Salkantay no worries

So last time we blogged there wasn´t much to say. We had spent a few shiftless days in Cuzco doing next to nothing. Well, the past few days have been extremely busy and awesome, and this blog post will be a long one. So...

Day 1
We woke up Monday morning around 430 and managed to crawl over to the SAS travel building in San Francisco Plaza. We boarded a bus and off we go. We´re headed to attempt the Salkantay trek, a 35 (ish) mile walk that ascends about 4000 vertical feet before plunging downward almost two vertical miles. We had our hands full. After our bus breaks down about 30 seconds out of town and we wait for half an hour, we catch another bus and head to the foot of a trail. Because of the wait, we hop in a truck that takes us farther up the trail than we otherwise would have gone. This is bad news, because this is literally a small truck, with 16 people and their bags packed into the back. I managed to snag a spot on top of the bags, and was relatively comfortable the entire time. Stretta was next to me, but in a long limbed feat of awkwardness managed to shove his right leg under about 300 pounds of luggage. Dave faired worst, standing in the back of the truck dodging low lying limbs and the occasional cactus. Finally, however, we arrive at the beginning of our trek. We get out, hoist our bags to our backs, and walk. The first day is relatively light. We cover about 6 miles of mostly mild uphill and stop for lunch before arriving at our campsite for dinner. We arrive around 3, with tea planned for 5 and dinner for 630. Here´s where stupidity sets in. We´re camping high, around 13500 ft, but are nonetheless in a valley. To our left is a hill that starts with grass and what seems to be about 200 yards up there are rocks and snow. It´s at about 45 degrees, and looks like a mild climb. We´ve had a mild day, so we decide to hike up to the snow. Bad move. 45 minutes later we are wheezing like asthmatics in an airport smoking lounge. I´ve been walking uphill at about 70 degrees incline for what must have been miles, and as my vision narrows to a tunnel the size of a paper towel roll and my stomach seriously considers disgorging its contents, I look up to see the snow in the exact same damn place it was when we started. It´s like being on a treadmill from some frozen hellscape. Well, being the manly if incredibly out of shape men we are, we soldier on and eventually crawl to a stop at the snow. We sit there long enough to regain feeling in our extremities, and make a controlled fall that ends with us at the campsite only slightly worse for the wear. The night is short, and we crawl into bed around 8.

Day 2
This is the hell day, the day we had feared. Weighing in at a little below 12 miles, the hike starts with steep switchbacks that take us to the feet of the awe-inspiring Mount Salkantay, for which our trek is named. At this point we are at the highest point on the trek, and the highest above sea level any of us have been. The views are extraordinary. In every direction we can see mountains of a scale unheard of outside the himalayas, and a fog rolls over the valley just distantly visible far past our feet. The air is thin and whips by us, and there seems to be about 30 degrees difference between sunlight and shade. Our guide, an effervescent and exaspiratingly indefatigable man by the name of Carlos, tells us stories of the Inca, or Quichua as they are properly called, and their penchant for human sacrifice. Our other guide, Javier, doesn´t speak English so well, so he merely sits by and chain smokes cigarettes. At 15000 ft. With 9 miles left to walk. Anyways, after a lengthy stay at this pass, we head down, and down, and down. We walk down switchbacks, steep direct descents, and the occasional mild decline or slight incline. We walk down to the shrub layer, pass through it, walk down to the tree layer, pass through it, down into the jungle, and end our journey in a valley with a river raging through it that is at about 8000 ft elevation. For the math challenged, we just descended around 7000 vertical feet. Throughout this ordeal our thighs and calves are burning, and our knees are creeking like an arthritic´s on a trampoline. The lungs are at first a problem, but by the bottom the air is soup thick. Once again, the views stay phenomenal. At the top we are treated to different perspectives on Mt. Salkantay, but as we descend the views turn first into gorgeous vistas of other mountains, and finally into scenes of tree covered mountains ascending and ascending from lush valleys carved by whitewater rapids. It truly is a wonderful thing. We make camp, and play Euchre with a nice couple out of Chicago. Dave´s midwestern origins are discussed and verified, and I´m left wondering how anyone could enjoy Euchre for more than three minutes. That night we camp in one of these valleys, and are treated to an all night cacophony consisting of donkeys, chickens, horses, and other assorted creatures intent on keeping the gringos awake.

Day 3
We awake, and while I can´t speak for the others, the words that come to mind by this point are sore and gross. My body is aching pretty much everywhere from the waste down, and the lack of any sort of hygienic experience is beginning to evidence itself. Barn animals have started to make room for me. However, I gamely hoist my pack over my head (causing all downwind to feel a bit light headed) and get ready for the day. Today´s trek is milder than the last day´s, but more difficult than the first day´s. We head to the other side of the river we had been following through the valley, and essentially retrace our steps, only on the other side. While doing a giant U turn isn´t the most pleasant thing, psychologically speaking, the views stay great. While 24 hours ago the cold was vicious, our problem at this point is the heat and the bugs. We´re very much in a jungle, and when not directly next to the river, the heat and humidity are pretty unbearable. Furthermore, experienced sojourners that we rapidly have become, we are often at the front of the pack, and thus often have to wait for our less fleet of foot friends. This gives the mosquitos all the opportunity they need to feast. These beast-insects are massive. They are each around the size of a praying mantis, and travel in swarms that blot out the sun. I may exaggerate, but, for the parents, look at your sons´necks, backs, arms, and legs when they get home, and then tell me I´m lying. We got torn up. Despite these difficulties, watching the water all day was mesmerizing, and we crossed over somewhere between 5 and 10 beautiful waterfalls, some of which were huge. At the end of the day, around 3, we arrived at La Playa, so named because it is near the water. This was to be our campsite. However, one of our group had heard that there was a hot springs near by, and so we convinced our guide to take us there. We travelled an hour by bus, and arrived at Saint Theresa, home to this fabled hot spring. Until this point no one questioned the wisdom of going to a giant hot tub when we had spent most of the day pouring sweat and wishing for anything, literally anything but heat. Luckily, it cooled down at night, and there was a cold waterfall at the St. Theresa hot spring. We had a blast playing monkey in the middle with our frisbee, to the delight of local children, who I´m convinced thought they were witnessing alien technology every time we threw the thing. After the hot spring we head to an alternate campsite, very tired and ready to go to sleep. But... Carlos explains to us that since we will be waking up at 330 in the morning the next and final night, tonight is party night. Hooray? Yes. We manage to find some energy, drink a homemade mixed drink provided by the cooks, and have a birthday celebration for one of our number, complete with delicious cake. Later that night we go out to a bar in St. Theresa. The bar is completely empty, and is the seediest, dingiest, grossest bar I´ve ever seen. We have an absolute blast. We stay out until the heady hour of 1030, and end the night repeatedly toasting our crew, since they speak no english and that is all we can do.

Day 4
We awake the next morning at 630, shake off the cobwebs and stumble outside to a wonderful surprise. Due to anticipated hangovers (did you notice we stayed out until almost 11) our bags are to be carried by the truck today, and we just have to haul our own carcasses. We manage to refrain from kissing Javier and Carlos, and we begin our trek. Because of our last minute change of scenery for the hot springs, the path is a bit dull this morning. Mostly dirt road with little in the way of sightseeing. We lunch at a train station and hydroelectric dam. We are tired. Two of our number have aquired a stomach bug. Moral is a bit low. Not to worry, we´re only 2 hours away. Well, we set off, and eventually realize that their idea of two hours means (with all the waiting and various breaks) around 3 hours and change. Stiff upper lip and all, so we press on. We´re walking on railroad tracks and it is burning hot. Slowly some clouds roll in, providing release from the heat. Then it starts to dribble. This too, is refreshing. Then it starts to storm. Then the hail comes. All of a sudden I´m expecting an Incan Armageddon as we´re being pelted with various forms of H2O. We hole up in a shelter on the side of a railroad and man, we´re soaked and morale is really low. The storm passes over and we stagger into Aguas Caliendes, the end of the line and the site of the hostel we will be staying the night in. At this point we (particularly me) are almost radioactive with filth. I smell like Pigpen would if he was a garbage collector and moonlighted cleaning sewage lines. We wearily slump into our room and discover that reports of hot water showers are greatly exaggerated. It´s frigid. We sponge bathe as best we can and I pass out around 8. The universal hope is that the rain will not pick back up tomorrow, when we are at...

Day 5 - Maccu Picchu

We awake at 340 in the morning, a time when no human should ever have to wake up. We stumble downstairs, eat breakfast, and get in line for the buses. The whole reason we get up this early is that we intend to be first in line for tickets to climb Huayna Picchu, a mountain that overlooks Maccu Picchu. They only allow 400 people a day to climb, and the plan is for us to get tickets, have our guided tour, then climb the mountain. When we get in line for the bus, it looks good. However, some tourists have the idea that they only have to send one of their party to stand in line, and that belatedly 30 to 40 friends will role up and, after shaking the sleep out of their eyes around 5, will slip into line ahead of by now furious Salkantay trekkers who smell like fermented curry and are doing they´re best to burn holes in the backs of heads. This view is particularly popular with a near albino set of scandinavian monsters who are of the opinion that it is normal for men to wear scarves and dolce and gabbana eyewear and that the rules of queuing don´t apply to them. Seriously, were parents not reading this, much stronger language would be in order. We end up making it up to the line for Huayna Picchu about 50 people too late. No matter, after mentally entreating Obama to nuke Finland we head over to begin our tour of Maccu Picchu. It is simply remarkable. To keep it concise, ancient Quechua people figured out when the fall and spring equinoxes were, knew their latitude, made rocks whose four corners pointed in the exact compass rose, and, oh yeah, built an enormous stone city at the top of a mountain using - get this - no mortar. None. They just fit rocks together. I was utterly amazed. This is what people were capable of before modern television programming. After our tour Dave, Stretta, and I went first to the Sun Gate. The Sun Gate is a niche naturally carved out of the mountain line so named because, on the Spring Equinox, the sun rises directly through it and is visible through one of the two windows in the temple of the Sun in Maccu Picchu. (The other window comes into play - you guessed it - the day of the Fall Equinox. What an amazing people). The views are incredible, but I´m sure by this point you know that. Next we head to the Inca Bridge. This is a partial version of the Inca trail that is closed now because it has become overgrown and is suicidally dangerous. However, part of it is still open and we journey to this part now. It travels across the most sheer and massive cliff face I have ever seen. I´m no wimp about heights and I am a bit nervous. We snap pictures of us in front of neverending drops into valleys made hazy by distance and get the hell out of there. Thus ends our 5 day sojourn through the amazing Andes mountains. These have been the most beautiful sights and experiences of my life.

I know by now it must be frustrating to hear about these things but not see them. I promise pictures are forthcoming. We get home Sunday morning, and I´m sure that the vast majority of those reading this will see us shortly thereafter. We´ve loved our time here but miss so much about America (ice cubes, things actually working, english, prompt service, etc.) Thanks for reading along, and, except for pictures and possibly an addendum by Stretta or Dave, this will be our last blog post. Once again, hope to see many of you soon. For those of you who joined us in Chile, it is my sincere hope that we can figure out a way to stay in touch. Hopefully that will include trips to watch Georgia beat the tar out of various other football teams.

Matt Bailey

We see white people

Short blog because there isn´t much happening.
We have been in Cuzco for 2 days now and it has been fun. The crazy thing is that there are tourists everywhere. It is quite different from our experience in Chile. Our days have mostly consisted of walking around the city and looking at pretty things and also trinkets. It turns our we have stumbled upon trinket heaven and today we will actually be purchasing as many trinkets as humanly possible. The food here is delicious and the portions are ginormous(thats a real word, don´t worry about it). Also we have come to realize that being young 21 year old men we are in peak physical condition. It is really insane how we can climb large hills and never get winded. But, honestly we might die on this trek, 15,000 ft turns out to be really high. Now for the biggest con of this place. The locals are relentless with trying to get you to come to their diners and bars. Also the trinket sellers are insane trying to get you to by random things. But, the worst ones are the little demon children. They will literally follow you for block trying to sell cigarettes and wool hats. It is getting annoying. Sadly that is all for now and hopefully our last blog will be more entertaining that this one. We will blog one last time before our trek but for now it is trinket time.
Adios,
Stretta

Cuzco

Well here we are in the heart of the Andes mountains. Cuzco!

Getting here by bus should be something reserved only for cardinal sinners and lost souls worthy of astonishing punishment. I´m pretty sure the bus ride from Arica to Cuzco is a lost circle of Dante´s Inferno. We woke up at 6am at the hostal (family´s house) to head to the bus station to catch our bus to Cuzco. Our bus was set to leave at 7am from the terminal, so we got there at around 6:40. As the minutes start winding down to 7, the light in the stall for the company we bought our tickets from stays off. Every other booth in the place is open and we´re starting to get slightly anxious and mostly angry. At about 7:15 a man with a long, black ponytail comes up to us and says, ¨Gringos, to Cuzco?¨to which we relpy, ¨Si.¨ So we get in this guys car, which is littered wth Dragonball Z paraphernalia, hoping we don´t come out as lamp shades. The guy turns on an 80s mixtape and the mood lightens. He turns out to be a really nice guy who´s taking us over the boarder to Tacna to catch our bus.

We get to the border (in the middle of the desert) at about 7:45 and the boarder opens at 8. We get through with very little incidence, except for Matt´s Chilean Pisco being confiscated. We´re still not really sure why, wine was fine but pisco was apparently out of the question. With the boarder patrol´s assurance that Peruvian pisco was better, we headed off for Tacna. We reached the bus terminal and hopped into our own private hell.

Matt gave you guys a list of pros and cons for the last bus ride so I´ll do the same for this one. I promise it will be mostly cons.

Pros
1. Chuck Norris movie shown at 10:30pm, 14 hours into the bus ride
2. A few really awesome views of the mountains
3. A cute little girl who screamed gleefully about gringos for like 15 minutes when we got on the bus

Cons
1. For the first 22 hours we were in Peru, a strong stench of urine was present and completely unshakable
2. I said 22 hours, because that´s how long the bus ride took. We were told it would take 16.
3. If you do the math, that put us into the Cuzco bus station at 4:30am
4. I mentioned urine: The reason for the stench, we quickly learned, was the simple fact that people pee everywhere here. Men, women, children, whatever, wherever, whenever. Grown women just pop squats on the side of the road. No biggie.
5. The only thing to compete with the smell of urine, was the stronger smell of vomit. Stretta got the closest whiff when the girl next to him started throwing up in a bag. This was apparently common on the bus as I spotted no less than 3 bags of vomit littering the floor. The bus company´s solution: sweep and febreeze.
6. An average speed of 35 miles per hour
7. A small town pit stop where we picked up people who apparently bought floor seats, meaning I head a small kid resting his read on my leg for about 3 hours.
8. The last 10 hours of the trip were ridden in complete darkness, preventing any reading forcing us to rely on dying Ipod batteries
9. Assholes from New Zealand
10. Some little kid playing some game boy game with the volume on blast playing the same song over and over for about an hour. Almost caused an international incident.

Hellish bus ride aside, we made it and are staying with a very friendly lady in her hostal. It costs $10 a night and has hot showers so there´s little to complain about. We´ve just started exploring the city and it seems pretty awesome. We´ll have a couple more updates hopefully before we head out early Monday morning for our trek.

Never ride South American buses,
David

Arica

Hey everybody. Just so you know, we are alive and well, and are now in the town of Arica, the northernmost town in Chile. How we got here...

After the ski trip we all went back to the hotel with big plans for a last night out. Unfortunately we were all very tired and only made it out with about 8 people. Then, we realized it´s sunday night, and all the bars close around 2. Thus, we ended up going to bed pretty early. The next morning we packed up and said our tearful goodbyes to the group around noon. From there we went to the bus station and bought our tickets to Arica. At four the bus departed and... 28 hours later, here we are. Tired, fractious, but ready for our 16 hour bus ride that starts tomorrow at 7 a.m.

Pros about the bus ride:
Big seats that lean all the way back
We all got to sit together
Stretta snores less in an upright condition
Lots of Niquil (sp?) ensuring hours of catatonia
The occasional movie

Cons:
28 damn hours
a baby two rows up that felt the need for everyone on the bus to know everytime it awoke, ate, excreted, or took any action whatsoever
A dog in the luggage compartment directly behind us that took the same view as the baby
A faulty speaker above our heads that turned off and on, over and over, without settling on one or the other
Movies such as house bunny, the guardian, and angels and demons, all in spanish.

Just to give some perspective, If you set out and drove from Atlanta to San Diego, it would take you about as long as we just spent on a bus. We are all a bit tired, and, due to the seediness of our hospital and the fact that we have no alarm clock to wake us at six, we will be sleeping in shifts tonight. What an adventure!

As always we all send our love to family and friends. To all of our classmates in Chile, hope you keep up with us on the blog, and we´ll try to make future entries a bit funnier. Also, Megan, we all express our sincere hopes that your MRI comes back negative for a torn ACL. Best of luck with that.

Matt Bailey

Ski Trip

View from the mountain



View from the top

Stretta before tackling the slopes

Ski pros


We went skiing today about an hour outside of Santiago. About fifteen of us made the early morning trek up to the slopes on a bus with a tour guide who was very clearly ripping us off by charging us $15, then $20, then $30 for the trip. He did manage to navigate his way up the side of a mountain in a bus pretty well though. The trip up was slightly horrifying, slightly fun. The horrifying part being the 47 cut backs (all numbered and named), the fun part being the 80s video mix tape that was playing on the bus DVD player the whole time. We made it up on the lift around 11:45 and didn't stop until 5 o'clock. The slopes were great and the views were amazing. The slopes were quite different than slopes out west as we were well above the tree line. They were mostly very well groomed, which played nicely into my skills, which hardly amount to much. Stretta braved the snow board and some good falls, but overall was pretty good. Matt skis with reckless abandon, but he does it well so it's all good. It was a very fun day overall and we're exhausted but getting ready to head out for our last night in Santiago. Apologies for the boring post, but Hard Candy is on TV and it's hard to be witty when Ellen Page is being real creepy.

Bus ride starts tomorrow so we might be out of touch for a while. Hope all is well stateside,

Dave

Night Life in Santiago and Valparaiso

So apparently when I don`t post on here for a while, Matt starts insulting my pop culture preferences. Unbelievable that in this day and age some people can`t appreciate the song writing genius that is Green Day`s Billie Joe Armstrong. In any case, we went out for our Mexican dinner last night, which was definitely Mexican done Chilean-style. The food was decent (and about half the price of the Peruvian place), but not really all that great. Matt ordered cheese dip to find that it was cheese in a bowl that looked much like the inside of a grilled cheese sandwhich. You needed a knife to cut chunks away from it. If Shaq or a small horse was prone to gastrointestinal problems, one order of this cheese dip could replace a week`s worth of Immodium. We had a good time messing around with our waiter who spoke English pretty well and after dinner we went out for an expensive (again, damnit) night on the town.

We managed to cab our way to a strip of bars that were more diverse than a college promotional brochure. These places ranged from extremely touristy (Bedrock: a Flinstones themed restaurant/salsa bar) to extremely seedy (the Green Bull, a definite dive bar, complete with bathroom coke heads). Not to scare the parents here but we ducked into the seedy bar to check out the live band that was playing. I wish I had my camera to take a picture of these guys. They were old and pretty normal looking, except for the singer looked like an overweight, extra tan Steven Tyler. Next to him on stage he had a table full of drinks that he would wink at girls and hand out. This band so much enjoyed the stylings of Queen that they played We Are the Champions not once, but twice before we left. It was an interesting place to say the least. We ducked our heads into a couple more places before settling into a Karioke bar. The ladies we were with gave us a most stirring rendition of the Bee Gee`s classic, `Stayin Alive` and our friend Sam did his best country dance version of recently departed MJ`s `Billie Jean`. This along with Chilean`s singing Pearl Jam made for another interesting experience. The night ended with Groundhog Day back at the hotel until the wee hours of the morning. You can`t fake love Bill Murray and God bless that little groundhog for helping you see that.

We woke up bright and early this morning to the delicious breakfast here at the hotel. We`re enjoying it much more than the breakfast that awaited us each morning in La Serena: Bread, slimy ham, and cheese. Here there`s a pretty good spread: eggs, sausage, fresh fruit, cereals, and yogurt. We hopped on the bus with hopes of napping for the two hour ride to the coast and Valparaiso. However, our dreams were spoiled by the most gregarious man I`ve ever met in my life, our tour guide. This guy talked into the bus microphone for the entire trip. My favorite thing that he did was have conversations with people in the front of the bus with the microphone still at his mouth. Two hellish hours later we pulled into Valparaiso, which is quite a sight to behold. The city is right on the sea and there`s not really any flat land at all, rather there are just houses built literally on top of houses built on top of houses for as far as you can see. It`s a pretty neat city though, with quite a bit of character. There`s a fairly young population in the city with quite a few different universities. We took a quick city tour with our tour guide, who miraculously could still talk after four hours nonstop. We stopped off at Pablo Neruda`s house, which was a pretty cool spot even though I know very little of his work. We also got to check out some cool graffiti throughout the city. Next we drove through neighboring La Vina del Mar, which looks a lot like Beverly Hills. I can only imagine these places are swimming with tourists in the summer. We stopped off for lunch right on the coast and climbed around some tidal rocks before jumping the bus back to Santiago.

Overall, this city is pretty cool. It`s absolutely enormous. Six million people live here, making up about 40% of Chile`s population. Tonight we`re going to take it easy and hit the sack early gearing up for a long day of skiing tomorrow. I`m very excited for the ski trip, but not very excited for the 36 hour bus ride to Peru that will follow it. The group leaves the day after tomorrow and the real adventure begins!

Dave

Goodbye to La Serena

Hey everybody. Sorry it´s been a little while since we last wrote of our exploits. Since we left La Serena downtime (and computer time) has become a bit more scarce.

Since Stretta wrote of their sickness, I have stayed healthy. Tuesday we had a day off to study for our final which took place Wednesday. Therefore we did next to nothing. My friends were still feeling sick, so we went to the mall, bought yet more McDonalds, and went to a subtitled version of Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince. Reviews were uniformly deliriously high, perhaps because we have all become pop culture starved in our time down here. Dave dissented to a certain extent, but that´s because he is apparently a "Harry Potter purist." He is also under the impression that this is a socially acceptable thing to be.

The next day we took our test, which consisted of 37 short answers involving political systems from various countries around the world. Just like that, we were done with class. We were leaving the next day at 10 a.m., so we packed all of our stuff up and headed to our farewell dinner. At the dinner we drank some wine, various people made toasts (Stretta made a wonderful one, but will not tell me about it accept to say that it was wonderful) and the dinner was capped off with several songs played on guitar. This includes a stirring rendition of Green Day´s "I hope you had the time of your life." How Dave reached deep and came up with such an obscure homage to time spent with friends is beyond me. Really gave us a pop culture gem though. That night we all went out to our very favorite club, Club Voltre. That is where I´ll leave the story of the evening, but we all had a great time and crazy hijinks, tomfoolery, and ballyhoo were all part of a night that stretched to around 5 in the morning.

The next day at 953 we woke up, shouldered our bags and staggered to the bus, only to emerge from the bus 8 hours later with the barest impression of time having passed and feeling blue eyed, bushy tailed and ready to take on...

Santiago. Santiago is huge, smoggy, and as we soon learned, not created with any particular worry about the ability of tourists to find an inexpensive restaurant close to their gringo hideaway, the hotel Bonaparte. So, the guys split off from the group and decided the only thing to do was walk approximately 12 miles to an upscale Peruvian restaurant called La Overchargo, or something to that effect. Bottled water - 1700 pesos (3.20 ish). The use of one of their apparently in demand seats - 2000 pesos (4.00 ish). We got fleeced, but the food was excellent and they had the best Pisco sour I´ve yet had down here. However, something about spending 30 bucks on dinner makes you hesitant to hit up the club and bar scene. Therefore we came home, watched Panic Room in our panicing-about-going-bankrupt room, and called it a night.

This morning we got up at 9 and started a walking tour of Santiago at 10. This tour headed into the center of town where we saw statues of various leaders of Chile over the years. We went into a beautiful cathedral in which the hearts (yes hearts) of four Chilean soldiers were in a box in a shrine. Also, there was a fingerbone on display. Quite weird, but the cathedral was beautiful. After that we went to the edge of town and rode a huge tram up the side of a hill and took in an amazing scenic view of Santiago. Pictures forthcoming if Dave and Stretta get their acts together. After that we wandered back to the hotel, stopping on the way to get an inexpensive, amazing lunch and buy trinkets for loved ones. After a catnap we are readying ourselves for crazy Chilean nightlife, after a dinner of what is hopefully authentic Mexican first. Miss everybody, and we´ll let you know how tonight goes hopefully sometime tomorrow.

Matt Bailey

The black lung

Girls are dumb. Exhibit A their immune systems are weak. Exhibit B they have the kooties. Some of the ladies on the trip managed to get some sort of sickness, ¿who would get sick in the middle of winter?, and felt that they should share the love. So most of yesterday was spent in bed sleeping and trying to recover. Dave, Matt, and I went to the market for an hour yesterday and looked at all the small artisan stands but most everything in Chile is closed on Sunday. Instead of hanging around we ended up going to, the always not as delicious as in the states but still makes you feeling like you have eaten an entire weeks worth of garbage, McDonald´s and then the grocery store. Once we got back to the cabañas nap time became a neccesity, while the rest of our friends went to the orphanage. They say the kids were wonderful and I believe them.... but we didn´t want to risk getting the babies sick so we stayed home(we do have hearts sometimes). Last night everyone grilled out food, we made burgers, and it remained a relatively calm night. We watched Mission Impossible 3 and also Disturbia. During MI3 Dave and I took our temperatures using a thermometer that looked like a duck, precious I know. Dave scored somewhere in the 99´s, we think it is coming down, and I managed to come in with an almost healthy again 98.8. Matt has yet to get the sickness and we hope he doesn´t, but Dave and I should be healthy in the next few days (pretty much just have naging coughs). Parents don´t worry we are well medicated and sleeping often. Currently I am sitting next to my professor´s 9 year old daughter in the library creating baby ponies on ponystars.com. It´s really an amazing site you should check it out. We shall see if I can keep my baby fire pony alive for the next few days, have your fingers crossed.
Adios,
Stretta

Ovalle and the Majestic Valley

We all enjoyed the soccer game a lot. I thought I would share with you all my best interpretation of my favorite cheer:

Wabble wabble wabble, wabble wabble wabble, wabble leeso
Wabble wabble wabble, wabble wabble wabble, ayyyyyy
Wabble wabble wabble, wabble wabble wabble, wabble leeso
Wabble wabble wabble, wabble wabble wabble *crazy whistling*

People here really are crazy about their futball teams. The flags we bought to wave at the game read, "If the Lions were playing in heaven, I'd die just to see them." Also worth noting is that there is a literal mote around the field to prevent people from rushing it. There's also police wearing nothing short of riot gear ready to beat some ass.

Friday morning passed without much event. We went home after class to rest up for our own soccer game against the Chileans. We made it back to the school at around 4:30 to warm up our foot skills, work on our touch, and do our best not to embarass ourselves. The girls played their game first and things didn't look good for us. Because of a lack of numbers, we ended up playing the games on a basketball court. Our ladies did have a savior in Beth, who plays for GCSU. I think they ended up putting up 4 or 5 goals to the Chileanas 10 or 12. Not a bad effort. We took the field... court and saw our opponents.
Our advantages:
1. Six to ten inches in average height
2. Six to ten times better hair cuts
3. The sheer size of Matt Bailey's feet
Their advantages:
1. Better ball handling
2. Better shape
3. Quicker
4. Kick harder
5. Years of experience
In spite of our heaping disadvantages we did manage to score one goal. More by mistake than anything else, but it counts. They only scored like... you know... 12 or 14. Not a bad effort.

After the game we had to come home and ice our injuries like old men. We ended up taking it easy and watching whatever movies that were in English that we could find. This morning we woke up much too early to drive two hours north to the Lumari Valley. The first stop was a rocky outcrop with a small creek running through it. There are a lot of carvings and drawings on the rocks from the people who lived here even before Incas moved in. It was pretty cool to see and a lot of fun to screw around on the rocks.
Our next stop was the Tabli Vineyard not too far away. Apparently the vineyard was the idea of some billionaire and is unique because it's the northern most vineyard in Chile. In fact, it's right on the edge of a desert. This means that they have a very unique brand of grapes that make for some great wines. The buildings at the vineyards were so nice and very clearly built by someone with a lot of money. There was a big mural of the Majestic Valley (the nickname of the valley) in the cellar that spanned about 20 or 30 feet of wall and was about 6 feet tall. Very impressive. The '05 Shiraz from this vineyard was voted the best Shiraz in the world that year. We tasted a few of the wines and bought a couple bottles a piece to take home.

We're sitting around the cabana tonight trying to figure out something to do. Tomorrow, we're going to visit an orphanage and have a cookout here at the cabanas.

Hope everyone back home is surviving the heat. We miss it.

Dave

futbol!

Hey everybody. So picking up from where Dave left off, yesterday night we had salsa lessons at some dance studio. That was really fun, but I think we intimidated the instructor, local chileans, and the rest of our group with Dave, Stretta, and my instinctive command of and proficiency at Salsaing. I felt bad at making everyone else look so arhythmic by comparison, but you can´t make yourself worse than you are, right?

After that we went back to our place, where we prepared some steaks and played a South American card game called Truco (Sp?). The game is basically a combination of spades, poker, and blatant cheating. Really fun, though Nick, our friend who knew how to play, was clearly much better than any of us. Anyways, after that we had a group discussion and decided we would go to this club called Kamikaze. A fact that at first seemed irrelevant but later in the night became both important and unpleasant is that Kamikaze happens to be right across from the... casino! Yay, gambling. So we go to Kamikaze, only to find out that it doesn´t open until 1230. From there some of us split off, but most of us go to the.... casino. The damned casino. The majority of us have the sense to just sit around the bar, drink, and watch the gamblers, but a few of us go back to the blackjack table. Of those who played, all but one made at least 20 dollars. One of us made 100 dollars. One of us lost 60 dollars and has decided that gambling isn´t for him and that all Chilean dealers are damn cheating assholes. (not going to tell you which person was which...) So, when 1230 roles around we go back to the club. Most of us dance, a few of us sit around the bar area and grumble over our losses. Anyways, the night passes, and we all end up trickling into the cabanas, the latest of us around 5 or so. Chile has transformed my friends into a bunch of club rats.

The next morning is free, so I crawl out of bed around 11, and chill out until 1230, when we hop on the buses and start heading to Antacollo, a small mining town about 90 minutes away. About halfway there we stop for lunch in what is surely the most bizarre restaurant I´ve ever been to. For starters, it is all about half outdoors, with only a roof over our heads. I hesitate to say over our heads though, because the roof is anywhere from 5 foot 2 to 6 feet, depending on where you stand. Ever get served lunch in a nuclear submarine or the bottom of a mine? Same basic height constraints. Thirdly, surrounding the restaurant is a bizarre menagerie composed of, in no particular order, emus, hawks, chickens, birds, and swans of every conceivable description, llamas, a half retarded mini llama thing, rabbits, an iguana, and a disquieted and thoroughly frightening puma. Those that were caged were kind of sad looking; it is clear that they are not being cared for to the standards one would expect. Another surprise, however, was that many of the enclosures were nonchalantly without a wall or two. In other words, the animals were in their cages, but in many cases there was nothing that particularly required that they stay there. That kept the heart pumping a bit.

Anyways, after our thoroughly bland lunch (who on earth thinks lemon juice is a salad dressing?) we head to Antecollo. This is a tiny, impoverished mining town which still has a church that seats 10000 people. Heavily Catholic, heavily religious. We arrive just in time for a procession into the church of a statue of the virgin Mary. Everyone is dressed up, people are beating drums and singing, and a huge platform containing a near life-sized statue of the Virgin is adorned with flowers, and other unrecognizable decorations. My Spanish is nonexistent, but as far as I can understand the Virgin was in a place besides the church, and this parade thing is taking her into the church. Not sure about the nature of the holiday besides that. Anyways, after the parade ended we looked around the church for a little bit and made our way home to La Serena. We arrived at 7, giving us just over an hour until it was time to leave for...

The futbol match! This clash of the titans pitted the heroic Universitad de Chile against the nefarious and probably inbred Universidad do Concepcion. We showed up, looked around, decided I enjoyed my body being free of bruises and contusions, and thus all bought flags showing we were heavily in favor of whatever team you angry and drunk looking gentlemen are in favor of. That ended up being (unsurprisingly) Chile. Not sure how the teams are organized (they are sort of pro but aren´t, and each team is called university), what they were playing for (one team gets to represent Chile in some cup or something and the other gets put in the stockades) or what exactly the rules of soccer are (seems like it would be easier if they used their hands). Overall though, I got swept away in the emotion of the thing. The stadium was only about 66 percent full, but from the beginning of the game until the end there was never ending cheering. That cheering literally lasted until we got off the bus in La Serena around midnight. Anyways, at the game I got to see Chile beat Concepcion 3-1 and thus win something good that may or may not have some degree of importance. I also got to see a guy get beat the hell up, until a carabiñero waded in with a nightstick and showed that if anyone was going to be beating on someone, it was him. So that was pretty neat. Like I said, got home around midnight or so, and hit the hay. Once again, woke up this morning to cold temperatures, and I have decided that the only bad things about this country are the food, the heat, and the fact that they insist on speaking a language that I know nothing about. Hope you´re all enjoying your air conditioning and your big Macs with large fries.

Matt Bailey

Casino Royale

So last night Matt and I checked out the Casino here in town. It´s a small little joint filled mostly with slots. We left most of our money at home and grabbed a cab for the ten minute ride to the hotel it´s at. We were hoping there would be a 1.000 peso (about $2) minimum table for some blackjack, but no luck. So we take our small amount of money and sit at the 5.000 peso min. We played for about 45 minutes before Matt hit a cold streak and went out. Luckily I had won the last three or four hands in a row (including splitting sixes twice in a hand), so I ended up 12.000 pesos (about $20) up. Cab ride back home was on me.

Today was another early morning and boring class day. We have a salsa lesson tonight, which should be fun. Tomorrow is a national holiday so we don´t have class. As Stretta mentioned, we´ll be going to a soccer game over in Coquimbo that starts in the evening. Other than that not too much to talk about. I am starting to miss some parts of the US. The food here is pretty bad honestly. It´s very bland: no salt, no spices, nada. Stretta and I went to the McDonalds at the mall the other day just to have a little taste of America. We eat lunch at the University each day and the typical meal is this:
- Small salad made of iceberg lettuce shreds, two tomato slices, and a (bad) olive with only lemon juice as salad dressing
- The main course, usually a small portion of meat casseroled with potatoes, with no salt to be found
- Oddly textured dessert that almost always looks better than it tastes
We´ve been taking turns making dinner at the cabaña, which has been going well. Last night was porkchops and applesauce. Ultimately though, I spend the majority of the day with aching hunger.

The weather yesterday was such a bummer too. It made me really long for the opressive heat of the good ol´South. Not having a heater is getting really annoying, especially when we have to sit through 90 minute long lectures on the Chilean economy in what amounts to an outdoor classroom. Oh well. Vive Chile.

All is quiet on the southern front

Since our return from Elqui Valley things have been fairly quite. Monday class resumed as normal, but we had our lecture in a coffee shop in the middle of downtown. It was an interesting class because we were people watching while people were staring at us. A lot of awkward eye contact and a little bit of learning later we had the first truly awful lunch. After lunch Matt, Dave, and I went to the grocery store and hopefully bought enough food and wine to make it through the next week. After a glorious nap the whole crew went to Martin Fierro to celebrate one of the professors 56th birthday. Martin Fierro is a mecca as it turns out because they bring you grills with slabs and slabs of meat sizzling and looking delicious. After struggling to get enough money to pay the bill we went back to the cabanas for a cocktail (or two) before heading to one of the bars on the beach. The night was pretty uneventful as we just hung out and enjoyed each others company. Our spanish college ambassador type person, Cristobal, hung out with us and I foolishly promised that I was going to play soccer with him today. We returned from the bar and Dave and I had a minor tustle. His weapons of choice were a sauce pan and a large spoon. I chose a large spatula. As our minor slap battle progressed Matt watched from the sidelines cheering us on. Dave lost the bout as he realized this morning he had a bruised thumbnail. This morning we awoke to ominous clouds. Unlike the states, ominous clouds just mean that it is miserably cold and there might be slight precipitation every once in a while. We managed to survive the longest lecture of the trip on Africa and the AIDS pandemic, a real uplifting topic at 9 in the morning. Luckily for me it was misted the entire class so I didn't have to play soccer with the Chileans. Nap time was a certainty and we attended a boring lecture about the Chilean economy. Dave counted plates and tiles, Matt made imprints on his hands by squish them between his butt and the wicker chair, and I stared at the bottom of my shoes for the better half of an hour (we might still be 6 years old). As I am typing this Matt and Dave have gone to the casino and hopefully they don't lose all their money(but don't hold your breath). Thusday we are going to a soccer game in Coquimbo and Friday we shall attempt to not make ourselfs look too dumb in our very own game against Chilean students (should be a specatcle imagine Matt's tugboat feet, Dave's utter grace when he runs, and my washed up soccer skills).
Adios,
Stretta

Elqui Valley

View from the Capel Distillery


View from Mistral's tomb



Barrels of Pisco

The Elqui valley, mountains, and grape fields

All the guys

Picture of the moon through the telescope

Hey everybody. Sorry its been a few days since we've been able to update the blog. We spent the weekend staying in a small town in the Elqui Valley, which is about an hour's drive from La Serena. This town had less internet access and we are only just now getting to a computer.

So, we leave La Serena and arrive in Vicuna around 6 p.m. After eating dinner, we went straight to an observatory that boasted several 12 inch refracting telescopes and a 15 inch in the dome. This was in my opinion one of the coolest things we have done on this trip. We looked at Jupiter and Saturn (Jupiter's galilean moons were in alignment, which was pretty cool. *Dave edit: Man, Matt is a nerd.*) We got the constellations pointed out to us and looked at a few globular clusters and the large and small Magellanic clouds, which are actually galaxies. All this is so cool because the southern sky is completely different from the sky in the northern hemisphere. Of course, to top it all off we got to see the stereotype of the southern skies, the southern cross, which is like the big dipper here. Anyways, after that we went back to our houses, which were really cool, and had bigger rooms, which led to everyone picking one (ours) and hanging out till the wee hours of the morning. Great day.

The next day we woke up feeling chipper after our nearly 4 hours of quality sleep. We had a full day ahead of us. First we went to the museum/ former home of Nobel laureate and Chilean poet Gabrielle Mistral. Riveting, simply riveting. No in all seriousness we would have approached this with more interest if not for the earliness of the morning and the fact that everything was in spanish. Also, excepting T.S. Stretta, poetry is not our thing. Anyways, after that we went to the Capel Pisco distillery. If you don't know, Pisco is a brandy made from a specific type of sweet grape grown right here in the Elqui valley. Only 3-5 percent of the product is exported, making prices for this brandy dirt cheap and it the de facto national drink of Chile. The best way to describe the taste would be strong apple juice or cider. A very sweet taste, but one that will knock you on your ass. The tour basically showed us the brewing process, which involved creating grape juice from grapes, fermenting that into wine, and further fermenting that into the finished product. At the gift shop we all bought a few bottles, which I predict will become gifts for some lucky individuals, owing to the fact that the liquor is delicious and costs about 1.50 American per 750. After the distillery we got lunch, hung out in the town square, and drove into the mountains to the tomb of the aforementioned Mistral. There we actually had the chance to interact with many locals. The tomb is supposed to inspire poetic/artistic thought in people. While none of us felt the call of our inner poet, others brought guitars and we sang native folks songs and some American songs (Let it Be) with a group of native Chileans that rapidly grew throughout and eventually peaked at around 25 people loudly singing Chile's "second national anthem". It was a really unique cultural experience.

That night the leaders of the program bought a ton of meat, wine, beer, potatoes, etc, and we had a barbecue in the grills out back of our little compound. After the barbecue we once again hung out in our place until late into the night. Highlights include (but are certainly not limited to) spirited debate on a variety of topics, a girl who had a bit too much to drink and ended her evening with a rendition of MJ's Thriller dance and being precipitously close to incoherence (not going to name names) and a late night no holds barred bread fight. It was a good night.

This morning we woke up once again perky and ready for the day. We had some early morning horseback riding planned, but none of us were particularly keen on that (due in my case to the natural fear and distate horses have for me that I gladly reciprocate). Instead we went for a hike, saw some beautiful views. Then we came back down and hung out until the buses came. Now we are back. I haven't showered in three days (no hot water in the valley). We are watching Apollo 13 in english and are planning an exciting evening of card playing and a dinner of fried eggs. If we plan to be at all moderate about this trip tonight will be a quiet night.

Thanks for reading, and feel free to let us know what you think of the blog and what further information/insights/zany stories you feel we should share.

Matt Bailey

Events since last night

Hey guys,

I know its only been a few hours since the last post, but since my folks asked me to write and stretta´s mom called me out as a ¨slack ass,¨ I decided to weigh in with a few stories and impressions of my own.

So while Stretta was busily blogging last night, I and a few others went out in downtown La Serena to get a few drinks. As we are arbitrarily walking into the first bar we see, these two girls are walking out. They say hello and we invite them in to hang out with us. One speaks decent english, and so we start to chat. Something that continually amazes me is the pervasiveness of American culture. This girl´s favorite music was stuff like Allman Brothers, Pearl Jam, Joe Cocker, people and groups I wasn´t even that familiar with. It´s so crazy that they listen to our music to this degree.

Anyways, these girls cause more people to magically materialize, and we had a really interesting night talking (or, in my, case, gesticulating and attempting to make myself understood via a series of grunts, pantomimes, and cerveza por favors) to people from a variety of places in latin america. Spoke to a Columbian guy who I instantly offended because i thought he was trying to sell me drugs. Apparently not every Columbian citizen is Pablo Escobar. In my defense though he said a word that started with ¨d¨and was in Spanish so how was I to know. However, after that initial road block we found the people to be overwhelmingly friendly and curious about us. At the end of the night one asks us for a cigarette, and we don´t have any, but one of my buddies has chewing tobacco. He offers it to us by saying repeatedly in Spanish, ¨don´t swallow.¨ She grinningly accepts a golf ball-sized hunk of the stuff and starts chewing voraciously as if she´s trying to get down a big ole slab of beef jerky. We get the hell out of there before, I assume, she starts vomiting thirty seconds later. Another interesting tidbit is that, towards the end of the night, we find out those two girls we initially met up with are both in high school and are around 16 or 17. They were out with us until around 3 or 4 in the morning. What a different culture. Luckily the evening stayed pg, and the mixup in perceived age didn´t come back to haunt anybody.

This morning we wake up and have a chat with a man who survived the Pinochet years. It was completely fascinating. I don´t know about you readers, but I knew next to nothing about Pinochet´s takeover. Apparently the military hid food prior to the takeover so that the population was nearly starving when the military swept in, burned the communist president´s mansion, and gave back the food they had hidden. Of course they blamed the shortages on the communists, and initially people loved Pinochet. However, the next seventeen years proved them very wrong. Pinochet´s secret police would make you disappear if it was so much as rumored that you had ties to the left. It all finally ended when people from other countries came in to control the elections. When the people were actually free to vote as they wanted they swiftly voted Pinochet out of power. Anyways, I would right more but my time on the internet is almost out. Hope everyone is doing well.

Matt Bailey

First Impressions of Chile

Our first week in the southern hemisphere has come to an end. Our days have been packed full and we've hardly had time to sit down, relax, and collect our thoughts about Chile. Tonight Andrew and I are staying in and together we will do our best to give you our cultural impressions of a country that is extremely different than the US.

First off I'd like to say that there are stray dogs everywhere and it's the saddest thing. There's clearly no Bob Barker to help control the pet population. A ton of the dogs are german shepherd mixes and really good looking dogs. Stray cats are harder to come by, I think mostly owing to the fact that the dogs have got to be eating something...

Now I, Stretta, will make my debut to the blogisphere. The culture and social structure is very different from that of the states. In Chile there is not much social mobility. We have discussed many times in class that no matter what skills you possess money is the ultimate deciding factor as to how far you will make it in life. Kids who grow up in family with wealth can afford to send their kids to better schools giving their children a better probability of passing the entrance exam for an accredited university. Without an equivalent to a bachelors degree, you are up shit's creek without a paddle. Many of the impoverished people, unlike in the states, are concentrated in the suburbs. The rich center around the middle of the city which creates an interesting dichotomy when walking around the streets of La Serena and Coquimbo. The main roads in the city are littered with vendors selling underwear, trinkets, and many useless objects, but this is "their place" in life as our guide says. It is interesting to see people bombard you with everything they have but nothing you need. It is even more entertaining to see them attack Matt, because he shys away and yells for me, which is also hilarious because I only speak very broken spanish. We certainly stick out as a bunch of goons. Which leads me to our next subject.

The inhabitants of Chile are very very very very short. We have only seen one person in our stay that was as tall as us. So needless to say we stick out just a bit. Everywhere we go people stare shamelessly at us as if we are a zoo attraction. We are the "Gringos." We were told not to get offended because they call everyone that is not Latin American a gringo. I don't believe I will ever get used to the fact that most people are just blatantly staring at you every moment you are in public. Many of the Chilean guys our age have some bent up tension towards us because we are so stunningly beautiful and their women love us more than them. Not really though, there is a stigma that men have machismo. Machismo is the overly masculine characterisitics that men feel is a neccesity to portray. Weird. So many times I have encountered 5'5'' Chilean guys that have choice words. Kindof hilarious because I have to bend over to hear what they are saying to me. I don't think that makes them happy either. But they do love our American women so as long as we around girls there isn't too much hatred displayed. We have friends and they want yall to know that....Now I am going to pass the computer to our expert blogger Dave for a somewhat hilarious story about how messed up Latin American politics are.

So Latin American politics are pretty much like a drunken, five foot two inch soap opera. So there are three players in our little play: Chile, Peru, and asshole Bolivia. Some time in the last two hundred years the three countries had a big war over rights to watching pretty sunsets on the beach. Stupid Bolivia lost the war and lost all rights to awesome spring break parties on the beach. At this point Chile and Peru make a deal that they won't give Bolivia any land ever without eachother's consent. Chile makes this agreement and then realizes, "Oh shit! We don't have any way to get energy," which is true. So recently Chile has sucked it up and gone to their rich little brother Bolivia and said we'll give you access to the sea if you set us up with some of your gas. Bolivia is a friendly little guy and says alright that sounds good. The problem is now Peru doesn't want to give up the land. So Chile is left buying everything from their short compadres, the Chinese, and Bolivia still has no where to spend their vacations. Crazy Latin Americans.

This weekend we're heading inland to the Elqui Valley where we will be visting an observatory and a Pisco distillery. Should be a fun weekend! We'll have updates on Sunday night.

Coquimbo

our new friends. and one ginger.


from the top of the cross


and again



Matt looking fly with his sweater

Andrew with our UGA alum friend Nick

statue from Easter island in the museum here

La Serena and Coquimbo are neighboring cities here on the coast. They are of comparable size, but from what I´ve seen I would say that they differ as much as any two cities in spite of their proximity. Coquimbo is the port town here and they say that´s why it´s much crazier than La Serena - also much less safe. The city front is along the water line with a big steep hill comprising most of the city and they warn tourists not to go up the hill. In fact, one of our groups was walking up the hill and was told to quickly make a right turn by an old woman shaking her head and drawing her finger across her throat.
The biggest (literally) attraction of Coquimbo is, however, at the top of the hill. Overlooking the city by the sea is the world´s largest cross. I don´t know exactly how tall it is, but it´s quite large. You can take two elevators to the top giving you a great view of the surrounding area, from the Coquimbo bay to the ocean and from the city front to the snow capped mountains in the distance. It was a great view from the top. We hiked back down the hill into the city front for some lunch only to find that almost everything was closed because it was Sunday and a religious holiday (San Pedro´s day). We made our way back to La Serena via city bus. I´m almost certain that not once did we come to a complete stop on the bus ride. It seems like the drivers just slow down and people jump off and on. Then the driver furiously speeds back up to merge back into traffic while throwing change at people who just got on.
The next morning was our first day of class and our sleepy eyed group gathered together to wait for the bus at 9am. The class Matt, Stretta, and I are taking is Intro to World Politics and it´s being taught by an Armstrong professor named Jose da Cruz. He´s originally from Brazil, where after serving in the military regime became a diplomat and worked for Brazil´s ambassador (who was ´a real dick´). He´s a little bit crazy, but fun to talk to. His views on politics are some what insane (´Do I miss the military regime? Of course I do´), but the class maintains a very relaxed discussion based atmosphere. We certainly have the least amount of work out of all of the classes and because we´re only taking one class we get done at 2 each day, leaving us a completely free afternoon.
Our second day of class was much the same as the first. At lunch, about midway through the main course, the room started shaking. About ten seconds later we had all survived our very first earthquake. Awesome.

Last night we went back out to the bar on the beach, actually right next door to the internet cafe I´m currently at. We were celebrating one of the (few) guys on the trip´s birthday. We talked to some strange locals for a while, realizing at the end of the night that they had been putting all their drinks on our tab. All in all it was a fun night and was not much fun waking up for our tour of the city this morning. We went to a museum containing some artifacts from the first civilizations in the region and learned a little bit about the history of the region. Then we went to a house in the square downtown where a former president of Chile lived. His name escapes me right now, but he was president from 1944-1950. There were pictures of him with Ike, Truman, Elenor Roosevelt and a lot of other important figures. We saw a protest in downtown Chile. Apparently some miners hadn't been paid in three months. There were police everywhere, causing me to comment on how impressed I was that they weren't just beating the protesters. However, I've come to find out that they did indeed arrest them and carry them off in a big paddywagon.

After lunch at the University we came home for some good quality nap time. Tonight we´re having a barbeque at our houses with some University students.

First Weekend in Chile

One of the bands that was playing

IM Soccer game

view from ULS

Apparently the fast food is very good here.

from the bus along the road

Hola Amigos
This post may not have much punctuation because this keyboard is somewhat cryptic. We arrived in Santiago on Friday morning around 7am. The first thing I saw when I got off the plane was that the group´s flight from Miami was canceled which was slightly horrifying because I speak no Spanish whatsoever. I managed to meet up with Matt and Andrew and one other girl who actually speaks Spanish. The first thing that happens when you exit the terminal is you are met by forty cab drivers who scream ´Minibus? Minibus? Ok Minibus later?´ After fending off the cabbies and almost making a huge mistake of going to a hostel with them we found that the group´s flight was not canceled, they just got rerouted through Dallas.

When you walk out of the airport in Santiago you can see snow covered mountains in the distance, a slightly better view than that of South Atlanta at Hartsfield. We got on the bus with the group which took us to La Serena. Santiago lies east of the mountains in Chile so we had to cross through them to get to the beach on the west coast where La Serena is. The vegetation is similar to California on the coast. Scrubby vegetation runs up to the feet of green mountains on the right and the beach is on your right. The beaches along the highway looked beautiful, but unlike the US, the further away from cities you get, the poorer the population gets. This means that the beaches we drove by were littered with small lean to shanties with tin roofs. We stopped at a gas station for our first Chilean meal which was the equivalent of fast food. Interesting to say the least. The bus ride was quiet for the most part as would be expected after a red eye flight. We got into La Serena around 6pm, at which point Matt, Andrew, and I headed down to the beach (a two block walk) where we sat at a restaurant, drank a (bad) Chilean beer and watched the sunset. We had a short meet and greet dinner with the entire group then most of us headed back to the beach to hang out at the bar. Everyone got to know eachother over a couple pitchers. I was pleasantly surprised to discover that the people on this trip are for the most part awesome. And they don´t all speak Spanish, which makes me feel like less of an idiot.

The second day started with us going to the University for a short tour. The Universidad La Serena is located up the hill from the beach and the buildings all over look the entire city and out to the ocean. The downside is that none of the classrooms are heated. After eating a lunch served with our first taste of Chilean wine we went to the ´IM´ fields (a big dirt soccer field) and watched an IM soccer game. The teams are comprised of the majors from the college and the game we watched was between the architechts (reigning champs) against the civil engineers. After an interested grocery store experience we went home to make dinner before going out to a folk dance festival. The festival turned out to be in a room about the size of a cafeteria with a few different Marriachi (I have no idea how to spell that) bands playing. We got some skeptical looks when we first arrived, but once the dancing started I think we earned a little respect from the Chileans. After the folk dance we were dropped off at a dance club with one of the students from ULS where we were let in in front of a long line of locals, which led to some very dirty looks. Chileans are under the impression that all Americans are rich so we were treated like royalty by the staff at this bar. We had a VIP area set up and got service immediately at the bar, leading to even more bad blood between us and the mullet sporting youth of Chile. After a long night of dancing, we all headed back to the hotel for late night hanging out. We came to be referred to as ´those Georgia boys´after our 3am swimming session.

Yesterday we took a trip to Coquimbo, a neighboring city. However my time on the internet is up.

Cheers!

View from the airport

Departure

We head out tomorrow from the Atlanta airport. Matt and Stretta are leaving early in the morning with layovers in Miami and Bogota, Columbia, where they will likely be the first people ever to throw a disc in a Columbian airport. That or they will be killed. Both equally probable. I leave later in the day around 10pm for my lonely direct flight down. We'll (hopefully) find the group to meet up at the Santiago airport around 7am tomorrow. Then we'll hop on a bus for 7 hours until we get to La Sarena.

Dave's spanish phrase of the day:
Soy americano. Me falta practica en Espanol.