fotos finales

Julie and I together in Santiago!

Aquiles, Rey de la Cordillera

El desierto atacama.

Me, Ximena and Koni at my goodbye at the bus station.

My second goodbye party. Renato-- giving me my certificate. Me-- embarrassed, yet happy. Pedro-- thinking the whole thing is hysterical and holding back tears over my departure. 

Me, Tia and Tio at my final asado at their lovely home. For now.

El Salar de Atacama-- the third largest salt flat in the world. Those are chilean flamencos.

Chuiquicamata: the largest open-pit copper mine in the world! Its 5km long!

Will and Allison in the mountains outside of Mendoza

Algún día volveré.....

I apologize for taking so long to finish up my blog, but its part of a resistance to admitting my travels are over. But according to all available evidence, this seems to be the case. I've been sleeping till 11am, eating lots of Special K and Tropicana OJ, spending my free time garage sale-ing and reading the TU and getting a lot of love/abuse from Moriah. Yup, I'm definitely at home. 

But before I landed here in Delmar, I spent a wooonderful week with my friend Allison in Buenos Aires. Allison was busy but made time to show me ALL the important spots in the big city. It is quite big. We saw a drumming concert, walked around every neighborhood, ate lots of dulce de leche and stayed out at a clubs till 6am (thats what BA is famous for they tell me). On my birthday we went to an INCREDIBLE vegetarian Asian buffet and then a sweet jazz club and a crazy dance club, celebrating with all her friends who I had met in Mendoza. On my last day we took a boat to Uruguay and spent the day at a beautiful bed and breakfast owned by the director of Allison's program. It was there that I had my last asado, which happened to be one of the most incredible asado's of my trip. It was a great way to end my travels and it was so fun to see Allison. I safely made it back to New York last Sunday morning. 

As I was saying before, its wonderful to be home. After four months of always feeling like a foreigner, you can really appreciate a place where everyone speaks your language, eats the same food as you, and understands you in a way that comes only with a common history. On Tuesday I even got to go back to Wesleyan where I arrived unannounced, surprising all my friends. It was so great to see everyone again and to be welcomed back as if the five months hadn't even passed. Anyway I won't bore everyone with too many reflections on my trip and what I learned-- I'll save that for my own diary. But quickly I'll just say that I am proud of what I did during my gran viaje. I learned spanish AND learned to survive chilean spanish, made friends all over, saw a large portion of a beautiful country, was welcomed into a new family and into my office, learned to love Osorno, and to love meat for just a little while and came back with four months of wonderful memories and lots beautiful pictures. 

Plus, I kept an awesome travel blog. Thanks for reading and I hope you enjoyed sharing my travels with me. Now that I'm back in the country you don't need to read about me online, but you can see me for real. So if you want to hear what I edited out of the blog, see some of my pictures, or mostly so I can see you all again, please give me a call. This weekend I'll be at graduation at Wesleyan but I should be home in Delmar/Glenmont/Albany for the whole summer (I'm still looking for employment-- any suggestions!?!?). I think the blog will have to be officially suspended for now. I say suspended because as I told all of my chilean friends, algún día volveré. One day, I'll be back to Chile. Entonces, you can be sure to check in to Rice n' Chile. 

al otro lado de la cordillera

My last day in Chile was EPIC. Aquiles (who prefers to be referred to as Aquiles, Rey de la Cordillera) showed me a fucking awesome day. It turns out he lives up in the mountains 4 months out of the year as a hiking guide. He took me up a HUGE mountain-- we were at 3000 meters when we parked the car! THIS is the cordillera, he kept telling me. He was absolutely right. I usually say I live near the mountains, referring to the adirondacks, but I will never again refer to the adirondacks as the cordillera. This was some serious mountains. We took the day very slow because of the altitude which was just fine with me. We stopped to have tea twice. Aquiles brought a massive backpack that included a stove, two pots, a bottle of wine, a wine glass, warm clothes for him and for me, comida and even some floss (just in case). Both stopping points were incredibly beautiful and we decided worthy places to spend an hour drinking early grey tea and eating empanadas, palta (avocado) and tomatoes. As we were waiting for our water to boil, we saw a magestic condor fly overhead (chile´s national bird adn the biggest in the world) . We even saw the sunset on the way down and it was one of the most beautiful sunsets that I´ve ever seen. It was the perfect way to end my stay in chile, containg all the necessary ingredients taht have comprised my stay there: empanadas, tecito, random friendship, the kindness of strangers, beautiful scenery and soooo much chilean slang.

After an incredible bus ride through the Andes to cross into Argentina, I made it to Mendoza. All of the border control workers wore face masks and looked at me and my Canadian friend extremely suspiciously. Once they considered that neither of us had touch foot in the northern hemisphere in over 4 months, they realized that the chances of us spreading Swine Flu were pretty low. Although I´ve left Chile, I´m carrying every part of it with me here in Argentina. I still talk with my chilean accent and everyone finds it hysterical. I compare everything that happens to chile and teach my friends chilean slang. I met a charming Argentine man who tried to convince me to switch my heart over to Argentine, but I promised him it would be staying in Chile. Anyway, despite my resistence, Argentina is awesome. I met up with Allison, Suji and a bunch of their friends from BA. The weather here is beautiful, the wine is delcious and the beef is even more so and we´re having great time. Today we´re going to rent bikes a tour a few of Mendoza´s famous wineries. Today is Sujatha´s birthday which means we already celebrated last night, and will continue to celebrate today. My birthday is Tuesday and Rodrigo´s is Wednesday, so its going to be a busy week for me. But what better way to end my adventures than spending a week celebrating in Buenos Aires?