Catching my z's on buses...

I feel it's actually a skill worth perfecting, espeically when living in Chile. This weekend, I once again hopped an overnight bus to go south for a few days. This time it was with my whole program, so we had the bus to ourselves. It was the night of the World Series, so there was a little mini-party/morning at around 1 when we received the call from home. I made a call home to congratulate Tim and talk to Sam, and then konked out as a result of very little sleep of late.

We arrived in Púcon, a touristy-outdoorsy town 10 hours south of here, at around 8 in the morning on Thursday. There are tons of tourists (which means English-speaking actually doesn't atract weird looks) a beautiful lake, a volcano complete with smoking top, and a cute log-cabin town. Plus, being south of here, it's actually quite chilly at night. Combine that with the great smell of the lake and the surrounding forests, it actually felt a little like fall in Northeastern Pennsylvania. Ah, happy memories of Thanksgiving in Moscow, PA, how I miss them.

Thursday we went on a tour of the saltos in the area - literally jumps of water, or waterfalls - which were really quite beautiful. When I'm on my computer (because right now I'm making use of computer lab priviledges at a Santiago hostal where I'm staying) I'll post great pictures. We also went to the thermal springs - bathing in hot waters by the side of a raging river under the mountains...what could be better?!

My program was staying in cabañas - cabins - for the weekend, which at first made me think of 6th grade summer camp style or Georgetown ESCAPE retreat-esque cabins with three tiered bunk beds and little else. Wow was I wrong. I'm never going back to another hostal if I can help it. Staying in a cabin here is like renting out a luxourious house for the night, only much cheaper. Granted, there were bunk beds, but there were four sets of them, plus a double bed, two bathrooms, a living room, and a fantastic kitchen. The grounds also had a pool and a jacuzzi. While it was too cold to actually swim, we decided it would be a good idea to go for a midnight jump-in-the-pool-run-to-the-jakuzzi dip. I believe I tied for the top number of pool to jacuzzi jumps: 3.

Because there were only 8 of us signed from the program signed up to be staying in this 10 person cabaña, and because Ashley and our friend Lauren were coming to visit us down there the next night, we called them up and said, don't stay in a hostal, come stay in our awesome cabin on our program's bill!

They arrived the next day and did just that. We tried to hide the fact that they were staying there, although not very well. Oops. Guess my dreams of joining the CIA and making out with Michael Vartan (ALIAS reference, for those of you who aren't as cool and in touch as I am with pop culture) won't quite pan out.

Friday was our program's trip to a Mapuche center nearbye. We learned about the Mapuche people (I love how we all introduced ourselves, all 32 of us, following traditions), ate food with them, learned some dances, and - Dad, you'll love this after reading My Invented Country by Isabel Allende - shared mate around a fire. (Mate is a type of tea which is made by filling a specific type of cup with the leaves, pouring in boiling water, and using a special straw with very small holes in the bottom so you don't drink any of the leaves. It is often shared in groups. Germaphobes beware.)

That night we were free to get our own dinner. Luckily, because Pucón is such a touristy town, the food there is the best I've had yet in Chile. That means it has flavor. We went to an "Arab" restaurant for Palestinian food that was quite good, although I'm pretty sure what I had wasn't shish kabab as I've ever seen it before. My motto for traveling though is, "when in doubt, eat!" and it hasn't failed me yet.

Another attempt at jacuzzi debauchery failed miserably as the owners were changing the water that night and it wouldn't be warm until the next day. The friendly night guard reminded us, however, that we had a jacuzzi whirlpool tub in our cabins. No need to tell us twice. Sara, Jeff, and I headed back to the "matrimonial baño" in our cabin and took a bath...leading to some weird quotes, probably dangerous pictures, and memories of certain other bathroom experiences involving Chambers, champagne, and an ironing board. I dare not say more.

Saturday was our free day to take advantage of the wonder that is Pucón`s outdoors-y toorism. I went white water rafting for the first time, which is fun because, in Chile, they don't really care if the guides have been drinking. Luckily, my guide was sober, and it was the crazy guide in the other boat that smelled a bit of alcohol, so in the end it was just amusing for us to watch him dance around in the other raft and enjoy our sane leadership.

That afternoon we did something called "canopy", which we quickly nicknamed "monkey flying". It involved ten ziplines from tree to tree over rivers and forest bed in harnesses. And fast speeds. It was crazy fun. The scariest part wasn't hurling yourself over the river but rather climbing up the tree branch assembled ladders to get to seemingly unsturdy platforms in the trees and then waiting to hurl yourself. But of course, our guides just shimmied up the trees like monkeys without a care in the world. Ah, life without lawsuits.

My program took off that night after our crazy fun activities, but Ashley, Lauren, and I decided to hang around one more night since we didn't have school on Monday because of the national holiday of (wait for it) All Saints Day. And they claim separation of church and state. (By the way, Chile is still just trying out a divorce law. Sometimes I'm amazed at where I am.) We stayed at an adorable vegitarian friendly hostal called école, which called to mind certain hair salons in DC due to it's "e. coli" like similarity. It was very hippy-esque, complete with "ANYBODY BUT BUSH IN 2004" sign on the door. Woohoo.

Sunday we had high hopes of hiking the national park Huerquehue (we nicknamed it Panqueque - pancake in Spanish - with good reason) but woke up to pouring rain. It was also election day in Chile, and, since no alcohol can be sold on election day here, we couldn't find much in the way of restaurants. So we stayed by the fire in our hostal, talked to backpackers from literally all over the world, found out quickly they all hated Bush (I don't care what you think of him, we're in deep trouble with international relations - it's the first thing people tell you here), and ate more good vegetarian food. Quite the relaxing day that I needed.

Our bus left that night around 9 and we were taking... EJECUTIVO! While this may have no significance for any of you, after several all night bus trips, I was thrilled to pay a few extra bucks for a bit more leg room and a seat that reclined back to like 45 degrees! I got into Valpo at like 9 in the morning, to find that my sheets had been changed! I get excited by the strangest things since being in Chile.

In the immortal words of Porky, that's all folks. To all my friends in ye ole United States, anyone wanna join me in, as Meaghan calls it, the "rest of the world"?