other passengers for the appx 2 hour ride) where after a flat tire just outside the city, we were taken to Arica. Now a hawaiin guy on our bus ride to tacna told us he had left Arica the same day because it was "The most depressing place he´d ever been." That guy must have a pretty amazing life. Or he´s a complete idiot. Arica was awesome. We stayed at a sweet hostel, with unlimited breakfast (sidenote...breakfast to this point has always consisted of two pieces of bread, jam, coffee and juice. thats what you get everywhere in peru. Everywhere. Period.) with fresh fruit, bread and jam, oatmeal, coffee, juice...amazing. We met this cool guy named Yoyo who taught us how to surf....And by taught us, he let us in on the fact that the ocean is breathing...and you have to breathe with it...as one. Thats how you know when to stand up on the board...when you and the ocean are breathing together. Amazing place, good people..loved arica.

Took a bus from Arica to Iquique which is also on the chilean coast. The main, "amazing, awesome, supercool" by all accounts, hostel was all booked so we opted for a brand new one close to the beach. It is really nice, the lady who runs it Isabel is really cool. (Isabel´s mom comes and cooks food for the people who work there sometimes. We´ve become great friends. She is the one who was telling me the earthquake story. She knows I barely understand anything she says. She doesn´t mind. We´re great friends.) The beach is beautiful and long, so I finally got a chance to go running a few times. At the end of my run I stumbled upon the worst gym of all time right on the beach. This gym started driving down tetanus road, and took a wrong turn down hepatitis alley. Everything there was completely rusted over...and the weights seemed like they would fall apart as you lifted them. So of course Aaron and I went back the next day and worked out there...The only other people there were Mr. Universe who runs the place, when hes not trying to squeeze his size 1023901239823 neck into a t-shirt...and about 4 little high school boys who obviously idolize Mr. Universe and hope to someday have just as much difficulty putting on their own clothes. Unfortunately, unless they trade in their cheerios for some boxes labeled Balco...don´t think its gonna happen. After the gym we tried bodyboarding...and finally I understood what it was to breathe with the ocean. Many a time bodyboarding I breathed with the ocean. Unfortunately, my lungs hate the ocean, and I would cough out most of the water. I guess I´m not cut out to be a Mer-man. Can´t win em all.

Welp...it about time for me to go prep for my 20 hour bus ride to La Serena. Pretty excited for it, especially seeing as my Ipod reset itself, and all my music and movies, and articles, and games are gone. Yayyy....At least when I walk around in Chile...people think I´m chilean. Till I laugh at a story about a tragic earthquake anyway.

Hope you are all well...Miss you guys....miss chicken wings. And Labatt Blue.