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...