It’s a bit hard to know how to do Chile justice. The 2 weeks there was just lovely. Chile. An amazing country so distinctly different from Mexico. Beautiful. And with some lovely, helpful people. And also with some of my favourite people in the world residing in a humble little town named Temuco.

Jo, John and I, after a long bus trip to Temuco arrived to Ricardo’s lovely little home. We stayed there sort of on and off for a week. After being tired of being on the road for so long, it was so incredibly nice to be in someone’s house. We shared some very lovely times together. Kind of hard to do justice to really.

-Despite Temuco’s lack of vegetarian food (made up for by Pucon’s abundance of veggie food), we ate a lot. Well yes a lot, but made up for by only eating twice a day instead of 3 times. Along with this, we shared many glasses of Chile’s beautiful wine and much tea…or at least hot drinks. John most certainly takes out the award for eating warrior. He showed us all up.

-The Chilean scouts (although already exist. We know this because we stumbled across them and got a special tour), have formed a special side group that choose to get lost rather than not. Making for much more fun. Chile in general was marked by things going wrong, but actually turning out far better for it. John, Jo, Ricardo and I tried climbing one Cerro, ending up climbing 2 or who knows really. Eventually found the restaurant and once we walked in seemed to help Chile score 4 goals (one for each of us). The owner being so happy there was free champagne for all.

-My newly purchased thermals made my time much more pleasant. Without feeling cold, cold weather is rather enjoyable.

-Another thing I rather enjoyed was the learning to cut firewood. Rather satisfying and such a useful skill. I also like having to be so involved with ones desire to be warm. I suppose I didn’t have to cut the tree down. Which perhaps is good cause that may have made me sad.

-We went to Leo and his families house for regressive…or progressive dinner one night. So lovely to meet his family and where he lives. He played us some music which also was a delight. Ricardo accompanied playing a cup…and some other things. Leo’s young spirit convinced Delila his wife to come out dancing with us that night.

-Pucon, despite its lack of volcano views provided us with some merry snow hikes. Once guided only by a mini dog. Snow walking is a fun activity. 10 times more fun running down the hill. I can’t wait to do this again one day. Snow is exciting for Aussies so we were pretty easily pleased on this department. We even got snow on our heads on our attempted day adventure to Argentina (the only thing more exciting for an Aussie than snow, going on a DAY trip to another country, by CAR). Fortunately or unfortunately (considering things always worked out for the best) the road got snowed in and the expedition failed.

-My one hope for Argentina was to be offered Mate. A typical tea type drink apparently everyone drinks all the time and shares the same cup. What a nice tradition. Anyway, we picked up an old Chilean who lives in Argentina and he offered us Mate, in Chile, but if we ever went to Argentina (if we could have made out what he was saying for the accent) we can have Mate. That’s almost as good.

-I also developed a love for woolen socks. I never knew their beauty until I discovered that one pair of woollen socks is warmer than two socks, even when the top layer is woollen. Also, when one has wet boots from snow walks and they put on their woollen socks, the water cannot be felt for the socks. Not only this, if they did happen to get wet, they still stay warm. What delights they brought my warmed soul.

-We were able to successfully drive on the right, yet wrong side of the road. Funnily the gears were the easy part. Remembering to stay right is remarkably more confusing than it first seems. But we returned safe, the only car damage being from some very unprofessional Chilean theives. They tried to take our anti-theft radio. First smashing the window and leaving blood everywhere, then making a right royal mess of radio the achieve nothing. The radio was left there in the car, deformed. What bad work.

-We did get an understanding of Chilean police systems as a result though. Them being the ones trying to convince us to lie and us saying…but we don’t want to.

-We had a fairly merry night out in Temuco where we went to La Perrera to watch Ricardo play his drums. A really nice little intimate place, with a lot of smoke (the only bad part, making me feel so sick I had to leave for awhile in fear I would vomit). Leo and Delila accompanied us again which was delightful. We danced a fair bit, I danced rather badly and vowed that this would definitely be the year I would learn how to dance. One meets some characters when then dance, some patient and some absolutely crazy insane, leaving you 10 steps behind. But it was a lovely time, despite the robbery at the end. We arrived home rather late, not helping ourselves by staying up late chatting away. We don’t have places like this in Mexico. I wish we did. It was rather cool.

-I enjoyed muchly the warmth of fires and wine, and actually the cold that I wasn’t feeling. I enjoyed the seeing of old familiar friends and of old only slightly familiar friends. It was really well just lovely in the truest sense of the word to see Ricardo and Leo in their homes. Seeing such dear people, being fellow Aussies and Chileans in a random context for me did confuse my poor little head and brought up the general thought for me that I have lost my passion. And that realisation has been an extremely hard one to come to terms with. I have wondered several times what on earth am I doing. And well here I am in Mexico…adding such great clarity to ones questions. Although perhaps it is useful if not difficult to be away from familiarity at least for awhile.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 24th, 2007 at 11:22 pm.