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.