Today was exactly why traveling alone can be great. Because sometimes you meet the most wonderful people, and you can't help but think that the world is small and some things are meant to be. Yesterday I met Aileen while climbing. She is from San Jose, lives in Berkeley, and was as eager as I was to be friends for the couple days we are both in Santiago. She has been in South America for 1 1/2 months, first teaching English in Peru and then getting her Wilderness First Aid certification in Patagonia (Southernmost Chile). We made dinner last night after climbing (we were both craving just some plain old stir-fried vegetables as a change from the pretty heavy Chilean staples), and I told her that I wanted to check out the free museums today and walk around Santiago more. She decided to join me, and I am very glad she did. Turns out, she has a good friend who went to Lowell and might know Rael and works at Sports Basement, she climbs at Mission Cliffs every Thursday (and I am definitely, definitely going to join her), and we were just perfect companions today.
We started off walking to El Museo de Arte Precolombino, which is the best in South America, to see artifacts from Incas, Mayas, etc.
From there we walked to El Mercado Central, where we bought fruit and learned about all of the crazy seafood they eat here. If we had been hungry, we would have tried enormous King Crab, sea urchin, or one of the other dishes in front of us. After the seafood market, we crossed the river to another market area, where I wanted to try everything. I tasted some olives, bought a new kind of avocado, then spotted the most beautiful potatoes I had ever seen. At first I just took pictures, but eventually decided to buy some. They were very small, and pink and yellow with spots.
The girl at the stall also had a bunch of salsas in small dishes, and she let me dip my finger in each one to decide which one I wanted to buy. We continued to a stand with many types of empanadas, probably the most common snack in Chile. Most of the time, there is only queso (cheese) or pino (beef, onion, and olive), but this stand also had champiñon (mushroom), which I had been seeking out. Delicioso.
We kept walking along the river to El Museo Bellas Artes. Beautiful photography, paintings, drawings, sculptures. El Museo is part of a large park, where we wandered for a while before I stopped for a churro relleno (fresh out of the oil, then filled on the spot with some nutty caramel and sprinkled with powdered sugar).
Eventually we arrived at Pablo Neruda's house that he built for his mistress/eventual third wife. He designed part of it to be like a ship's cabin, another part like a lighthouse, and had the most random collection of trinkets. The tour was in Spanish, but I understood basically everything. Every day, I feel better and better about being basically bilingual. I don't mean to brag, but people here are so impressed with my accent and really appreciate that I would rather speak their language than mine. They have a hard time identifying where I'm from (someone guessed Portugal, a few have thought Chilean), which makes me feel like a citizen of the world.
After Neruda's house, Aileen and I walked back to the hostel to make dinner again. I sauteed my special pink potatoes and we ate them with the salsa as an appetizer, while our experimental leftover vegetable/noodle/tomato casserole cooked. We both love that our hostel has a huge full kitchen, because I know that cooking makes me feel relaxed, grounded, self-sufficient, happy, and healthy.
Tomorrow, I might go to Valparaíso as a day trip since I didn't go this weekend. It is only an hour and a half by bus, and I think I can see enough of the town and beaches in one day. Then, Tuesday afternoon I leave for my hostel's trip down South to Chillán to ski Wednesday and Thursday. Instead of taking the bus back to Santiago, I might go directly from Chillán down to Pucón, because it is almost halfway there. I need to check with Daniel to see if that would be okay with him.
I have basically done everything I wanted to do in Santiago. I'm sure I could keep myself occupied, but I am ready to move on. I love this city and could actually see myself living here, but of course I said that about Norway, Paris, Barcelona, and sort of Ghana. But, Pucón is where I can stop paying for lodging, nest a little bit, and also keep getting my outdoor adventure fix. On my Pucón agenda: hike and ski the volcano, white water rafting, hotsprings, rock climbing, horse back riding, as many national parks as possible, and hopefully a trip into Patagonia. I might even make it to Argentina if I'm lucky. Scratch that. I am already so so so lucky to be here.
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