Bicentennial Weekend in Chile

Well as some of you might have learned in your travels, the 18th of September is Chiles 4th of July.... except cooler. I mean independence day is fun and all in the states but nowhere near the level of fun-ocity and diversions and happylicious that 'fiestas patrias' is.  fiestas patrias literally translated is patriotic parties.... the week leading up to the weekend of the 18th the streets were lined with chilean flags... it was impressive and I dont think I will ever be able to forget the chilean flag after this past week....

My Future Home

This is in Horcon, a small fishing village about an hour outside of Vina del Mar, Valparaiso (my city)'s sister city.. if that makes any grain of sense i will be pleased. Anyway you can see all those lil dots of red white and blue, yep that would be the chilean flag taking over the scenery. Since Ive skipped to friday Day I will back track later and just go with the flow for now... this is Horcon, as I said. It was once a hippie community in the 70s and is still filled with much tiedye and free love. I went with three gringos I met here who are volunteering at a school in Vina.  So we get to this incredible little town (back plan is to come live here :) and its perfect, when we walk down towards the beach we are passed by this Pocahontas looking chilean.  As soon as our feet hit the sand, our shoes are gone and we begin walking along the beach, not sure where we are heading but we keep walking. It is a beautiful day and we are walking on the beach, it was perfect. 

We finally found a spot a less than a mile down the beach, a cove of sorts. it was our own private view of paradise, I know how cheesy that sounds but its the beach people... how do you write about a beach without sounding cheesy?  we layed there for hours just relaxing and ended up meeting some nice Chilean students from Santiago on break visiting the town too. they invited us to come hang out at their place and told us about the nude beach just a few minutes further down the beach from where we were from... i cannot lie, I was a little happy we stopped where and when we did. That would have been a bit abrupt for a relax on the beach day. Once we had enough of the beach we began our trek back, I think it was more of our stomachs telling us to head back to town.  Once there the three girls got very distracted by a fonda or display along the boardwalk...

I mean look at all that tiedye how could we avoid being drawn to it. it was here that we met our Pocahontas, she was fabulous.  I wish I had gotten a picture of her. After we made our purchases, and had made the guy of the group a slight impatient, we decided upon a little shack of a restaurant with a view of the ocean. When we had finished eating we found our tired happy way back to Vina... where I got a message from a friend about checking out the Ramada again. (1: a ramada is a fair of sorts with lots of food, alcohol, vendors, rides, games, all around celebrations.... 2: this is what I skipped earlier in favor of the horcon tale, I had been told so much about the Ramadas going on this weekend that I simply could not wait to go to one "hello my name is casey and i have no patience" So i  called up my friend James and asked if he wanted to check it out.. at 4 on a thursday... why shouldnt it be poppin yet right? doesnt tunbridge fair start on a wednesday? well needless to say after walking for hours trying to find the illusive "sporting club"where it was being held, our tired feet arrived -through the back illegal entrance we found out....- to find that the ramada was still being set up... there were things going on, however we were pretty sure we were the only non ramada workers walking around... whoops! we werent about to wait for this party to start so we went to get ice cream at the most amazing place in vina Bravissimo, with the intentions of heading back once it got dark....

But look at that monstrosity of a delicious savory meal... Yeah when we were done and it was dark, all we could think about was getting home to eat something real. delicious but deadly. So alas, we missed opening night of the Ramada in Vina... but never fear this parentheses story is done)

So as I was saying, James texted asking if I wanted to try the Ramada again. How could I not? its like a mini non agricultural and crack infested version of the tunbridge worlds fair? of course I am going to find a caramel apple! So I convince my friends from the Horcon trip to come with us and we make our way to what is sure to be a night of super excitement. Even though the sun has sucked much of our energy level and we are dragging feet alittle, we walk excitedly down the aisles stopping and admiring all the cool things offered. 

There is an aisle for meat .... and there is chicha, I had been told by my chilean friends that these are the two things I must have if I am to say I participated in the festivities of fiestas patrias... Chica is a type of wine with fruit, i cant explain it. It is quite delicious but also far too sweet for anybody to drink more than one glass without feeling as if they have just chugged liquid candy. Well there were tastings throughout the ramada for chicha, my friend Jim and I gladly participated, not wanting to miss one aspect of the chilean culture. We found one that wasnt that bad so I asked the girl (and i mean girl, she couldnt have been more than 13 selling alcohol) if I could have one, thinking that the 1500 peso price listed (equals 3 dollars) meant one glass... that sounds right no? no. she took my money and handed me a bottle... only after Jim had made fun of me asking if he thought id get a bottle or a cup... so I now had a bottle of something far too sweet to drink on my own, in a ghetto style bottle with a weird stickyness and a homemade cork... 1) i was not about to walk around drinking from this bottle 2) i was not going to be able to finish a bottle on my own  3) alcohol is not allowed in my house so I am not about to bring it home... thankfully Jim offered to help me drink it. 
The volunteer group left the ramada shortly after that, we were all exhausted after a full day of lounging on a beach ;) so it was James and I left to wander.  We decided we had to try an anticucho (kabob) if we were to say we were at the ramada..
Don't we look like we are having soo much fun! I know, we were. Well after we checked that off our list, we continued wandering and got a little caught up in the game section, never fear mother, your constant anti carnival game speeches played over and over in my mind so i wasted no money in that section, however it was very interesting to see what the toy of choice was for the ramada goers... for the underage it was light up multicolord devil horn headbands... and for those of an older age but not necessarily better judgment, the prizes were bottles of different types of liquor.. At one game if I got my pingpong  ball on just the right cup, i could have won a bottle of tequila, at another i could aim my ring to land on a bottle of my choosing, from chicha, to whiskey and rum, to anything else you can imagine.  I take back my previous statement of the Ramada being less crack filled than Tunbridge fair...

Not a great distance from the games, were the rides... Now I am a big one for carnival rides, even the most sketchy ones with the creepiest looking attendants but there was a little alarm going off in my mind when I looked at these rusty crooked unbalanced but newly painted death traps. unfortunatley i listened to my gut, never a fun path to travel, but i am in one not half dead piece. look if you will at the second picture of the ferris wheel? does that not look like it is leaning?

Once we were filled with chilean tradition and celebrations and ready to settle down for the night in preparation for the even bigger festivities tomorrow morning, we began to walk to our respective bus and metro stops... but not before running into a scene straight from mary poppins

It was quite fun, and i hope to see this type of thing again. I am just lucky I had my camera ready :)
oh I must share this photo with you as well, perhaps it is the reason we got lost on our first attempt of finding the ramada on thursday..

yes my friends, that says 3 1/2 oriente..... poor planning in my opinion :P

Wow, only one night down of this incredible weekend.... i should learn to be concise...
When I arrived home, late for me, everyone was in bed but there was a mountain of meat waiting on the kitchen table thawing... i mean mountain

kinda ew...

but my family was so sweet, knowing i dont eat pork they set aside my own little mini steak for the days asado (bbq). There was so much food being prepared when I woke up the next morning. pictures will follow this blog like last time. all morning the women prepared and made the house ready for friends to come celebrate.  there was churripan, this drink with white wine, fanta, and peaches that was super sweet but pretty good, pebre (a salsa type sauce), alot of meat obviously, and the usual potatoe salad and corn and such. two other gringos that i had never met ended up showing up with one of the families. they are studying in buenos aires but were visiting on of their old host families. Although we spoke in english alot, it was nice to have somebody else who was experiencing this for the first time.  Other than a slight difference in the food served, it was pretty much like any 4th of july bbq you have been to. Except, since my mama chilena is a but older, there were no crazy drunk people running around dancing queca and singing the national anthem... for this I was a bit sad but it was a very nice day.  By the time everyone had left, I was exhausted so my family told me to rest because they would be taking me to the fireworks in vina later. No sooner did I rest my head on the pillow did i wake up to the booming sound of the sky exploding, aka fireworks... when my family returned, they apologized and said they didnt want to wake me up. Oh well, alot of my friends here videod them so the next morning i was able to watch a little 2 by 3 version of the fireworks. i mean once you have seen fireworks youve pretty much seen fireworks. theres never a surprise but it wouldve been nice to go with the family.


The rest of the weekend was a little less crazy but still alot of fun. I walked around alot and took the perfect tourist picture, that everyone and anyone who has been to vina del mar has taken...

whats the time?

so i visited the beach near my house and walked to vina and shout out to my german familia, I found a castle for us...

roughly translated: In 1905, the industrialist german, lord Gustavo Adolfo WULFF!!! Mowle ordered construction of a stone chalet in this place in a french/german style with two towers and two terraces which was inaugurated in 1908. Not until 1916 was it transformed into a castle thanks to the work of the architect, Alberto Cruz Montt.  In 1959 the I. munipilaidad de vina del mar aquired the property for preservation and declared it a national historic monument on sept 20 1995.

yep thats one of our towers :)

Now onto the handful of pics I am obligated to share for those of you who luckily do not have facebook and are therefore safe from my ridiculous amount of foto uploadage...

Mendoza Argentina, Because Chile Wasn't Enough...

Well, as you might have figured out from the title of the blog, I traveled to Mendoza, Argentina this past weekend. (oh yes, just a weekend excursion to Argentina, no biggie) it was incredible. Almost had me questioning a few times, why I chose Chile over Argentina..... but no i love chile. Argentinas exchange rate was only 4 pesos to 1 usd, but from what i saw, the cost of living is sooooooooo much lesss there! for example, i got a nice steak (i was in argentina i had to!) dinner for less than 7 bucks.... over the course of the weekend my friends and i spent $10 on 1.5kilos of ice cream from the shop a block away from the hostel... imagine that! although i did come to realize how expensive it is in general to take a vacation.. especially when one is not working and technically already on a vacation. ja! we went the cheap route and suffered an 8+hour bus ride from Vina to Mendoza (with an hour or so break to get through customs...gahhh) and we stayed at a really cool hostel, it was quiet unlike alot of hostels i have been to which was nice.
speaking of customs, let me tell you about getting into Argentina and how they didnt stamp my passport.... :( and (skipping ahead in time) how when i came back across the border, i put my super cute puppy please with a cherry on top face to ask if the nice argentinian man could stamp my passport real quick, and got denied.... stingy passport man! :P oh well, its not like i didnt go to argentina, i totally have a picture of the welcome to argentina sign soooooo, PROOF!

so this 8+ hour bus ride was ridiculous, but alot of fun. it was definitley the way to travel, as miley cyrus says: its about the climb or something like that.... i dont really know but i know its about the journey. and it was a fun journey with me and 8 other gringos from Chile. I was sad we didnt have a double decker bus but never fear, that was rectified for the journey back. :D At the end of this post I will throw in a whole load of pictures so itll be like you were there!!!!
Getting to the actual being in Argentina part.... the first night, we split up into two groups for dinner arrangements... one group went for steak and pub crawling type night and the other (aka what i did) walked around the area we were staying in and found a wonderful restaurant with a nice waiter that found it adorable (code for most likely the most obnoxious gringos hes met, ever.) that we couldnt get enough "Agua de Jyave (llave)" which is tap water. hey, we were thirsty after all the bussing.... After awhile he just kept bring out pitchers ever few minutes. maybe he got the hint? this place had incredible pizza! i wish i remembered the name so i could suggest it... but it was sooo delicious, it could have been that i was just starved from only eating cookies, alfajores and sprim pina juice all day on the bus but i believe it was honestly super yummy. After dinner we took our time walking back to the hostel and decided as a group we didnt want to go out but we did decide to watch a movie, make friends with the hostel worker patrick from california and get a caja de vino tinto... for those of you who are english speakers that means box of red wine... it sounds as sketch as it tasted. but we thought, hey we're in argentina, its beef and wine country lets get this started!

never fear, we moved on the next day to try real wine.. oh and that lil egg was a chocolate egg with a prize inside.. hello my name is casey and im 7 and 3 quarters

So I finally got to see Shutter Island, oh my holy moley that was a sketchy movie. At one point (around midnight or later.....) there was a point where a scary insane person jumped from the shadows and i screamed louder than ever and made everyone in the common area of the hostel jump and come see what the heck happened.... but you see, in south america, midnight isnt really that late for people so it was fine.. i hope!
Moving on to the first day, saturday, we did a biking vinyard/winery tour. basically the hostel set us up with a bike shop "Mr Hugo" (a really sweet guy with super cool cruiser bikes and tandums!)

didnt actually tandum, decided itd be safer to go solo :(

Mr Hugo had a map that was super easy to follow and we just biked all day on back argentinian roads occasionally visiting a winery or olive oil maker.  A few points during our voyage we sang the songs from sound of music, if you had seen us you wouldve totally thought we were the von trapp family chilling with our bikes... i could understand the mix up is all i am saying.
So the first winery we visited was less vinyard and more dark dungeoun winery style which was fun but not that interesting because we were inside on a beautiful day. the next place we visited was my favorite. Owned by a swiss man, son of a french guy that worked in the best absinthe factory of france back in the day... he had a little quaint house with an open kitchen where we could see him cooking up his delightful creations.  He made everything from olive oil, to fudge, to liquors and absinthe to dulce de leche and other jams. oh my ask me about his smoked queso, it was incredible!!! when the tour was over he prepared a tasting for us in which we first tried his olive oil and balsamic vinegarette, then his marmalades and mustards and such. and then we moved to the liquors..... I had been in Guys and Dolls this past spring and the drink of choice in the musical was dulce de leche... I didnt know this was a real beverage until now. it was not my preference personally, it was a bit too sweet but not in a caramely way which made me sad. a few of the girls in the group decided to try the absinthe, one had had it before, so i began considering trying it... I mean I have always thought about it but I would never do it unless it was made properly and served according to the way its supposed to. as he began preparing their tasting I was enchanted by the flaming sugar and decided that since this man made it himself and its traditional and what not that I should atleast try it....

here i go...

never again, that was shadynasty, yucktastic

imagine gargling stale mint with a side of rubbing alcohol.... yep, that was it. No worries, i did not see the green fairy and will not be going to the moulin rouge as a bohemian revolutionist... Thankfully, the nice swiss man brought out his fudge next and i was able to let my tongue forget the torture i had just put it through.  Next we biked across town to the "beer garden" a fleite (sketch) name for an incredible craft brewery. I wish Matt had been there. It was a totally chill restaurant with a surprisingly delicious brew.  Dare I say better than Long Trail? never, but still pretty delicious considering my trips to latin america have only found macro breweries with cheap yucky beer. but i could be spoiled..... who knows. After lunch some people wanted to go visit more wineries and some just wanted to bike and take pictures so we made a plan to reunite at mr hugos later.  I spent the rest of the day soaking up the sunshine on my cruiser. Ended up with a wonderful farmers burn but it was simply an incredible day.

That night, the pizza eaters decided it was necessary to try steak while in Argentina so we went to a great restaurant... well there is a back story, our friends told us one restaurant and patrick the nice hostel man told us another. so we went to patricks but it was uncharacteristically expensive, because no one else was willing to walk to the restaurant next to the one we were at (the one our friends suggested) and check out their prices I volunteered of course.... i got a stare down but hey, if youre going to charge 5-10 dollars more than the restaurant next to you, you deserve to watch the second restaurant get your customers. so we had to awkwardly get up from the table (the hadnt served us anything yet so it was fine) although two of us did use their restroom so it was a walk of shame from one restaurant to the other.... but we made a good choice, it was a delicious amazing dinner

At dinner it was my and three other of the gringos, its really funny how similarly we found ourselves thinking.  The other gringos had brought up going out and meeting up with other other gringos that happened to be in mendoza too before we left so i brought it up again at dinner asking "so do you think you guys are wanting to go out tonight?" there was silence and some hmphs and hmms and very concentrated faces deciding if they wanted to... or from it appeared to me trying to find a way to say no not at all, after a few awkward paused moments i said "throwin it out there, dont let me effect your decision but i am not" the bike tour had wiped this lil gringa out... after i put that on the table we all sighed of relief knowing that we all had the same thoughts. our favourite phrase this weekend became "well i mean if you want to Ill go but...." it was a great group of people to spend my weekend with, we were there to chill with no schedule and just have a fun time. Rather than doing absolutely nothing, we went for a short walk later that night in search of mani (peanuts) to eat while watching a movie. We did not find any as it was very very late when we finally got back and decided what we wanted to do, but thanks to our lack of schedule and adventurous spirits we ended up on a random block (across the way from the hostel) after just having said, well i guess if we cant find mani id be into having a tub of ice cream for the movie.... lo and behold, we stumble into an amazing ice cream joint!

you see those prices, remember its 4-1 :D oh yes, i have arrived in heaven. we went there two nights in a row, the cashier lady hated us unfortunately. she kept yelling at us while we were trying to decide what we wanted "QUE VAS A LLEVAR!!??" what do you want!!!, very frustrating when trying to decide amongst three people if we could eat a whole 1/2 kilo together or not.... once we finally paid and got her off our back we could start choosing flavours, which was a super fun process because both nights the ice cream boys that served us were amazing and kept offering tastes of different flavours.  While we were deciding however, this cashier lady (didnt have the rush she let on while yelling at us telling us to order now) took a taster spoon had a scoop of a flavour, then licked it all up and moved on to another flavour with the SAME spoon... from then on she was the double dipper "double d"... but the ice cream was worth it and us being friends with the servers got us extra free stuff like chocolate niblets the first night and extra amounts and free flavours the second :D
On Sunday we split up again, James Allison and I decided to walk around mendoza without a specific destination.  We ended up in a few of the plazas (mini parks) and began a judging process of which plaza was the best.  we settled that Plaza Italia was the best because it had a merrygoround and a seesaw :D we played for soooo long (did i mention im 7 and 3 quarters?)

We reunited with the rest of our gringos in the Parque on the OTHER side of Mendoza, Aka we walked the entire length of the city plus some, but it was great! we grabbed a light lunch there and walked around the park for awhile, we stumbled upon a fiesta with traditional argentinian dances which was especially cool because allison (the blonde friend) and I are in a Danzas Tradicionales of Chile class together.

The little boy in pink was absolutely adorable! and the boy in red reminded me of that little kid from the disney channel? he was in even stevens i think? 

After another long day running around the city of  Mendoza we took the night off and stayed in. The next morning (monday) we had to be up early to make it to the bus station on time. This time we had a classy bus company, with a double decker bus which of course made this camper extra happy.

thats not a peace sign, its me showing you there are TWO floors to this bus.. Andes here we come :)

We arrived back in Chile just in time for Once (german style dinner) which was a perfect relaxing way to end the trip. This morning I was woken up by the beginning of fiestas patrias (the independence day). A parade of highschool/middleschool age kids made theyre way up my street playing a marching band. This year is Chile's bicentennial and I am thoroughly excited to experience it. I hope to upload many pictures as well as many stories about how it is soon, the entire country is shutting down for fourdays.. as in it is illegal to work friday saturday sunday and monday! except for the bus drivers and maybe some others too.  Apparently its going to be a crazy insane week.  

CHEE CHEE CHEE LAY LAY LAY, VIVA CHILE!!!

love, Casey J.

as promised: