Bien Acompañada en Valdivia

Before I was about to leave for my trip to Valdivia, a nearby city, I recieved the usual doubts from my family. You`re really going alone? Tía came to my rescue with a chilean dicho : Mejor andar sola que mal acompañada. Its better to travel alone, than with bad company. Exactly, I told your. Finally she was starting to understand. Well, it turns out I wasn`t much alone in Valvidiva. I decided to buy a ticket on the Reina Sofia, a boat that takes a six hour tour around the beautiful rivers of Valdiva, serving lunch, dinner, and stopping twice on a island and in a small town with a historic fort. I bought the cheaper tickets downstairs, and as the boat took off I was concerned that I might be in for a rather dull 6 hours. Was it really a good idea for me to come to Chile all alone?

Well I didn`t have too long to be worried because ten minutes into a voyage, a friendly young chilean came over and started talking to me. Even for friendly Chileans, he was absurdly friendly. But he wasn`t creepy and didn`t seem to be hitting on me, so I went with it. Within the first 15 mintues of conversation he took a picture of us together, invited me to sit upstairs with him and his friends, and invited me to hang out with them later that night. Hahah. I was a bit overwhelmed by his quick friendship, but I soon fell in love with him (in a friendly sort of way of course). In this initial conversation he also explained how he wanted to move to Spain where they were more open minded about things, like homosexuality. I explained that I, a Wesleyan student, was very comfortable with homosexuality. Oh, so I can show you my real self, he responded. I thought I had finally met my first openly gay chilean! How exciting! Well it turns out Andrés isn`t actually gay, just open minded. This suited me just fine. I spent all six hours on the boat with Andes and his friends. Mostly I hung around him. I had my first conversation about questioning gender with him, and it was great. He laughs too often, just like me, and we have a lot in common. He also spoke slowly and we were able to communicate with ease. His friends were also really nice. They were all from Viña del Mar (12 hrs north) on a weeklong vacation in Valdivia. They welcomed me into their table and their lives.

The boat tour itself was really nice. It was a beautiful day without a cloud in the sky. We stopped twice and two beautiful little towns and ate a huge lunch of seafood and fish. I took lots of pictures and wandered back and forth between our inside seats to the terraces on the front and back of the boat. I caused a whole ton of confusion amongst the waitresses because I moved my seat, but they didn`t seem to mind too much. By the end of the day, there was no question that I would continue on my evening with my new friends. I went back to their rented cabins and we relaxed for a while outside. We bought necessary supplies for the evening (cerveza, coke and rum) and sat down to play cards. We played the Chilean version of Uno (mostly the same as our version) and I taught everyone how to play bullshit. This was fun for me not only because its a fun drinking game, but because I got to hear them all scream "bullshit!" with their silly chilean accents. I had a really great time. I felt for the first time like a full member of the conversation, and didn`t have any trouble keeping up with stories, jokes, and conversation. Our final drinking game consisted of us picking important topics, and discussing. We had a bunch of really interesting conversations on the topics of religion, friendship, politics and sex. It was fabulous.

When we were sufficiently drunk, we heading to a nearby discoteca. I had a great time dancing and laughing with my new friends. Everything was too perfect to be true. And thats when I ran into problems... I had been dancing with Fabian, one of Andres` friends. Unfortunately, Soledad, on of the girls in the group, had a terrible crush on Fabian and didn`t take our flirtations too well. She got angry and spent a good portion of the next few hours yelling at Fabian, cursing at me (¡la gringa puta!), and complaining to Andés´ father. I left early the next morning to avoid any more confrontation. Unfortunately I didn`t get to say goodbye to my friends, but we had already traded phone numbers so I called them later in the day. I hopefully will stay with Andrés and his family (a 26 year old living at home is the status quo in chile) when I travel up north. Anyway, it looks like I had the good luck of traveling with good company in Valdivia. Chileans just loooove hanging out with a gringa.