No me toques ... OK, me toques

Translation: "Don't touch me. OK, touch me."

Folks, I've been keeping something from you. Not deliberately. We just had so much to blog about that this news kind of fell by the wayside. 

I'm a co-ed touch rugby player.

And I've decided to tell you about how this evolved in third person, because there are pictures of my feet in this blog post. Have you ever taken a picture of your feet before? They look like aliens. And although I know many of our readers well, I still feel quite vulnerable, revealing my feet to the world. So to make myself less uncomfortable, we're going to pretend I'm an observer of my own athletic endeavors, OK?

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When Abby first arrived in Chile, her sweet host sister Pauli invited her to play touch rugby "with her." Abby had never played before. And she's not that confident in her ball-handling skills. But she thought it'd be a great way to meet Chileans and get some exercise, so she signed on.

Whoever does the rain dance on Wednesday nights had a heyday the first couple weeks of August. So Abby didn't get to practice with the team before the first game. What she did get was a rapid explanation of the rules of game as she and her host sister were sprinting to la cancha (field). 6 touches allowed. A girl scoring is worth two points. Don't throw the ball forward. That's about all she heard.

Abby soon found out that when her host sister said "play with me," she actually meant, "play against me." Abby and Pauli are not on the same team. In fact, they're on opposing teams. Abby was tossed onto a field with tiny clue of what to do, with extremely intense Chileans she didn't know, with her sister as her enemy.

The one advice Pauli did give Abby before she put on her I'm-gonna-pummel-you game face was, "If your coach yells at you, don't cry. Even though gringas always cry the first night."

Abby threw the ball forward. She was off-sides. She turned the ball over. She made penalties. And yes, she got yelled at. She also got stepped on. And now her toe-nails are going to fall off ... ironic, since her team name is BRUISERS. That should probably mean she should be bruising others with her ferocity. Instead, she is the bruisee week after week.

Do you see the black peeking from underneath the orange toe-nail polish? At least they're both black and wiggly in solidarity.

But don't worry. She's having fun. Honestly. She got a good laugh from the Nike stores-clerk when she told him her foot size was 11.5. She has realized she really likes sliding to touch opponents. Her fellow players have finally realized how to offer constructive criticism for the sensitive gringa. The field is pristine, perched high in the Andes above the glittering city. After games, she's allowed to go to the secret clubhouse for a Coca-Cola and team banter. She even gets to participate in the secret team salutation: "No me toques ... ok, me toques," followed by a big bear hug. 

So legit.

All the trophies Abby will never win in the clubhouse.

Nevertheless, a "good luck" is always appreciated :).

47 buses later...

Back on the mainland, we stopped by our hostel in Puerto Montt to drop off our backpacks. When Abby called the woman who runs the hostel to tell her we were on our way (around 10am), she sounded so groggy that sweet Abby asked her if she was sick. Upon our arrival an hour later, it took her a while to answer the door because she was still asleep. She informed us that there were muchas fiestas the night before... yep, she wasn't doing too hot. Lucky for her, we didn't require too much attention, because we were off to nearby Puerto Varas for the day.

Puerto Varas is a little German town, situated on the shores of the enormous Lago Llanguihue (seriously, so giant. For a while there, I was convinced it was actually the Pacific.). Despite the cold, misty weather (The Lake District of Chile is known for its rain-- we were really lucky with weather for the majority of the week), we enjoyed a walk along the shore. Or maybe we missed our bus stop so we had no choice but to walk a few miles back into town.

Once we actually made it into Puerto Varas, we walked around to check out the German architecture and of course, another wooden church.

We were walking down the street, brainstorming our next move, and we stumbled upon a warehouse full of bicentenario celebration! People had set up tables to sell all kinds of typical Chilean delicacies (alfajores, empanadas, mote con huesillo...) as well as some jewelry and other artsy things.

When we passed by later in the night, we saw some cueca being danced on this oh-so-patriotic stage.

 After this, we went to catch a bus out to see some very exciting waterfalls about twenty minutes outside of town. Sounds simple right? Well, nope. It wasn't. First of all, the bus took about a million years to come. Then, the waterfalls ended up being an hour away. And to finish off this ill-fated expedition, the entrance to the falls was all closed up for the night by the time we got there. The best laid plans, right?

We made it back into Puerto Varas and grabbed dinner before one of our travel buddies had to catch a bus back to Santiago. Vegetable empanadas? Yes, please.

We caught a bus back to Puerto Montt to spend our last night in the hostel there. When we got back, we bonded a little with the precious hostel woman and her friend (They even invited us to go out with them, but most of us just really wanted to shower and go to bed.). In the morning, we ate a delicious breakfast, prepared by that same precious hostel woman, and we hit the road. A quick 15 hour bus ride later (they showed at least 7 movies, there was an old man throwing up... epic), we rolled into our beloved Santiago around midnight, so happy to be back in the land of the tarjeta BIP!.

Chiloé ... hey hey

For the next leg of our journey, we hopped a ferry to Chiloé Island ... part of Chile, but, as my host parents said, "otro mundo" ... another world. And it's huge, for an island. About the size of Connecticut. And it's full of cliffs, penguins, ocean, and hills.

Let's start by describing the city of Ancud, via photos.

There's our trusty bus! Allison thinks the mirrors look like ant feelers ...

We met a woman named Silvia. She waddled in her poofy purple coat as she directed our lost little selves to the hostel.

And that hostel was awesome. 

We dropped off our stuff, then headed to the "penguin sanctuary." What do YOU think of when you hear "penguin sanctuary"? I was thinking something along the lines of a glorified zoo ... maybe with fresher fish and real glass walls instead of smudgy plexi-glass? Ha! Just look.

There's a penguin! Can you see him?

Then we wandered around town. Ate ample seafood. And rested up for BICENTENARIO!

Since I had such a positive response about my flowers last post, I decided to add some more!

And then we headed to the capital of Chiloé (Castro) for bicentenario celebrations. In the morning, we walked along the water's edge and snapped some shots of houses on stilts, or palafitos.

And then we stumbled upon a parade. We were seriously, I kid you not, the only foreigners amidst a sea of hundreds of Chileans. That wasn't just a big deal for us. The Chileans were pretty surprised too. One video-taped us very obviously. Another couple asked for a group picture. We were a rarity in those parts.

Do you think his stomach is real? We couldn't reach a consensus ...

This little girl was manning her own horse! Until she almost toppled over ...

And we went to a beautiful church, made completely of wood on the inside.

And, as our last excursion on Chiloé, we stopped into Achao for ... mmm ... maybe an hour-and-a-half. We were falsely led to believe that it was a hoppin' place with lots to see. Not so, my friends. But there were many shingle houses. And a beach. And a mysterious fruit on a beach. And a beautiful nighttime scene.

And with that, we say, "Good night Chiloé. Hola Puerto Varas!"

V is for Villarrica ... and Vacas

Vaca = cow.

OK. Villarrica was magical. But totally spontaneous magical. Which is the best kind of magical. 

We had 5 hours in the city before we had to catch a bus to Puerto Montt, and we didn't know what to do. So we bummed around for a bit, and then decided the municipality might be a good source of information on activities for the hit-and-run tourist. Well, we ended up bumping into a woman who had a farmer friend. That's what she said, "I have a farmer friend. Come with me." So we went to her home, dropped off our backpacks (yes, we might trust too much in the good of humanity), and got picked up by her farmer friend, a jolly 40-something man with a white truck. He locked us up in the trunk, and we were on our way (yes, again, we might trust too much in the good of humanity).

Mads and our alpaca, Sancho Panza, aren't so sure about this truck situation ...

Turns out trusting in the good of humanity is a GREAT thing! Our farmer José Ramón was such a great guide. He showed us so much. And mixed in a little philosophy. Our favorite: "El hombre es tan pequeño enfrente de la naturaleza." Man is so small in front of nature.

We saw his cows. Including a baby one getting castrated.

And a Mapuche woman's cheese factory on his property. Don't worry. We definitely bought some queso.

A turkey. For those of you who don't know, Madeline hates birds. Emphatically. She called this one "the devil" to his face.

But we were only able to navigate the wilderness with José Ramón's help. Well, I should say, MADELINE needed Jose Ramón's help. My legs were long enough to hop over barbed-wire fences. No bear hugs for me :(.

And then José Ramón took us to another surprise ... his buddy's cerveza (beer) factory. This man here made the machines behind him, and he meticulously paints each Crater label on each bottle. But he promised us he's in the process of inventing a machine that will do this automatically.

All in all, Villarrica was more than we could have imagined. That may be because we didn't imagine anything, but it may also be a very, very special little town.

Pucón? Colorado? Heaven?

Here we go. Day 1. 

After an evening in Santiago learning the cueca (the national dance of Chile-- why doesn't the USA have a national dance?), the 7 of us met up at the bus station for our 11pm southbound bus. We hopped on, found our semi-reclining seats, and settled in for the 10 hour ride ahead of us. I (Madeline) slept just great, but some others (Abby Long-Legs...) had a less restful night. We had no idea how many buses were in our future.

We rolled into Pucón around 9am on Wednesday morning, more or less awake and so excited to begin our week of adventuring. After a quick stop at the tourism office, we headed to our first hostel to drop off our bags, and then headed back out to explore.

The hostel. Oh my goodness. This was my first experience ever staying in a hostel, and my expectations were verrrry low. I thought hostels were scary, dirty places where we would all be robbed. But école was far from that:

Our most exciting plan for Pucón (and our main reason for stopping there) was to climb a VOLCANO, called Volcan Villarrica. So we went to the ecotourism company that was going to take us up, to get fitted for helmets and snowboots (that's right, the volcano is full of hot lava, but covered in snow... that just doesn't make any sense.), and to finalize our plans to meet up with them at 7am the next day. At this point, we were told that there was a chance we wouldn't get to go, depending on the weather.

Full of hope for the next day's adventures (and full of delicious food from the café where we got breakfast), we set out on a local bus to Lake Caragua, and told by the bus driver to "walk along the shore until you get to the white beach, and then you can hike to these super cool waterfalls" (loosely translated...). 

Abby LOVES the lake!!!!!!

So we walked and walked and walked...

And we were chased by some extremely aggressive sheep...

And we even encountered some beach hippies, playing the bongos. But we never did find the darn path that allegedly led from the white beach. Pucha. So we headed back to the main road to catch a bus back down the Ojos de Caragua (the super cool waterfalls our previous bus driver had lied to us about). 

And then we saw a sign pointing us to the "Blue Lagoon" (that was actually green, by the way):

 

 

Then we headed back into town to eat wayyy too much cake, do some grocery shopping, and head to bed with our fingers crossed for the weather to cooperate for the next day's volcano hike...

We showed up at 7am with peanut butter sandwiches and trail mix in tow, totally ready to dominate that volcano. After much deliberation between the volcano-climbing-people (who were French? Spanish spoken a French accent might just be the funniest thing ever.), we were told that the only way to know for sure would be to actually go to the base of the volcano and see for ourselves. When we got there, we saw pretty quickly that it was just not gonna happen. Huge bummer, but we saved 40,000 pesos ($90), and we still got to play in the snow!

So we were left with a whole day to fill... Villarrica, anyone?

And the journey begins...

Hello!

Much has happened since our last post, and we're here, all night long, to fill you in. For the week of bicentenario, Mads and I (and 5 other adventure-seekers) headed to southern Chile. Well, "southern" is a relative term. At least in this country. Because we drove 15 hours in a bus and only made our way about one-fourth of the way to the end of the continent. So, to give you a quick visual of what our trip looked like, here's a map.

Itinerary:

Santiago --> Pucón --> Villarrica --> Puerto Montt --> Ancud (Chiloé Island) --> Castro (Chiloé Island) --> Achao (Chiloé Island) --> Puerto Varas --> Puerto Montt (again) --> Santiago

And the blogging begins.