Deadbeat Finish

So I have been very lazy about posting lately...mainly the last two countries. However, I did not want to sacrifice quality for quantity. So I will be cleaning up some older entries and writing some new ones once I get back (tomorrow night). More stories to tell and they will be told properly.

Salutations from Bogota...again.

Getting Chilly in Chile

In my last installment you found me in a bus station in northern Chile waiting for a 30 hour bus to Santiago. Now I am in a warm cozy cafe in Puerto Natales in southern Chile where the sun rises just after 5:00 AM and sets well after 10:00 PM.

My inability to read Spanish got me into that whole ATM bind, I didn’t see that there was a foreign customer button to select. All that button did was change the language to English and then charge you a $6.00 fee! But it was good to have cash in hand for my 30 hour trip when I was eating nothing but bread. All in all, 30 hours on my tush wasn´t too bad, I would do it again. The drive was great, we got to see the desert and get stopped for drug searches. One of them included us getting out of the bus at 1:00 AM to unpack our bags in the middle of the Atacama Desert. After the dogs ran through the bus we got back onboard and cruised down the Pan American. We stopped at a small town where the bus refueled and we got to take showers at a gas station. The bus kept going stopping for people along the way and we got into Santiago after 9:00 PM and the sun was setting, starting to enjoy the southern latitudes.

Santiago was a great city. My first impression was that it had the feel of Seattle, the busyness of San Francisco and the weather of San Diego. The first day I was in shorts and a t-shirt waiting for Josh to show up from the airport. I toured the city a bit myself, hoping today would be the first day I could eat normal food and at lunch I did...nothing to eventful. I did notice a tear in my contacts though so I ran to an optometrist and luckily got a fresh set of contacts without a prescription needed. They cost about the same as in the US with insurance.

After switching hostels to a weird hippie commune full of loud obnoxious Brazilian athletes in town for a competition we met up with a friend of a friend for drinks. We enjoyed pisco sours, mecheladas and a Fanshow. I enjoy the first two, but the third was a new one...Fanta and lager. It felt like drinking a backhanded hangover, very sweet. Meeting and talking with Alison made us feel at home, she told us about the city´s sights, restaurants, bars, people, language and most intriguing of all Santiago´s ¨cafes.¨

Though we never got to experience these, I wish we had just to say we did. It combines a strip club with a coffee shop, why hasn´t this caught on in Seattle? Men in business suits walk into a business space with blacked out windows and a neon sign that says ¨cafe,¨ but apparently it should just say ¨XXX.¨ We were looking for coffee and stumbled upon a chain that had clear windows. The cute gal behind the bar told us to go over to the man in the window to order our coffee. There we paid and he gave us a slip to give to the girl. Then the gal with a short skirt, nylons and makeup that was sparkly and thick brought out coffee to the bar and winked. This is apparently the G rated version of what´s inside the blacked out windowed version. Here you pay for ¨coffee,¨ but also order off the secret extended menu like at In-n-Out. Here I think that a ¨double double, animal style¨ might not be a double cheese burger with grilled onions.

The next day we headed up to an ex pat bar called the California Cantina to buy our tickets for a traditional Thanksgiving dinner, another tip from Alison. We had the best burgers of the trip and talked to the bartender a bit, a girl from North Carolina. We also got to watch part of the MLS cup game, I was amazed to see that it was Colorado and Dallas playing...and that they let us watch American soccer in Chile. After lunch things started to go down hill...our planning day for the rest of the trip turned into another ¨Chris is getting sick day¨ so I slept it away and went back on the bread diet.

Feeling rested and a little bit better, the next day Josh and I set out to put our plan in action. Buy plane tickets from Santiago to Punta Arenas to start our trip into Patagonia. At the ticket office Josh threw a wrench into the plans and set off a chain reaction that kind of solved some issues between us. We agreed on a plane ticket that would make us arrive in PA at 12:30 AM, not the most convenient time, but the price was right. Once in the office, the ticket price changed and it meant we could afford the next flight that would get us there at 9:30 the next day, perfect for me because I could get an extra day to recover and see Santiago...that was a NO GO for Josh, he wanted out of the city and fast. Sitting in the office sick I didnt want to argue so I told him if he wanted to waste our time he had to make a new plan on his own. I gave him a copy of my passport to buy any tickets needed and I went to the store and to bed.

I woke up with a bus ticket to Puerto Montt 12 hours away and a plane ticket from there to Punta Arenas, arriving on the same 12:30 AM flight. We agreed we make plans differently, I make them quick and am willing to put up with minor inconveniences, and Josh likes to take a bit longer, do more research and then implement...we ended up with the last two seats on the bus...That´s not how I like to roll.

That night Thanksgiving was a success! A nice gentleman with a good west coast accent greeted us and seated us in the surf shack, a banquet room with a projector showing the Cowboys-Saints game. Here we feasted on turkey, dressing, cranberry sauce, sweet potatoes, twice baked potatoes and pumpkin pie. Well Josh got to feast, I got to nibble and drink juice instead of the cinnamon pisco sour...but the sip was very tasty.

We were up and ready for our 6:00 AM bus and arrived at the wrong bus station (Josh booked the tickets at the wrong bus station) but we still made it in time and I was snug in my aisle seat next to the bathroom just in time for sunrise. Our bus arrived late into Puerto Montt after driving along what seemed like an endless Willamette Valley, boring scenery and not much change. We made the airport in time for my stomach to explode and were on our plane to PA, and on schedule. The flight was nice, dinner was served around 11:30 PM and because we were traveling at such low latitudes I got to see two sunsets in the same night! One from the ground and another an hour later on the plane!

In baggage claim, we met a nice German girl who needed a hostel. She decided to split a cab with us and hope our hostel had open space. Luckily they did at 1:30 AM in a small town with the temp around 40 degrees and windy. We got in and went to bed. The next morning we chatted with our new companion Antje, she was on a few month trek through South America as well and was just waiting for her sister to arrive from home before heading out onto the Patagonia. While in PA we saw a few sights including the cemetery, statues and a viewpoint. We also geared up for our trek into Torres del Paine National Park. Here I got a new pair of shoes and some nerd (zip-off) pants...prices comparable to back home so I didn´t feel too bad. I could afford to buy a few things since I was really just eating bread. We booked our bus ticket to Puerto Natales, the gateway to TdP and would be off the next morning.

That evening we met Antje´s sister Karen and headed to bed. That night I noticed that the bug bites I got in Cuzco were starting to swell, turn funny colors, ooze puss and one was starting to make my shin muscles sore. In the morning the girls´ bus to Ushuaia was leaving the same time as ours so we all sat at the breakfast table chatting about what we were going to do next. Then I asked Antje, who said she was a doctor about the bites on my leg...She said, well my sister here is a dermatologist, you should ask her. I thought I was dreaming, once again the medical field is here to help! She looked at the bites and said they were just infected and to take better care of them, Antje and I swapped contact info hoping we might meet up so I could buy them beers sometime in life.

To break up some of the novel I am writing and so I can go to bed at a decent hour, I will finish the rest of this at another sitting...Here is a teaser. We were reunited with three people from this story, my sickness changes and we finally get to use the camping gear we have been dragging all over the continent.