Not long after completing my last post, three friends of ours, a Colombian doctor named Javier, a Chilean bus mechanic named Andrés, and a student from Texas named Robert showed up from Viña del Mar so that we would begin our trip to the Chilean Lake District. We piled into the car and took turns driving throughout the night and in the morning arrived at Los Lagos, a quiet small town in the center of the Region.

This is my roommate Cesar with our generous hosts in Los Lagos, Juan and his son, Juan.

From left to right we’ve got Juan, Andrés, Robert, and Cesar in front of the house in Los Lagos. We spent the afternoon that first day just hanging around and relaxing and getting to know each other. Of of the residents we got to know pretty well early on was their cat-dog.

So this cat-dog up there is Luna, and he climbs up these logs to sleep on the roof, which is really one of the the more ridiculous and comical things I’ve seen before. Each step climbing up it looks like the entire log pile is going to come crashing down. It the photo it looks like Juan is about the hit the dog with that stick but he’s not.

I’ve got so say here that I took a picture that was similar to this but one of the best pictures I think I’ve ever taken, which I then I deleted on accident. Really pissed about that. I wish I could have shared it here.

OK ladies, this one’s for you. This little guy kept getting his head stuck in the gate trying to get near all the action in the house. After setting him free a couple time I didn’t feel too bad about taking some pictures of it. The little bastard is kind of cute, after all.

Unfortunately, I still haven’t picked up my camping gear from Valparaíso so that first night Chechi and I stayed in Los Lagos with Juan while the rest went to that farm I was talking about in my last post to go camping. Not too worried about it though since we plan on repeating this trip several times, and that is definitely high on the list of places to visit.

Oxen are still used frequently like this in the South of Chile, but I was a little surprised to see them working in a residential neighborhood like this one, across the street from the house I was staying in. Here they are hauling gravel, either for a driveway or to mix cement. I’m not sure which since this was actually the last thing I saw before we left Los Lagos to return to Santiago.

That first night then Chechi, Juan, our friend Rita, and I headed over to Valdivia and went down to the Kuntsmann Brewery. Valdivia really is a spectacular city, and unfortunately this trip we didn’t see much of it during the day. It’s one of the places I visited last December when I was traveling in Chile and it’s absolutely one of my favorite places in the country. I won’t say too much about it here because I’m saving that for the next time I go back and photograph it.

Kuntsmann is definitely far and away my favorite beer in Chile. It has a German name because this part of Chile was originally settled by Germans and the culture is still really strong in the area. If you are lucky enough be be able to find this beer wherever you might be at I highly recommend that you try it.

That night we crashed at Juan’s place in Valdivia (the place in Los Lagos is really his parent’s and he actually works in Valdivia) and in the morning we drove back to Los Lagos to meet with the rest. We had a pretty grand plan to visit several places including a couple of towns with German styled building and some waterfalls on our way down to Puerto Montt, which is the last major city in Chile before you get to Chilean Patagonia. (Some people consider the Lake District of Chile Patagonia, but it’s not.)

We stopped at a town called Osorno to eat lunch, which pretty much nixed most of our plans for that day. I expect bad service in Chile this place was beyond ridiculous and we must have spent more than two hours in this place, which obviously cut pretty deep into our plans. Here are Robert, Javier, and I at that restaurant.

After we left the restaurant we came across this religious gathering on the main road of the city. I’m sure it probably had something to do with this holiday they celebrate here called Easter, which was going to be happening the next day.

So we decided then on a couple of places that we would still be able to visit before the night came and we got in the car and drove past Frutillar, one of the towns we had planned to stop at, and then through Puerto Varas, which was another one. They’re both two of these German settled towns I referenced earlier on the shores of Lago Llanquihue with a really stunning views of Volcán Osorno hovering over the lake.

This is a photo I took of Volcán Osorno just past Puerto Varas while we were driving to Petrohué©.

Here is the Volcano from a little closer.

We got to the waterfall, Salto Petrohué, just before the trail heading to it closed. It’s waters are characterized by the bright turquoise that is in all the water here in the South, which you can see running down the channel in the photo on the left. It’s really stunning and I still need to figure out exactly why all the water down here has this color, but it must have something to do with dissolved elements in it.

These falls were definitely impressive but really weren’t nearly as cool as some of the ones I visited nearby last year, specifically Salto Huilo Huilo and Salto Chino. But those are for another trip and I’ll have to show you later.

Me at el Salto Petrohué. After checking out the waterfall we drove over to Lago Todos los Santos just in time for the sunset.

I believe that this peak here is Cerro Nevado, which is in Argentina.

Here is the sun setting over the lake. You can take a ferry across this lake into Argentina where San Carlos de Barriloche is, which is a really popular tourist spot and ski resort. It’s one of the most popular places for both Argentinians and Chileans to vacation, plus lots of other foreigners. Still haven’t been over there yet.

After that we drove down to Puerto Montt and had dinner. The city seems kind of cool and I’ll definitely have to come back to see it during the day. This is also the city where you take most of the ferries that go further south to Patagonia or la Isla de Chiloé, all places I have yet to visit.

So despite the fact that I had a ton of fun and met some great people on this trip it was a bit rushed and left me with a desire to come back and really spend some time in all these places we saw. But this is definitely a trip that my friends and I intend on repeating several times (hopefully with a little more planning) and a place I´ll be dragging any of you who are lucky enough to come visit me while I´m here in Chile.

As always I took a lot more photos on this trip than I’ve shown here, the set of which is available here .

The next major trip we have planned is a weekend in Mendoza, Argentina, another great place I’ve visited before and somewhere anyone who comes down here will be obliged to go to with me when you visit.

Let me go ahead and briefly go over the issue of Chilean soldiers fighting in Iraq that I talked about in the last post. Before I get into it let me state that this is not an issue that is confined to Chile and is more foreboding for my own country, the United States, if one makes exceptions for Iraq and any other countries that are unfortunate enough to be direct victims of our foreign policy.

This involves a particularly alarming issue that has emerged in the United States within the last decade, which is the increasing privatization of the military. The company that is at the forefront of this is Blackwater USA. It is notable about this company that two of its employees were the American contractors killed in Fallujah, Iraq in 2004 and drug through the streets, which led to our forces leveling the city and possibly committing international war crimes in the process. (A short Italian documentary in English describing these crimes can be downloaded for free here.) Blackwater USA was also the first to respond after Hurricane Katrina, reportedly using excessive force in many cases.

I hope I don’t have to spell out the potential consequences of this for anyone reading this post, but two of the most obvious involve the lack of accountability of these companies to American and international law and also the lack of accountability to the American people. I feel like I’m pointing out the obvious here again but anytime you have a situation where war is profitable you’re probably going to see a lot more of it.

The news program Democracy Now! dedicated the large part of two episode to this which can be either read of listened to here(part1 part2) and there is a book I haven’t had the opportunity to read yet but has been highly recommended to me about this by Jeremy Scahill called Blackwater: Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army. The website for that book is here.

Regarding Chile, this country has been one of the major recruiting grounds for these companies, particularly by the aforementioned Blackwater USA. Most of these soldiers go over to Iraq and provide security and perform other tasks, often leaving the Chilean military for these higher paying jobs. This is particularly disturbing when one notes that the 90% of the Chilean people are against the war in Iraq and the government is officially opposed to it. A very good article about the recruitment of Chilean soldiers by US private security firms is here.

I hope to look into this more myself and see to what extent recruitment is still taking place within Chile, and will certainly include anything I find here. I think I’ve met one person in the entire time I’ve been here who supports the war in Iraq, and many, many people have brought it up with me. I think that this is not very well known in this country and I think most people here would be really upset if they found out.

If I get a good response to this (it is possible to leave comments here) I’ll try to include a lot more about Chilean current events and their relationships to global events and happenings.

So I’ve been told that the quality of my writing on this site has deteriorated. This is probably the case, since my last couple of posts have been pretty rushed. This one will be no different. Right now I am about four weeks behind and I want to get this thing up to date. Hopefully pretty soon I’ll be able to write like I mean it again. But still I’m playing catch-up, so don’t expect too much.

What’s going on now, in brief? Just finished my TEFL class. It’s worked out pretty well. Will be looking for work soon.

But I’m catching up. Where do I really begin? After I left Iguazú Falls I spent two entire days on a bus coming back to Santiago, Chile. What was it that I mentioned in the last post about the bus ride that was so funny? Up ’til now I still regret not taking a photo of it. I meant to, but the planets were not aligned correctly, or something. So unfortunately I didn’t get the pic, but the whole thing really kept my kicks going for 48 hours.

Across the aisle from me, close enough that I could have touched had I wanted too, sat a transvestite next to a nun. For the entire trip? So much time, you ask? Yes, almost the whole trip. They talked once, though I have no idea of what. It was brief, and lamentably I was too far away to hear.

At Mendoza I switched buses and took off to Santiago. Passed close by the highest mountain outside of Asia; Aconcagua. This trip across the Andes between Mendoza and Santiago is really incredible. Hopefully I get the chance sometime to come up here and spend some time.
Here are some pics that I shot off at the border crossing at El Paso de los Libertadores.

The customs house.

The view in the other direction. This is pretty close to Portillo, one of the more renowned ski resorts in Latin America. Got to make it up here when winter comes.

After that hellishly long bus ride I arrived in Santiago just in time for the first day of implementation of some major changes had been made to the public transportation system, Transantiago. The changes were intended to better integrate the subway and the buses and streamline the whole system but the whole thing has ended up being a nightmare. The first week I was here a couple of city buses were confiscated by angry passengers who had waited for more than two hours for a bus. Thank god that I only needed to use the subway to get to my classes, since at least that’s still functioning much better than the buses. It seems that things are improving slowly and hopefully the whole system will be working as it was intended soon.

Right after getting off the bus from Argentina I went down to the metro station, which was complete chaos. Carrying both of my backpacks it took me about thirty minutes to get downstairs to the boarding platform from the ticket booth, which normally takes no more than thirty seconds or so.

I ended up making it to the apartment just fine, though pretty late. Early the next morning it was straight to class.

My apartment here is in a really nice neighborhood and is very comfortable. There’s a jogging trail really close by and a flock of parrots living in the neighborhood. My roommates are really great and we’re getting along really well. The two are both Colombian doctors. So if I end up staying in Santiago there are a lot of good things going here.

A view of the Andes foothills from my bedroom window.

After my first week of classes I went to Valparaíso for the weekend, which was great. I spent some time with some good friends and picked up my laptop and some other stuff. Don’t know if I’m going to be living there or in Santiago. I would really prefer to be in Valparaíso, but it depends on what kinds of jobs I find.

My TEFL class went pretty well overall, though I had one particular demo class that was pretty rough. It’s taken up most of my time for the last month, but I think I’ve learned a lot and it’s been fun. It will really help me a lot in my teaching.

There was one weekend that a friend of mine gave me a mohawk and the whole crew of us went out for the night.

This is what the ‘hawk looked like. I know you must be thinking that’s it’s pretty friggin’ rad. I had to drink some beer in the picture to make it look even cooler.

My roommate Cesar and me at the club.

Cesar and our buddy Juan, another Colombian. Gotta love the smoke in this photo.

After a while the dj stopped playing music and everyone stopped dancing. This guy in the photo came out and started performing, which all ended up being pretty interesting. The guy is from Ecuador and his stage name is Delfin (which means dolphin). His girlfriend died in one of the World Trade Center towers during the September 11 attacks in New York. The song he played was a sort of dedication to the whole sad business and there was an accompanying video playing on several screens to go with it. Delfin ended up leaving the club at the same time we did and I talked to him for a bit. Pretty nice guy.

Unfortunately, the mohawk didn’t survive the weekend. At least my mom is happy about that. But the thing really is that the awesomeness of the ‘hawk didn’t change the fact that it was too much work to maintain. Here is the set with the other photos I’ve taken over the last month here in Chile.

So finally I am caught up to the start of this weekend. Finally as well the charger for the batteries in my camera showed up. I took some really nice photos around Santiago this past weekend. Should be putting them up soon.

Also, I still hope to post that video from Iguazú Falls, but I’ve had some troubles getting it set up. Hopefully it’ll be here soon.

So after getting back to Seattle from Vancouver, BC to celebrate the New Year my friends and I went to a bar a shared a bottle of Malbec from Mendoza, Argentina that I picked out.  The next morning I was picked up by Paul, Mark, Adam, and Twan and we headed down to Portland.  I hadn’t seen Mark or Paul in a long time and it was cool catching up with them.  I hadn’t met Adam or Twan before but they were both pretty cool guys.

After getting there we arrived at the Martin’s brother’s house and had some drinks and then went to bed early so we could get up for skiing in the morning.**

We skied Mount Hood Meadows that day on almost perfect powder right after a pretty good snowstorm.  This was my first time skiing for about three years or so and it took me some time to regain my confidence, but I did pretty well.  I had almost forgotten how much I enjoy skiing.

Afterwards we went to this bar called Charlie’s up on the mountain in a town called Government Camp.  Marvin told me that his dad used to come to this bar when he was young and that it still is exactly the same as it was back then.

(So my camera died at the start of this trip and I had forgotten both my extra battery and my charger, so none of these photos are mine).

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This is us at Charlie’s

This is Adam after his teachers Paul and Marvin threw him in a snowbank and took pictures.

The next day we opted to go to Ski Bowl instead, which I liked better because there were fewer people and the runs were funner and more challenging.  Marvin’s dad used to be  ski instructer here and this is where he grew up, and possibly concieved, as he told me.

Apparently that day at Mount Hood Meadows some old guy got hit by a snowboarder and died and the dude that hit him just took off.  What a bastard.

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We only came off the hill to drink beer and eat nachos.  Actually, I didn´t have any of the nachos becuase I´m a vegetarian now.  Adam did though, even though he is also recently a vegetarian.  If you look closely at his sleave you can see the tears off shame he wiped off there.Â

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A band of merrymakers.

So after rockin’ Skibowl we dropped off Marvin at his brother’s place and had these killer coffee drinks and checked out his impressive vintage stereo collection and drove back to Yakima.

All the rest of the pictures from this trip are here.

I chilled out there for a couple hours until my driver Vik picked me up again and took me to Pullman.  We arrived there a little after midnight but still had time to hit up Valhallas for about an hour before it closed and then went to our buddy Mohamed’s place and hung out. My sister Laura took me to Spokane in the morning.

So due to the fact that I was travelling almost continuously during my trip to the States and that I didn’t often have reliable access to the internet when I was more stationary this entry is a little belated.

So it all started when my bud Vikrimjit picked me up from Spokane to take me to Seattle, and we ended up turning around at Vantage and heading to Pullman because being true to his character he had forgotten his passport.  For those of you that aren’t so familiar with Washington State we drove for a little over five hours to go the distance of about 70 miles or so.  Just a warning.  If you’re ever going anywhere important or far away and then look to your left to see this:

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quiz him and be sure that he is fully prepared to flee the country.  He probably wants to but isn’t.  This docile looking Punjabi would be at best the partial cause of lots more unnecissary driving during this trip.  The cool thing was that we went to Rico’s Pub, which is a bar in Pullman something over a hundred years old that we used to hang out at a lot.  Hadn’t changed much.

In the morning we drove from Pullman to Bellingham, which is near the border and met with Shammi & Rie, afterwich we proceeded to the greener pastures of Canada.  Here’s a cool photo of a peak on Snoqualmie Pass that I took from the car on the way.

We picked up this other wack Punjab named Gurri and then went to our Buddy Jay´s house to Prefunk.

I forgot that I was the only white guy there until just now when I put up this pic.  Then we went to a ghetto club on Granville Avenue which I got into for free and checked my coat for free because I tried paying in pesos.

This was a good start to the night.  As you can see from these photos everything was great.

Until Guree & Rie had some glowing, green mixed drink that turned them into flesh-eating zombies.

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I think Shammi gave it to them and made them to terrible things, but I´m not really sure what.  I don´t trust that guy.  Thank god Guree and Rie slept it off and couldn´t remember what they had done in the morning.Â

There was one girl with us who was a total floozy and was hooking up with all the guys.  Her name is Rie.

 
Rie hookin´up with Guree         Rie hookin´up with Shammi

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Rie hookin´up with Vik

As you can see from these pictures she just couldn´t make up here mind.  (Actually, she´s a really sweet girl and would never actually consider getting involved with any bad, bad types like us.)

  The next day is a blur (no, I wasn´t hung over) of sitting in Indian restuarants and eating and talking.  We got caught up in this and did it for so long that we forgot that our Punjabi driver and navigator had no idea what they were doing and left way too late to get into the Cambie, a really rad bar that was also the only one that didn´t cost like fifty dollars or more to get into that night.  So we spent the New Year in line outside the bar, which isn´t really so bad all in all but we still began to torment Vik the driver because of it.

 The prospects for the night were looking pretty dull since we weren´t willing to fork out exhorbitant amounts of money to get into a club and for some reason it´s illegal to sell alcohol in British Columbia after 10pm, even on New Year´s Eve.

We did manage to infiltrate a private Japanese party and had tea and scones.Â

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   So we were a little put out about the way New Year´s Eve had gone…

But then Guree got his hands on one of those New Year kazoo flapper thingies, which he vetted his frustration at towards everything in the street for about two hours, which was a rather entertaining spectacle.Â

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You can see here that Vik has finally cracked from all the ridicule we gave him for making us miss the New Year.  Don´t worry about him though.  Shammie took him into his lap and rocked him and sang him lullabies and he´s all better now.

So the first morning of the New Year before we headed out we stopped at Jay´s Little Caesars to have pizza.

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We made Vik beg for his pizza.

And it was back to Seattle after that.  Vik, Rie, and I spent the day at the Seattle aquiarium, which was pretty cool.  They had reversed the order that you go through it since I had last been there and the lobby was closed, I´m not sure if temporarily or not.

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This sequence of photos showing Vik sneaking up behind Rie shows without a doubt that he is a creep.

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Vik creeped up on this octopus too and it attacked him, hopefully teaching him a good lesson.  When I saw what was going on I had to rescue him.  He was my driver, after all.

 

Later that night we met up with Heather and went to a bar in West Seattle.

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Vancouver is still one of my favorite cities in the world and I always love going there.  Even though things didn´t really go as planned it was really great spending the New Year with some good friends hanging out and eating delicious food.Â

 PS You can see the complete photo set for this trip by clicking here.  I finally put up all the pics, so yo