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Published: April 10th 2006
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Street art1
Street art in chillán For the sake of chornology i´ll get to the volcano bit in a sec, to take up where I left off last time let us travel back in time to about the 30th of March
From Talca I went nowhere, got sick, antibiotics, hung around Talca for about 4 more days. I was however lucky to meet a great chap called Christo who put me up at his place in Talca for the duration (as an owner of a local vineyard, the he´s only ever there once or twice a week, so I pretty much had the run of the place).
Here are a few things i´ve learnt about Chile during my time it Talca.
Gangs - The only gangs i´ve seen have been of dogs, who prowl around town by night and sleep it off through morning.
Beggers - The only beggers i´ve seen have been of students, who get all dirty´ed up riped clothes and all begging around the Plaza de Armas - it seems to be some sort of tradition in the first weeks of uni.
Payday - In Chile almost everyone gets paid once a month and all on the same day
Let sleeping dogs lie
The local banditos after a rough night the 31st. It puts a real buzz in the atmosphere as you can imagine, the local icecream parlors do good business on this day and me thinks that sales in beer, pisco and vino would be none to small also! (my vineyard owning friend hands out paypackets from 'one worker at a time' booth and a buddy with a shotgun standing by)
I´ve had a great time making friends in Chile too, pictured are a bunch of local English students from one of the local universities, who´ve helped me immensly linguistically and I like to think i've helped them out too. Being at the same level of tuition as these chaps, my Spanish was embarrasingly poor, thus we conversed primarily in English. Trying to explain the meaning "dontcha" and "in da house" was strange but amusing.
I finally got outta Talca and made it south to Chillàn, check out that cahthedral! Immense. I wondered east through the town to find the old (destroyed by earthquake) Chillán but found stencil art instead.
From Chillán to LA. thats right "Los Àngeles" I had a bizzare adventure out in the Andes. Re: the title of this blog.
After getting
English Students
Friends in Talca off the bus at Antuco and seeing my target (Volcun Antuco) right before me, I began the hike to my campsite. I´d walked about 6kms with my fullpack past waterfalls and cowboys hearding cattle expecting that freaking campsite to be around every next corner, but alas it was not, and the sun was setting fast. I got a ride ride with some local lads who were headed in my direction.
As we wound ourway up towards the volcano, they would occasionly stop and say "aquì?" i.e do you want to get out here, and as every place was as inhospitable as the next i decided to just go with the flow and see where these guys were headed, i was 25kms from the nearest bus stop by this stage and didn´t feel like leaving the confort of a working car. To my utter surprise at one point, right at the base of the Volcano was, you guessed it.... a Casino. If there is a god, these punters are on very thin ice.
But my comrads were not in for the Casino and nor was I, but where then?
An interesting fact about Volcun Antuco: An eruption some
Street art2
More stencil work in chillán time ago blocked a nearby river to create a specatular lake, "laguna de Laja" there is many a Salmon in that lake and under a half-moonlit night (for reasons of legality I suspect) it is possible to fish those Salmon out - and so we did.
These industrious fellows setup about 10 to 12 lines each, using tin cans as reels and crossed sticks to stop the Salmon taking their tin cans for ride, imagine a miniture recreation of the battle of Omaha beach (i.e. saving private ryan) except with volacnic rock for sand and salmon for the yanks. What a wild trip!
I can´t possibly write anymore at this point, suffice to say i'm currently at Villarrica and my plans for climbing the Volcano have been foiled by foul, foul weather, which I intend to substitute with bike ride and thermal springs.
Expect more frequent posts, with less photos,
Chao to all!
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Finally caught your Blogs!
ola amigos! Well, what an adventure for you! Nick felt the same about getting his camera flogged when he first got overseas too! Glad to hear the local folk have taken you under their wing... PS, casinos aren´t that bad, we won 100 euros 2 weeks back from one at Figuira da Foz!!! YEAH!