One Way United

After spending a couple days in Valdivia we hopped on a bus for a quick three hour ride to Pucon in Chile. Our guidebook warns that this place can be rather touristy and to beware of inflated prices, but it is a worthwhile visit as the town is slated as the adventure capital of Chile. It’s not hard to see why as you can just about every extreme outdoor activity there is here. Hiking, mountainbiking, whitewater rafting, canopy, skiing, horseback riding, and you can even climb the beautiful and imposing Volcan Villarrica, the primary reason many people come to this place. Unfortunately, everything costs money and a lot of money at that. To go rafting on a class IV river would have cost about $36 a person and to do the volcano summit would have been at least $50. Some people paid as much as $70. Seeing as how we’d felt like we’d been spending way too much lately, we decided to hold back and find the cheapest form of entertainment we could for our short stay here. We arrived in the late afternoon and this older woman named Sylvia came right up to us and offered us to stay at her place. She seemed nice enough and it was a decent deal so we went with it. We didn’t do much the first night except explore the town and eat an expensive, but very good, pizza. The next day we figured we’d try hiking or something.

We actually didn’t leave town the next day as something occurred that we hadn’t been expecting. It turns out that Chile was in an election year and the former president: socialist Ricardo Lagos who had held office since the year 2000 was now stepping down. From what we gathered by listening to our host Sylvia he was a fairly successful president. He helped Chile’s economy grow tremendously and had an approval rating of 75% when he left office. The next president elect has a very interesting story, first of all because it was a woman. Not only that Michelle Bachelet is the very first woman president the country of Chile has ever elected, and she’s had a very impressive history even before that. It wasn’t too long ago that Chile was under control of the military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet from 1973 to 1990. During his reign he killed and tortured thousands of people. Bachelet herself was imprisoned and tortured before being exiled to England and Australia in 1975. Since then she has worked as pediatrician, raised three children pretty much on her own, and was appointed Chile’s first female defense minister along with being health minister.

I had no idea of any of this, but it was still impressive to watch on TV all the people gathering and celebrating in the streets of Santiago and Valparaiso as their new president made her way to what I assume was the senate to take her oath of office. I have never seen so many people this passionate about politics before. I had no clue as to the backstory behind all this at that point, but to see these people come together and actually CELEBRATE the election of a new president was inspiring to me. Maybe I’ve been living in the wrong areas, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen people care that much about an election, even if they did vote for the guy who won. So we watched Bachelet take her oath and then sing the national anthom. After this we felt we’d spent enough time in front of the TV and went out to look around and do things. It turns out people were celebrating here in this little town as well. A whole section of the main street was blocked off and various performers were singing and playing music in honor of their new leader. People were dancing, clapping, and we sat back and watched the festivities in awe. If politics were like this in America maybe people would actually care.

Later that night we went to the huge hotel casino near the water (I’m not kidding) and went and saw the movie “The Constant Gardner”. A very well-done, realistic, and unfortunately depressing movie about the state of things in Africa. I would recommend seeing it but won’t go into much detail here so I won’t spoil it for you. We also spent some time with a couple from North Carolina who were also staying at our place. We exchanged traveling stories and had a few good laughs. The next day we hitchiked to the nearbye national park to go hiking for the day. We went through a few forest and over some lava fields and even halfway up the volcano itself to where the ski lifts begin. We were then lucky enough to catch a ride down to town from people who had just finished hiking the volcano. No we need to shower and get ready for a nice long night bus ride to Santiago where we will spend the next few days, hoping to meet up with some people we met in Cochrane. Peace.

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Fabrice had already left Bariloche to meet Rose in Santiago and we went to the bus station to see when we could leave Bariloche and decide what our next destination would be.  We had thought seriously about buying bikes, and for a while I was really sure it was going to happen, but Adam and I decided that the inconvenience, the price, and the fact that we know nothing about bikes outweighed the coolness factor.  Now here we were, at the bus station, with no idea about our next destination.  Of course I brought up the bike idea again, always trying to keep our options and coolness factors open.  We sat there for a couple hours and I was blabbing about well…nothing.  We finally decided to go to Valdivia, Chile.  This was a decision we had pretty much made an hour and a half ago until I proceeded to complicate things by mentioning, once again, the bikes and the coolness.  It was Monday and we found out we could not leave to Valdivia until Wednesday.  Oh darn…2 more days in Bariloche…what to do?

We rented bikes.  There was this very scenic 60 km bike circuit nearby called Circuito Chico.  What a great opportunity to see what we are missing and doubt our decision once again!  The only day we could do it was Tuesday.  What a nice, beautiful, cold, rainy, windy, day that was!  We started our bike ride and immediately my chain came off.  Not a bad start.  We had a nice little headwind as well.  Even biking down hill this wind would stop us in our tracks and going up hill…well..pain, lots of pain.  We were halfway through the circuit and we were completely drenched.  My feet were completely submerged in water that had got in my shoes.  I was ahead of Adam and I saw a small ranger station.  Of course I went in to get warm.  Adam passed by the ranger station without seeing me.  I met a couple of firefighters there that were going to Bariloche right then.  The manly instinct in me wanted to refuse the ride…30 more km in this weather is nothing…bring it on!  After attempting to converse in Spanish for a while, Adam had already covered some distance and was probably pedaling as fast as he could trying to catch up to me.  I told them to at least drive me to where Adam was.  When we caught him, it was pretty obvious to us, although I hate to admit it, that we should accept the ride back into town.  So these guys drove us back to Bariloche which means we missed the 30 km where the wind would actually be at our backs…dang it!  Although it may not sound like it, I actually thought this bike ride was a lot of fun.  There is something satisfying about pedaling up a big long hill, into a strong headwind, in the rain, with every part of your body telling you to stop pedaling and walk, then telling your body with each painful pedal “screw you, I´m getting up this hill on this stupid bike,” and then doing it.  Maybe I am just sick. 

Anyways, on Wednesday we left for Valdivia.  We had one seat in the front of this big double decker bus.  The view from the front is amazing as there is the big window with an unobstructed view.  Adam rode there the first half of the bus ride and I rode there the second half.  We did the customs thing which is becoming old hat.  We got into Valdivia in the dark and this persistent women finally got us to say yes to stay at her house.  Valdivia is a college town on the shore of this giant river near the Pacific.  There is a fish market on the river shore where sea lions come to sun themselves and if they´re lucky, receive handouts.  We took a 6 hour cruise yesterday to a couple of 17th century military forts on these two islands.  We were also fed 2 first class meals and the whole thing only costed about $16 each…not bad.  The forts were amazing…both forts were right on the water and walls were still kind of intact despite the decay of time and the 9.5 earthquake that hit this area 40 years ago.  These forts reminded me of Scottish castles the way they were set.  Although I have never been to Scottland, that is how I imagine they would look like.  Anyway, today we are taking a bus to Pucon which is supposed to be beautiful.  It is set right along side a lake and a volcano.  I hope everybody is doing dandy!  Love ya´ll!    

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We have not posted in a while because, frankly, there has been nothing much to write about.  We have spent the last week or so just relaxing on Chiloe island.  The hostel we stayed at was really nice!  We had a flat screen TV in our own room with 50 channels, hot shower, an all you can eat free breakfast, free internet, and it cost less than $10 per person.  We met up with Trisha and her friend Kyle and they stayed at the same hostel for a few days as well.  They were planning on catching a ferry on tuesday from Puerto Montt to Puerto Natales but Kyle had his passport stolen in Santiago and had to go back there in order to replace it.  The only interesting thing we did on Chiloe was go the national park that was there.  We hiked for a while, found a big sandy beach, and proceeded to play pictionary in the sand for a couple hours…good times!  Also, we ate at a bar what must have been the biggest hamburgers in the world.  These things are simply undescribable…in diameter they are the size of a large pizza and are like 8 inches high…amazing…I was able to eat a whole one by myself (although I did only have meat and cheese) which resulted in Trisha giving me 1000 pesos (about $2).  The ferry ride from Chaiten to Chiloe was very beautiful…you can read more about it in the moments section along with something Adam wrote about being on the road for seven weeks.  Right now we are in Puerto Montt and will be leaving on a bus to Bariloche in roughly an hour.  Love ya´ll!   

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