I've been waiting so long to write this because I haven't been willing to put the time into uploading and sorting though the 800+ pìctures I took while we were on vacation. Actually, I still haven't done it, but I figured I should at least write about it while the memories are still fresh in my mind and I'm not busy with school (which starts this Thursday!).
Well we left the 5th of february to go to La Serena where we stayed at my host-aunt's house and got everything ready for the real start of the trip. The next day we got up reasonably early and got on the road. We stopped for empanadas de queso along the way and sandwiches before getting to Valparaiso in the afternoon. Valparaiso is definitely one of the coolest cities I have ever seen. Most of the houses are brightly colored and built into the hills around the city. Pablo Neruda actually had a house there that we visited called the Sebastiana and it is gorgeous! Neruda has huge picture windows in his living room bedroom and office that look out over the city and the pacific ocean. After visiting Valparaiso we drove around Viña del Mar which is right next to Valparaiso. Most people seem to think Viña is prettier, but I definitely liked Valparaiso a lot better, it has more character. That night we camped near a lake that's mostly dried up because this summer has been really dry before heading further south the next day. We sight-seed a little bit and went to Chillan where we bought Langanizas de Chillan whcih are like sausages to make on the grill later before getting to a waterfall called Salta del Laja in the afternoon. We set up our tent in a camping spot before walking to the waterfall were we ended up going swimming. That was definitely a cool experience. The next day we kept heading south to Villarica and Pucón, two cities on lake Villarica which have a greta view of the Mountain Villarica. We walked around Villarica for a while in the afternoon and ate typical Chilean food like empanadas and Humitas for lunch. Afterwards we found a camping spot right on the lake and headed out to Pucón to walk around a little bit and eat dinner. We were in Pucón when it started raining! It was really exciting because I hadn't seen rain in like four or five months! The next day we went ziplining before lunch, swam in the lake a little and went rafting in the afternoon. Rafting was my favorite part of the day because we got as bunch of awesome views of the volcanoe and mountains while rafting, but it was a lot of fun in itself too. I jumped into the river partway through and it was so cold I almost counldn't breathe! When we left Villarica we headed to Valdivia where we got a cabin before taking a ferry to an old war fort where we saw a reenactment of a batlle between Spaniards and Chileans. We also saw more of the area on the ferry and I was pleasantly shocked by how green everything is there! There are trees everywhere! It even rains! In fact it was raining that night when we went to a fair in a town outside of Valdivia where we tried a lot of typical foods such as papas rellenos, seafood in various forms etc. The next day we headed out early to a national park called Puyehue which is famous for its volcanoe and hot springs. The whole three days we were there it rained and I ran out of dry sweatshirts, but I still think it might have been one of my favorite parts of the trip. We hiked around in the trees some and went to the indoor hot springs which are basically a pool but fed with water heated by the volcano. We also hiked through the woods at 11 at night in the rain to go swimming in heated pools that form in the rocks on the side of the river. That's not an adventure I'm going to be forgetting about naytime soon! Packing up the tent in the rain also deserves to be mentioned. It was quite the ordeal, but we lived through it, and so did the tent for that matter.
The day we left we were planning to head over to Bariloche Argentina and in anticipation of that, I'd sent a letter to the AFS office in Santiago asking for them to send my permission papers to leave the country. I had those, my passport and my carnet ready, but when we got to the border, they told me they weren't the right papers. It turns out noone out of the many people who had handled the papers, had bothered reading them. It was pretty disapointing, but it was fairly funny too now that I think about it. After that we turned around and headed back to Chile where we stopped by Frutillar, a picturesque town on a lake where they make really good Kuchen before heading to Puerto Montt where we ate lunch before catching the ferry to Chiloe. In that area of Chile there's a typical dish called Curanto which basically consists of mussels, smoked pork, sausages, potatoe dumplins and some other stuff being cooked togther in a pot or sometimes in a hole in the earth. We had that for lunch and as I'm sure you can imagine, it was pretty good. In Chiloe there are a lot of old wooden churhces that are patrimonio de la humanidad along with the palofites or houses on stilts. There are also a lot of sheep. We saw all of these things. We also went to a bunch of craft fairs where people were selling things made of wool as well as other crafts. Our last day in Chiloe we actually went to the northern part of the island near where we caught the ferry to a part where there are penguins. We had planned on taking a boat to see the penguins but they didn't have any spots for almost four hours so we climbed along the place on the rocks to a place where you could see them from. We were carrying binoculars so they looked pretty close and I even got pictures. That was one of the collest experiences of my life!
Once back on the mainland we drove to Temuco where we spent the night, then drove to Santiago the next day. There we ended up spending the night in an appartment and doing some shopping. We went to the biggest mall in Santiago and it was absolutely huge! After Santiago we drove straight to La Serena where we met up with my host-dad's poarents and sister to go camping at a beach near there. We camped out for a couple of nights, ate asado, did typical chilean things before driving home on the 20th. Since we've been back in Copiapó, we've been getting ready for school which starts on the third of march and relaxing. I spent this weekend at another exchange students, Sara's beachouse in Loreto. There we stayed up late, watched movies, and went to the Despedida de Verano in Caldera where they had fireworks. That means that summer number one of 2011 is officially over.
Back to our trip though, I had an absolutely amazing time. I feel like I got to know Chile a little bit vbetter through it. I saw more of it's landscapes, cities, people and customs. I ate more typical foods (a lot of typical foods actually) and I feel like I got to know my host family better. I spent more time talking to my host parents since I didn't have tpo go to school and they didn't have to go to work (and we were all in a car together for like 4000 km). I would call it one of the best experiences I've had in Chile and an amazing way to end summer.
Next time I write, it will probably be about my first days at my new school, so wish me luck!
