¡Que fome!

Passport situation resolved.

After about a month of sending emails without replies and listening to answering machines, I finally found a telephone number for the US embassy in Santiago that doesn't lead you through a bunch of recordings (it was a number to get a temporary passport). Instead, I talked to a real person who told me that they actually do have my passport ready, I just have to pick it up. I suppose this proves that the embassy isn't weaselly or incompetent; they just don't handle email very well. In any case I'm very glad that I'm going to be able to return to the US after all.

It's sort of ironic that the thief who made off with my backpack won't get any value whatsoever out of the passport, but so far it's cost me about $350 to replace the thing.

La Isla

One final trip in Chile.

I just got back from a week traveling in Chiloé, an island about five hours south of Valdivia. Great trip: beautiful rainforest, ocean, cliffs, beaches, interesting architecture, and warm hospitality. We spent five nights in the tent and three nights in hostels. The hostels in Chiloé, like much of Southern Chile, are essentially private homes with a few extra bedrooms. For $20-$30 you get a room for the night, use of the family kitchen, breakfast the next morning, and good company. Chiloé is famous for its palofitos, houses that extend over the estuary on stilts, and its wooden churches. We saw both in Castro, and they were fairly interesting, but they didn't hold my attention for long (about 35 minutes). Both myself and Jessie aren't the sort of people who do tourism very well, and we quickly realized that Castro didn't hold much appeal for us, so we decided to cut our stay short and head for the wilderness as soon as possible. To be honest, I had the most fun in the cities watching futbol in resto-bars and hanging out in the kitchen of the hostels talking with the families and cooking US comfort food (we're getting started on the transition process).

The national park was difficult to get to (1.5 hours in big bus, 1.5 hours in rural bus, 4 km walking/hitching gravel road, 9 km hiking along the beach, 5 km hiking on horse trail) but worth the effort. The beaches were lovely. At the first one, near the indigenous community of Cole Cole, we found a CONAF shelter and met a couple from the US and another couple from Europe (not sure which country). Aside from a couple of Huilliche fisherman we had met just before entering the park, they were the only people we saw. It was interesting that we didn't meet any foreigners in the hostels and we didn't meet any Chileans in the park. The next day we bushwacked through 6 km of very rough trail through the rainforest to arrive at another beach where the Río Anay empties into the sea. This one we had completely to ourselves; the two days we stayed there we didn't see another human. Uncharacteristically for Chiloé, we had perfect weather for all three days on the beach.

After hiking out we stayed in a campsite near the park headquarters. A group of CONAF rangers had ordered a curanto from the restaurant/common area of the campsite. Curanto is kind of like a clam bake but with chicken, pork, lots of different types of shellfish, and lots of potatoes. We had stopped by the restaurant because the owner had offered us real coffee (extremely uncommon in Chile). However, since the rangers had a lot left over, they ended up giving us a heaping platter of the stuff along with fresh bread and good wine. It was good, but I had lost my appetite for shellfish by the end. (Another food highlight of the trip was milcao, a meat filled potato pancake with the same grease content as a stick of butter deep fried in lard. I liked it. It proves that Chile is one of the exceedingly rare countries with a culinary tradition less healthy than that of the USA.*)

We also visited the Northern sector of the park, near the tiny town of Chepu, with a stopoff to shower and restock food in Ancud. We found a boat to take us across the river and then hiked about two hours to reach a penguin colony. They were cute, and the coast along the north of the park was gorgeous. We stayed at a campground with a bunch of gringos (my first time speaking English with someone who isn't part of my immediate family in five months!) and went kayaking at dawn (on the water at 5:15 am) the next morning in a dead forest. The earthquake of 1960 had sunk the entire area and what once was forest is now a collection of dead trees in a tidal estuary. We hitchhiked back to Ancud in the afternoon and stayed with a couple of old ladies we had met our last stay in Ancud (they baked excellent bread for breakfast). The next morning (this morning) we hopped on a bus (and a ferry because Chiloé is an island) for Valdivia.

I bought my ticket for Santiago today, so tomorrow is my last day in Valdivia. I still don't have a passport, and the embassy won't answer their phones or return my emails, so at this point I have no idea if I'll be able to get back into the US or not. In any case, I'll have two days in Santiago to figure things out.

I'll try to throw up some pictures when I get them, but there are a lot of other things to do right now (like packing).

*For further proof of this assertion, see the completo.

Leso

Why is it that only after five months of living in Chile I finally think to take two minutes to switch my keyboard to the international setting?

Seriously. I've been typing tildes the hard way for five months. I probably could have saved myself an aggregate of half a day's worth of time by just thinking about what I was doing at the beginning of the semester instead of two days from the end.

Two days. It's scary.

I took my last exam today, and met with my economics professor to review a draft of my last essay.

The weather has been beautiful all week, but I've been glued to the keyboard churning out academic drivel (high quality academic drivel let it be known). Two papers turned in, one finished, and the last one halfway there. There was a span of two days were I don't think that I set foot outside of the house. But soon all this will end, and I'll have ten days on the myth-filled island of Chiloé (that tilde was so easy to type!): more rain forests, more beaches, more curious and unknown foodstuffs, and, in all likelihood, more rain.

¡Vivan los novios!

Time to celebrate.

Last night was the wedding of Lesli, the daughter of my host family, and Enrique, her (former) fiancee (obviously), and I was invited to the ceremony, and the party afterwards. The civil wedding had taken place last week. I was the "official" photographer for the pre-wedding wedding, and we had a party afterwards at Enrique's parents' house. We stayed up late eating and taking turns singing. I sang some bluegrass to represent Kentucky.

The church wedding was short and sweet. The catholic bits were exactly the same as what I know from the US, only in Spanish. Then everyone lined up to congratulate the novios, who subsequently departed in an antique Fiat to do a photo tour of Valdivia in wedding attire. Everyone else loaded up and headed for the ballroom in the centro that had been rented for the fiesta. There was champagne, lots of toasts, embarrassing baby pictures, steak, lots of alcohol, and lots and lots of dancing. Jessie didn't attend the wedding, but she showed up for the celebration afterwards, and we spend the whole night eating, drinking, dancing, and making merry. At about 3 am we had a surprise visit from a group of bateristas, a band of drummers who danced and played and were a lot of fun. The novios were both excellent dancers and danced all night long. Myself and Jessie left shortly after the cake was finally cut at 4:30am, and I got to bed just as dawn started to break.

Today I have to finish up a 16 page paper and a 10 page history project. Such is life.

(There are lots of pictures, but I don't have any of them yet.)