The last few weeks since my last post have been really active, and I finally I have an opportunity to breath a little and sit down and update the site. Looking back at the draft I wrote just a couple weeks back it seems strange to me that some of these things happened such a short time ago. But let’s go ahead and begin from where I left off in my last post, where I stated I would be headed to Argentina on a trip to renew my visa. I never made it there into the country, or rather I did, but just barely and just for a moment.

Border Expulsion

When I got to the station I found that the buses were all sold out so I hopped on a van (not too much more expensive than the buses) and began the trek up through a pass in the Andes that leads to Argentina. These mountains are truly beautiful, and the main route from Santiago to Mendoza, el Paso de los Libertadores, passes by several of the highest peaks in the Americas, the highest of those being Cerro Aconcagua, at 6,962 meters (22,841 feet). The beauty of these mountains is staggering, and the landscape displays a surprising variety of colors, so much that parts are reminiscent of the Painted Desert in the United States, only uplifted to dramatic new heights. Here is a photo from the customs house on the Argentine side of the border that shows some of these colors

When the bus arrived to customs I closely examined my passport to realize that earlier I had made the innocent (stupid?) mistake of misreading the expiration date on my tourist visa of May 13 as May 18, and consequently realized that my it had expired a week prior. For that reason, I was not allowed to leave Chile (although I was really already a few miles beyond the border) and was left stranded, stuck at the pass. Luckily, I managed to wave down a bus which was headed to Viña del Mar. I had contemplated going to Viña anyway that weekend before I belatedly realized I needed to leave the country for a visa run, so I figured that since I had my things all packed and ready I would just go ahead and spend the weekend there.

The Road to Viña

So we passed through the tunnel in which the border is hidden and stopped at the Chilean customs house a little ways beyond that, where I talked to some authorities about nothing very important, except for the fact that I would have to go to the Department of Foreign Affairs and pay a fine, and then would be free to leave Chile. I didn’t tell them I didn’t plan on leaving, but that doesn’t matter much now.

Here is a photo of one particular peak near the Chilean customs I took that weekend next to an almost identical photo that I had taken about three months (and a week) prior.

Coming up the pass is an endless array of switchbacks, typically and dangerously overrun by countless semi trucks and buses. The photo you see below was actually taken about halfway down the particular set of switchbacks which you see. This scene also happens to be near one of the more renowned ski resorts in the Andes, el Portillo. In some parts of the road are covered so that ski runs can pass over it. Definitely a place I’ll be spending some time at this Winter.

The next few hours of the day were spend on the bus descending the mountains, crossing the central valley and then passing through the equally beautiful coastal mountains until we finally reached the coast and descended once more into Viña del Mar just as the sun was going down.

Return to Valpo & Viña

There I called up a friend of mine, Mauricio, and spent the remainder of the day catching up on things and talking with him and his family. The next day passed pretty casually just walking around the Northern end of Valparaí­so and hanging out on the beach. Here’s a photo of Mauricio and I we took that day.

And a photo of central Valparaí­so across the bay.

All these pictures here are taken from Playa Portales, a small but pleasant beach in Valparaí­so towards Viña del Mar. This is the famous site of “liter on the beach” from way back in the ISA days, for those of you who participated in that.

During this trip I never made it to the heart of Valparaí­so, but I felt the tranquility and well being that has accompanied each of my trips to this city since returning to Chile earlier this year. Already the months I spent living, studying, learning, and growing here seem farther away than they really are.

Sitting on that beach that evening it dawned on me in the clearest possible manner that this is a place I will always love and that I hope to return to all my life, no matter how far away I may find myself in the future. More immediately, I recognized that I need to be spending more of my time here, having thus far spent almost all of my time since returning to Chile in Santiago. Valparaíso and Santiago are only little more than an hour and three dollars apart, after all.

Here’s a great photo of my head being eaten by a giant great white shark hanging next to a restaurant on Playa Portales.

That night we headed for the the bar Journal where I passed the night with a group of Chileans, Germans, and Irish. At one point we headed to El Huevo in Valparaí­so where a pretty decent rock band was playing. After that died down it was back to Journal for the rest of the night.

Pulling Teeth in the Belly of the Beast

The next week in Santiago was spent largely in the catacombs of Chilean bureaucracy and not working. For those in the States who have spend lots of time in the DMV, you can understand to some extent what this is like, although my experiences renewing my license fall far short of this. Arrive early in the morning and wait in line for a number, then you wait. And wait. After your number is called, you are sent to a different office, where you have go through the same process only to be sent back to your original location.

To make matters worse, daytime television in Chile manages to top even the worst that I’ve ever seen in other places. I’m not exaggerating at all when I say this, that the televisions in the waiting area were tuned to a several hour long reality TV program involving dentists or something which almost solely depicted hour after hour of pulling teeth from the various mouths of one unfortunate patient after another. Somehow, I couldn’t really think of anything else more appropriate for the situation.

All in all though it wasn’t quite all that horrible since I came equipped with my ipod and met several really really cool people, while waiting. A few include a soccer player from Brazil, and displaced Indian, and a tour guide from Colombia. And among my encounters with the inevitable inept bureaucrats who sent me pointlessly from one place to the next I came across one very kind woman who actually reprimanded those who had sent me to the wrong places, helped me through much of the ordeal, and even gave me the phone number of her office in case I encountered more problems. Most generously of all she waved my fine.

I finally got through all the bureaucracy and regained my legal status on Friday of that week just ten minutes before I was to start my first class and the new Institute I was working for, and managed to get there just in time.

Snippets From a Life in Transition

Let me briefly sketch a few of the various happenings since then.

The weekend after escaping the Chilean bureaucracy my cell phone was stolen by somebody who grabbed it off a restaurant table and managed to jump onto the back of a motorcycle just before I could catch him. As a result I lost a lot of numbers, including those of the people I met that week while trying to renew my visa. I can think of at least half a dozen people now that I probably will never see again unless either luck or fate happen to intervene. So that’s been a serious source of irritation but I’ve got a new phone now.

The week after that I completed my final week of work at the clinic with the old institute I had been working for. I’m going to miss my students there, but I’m definitely glad I left when I did. Apparently the institute is in pretty major debt right now and is having serious trouble paying its teachers. Being that I’m not working for them anymore, I don’t think I’m top priority on the payroll, so to speak. I’m still fighting with the management there so that I can get paid. I will, but it might take some more time and hassle and a bit of a fight.

My classes at my new institute on the other hand are going really well. I have classes twice a week at the airport near the hangers, which is really awesome. I’ll definitely put up some pictures of that soon. I’m really glad that I’ve moved to this new institute and didn’t get stuck where I was before. For one, I’ll have a contract which means that I’ll have a working visa and won’t have to worry about trips to Argentina every three months to renew my visa. They also have a really good reputation for paying their teachers well (and on time).

I’ve moved into a new apartment in a really great part of town, Bellas Artes, which I ‘m really, really happy with. It’s really nice, with wooden floors and is pretty spacious for one person. Everything I need is within walking distance and I can walk to almost all of my classes as well.

Last weekend I went with a friend from work to a blues festival in a small town outside Santiago called Talagante. I’m pretty sure it was the first time I’ve ever heard the blues in Spanish, which was interesting, although there were a good number of songs in English too. I have to say that I was really impressed with some of the musicians, and now I’m pretty inspired to invest in a guitar here and start playing again.

Blog in Transition

For various reasons, I’ll be writing my future posts in a different style, which I hope will be of a higher quality and I expect should be a little more interesting for the reader. Unfortunately, the frequency of my posts may not improve much, although I will certainly try to avoid large periods of time without an update. In any case, thanks for reading and I hope you’ll continue to visit my site!

Wow, it took a long time to get this updated. I’ve been busy, I haven’t had my own computer until this week, and I’ve had a variety of technical problems as well. But all is well in the Will blogosphere now. Updates should be a little more frequent now, I should expect. Also, wherever you see this icon you can click on it and Google Earth will open and zoom to the place that is being talked about.

I’m now living in Santiago, Chile in the middle of the second week of my TEFL course (teach English as a foreign language). This is all going really well and keeping me pretty busy. I’m living in a nice spot with two really cool Colombian guys, so nothing to complain about. I went to Valparaíso this past weekend to pick up my laptop and some other stuff I’d left there and had a really great time doing it. But I’m going to talk about all of this later. This post will only talk about the last two weeks or so I spent in Argentina. I should be doing a catch-up post in a few days and then proceed as normal from there.

IguazúFalls were absolutely amazing of course. Looking back though I’m not really sure that it was the best idea to go, considering that it took me two days to get to Santiago on bus from there (although there was something totally hilarious on the way, I’ll tell you later…). I would have liked to stay that extra day in Buenos Aires as well. I spent almost a month there, but the dynamics of any place, especially a place like Buenos Aires, are always changing and compelling reasons not to leave sometimes emerge. Add to that the fact that I have every intention of going back to Iguaz’u sometime and it seems pretty clear that it was a long way to travel to see something I intend to visit in the future anyway. But what can I do now and what can I say? It was still awesome.

Coming up on it, it looks like this:

And then you see this. This panorama was taken from the top of La Garganta del Diablo, or the throat of the devil, which is the largest fall of the whole complex.

Here’s a video of it:

A little closer up:

And here is the heart of the garganta, or at least the top part of it, with a nice rainbow.

Here is the same fall from a distance:

You can see a viewpoint on that second tier waterfall on the Brazilian side (left), which I didn’t visit. I took the video and those previous photos from a platform on top of the falls and to the right. The land mass that you see on the right side of this photo is actually an island that separates the garganta from the other side of the fall complex, which is pictured below.

You can see that there are some boats going in there, which I didn’t go on. Come down here to visit and we can go together…

By the way, I didn’t go into the Brazilian side because us Americans have to pay $100 dollars and jump through some hoops in order to get a tourist visa. Sucks being so loved around the world, doesn’t it? There was one agency that I heard could take Americans without visas through but they were closed when I wanted to go. When I return I’ll be spending a lot of time in Brazil so it should make the whole business of getting the visa worthwhile.

The Biggest fall that you see in this photo is called Salto San Martín, though there are several others. And yeah, it rocks.

There are a bunch of names for all of these falls and it probably wouldn’t make the slightest difference to you if I told you.

These are the same falls from a different angle, p’oh.

There was quite a lot of wildlife running around the park, much of which I’d never seen in the wild before.

So there on the right is a caiman, which is somewhat different from a crocodile or an alligator. That¡s a tucan on the right of course. They’re both pretty bitchin’.

These are coatis. There were tons of them running around the park. They actually range all the way up to the Southwest United States and I saw quite a few when I was in Costa Rica, though these looked a little distinct.

There were a ton of butterflies around, which was pretty neat. These are my favorites among the several photos I took of them.

This pitiful looking creature wasn’t in the park but in the city Puerto Iguazú. It’s actually only the second most pitiful dog that I saw in that city and you should be thankful I didn’t photograph the first. I guess they don’t take care of the strays in Argentina like they do in Chile.

These three murals were in a plaza in Puerto Iguazú and were cut out of wood and painted. There were a few more, but these were my favorites.

They really did come to bring Jesus, silly indians.

We are the land and the land is us. And the plants and the animals they are land and the plants and the animals ate each other…

Split open that eyeball brother, yeah! Raise a fist!

I came out here with an Australian friend of mine and one of the locals was kind enough to give us a ride in his car. In the foreground is Argentina, across the river to the left is Paraguay, and across to the right is Brazil . If you follow the river that goes to the right you will end up at the falls, and if you follow the river that goes over the horizon you will find one of the largest dams in the world, or so I was told.

This is the obelisk marking the Argentinian side. There are similar ones on the Paraguayan and Brazilian sides, each with their proper colors of course.

The set of the many other photos I took up in Iguazú can be found <here>.

Yup

So Before I bussed myself on up to Iguazú I was living the life down in Buenos Aires. Still so much to say about that place…

The last night I spent there in Buenos Aires a few of us went out for Thai food, which was amazing. We sat on the floor too, just to be cool.

This is me looking sad because my bud Pete has killed an entire cow for his dinner. I only let them kill a fish for me.

“For relaxing times, make it Suntory time.”

This is Evalina, from Sweden. Ya.

I’m heartbroken that I can’t remember the name of this Israeli girl. She was really sweet though.

At the bar afterward I think Pete and I really irritated her with our ¨We’re Americans, f’ yeah!¨type talking.

Evalina was cool with it though. She’ll laugh at just about anything. (just kiddin’… Errr, now laugh…)

This is Pete and I. I know you’re probably thinking that it’s about the gayest photo ever. I don’t even know why I posted it.

At the end of the night we went home in this cab because we thought it would be funny, and somehow managed to live. Hilarious! I didn’t take any of these last photos by the way. They’re Pete’s, and his flickr is <here>. (if you click on this link you’ll notice that Pete doesn’t have that flickr account any longer, which also is why the preceding photos don’t work.  These issues may be corrected in the future.)

A couple of days prior to that I went ice skating with some friends of mine.

Several more went than are pictured here, but these are the cool ones. (Don’t really mean that… Respect.) But here we have two Israelis, Two Argentians, a German, and a gringo. See if you can tell who is from where! I don’t want to give any hints, but Laura and Andrea are in there, and they were two of the better friends I made in Buenos Aires.

You might notice that the quality of this photo is substantially better than the rest. That is because Randall is behind the lens with his badass camera that is bigger than your head. (Unless you are reading this Vik, your head is a bit over-sized for being such a short fellow). Randall traveled all the way to Argentina from the States and should be coming to visit in Chile, where I will be helping him find a boat to New Zealand (or so we plan). His photos are really amazing, and he has photographed some really interesting events such as one of the uprisings in Oaxaca, Mexico. I highly recommend that you check them out. His flickr is <here>.

The story moves on…

Here we have Gorge from Chile and some Swiss guy whose name I have forgotten. Lost his email too on accident. Both are really cool guys. Gorge and I should be hanging out some here in Chile. Andrea was with us at this time, and we later went up to here apartment and had matte with her parents. The Swiss dude couldn’t come because he was just starting work in the restaurant we’re sitting in here. He’s actually been traveling all over South America and working whatever jobs he manages to get.

We passed this house on the way that’s supposed to be haunted and that’s supposed to be me being scared by that face on the wall. The truth is though that I don’t get scared at anything at all, so it’s totally a set-up.

Andrea and her family live on the top floor of an apartment complex and this is the view from the top. This was really one of the more genuine experiences that I had in Argentina. We stayed for a couple of hours just talking and passing around the guitar playing and singing songs while taking matte. Nobody from outside the Southern Cone of South America but me.

So you look at all these pictures and you think that it’s all good times and babes and kicks and that it’s easy to be in a place like this. Maybe you could do it too? No! You can’t. This is what they do to unwary tourists who don’t watch themselves in Buenos Aires. Not kiddin’.

Really though, these signs are all over the city. Didn’t they know that someone would do this?

All the other photos I took in Buenos Aires that weren’t of buildings are <here>.

This is right by the capitol, on the opposite side of the park.

A Lamppost and the steeple of a really cool building near the capitol.

And finally here is the capitol itself .

In your face!

\

From the rear!

Reflection of the dome from a neighboring building.

In a city with so much amazing architecture that buildings that would stand out anywhere else become lost to the background, this is one of my favorites. It’s called El Palacio de Agua, or the Water Palace . It is so called, because it is actually the water utility building for the city. An odd use for such an amazing building. Unfortunately none of these pictures does it any justice; really just needs to be seen in person.

Sportin’ the flag.

The front.

Here is a statue with a pigeon sitting on its head. Respect.

This is a memorial plaza built beside the Israeli embassy, which was targeted in a suicide bomb attack in 1992. The sign says, “In this place 29 people died, please respect their memories.”

This is the Bauen Hotel . It is being run by the workers and there are no bosses. There’s a whole movement of worker collectives running businesses that failed after the economic collapse in 2001. There is a really great documentary in English about the movement called The Take that I highly recommend watching (notice that the name links to the film’s web site). I went inside to check it out and things were pretty lively and it had a really nice atmosphere.

I took a ton of photos of buildings and stuff like that in Buenos Aires. They are all <here>.

Alright, I’ll update youz folks on coming back to Santiago, my class, my trip to Valparaí­so and everything else in a few days.

I just arrived here in Puerto Iguazú and am looking forward to getting out to the falls and poking around some. I’ll be leaving for Santiago on Friday night and arriving sometime on Sunday morning, which I shouldn’t have to say is a ghastly amount of time to spend on a bus. I expect that this place should prove itself worthwhile of the journey though.

I haven’t updated the site for some time because I was rather busy in Buenos Aires; that city really sinks it’s claws into you. The other thing is that the computers at the hostel I was in suddenly became really slow and it wasn’t really worthwhile to take the time to upload pictures nor did I care to spend a couple of hours in a cyber cafe doing it.

I never went to Uruguay or Mar del Plata like I had mentioned in the last post, but they will be there next time and I spent the time well otherwise. There are a lot of thoughts that I want to share and a lot of great photos I’d like to post but I expect it will have to wait until I arrive in Santiago, which should be this Sunday. Expect a really long post sometime that week.

So things are going very well here in Buenos Aires.  On Wednesday I’m planning to take a ferry over the Rio de la Plata to Colonia de Sacramento in Uruguay for the day.  Believe it or not after being here for more than two weeks I still haven’t really seen the Rio de la Plata, which has an absoltuly huge mouth.  I’ve seen a lot of water that leads to the river, but the view is always blocked by ports or the Ecological Reserve.  The Reserve really is nice now but is actually a former trash dump.

Then on Thursday I’m hoping to head south to Mar del Plata and then come back the next evening.  I’m going to take a train, which I’m excited about because I’ve never been on one before.  Mar del Plata is the beach here that all the porteños go to, so swimming and everything else should be good.

Then I’m going to go to Iguazú Falls on Sunday or Monday, and from there back to Santiago, where it’s back to work for awhile.

I have a couple other things that I would like to point you all in the direction of. First, I would highly recommend reading a short article called “The Day Seattle Stood Still.”  If you love Seattle and you don’t know about the general strike of 1919 and its relation to other important events in our nation’s history then you need to read this.  If you don’t care about these things, then go look anyway because the author has the most hilarious name ever.

The other night when I was trying to fall asleep I was listening to a podcast that I’ve had on my ipod for a while from Bill Moyers’ PBS show Moyers on America.  The episode was called the “Net At Risk“, and if you care about the freedom of the internet, net neutrality, or media issues and aren’t already familiar with these issues in general then you have to listen to this.  It’ extremely important, but please go look for yourself.  The web site with the video and audio as well as several other resources on the subject is here.

So I did go to the Bauen Hotel today like I said, and did some other things, but I’ going to write about those tomorrow.