Chi Chi Chi - Le Le Le

Viva Chile!

Me in a Chilean flag t-shirt & face paint!

2-0 Chile

Well the good news is that Chile won against Peru!! Also, there were no disruptions at the game and I even learned a cheer! The little section that Peru had was guarded on both sides with Caribaneros - Chilean police and barricades.

Carabineros!

We got out of the game around 9:30pm and decided to grab dinner. After a taxi driver tried to take us for a ride we found a cool district and had a great dinner on an outdoor terrace. Of course we hadn't really thought through the fact that the last bus between Santiago and Viña was going to be leaving by 11:00pm and by the time we were done with dinner ... well we thought no big deal we'll go to a cafe sit and chat or maybe even out dancing for a few hours. We all thought, "But of course we can find something to do for the next few hours until the first morning bus leaves ..."

Unfortunately that wasn't the case. We did sit in a cute cafe which had walls covered in 50's memorabilia and played Elvis. We had called a cab and asked him to take us somewhere which ended up being closed and after driving around with him for at least 40 minutes he finally told us he knew of a place that would be open all night. Great. It turned out to be a cafe ... of a gas station. Not really a big deal, I think we all would have preferred less fluorescent lighting at that point but we just sat and chatted and when it came time to get to the bus station we hopped in a quick cab and made it home in time for sunrise.


After arriving back to the apartment I literally had enough time to scrub the face paint off and get to Valparaíso for my volunteering job. This basically sums up my frustrations with the inefficiency of the whole country ... I arrived at 9:00am, after having not slept the night before, on time and ready to go with games for the 5th grade classes I have been working with.
I go to the director's office to check-in and find the teacher I'm helping. The director isn't there, so I ask someone in the office next door to help me. I explain what's going on and she asks me to take a seat while she finds my teacher. Immediately I know that she has gone back to what she was doing when I walked in and is not looking for my teacher. 20 minutes later ... still sitting, impatiently ... I get up to look around myself and ask her again ... trying to explain exactly who I was with the week before. This goes on for another 20 minutes before the director gets into her office and at this point I'm really frustrated. Of course I feel bad because she clearly has a lot going on and I'm probably not a priority but ... still frustrating. She decides to pop her head out over the ledge to try and see the teacher I've been waiting for (the school is more or less one big box which opens into a playground so from every floor you can see across and down to the other floors) ... she is also asking random school girls as they walk by ... frustration mounting ...
Finally I see the teacher, catch her attention and managed to chat with her long enough to find out that she is leaving because her daughter was sick. Needless to say I was just glad to finally find her and I was pretty ready to just get home and nap.

In my Organizational Sociology class we learned that Paris has the highest level effciency (in terms of working hours) and Santiago has the lowest worldwide average level of efficiency. At this point I'm not surprised in the least.

Ok, same day ... after a long nap and quick packing ... we were off to Mendoza, Argentina!!
We took a direct overnight bus from Viña and after about 2 hours crossing the border made it in at 7:00am. Dropped our stuff off at the hostal and figured out the best thing to spend our day doing. BIKES AND WINE! We set the tour up through our hostal and spent the whole day riding bikes through the Mendoza wine valley. One of the girls I was traveling with, Eliza, has never learned to ride a bike so we had to reserve a tandem bike for her to ride on. We were really lucky that the company even had a tandem so the day started really well! When we arrived to the bike shop though the young argentinian told us that a pair from the last group just took the bike. Well ... we didn't really have a choice so we grabbed two bikes and took our chances going to the closest vineyard to hunt down these bike thieves! Amazingly enough they were at the first vineyard! It took an hour before we found them and they finally came out to swap bikes but at least we were ready to go.


Our plan was to bike to the furthest vineyard on the route and work our way back as time permitted. Once we reached our first stop (probably 9km) we realized that one of the bikes had a flat. Of course calling the company didn't help because they didn't answer ... so we were left to get all the way back. It was probably the wine tasting but we got back at the end of the day, probably a lot sorer then we would have liked (the other bike that we had had the narrowest seat I've ever seen ... yikes) but in good spirits nonetheless. It was really interesting learning about the production of wine. We also visited an olive factory and a chocolate factory! I guess factory maybe isn't the right descriptive ... they were little factories : )

try and notice the flat tire : )

The next day we had planned to go to the spa but were advised to wait and spend the day walking around the city and going to the San Martin Park. We had another great day and it's just so amazing how different Mendoza felt from any other city I've been in while here. It feels very European and for the most part we didn't really see many signs of economic hardship. The streets are lined with beautiful trees and the sidewalks are lined with fashionable boutiquesplazas with artesans and cafes. The park was really amazing and we spent the day exploring, taking a nap under the trees, and climbing the giant hill to see this beautiful monument.

Plaza España

Cute Argentinian girls!

Gates to the entrance of the park

After what was definitely at least 8 miles of walking we took the night off from cooking and headed out with friends from the hostal to have a real Argentinian meal. Argentina is famous for it's meat and wow ... they don't mess around. Everything I had all weekend was delicious. That night we stayed up playing card games and chatting with new friends we had made at our hostal.
By now we had really earned a day at the spa. It was a great day and verrrry relaxing. We had an hour drive into the pre-cordillera, the mountains before the Andes, and found ourselves at a beautiful hillside oasis. We soaked in thermal pools, took a mud bath, had a hydro massage and napped next to the pool for the rest of the afternoon. That evening I decided that I was definitely staying another day as Mendoza became more and more beautiful. We had a big dinner at the hostal and even had our own Argentinian Parrilla (bbq style meat) yummm.

Our last day in Mendoza (or what turned into the last day after deciding ... school? schmool!)
was spent horseback riding and white water rafting! The horseback riding was interesting because it had been so long since I had done a trail ride, let alone along the edges of some pretty narrow cliffs (small cliffs, not really cliffs at all ... more like hills ... don't worry mom)!



Rafting was definitely a blast. It was the three of us girls and a couple from Canada. Our guide was hilarious and made plenty of jokes prior to getting onto the river. It was my first time and even though it wasn't really an intense set of rapids it was a really great experience. Apparently come January with the amount of melt off they can't even keep the whole course open because it becomes so narrow. Who knows, maybe I'll go rafting again! The guide told us that Chile has the best rafting in S. America and maybe I'll be able to do it when I head south!



The trip home went well and I was able to sleep quite a bit on the bus ride. I still kind of feel as if I'm not going to half as much class as I would be back in "real life" but I am hopeful that next semester in Copenhagen will at least prepare me for getting back to GW.

Hopefully I'll have some rafting pictures to post soon! For now this is probably more than enough, but thanks so much for reading it's always appreciated.