Chile!

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During our break from school Sophie Laura (two of my best) and I decided to get out of the country and check out Chile. We had two options for transportation either A - Take a flight which is about 1 1/2hours, which also means as American citizens we have to pay an entrance fee of around $130 or there was option B. Suck it up and take a 20 hour bus ride. It was an easy decision, being poor college students that live in a foreign country we easily met the qualifications of bypassing that nasty entrance fee... Bus it is! To be fair, the buses are extremely luxurious offering movies, food and plenty of sleeping space which is hardly enough to bitch about, except one thing.... people who bring their toddlers. In my experience with watching kids, they don't like to sit down for hours at a time looking out a window and rightly so. They need room to run, they need to play games! So with our luck, we got to listen to a pissed off baby alllll night long, yay! By morning we approached the border of Chile (which is located in the middle of the Andes!), this was interesting. After going through customs, unloading our bags, standing in lines while dogs sniffed for any thing being smuggled through, we were cleared to go (that is after I was pulled aside for bringing fruit, oh and Sophie for all her pharmaceuticals oops).

We arrived to Santiago on a sunday afternoon and all was calm. Although it's a huge city, the demographics are quite different. Santiago is very spread out and the buildings remain low so it executes a vibe far different from the noises of Buenos Aires. The form of currency is absolutely hilarious it was $1 to $500 chilean pesos with our luck, things were much cheaper that we had heard, except for one restaurant that charged me close to $2000 pesos for a tomato on the side (do I dare dip into the topic of inflation)! I will NEVER get over that tomato.

The next day we hit the road and headed to Valparaiso (known as "The Jewel of the Pacific") which is one of the country's most important seaports and is about 2 1/2 hours from Santiago. Valparaiso has incredibly distinct architecture, a lot of the city is built on the hillsides overlooking the ocean. The rest is built from a foundation of narrow cobble-stoned alley ways that wind around rich, colorful yet old buildings. Valparaiso was definitely an experience, beginning with our hostel. Our hostel was in some back alley way but since we were together, we figured we would survive the dark obstacles. Once entering, we were confronted with dusty antiques and no one in sight. We were the only and I repeat the only ones staying in this large, old possibly haunted hostel. It reminded me of the movie the shining you know the one with "HEEEEEEEEEEERES JOHNNY!!!", it was filled with long narrow corridors like the part where the kid is riding on his tricycle down the hall and runs into the two twins and blood is spurting anywhere - buuuu! Like I said, we looked at it as an experience and made it through the night. Aside from our hostel, Valparaiso is a really unique city. We mainly just walked around town to see the different architecture and graffiti covered walls. I wish we had more time to discover all the hidden spots but you can't have it all!

After Valparaiso we headed to Vina del Mar (vineyard by the sea) which is about 20 minutes away, and is known as the ritzy vacation beach town of Chile. The bus ride should have been the easiest task in the world, but we were all rather oblivious that morning, and failed to notice where we were. Instead of asking, we remained seated laughing hysterically, I mean the truth is, sometimes when you are lost, you run into the most amazing, unexpected avenues, or you just look stupid (like we did haha) A local on the bus finally came to us, and informed us that in fact we had already been in our destination and that we needed to get off, so he got off with us and showed us the way to our hostel.

We were all thrilled to spend the next few days laying on Chile's best white sand beaches under the sun, and listening to the crashing waves. Bathing in the sun, munching on churros and exploring the small city was exactly how we spent our week. We also invested time interacting with the locals, which is the best part of any foreign country. The first local we came across was a kid in his 20's who is literally hired to build characters out of sand (he has to change them every few days). At the time of our visit he had built homer simpson and a gorilla! There were actually several people who do this along the beach. This kid went by the name of Joao, and was extremely artistic. Joao actually divides his year between Chile and the U.S. When he is working on the beach, he chooses to camp out next to his work, because it takes a lot of maintenance by the hour. Following Joao we came across a bunch of locals who practice slack lining. Slack lining is basically the practice of balance that most people correlate to tight-rope walking, however the difference is that there isn't as much tension in the webbing with a slack line. This way the lining provides a bounce effect like a trampoline, this is so that the slack liner can demonstrate/practice tricks. I've actually seen this in buenos aires quite a bit, however, we were to experience it foot on for the first time in Chile. I have to say, we were fooled by the visuals, because slack lining is tough tough shit. The locals were pulling off stunts that you wouldn't believe. We were obviously a joke when we tried, they had to hold our hand, and just that was hard enough, but they claim with practice, we would be on our own within a month or two... ha! It was all fun and games.

There is one factor that would be impossible to leave out... this detail goes by the name of Manu - well at least that's the name we chose! Manu was our guardian dog. The perfect addition to our little family! Manu was with us every step of the way, it's was absolutely crazy how protective he got. Manu was a beach dog, but he made sure to walk us ALL the way home and kept us clear of strangers. When he sensed bad vibes, Manu was insistent on remaining between us and any threat that was near. It was actually pretty heartbreaking because we would have to send Manu away, you see, he was a beach dog and we stayed a pretty distant walk away, and we could sense his anxiety as we trekked further and further away, nontheless, Manu NEVER wanted to leave us. This is something I adore about South America, the dogs are all so intuitive and it really is as if a lot of them are street guardians, they know who to protect. Joao was actually telling us that in Vina del Mar there's an organization that comes through the small city quite often to care for the dogs, this explains why they are in such great shape and health.

*Side Note*

In case you happen to forget, moments like this occur to remind you that you are in fact still in South America....

On the bus ride back to Buenos, we were merging onto a new freeway when suddenly the air began to smell of burnt rubber. Then it happened, the bus BROKE DOWN. The ridiculous part about it was that they kept exhausting the engine but we weren't going anywhere. At the point we looked at each other and I just had to ask... is this thing gonna blow? Should we get off? But where were we going to go, we were in the merging lane and cars sliding by us had no mercy. Among the honking and screaming we noticed that people began to disappear off the bus. We decided that we too should try disappearing, so where did that leave us? It left us LITERALLY in the middle of the freeway, thumbs up, hitching for a ride back to Buenos Aires.... man I love it here!

Hanging with the locals was my favorite part about the trip. It reminded me of how much I love traveling, and how important it is to be immersed. Buenos aires has been made our home, and once you get comfortable, you start to forget the details and the purpose. This opportunity stripped off the mask and opened up our eyes once more. It was like hitting the refresh button when the internet is frozen on a website, we were able to hit refresh in Chile so we could move on to the next page, rather than remain frozen in the process.

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