The Journey Never Ends

There is no way I could quantify the number of miles or kilometers that I have travelled over the past 5 months, and now I find myself on the last leg of a journey that took me to every imaginable destination.  I have been to bustling cities in South America, to seemingly untouched nature reserves, to visit new friends and old friends, and I have said hello and goodbye to so many people along the way.  It is hard to believe all of the incredible things I have seen, and I can say with certainty that I succeeded in fulfilling the desire to expand my horizons and I am returning as a changed man. 

Behind me is a path I have been following without hesitation, without regret, and without a clue what may lie ahead.  For the longest time, even the notion of such a path seemed like a bad idea, as if embarking on such a journey would immediately erase everything I had achieved in a world that seemed like a permanent reality.  And now here I am, returning from my sister's beautiful wedding and in my heart and mind I feel that I have accomplished more on this path than any other I have followed in my life.  As I sit here, I keep thinking about myself sitting in an airplane on the way to Santiago, with so many questions unanswered and so many expecations to fulfill.  I sat alone and isolated on that plane with a sense of dissatisfaction - I had accomplished many things on paper, but had failed to find a spiritual well being. When I left the states I did so because the immediate future seemed so unpromising and bleak, and I felt trapped by a life filled with routine - I had grown accustomed to finding comfort in past experiences rather than thriving on exposure to new and exciting things.  The life I left behind in Napa had grown to be unfulfilling and I felt lost in the present, and until I left I never committed myself to breaking the mold.  I think now I can look back and say that the repetition that defined my lifestyle there created a false sense of endurance, like I could live the same week over and over again and be content with everything because I felt comfortable.  My journey taught me that I can't live my life trying to reproduce elements of the past and expect to find a sense of fulfillment.  Every day is a new opportunity to find a new form of fulfillment, to break the mold of the man I was yesterday and forge a new beginning based on unfamiliarity.  Success is an individual reality, and can only be acheived by those who are truly happy.  In order to find that happiness, I have to fight the habits that I have formed and make a promise to seize each day and recognize the opportunities that each day brings. 

As my hiatus from the Californian wine industry nears, and as I reflect on the most epic journey I have ever known, it is easy for me to acknowledge the promise that the future holds.  I see innumerable opportunities ahead of me and I plan to continue my journey even though vacation is over.  I am returning to a familiar setting with a promise to myself - that I will commit to positive changes for the future, and no longer will I fall back on the comfort of past habits.  Additionally, I know in my heart and mind that it is in my best interest to continue searching for new stars and new horizons, and I am already eager to set my sights on new unfamiliar destinations. 

Where Has Tyler Been?

Surely everyone has been wondering.. Where is Tyler and why has he stopped posting blog entries on a weekly basis? I am sorry to have abandoned all of you and I consistently feel a sense of guilt when I think of all the emails and phone calls and blog entries that I have fallen behind on. The truth of the matter is that I am on a harvest schedule, and time slips away so easily when you are working hard and using your free time to sleep and eat, all with no WiFi access at home.
Harvest at Matetic has been going very well and I am somehow already less than a month from the termination of my internship and my journey to South America. Our typical work day lasts around 12 hours, from 8am to 8pm, but time goes very quickly and the work environment is very relaxed. The mornings are usually spent processing grapes (sauvignon blanc, chardonnay and pinot noir are all done, now we are moving to Syrah and Cabernet Franc), and the afternoons typically involve pressing, racking to barrels, and inoculations/additions. Matetic itself is a very interesting place because the existence of the winery and vineyards, as well as the raising of cattle, sheep and llamas and farming practices that take place on the property (which is nearly 10,000 hectares) all seem to provide a reason for the existence of the town that I live in, called Lagunillas.It seems that everyone in this pueblo is in some way related to the Matetic empire, and everyone knows everyone. Over time, I have really enjoyed getting to know and understand the community and seeing how the micro-economy functions - the company and the people serving each other in a mutually beneficial relationship.
Another experience that I have thoroughly enjoyed is living in a very authentic Chilean countryside home, which undoubtedly housed a large family and servants some 40 or 50 years ago. Our home in Lagunillas has a ton of rooms (some of which I have never seen), and can easily waver from creepy and haunted to homely and humble depending on the day and depending on how your day went. It took sometime to get used to things like not having a laundry machine or a functioning shower or toilet of my own, but over time these issues were addressed and I am really happy to be settling into the home, which I feel is quintessentially Chilean. I share the home with 5 women, three of whom work in the tourism areas of the winery, and the other two (Soledad and Rosario) are my amigas mejores and we spend basically all of our waking hours together. In the mornings we head to work around 8, usually on a beautiful dirt road that leads us over hills and through the vineyards and eucalyptus groves, and then return home around 8 and commence to cook up a storm of chilean food, tipicalmente some sort of dessert as well as random fixings followed by some tea and then its off to bed. Soledad and I have also been crafting some homemade wine at the house (with all the success and failure related to the undertaking), and we occasionally have a chance to leave work early to enjoy dinners in surrounding cities or by the beach. I have really loved getting settled in to the routine here and I can say that I really have felt at home in Chile - it is sad to say that I have less than a month before the adventure comes to an end!
<p>Despite their brevity, the weekends have routinely produced memories and experiences that escape the realm of possibility and have truly forged my perception of the great country of Chile. Every Saturday after a shortened work day that typically ends around 3pm, Rosario and Soledad and I head into Santiago with a car full of dirty laundry and usually some bottles of wine and delicious postres or cheese to present as a preemptive thank you to Soledad's parents for welcoming me into their home. Typically Sole and I arrive to the smell of an asado, and we sit by the barbeque enjoying a beer or wine and wait for a delicious cut of meat to come off the grill. Several times we have gone out for dinner, for some drinks and appetizers at a sushi place, or to a friend's apartment for a home cooked meal, as well as an Italian restaurant for a date night and the best best best place for empenadas, steak and puree picante--- restorante dona tina.
Sundays play out so well after a good nights sleep, and are always filled with so many activities and new sights, and tons of food! Did I mention the food? For breakfast, eggs, ham, cheese, fresh bread, avocado, fruit and coffee, and then its time to catch up with the world for a very short phone call or brief moment to find a job in the future, outside of the dream world of the weekends with Soledad's parents and sisters. On Sundays, we have ventured up into the mountains in Farrelones several times, always for a lunch with empenadas and mussels, along with champagne and a very rich cake and coffee. One weekend we went out to el Tabo, about 30 minutes from our home in Lagunillas, where we hung out on the beach, enjoyed some incredible sweet pastries (merengue, chilenitos, and artisanal bread and honey) and then went to a seafood restuarant for some comida tipica chilena - shrimp, salmon, and a delicious dish (probably my favorite of all my meals in Chile) called pastel de jaiva, which is essentially a thick and creamy crab casserole prepared in a ceramic bowl, very similar to another delicious dish called pastel de choclo.
This past Saturday for example, we met up with an old friend of Soledad's from school, who happens to be engaged to the mayor of the agricultural town nearby us, called Curacavi. All together, Sole and I, along with Rosario and her boyfriend Eduardo, and Sole's friend July and her fiance Juan Pablo started our day at the restaurant owned by Juan Pablo's family, where we enjoyed a huge meal and bought some freshly made cheese from the family's dairy farm. After lunch we went to one of curacavi's famous chicherias to enjoy a beverage that is in some ways similar to wine, but in many ways different. The grapes are harvested, destemmed and pressed in some very old machinery, especially in the case of the place we visited, called chicha duran, which has been around for four generations and more than a hundred years. After pressing the grape juice goes into a huge copper cauldron and is boiled, after which the hot juice is transferred into huge ceramic amphoras, which are buried in the ground and covered and sealed with mud, where they remain for a long period of time to ferment and save and enough is produced to support chicha sales throughout the year. The juice is strong and they sell it at varying levels of sweetness, some of it brown, some pink, and for me it was unclear what types of grapes were being used. Nonetheless, we took a bottle to go and continued to the next destination, a small pastry shop called Parolo owned by Juan Pablo, where we sampled and purchased some unbelievable pastries called merengue with either manjar or raspberry, and even fried egg yolk, as well as cookies with coconut and manjar (FYI manjar is the same as dulce de leche, and the pastries from Parolo are made with fresh manjar from Jan Pablo's family's creamery). After we had sampled pastries and purchased almost a dozen for the road, we headed to the next stop on our tour of Curacavi, the family's lecheria, where dairy cows produce the milk used to make the cheese and manjar we had enjoyed earlier. The creamery was a very interesting place, and we even saw the new machine used to milk the cows (pictured below) which is almost like a carousel for cows. Unfortunately we were too early to see the "show", but we did get a chance to visit the calves and pregnant cows and see how the whole operation takes place. It was a great finale to a day full of diverse experiences and a good perspective on life in the agricultural center of Curacavi. We were lucky to spend time with July and Juan Pablo, and quickly realized how demanding the job of mayor really is. At every stop along the way, people were pulling Juan Pablo aside, asking him questions and raising concerns, and we were astounded by the number of phone calls he got throughout the course of the day. We were glad to have seen all these unique aspects of life in Curacavi, and were happy to be heading back to Soledad's house to present them with about 2 kilos of cheese, almost a dozen pastries, and 750ml of Chicha de Curacavi. What an experience that was! There have been so many exciting excursions in and around Santiago, all of them thanks to mi palola mina, Soledad. If it wasn't for her, I would probably be spending many of these enjoyable weekends on a bus headed to unknown territories, or hanging out alone in hostels. Instead I have had an insider's view of a loving Chilean family, a beautiful, vibrant capital city, and a feeling that I belong in a place that is half a world away from my home.
It is really hard to believe that I am nearing the end of my adventures in Chile, and I look ahead to the next 2 and a half weeks with a bit of trepidation. I have settled in so well, and made so many strong connections with people and places, and I am already aware that I will feel a sense of dissatisfaction upon my departure because I will not have the time to see everything in this great country. So many restaurants still left to visit, so many places in the north and south that I have yet to see, and saddest of all, so many people to say goodbye to. There is a sense that my journeys in Chile are not yet complete, and it seems likely that I will find myself wanting to come back to reconnect with the people I left behind here, and to discover the beautiful places I have yet to set my eyes upon. One thing is for sure - I have been bitten by the travel bug, and I am already setting my sights on more stars and more horizons.</p>

Work Begins, Weekends Become More Important

It was a sad moment, boarding the bus and heading back to Casablanca, where I would eventually be picked up and transported to my new home in the Rosario Valley, at Vina Matetic.  The source of sadness was not the work that inevitably lied ahead of me at my new winery, but rather from a sense that my journey was essentially over, and that my neverending streak of vacation destinations had finally been broken.  With the sadness came a very real sense of excitement and wonder - I had accepted the job at Matetic without knowing where I would be living, how much I would be paid, what my job would entail, and a number of questions filled my brain as I embarked on another bus journey into the unknown.  My travels had shown me time and time again that the "chilean way" was to go with the flow and trust that things will work out, and by this time I was perfectly comfortable with this concept. 
When I did finally get to Matetic, I was greeted by so many different people and introduced to so many different members of different departments within the winery, I was very overwhelmed and it took a while for me to get my bearings and begin to find my place in the winery.  Who would I be taking orders from?  Who would I be living with in the house I would be calling home (all I knew is that there would be 5 women and myself)? How would I get to work and back?  What things did I need that I inevitably did not bring with me, fresh from the world of hostels and tour buses? There were an insurmountable number of questions, but I was very excited to accept that I was in for an adventure and let the questions answer themselves.  Immediately, I grew fond of my new place of work and my new pueblo, Lagunillas. 
It took no time at all to find my niche and settle in with my new coworkers, all of whom could not be an more welcoming.  I was very excited to jump right in, taking charge of a pre-bottling filtration project and getting used to a new work environment.  There were some stark differences in the work environment - things were much more relaxed and the work flow not nearly as regimented as I had been used to at Stag's Leap.  Conversing with coworkers was very commonplace, and I immediately established a repoire with two of the girls I would be living with in Lagunillas - Rosario and Soledad.  Thankfully they both spoke English, so I knew I would always have someone to turn to if I needed an emergency translation, and they had both worked in Northern California for a harvest - it turns out we had a lot in common! 
Towards the end of my first week, Soledad mentioned that two of her friends from California would be visiting our house that night, and that I was invited to drink wine and enjoy appetizers with them.  I was very stoked to speak some english and to try some wine from Matetic, all while getting to know my new roomies and making some new friends.  We had a very eventful night, and I felt right at home with these three girls, who had all met at Flowers Winery on the Sonoma Coast, where they had all worked together.  Soledad was an intern there, along with Gianna, and Jennifer was the enologist, and they had a ton of stories to share about their time at Flowers and crazy stories about their time together.  By the time the night was over, we had already made plans to go to Soledad's house in Los Condes, Santiago, where we would enjoy our last full weekend before harvest interrupted our social lives.
We left after work on Friday, and Jennifer and Soledad and I headed to Sole's house in Los Condes, where we would be treated to a Chilean Asado (BBQ) as soon as we arrived.  Sole's family was more than kind, and immediately upon our arrival, we were trying chori-pan and sparkling wine, as we waited for the delicious pork tenderloin to finish cooking.  As I have learned during my time here in Chile, every proper meal entails at least 4 courses - appetizers, salad, entrees and dessert, all served in succession.  My fondness for Chilean food has seen its highs and lows, but nothing can beat a well cooked meal prepared in a Chilean home - and the asado that Friday night was no exception.  Sole's parents and two sisters, along with her sister's boyfriends, welcomed us as part of their family and we went to bed with full stomachs and happy hearts.  Little did we know that the party would continue. 
The next day, we woke up late and all of us pulled out our electronic devices to connect with the world, since our house at Matetic has no internet and the opportunities to sneak away for meaningful wifi time at the winery are few and far between.  I called my loved ones and checked on the status of my NCAA bracket, and I struggled to come to grips with the fact that I would not watch a single second of the tournament (not televised in Chile, and NCAA app not available through chilean IP addresses).  When we emerged from the cyber world, we went out by the pool in the back yard, where we were greeted by freshly steamed mussels and some delicious porter, Cerveza Austral Yagan.  It was another first time for me, and I thoroughly enjoyed eating mussels, and repeatedly turned down offers to enjoy leftovers from the asado, as I shared the concept of a new years' resolution and explained that I no longer say no to any kind of food.  Lunch followed the appetizers once Gianna arrived from her work at Veramonte Winery, and we enjoyed another full on meal with Salmon followed by some delicious fruits that none of us Americans had ever heard of.  After lunch, we jumped into the car and headed to a great artisanal crafts fair in the Los Dominicanos area of Santiago, where the girls shopped for clothing and a rare chilean stone called lapiz, and we all enjoyed a late afternoon stroll before we got ready to party later that night.
Around 8pm we headed to dinner, and the four of us met up with a friend of Gianna's as well as Soledad's sister Coti and her boyfriend Martin, and we had a few pisco sours and Churrascos as we got ready to go out on the town for what we knew would be a long night.  During dinner, Gianna's friend Sebastian Montes told us that his boss had recently been divorced and that he was having a pool party at his house.  Under normal circumstances we would have thought twice about the idea, but when he showed us photos of the house and told us about the location of the home, we did not hesitate to head to the pool party right after we finished dinner. 
WHAT A HOUSE! That was our immediate reaction as soon as we set foot on property, and we were ushered out to the backyard, which offered a nightscape view of the entire city of Santiago, as well as a huge big screen on the outdoor patio, along with an open bar and a youtube DJ.  What a house!  The homeowner and his friends were more than generous, and they welcomed us with whatever drinks we could want (I was so happy to enjoy my first Whisky drink in months, Chivas Regal) and we spent a good couple of hours practicing our latin dance moves.  Soledad taught me some basic pointers for latin-american dancing, and I was definitely a far cry from the tango dancing I had seen at the club in Valparaiso, but I was still happy to be getting dance lessons from a beautiful Chilean girl, with scotch in my hand and the entire city of Santiago in plain sight below us.  Life is good.
Eventually the party moved from the house to a underground club called Candelaria, and all of us from the pool party arrived there around 2am.  I think I can say without bragging that we were having the most fun of anyone in the club, and we spent a good 3 hours there, dancing to every kind of music imaginable.  Eventually we all knew it was time to head home, and we were thankful that Jennifer had been kind enough to DD for us, as we headed back to Soledad's home around 5am.  I assure you (Mom and Dad), this is a very normal time to end your night in Chile, as dinners are enjoyed late in the evening, and clubs and bars dont begin to fill up until well after midnight.
The next morning (or rather that same morning), we jumped into the car around 11am, and we headed out of Santiago into the Andes, where we would be heading to enjoy lunch at Soledad's family's home in the mountains, in a place called Farralones.  After climbing something like 3 kilometers in elevation and carving a whole bunch of switchbacks, our two car caravan arrived at the mountainside cabin, situated just below two ski resorts with a spectacular view.  Once again Sole's family treated us like royalty, and this time we ate some freshly made empanadas along with some Argentine Malbec and water - tons of water!!  We dined outside on the porch (after battling a beehive), and couldn't believe the view from the cabin, and it was especially nice because the house so close to Santiago but yet so isolated from all the things happening at any given time in Chile's capital city.  After lunch, Sole took us three americans on a hike down into the mountain valley, where we saw some crazy rock formations,  waterfalls, an abandoned home, and even learned about the mummy that had been left behind by some early settlers in the area - a young child that had been sacrificed by his people and was fed too many coca leaves, and whose body was perfectly preserved in the cold weather of the mountains.  After our hike we drove up the mountain to check out the eerily quiet ski resort town, and we checked out some views from the mountain and posed for some funny photos before we headed down from Farralones and back into our normal lives to resume our lives back in reality.
Its hard to beleive that such a great weekend could follow my first week of work at Matetic, and even harder to beleive how quickly we had been made to feel right at home with Soledad's family.  When we got into the car to return to Lagunillas, it was unfathomable that it had really only been 48 hours since we left, and yet we had managed to enjoy such a wide variety of activities.  It had seemed like a weeks worth of time, and I was very happy to have spent this time with my new friends Gianna and Jennifer, and I was especially happy to establish such a connection with Soledad and her family.  Having been on the road for so long and travelling so far on my own, I cannot express how good it was to feel like I was back at home with family, eating delicious food and laughing, telling stories and sleeping like I had never slept before.  During the span of the week, all of the confusion and bewliderment had been eradicated, and I couldn't have dreamed of a better ending to the story of my first week in the wine industry in Chile.  And the cherry on top was a kiss from my new favorite coworker!

Grand Finale in Valpo

To all my loyal blog followers, I am truly apologetic for leaving you hanging without an update for such a long time! I am now to the point where I have truly finished with the vacation phase of my Chilean adventure, and I am quickly falling behind with updates for all of you since I am occupied with work at Matetic and weekend excursions to Santiago with coworkers and friends. More about that later!

After a great time with my new friends in Santiago, Smita and Paulo and I were on a bus to Valparaiso, and we were fully stocked with bus supplies (wine cheese and chocolate) since I had lost a bet and was deemed as provider of provisions. Smita and I had a grand old time swigging white wine and looking at pictures of our travels thus far, and Paulo used his spanish speaking skills to get directions to the hostel from a Valpo local, all while we listened to the loud snoring of the man behind us (pictured below). When we got to Valparaiso, we hopped on a local bus and then took our first trip on the infamous Valparaiso "acensors," which were built by european settlers in the late 1800s and had scarcely been repaired since that time. We arrived to the hostel and had a laugh when we discovered that our three bed reservation had in fact been a reservation for a double bed and a twin in one room, leaving the three of us to quarrel about the sleeping arrangements for the remainder of the day! After getting settled at the hostel and cleaning/arranging our baggage, Smita and I left Paulo to his nap as we went for a walk to the marina and then up a different acensor for a view of the city. On the way back, we came across a cool bar where there was a band preparing for that night's live performance (pictured), and we enjoyed a few cervezas and headed back to the hostel to see if Paulo had left yet to shop for the ingredients for dinner, since it was his turn to cook for us. We enjoyed a few different types of beer and wine as Paulo cooked some delicious spaghetti, and we mentally perpared for the fury of Valparaiso's premier night club, known as "El Huevo."

We set off for el huevo at around midnight, the three of us joined by three hostel friends and a definite urge to party it up and dance until the sun came up. Inside the club we found a very diverse set of options for a night full of dancing and enjoying local beverages. There were a total of 5 floors at the club, each with its own music selections, from Chilean pop music, to salsa, hip hop and reggaeton, and a more relaxed outdoor level on top which served as a great place to reconvene with the group and cool off from the dancing below. This club was definitely a blast! Paulo and I ventured off to the reggaeton section and made some trips to get some sprite and piscos, and our friends from Santiago, Brazil and Israel were interspersed all throughout the club. SOmehow we succeeded in never leaving anyone alone in the club, while still enjoying all the diverse options and dancing styles. Latin american dancers and far superior to Americans, and several times we went to the Salsa section just to watch, and I made a promise to myself that sometime soon, I will learn to dance salsa. By the time 5am rolled around and the club closed its doors, our friend from the hostel (via Santiago) had learned of an afterparty nearby, and he had the secret password required for entry - - the night was not over! This afterparty took place in an underground bar very well suited for non-licensed parties, and we all had a blast attempting to converse with the locals and dancing until we could dance no more. By 7:30am we had all made it back to the hostel and fell fast asleep until around 2pm. When I awoke, I found myself alone in the double bed, and Paulo and Smita in the twin bed, and both of them were amusingly agitated with me because I had fallen asleep in a way that I took up the whole double bed and they were unable to move me! I'm sorry Smita and Paulo!!!

When we had rallied that afternoon, we made our way to a breakfast place, "el desayunador," and randomly ran into a friend from the hostel in Santiago there, Shannon. We enjoyed our late afternoon breakfast and made plans for dinner with Shannon, and I was the chef for that night. In the meantime, I was dead set on finding a pair of work boots, since I had worked myself into the last possible day to find boots that were waterproof and big enough for me. Smita and Paulo were gracious enough to join me - after all, our group slogan was "birds of a feather flock together!" We took a bus trip to Vina Del Mar, where I was actually able to find a timberland store with an exact match of boots I had previously used for wine work in the States! With a 20% sale going on and a perfect match for my size, I was more than enthused to have found what I needed and I was instantly mentally prepared to make the journey the next morning to Casablanca, where I would be picked up by someone from Matetic and have my introduction to my new place of work and new home in the countryside.

That night, I cooked up a full lineup of mexican fajitas and the four of us sat down for a final meal together. I was sad to leave my new friends, but glad to have met such great people and to have developed such a close friendship after only a few short days. If I ever journey to London or Sao Paolo, I know I have a place to stay, and the same for them when they come to my house, which consequently does not currently exist! LOL

Rowdy Times in Santiago

After a beyond relaxing day at the hot springs, and another great evening with some people from Hostel Lao (including a potential future business partner), I was headed back to Santiago once again. With the end of my vacation on the horizon, I was content to just relax and take a 10:30am bus to make the 7 hour journey to Santiago, or at least I thought it would take that amount of time! The bus ride was timely and everything went smoothly on the Argentina side, and I was enjoying my first class "Cama Ejecutivo" seat, listening to other passengers and reading my book. Once we got to the border, I was surprised to find that we had to undergo a tedious process, with a long line for exit papers, a similar line for entry to Chile (and a little weird scary moment when the woman took my passport to the back for some unknown reason), and then a very thorough agricultural checkpoint with a ton of questions and xray scanning, and even fruit sniffing dogs! Like an hour and a half later, we drove about a half kilometer from the top of the mountain pass, only to stop again since they were rebuilding one lane of the two lane switchback highway. We would drive for 10 or 15 minutes, and wait again for a half hour, drive again, wait again, all while they showed "Wild Hogs" and "Ghost Rider" just to extend the torturous feelings of angst and boredom. I broke out a bottle of wine and passed it around in first class, only to be scolded by the bus guy and instead had to hide my bottle and drink it to myself, since only a few others got a chance to fill their cups! To top it off, a crash had ocurred at the bottom of the hill, so our bus had to wait on the road for an extra 2 and a half hours! Enough about that.

Once in Santiago, I was able to meet up with my Chilean expat friend Isabel for some pisco sours and call it a night, which was all very easy because through my past experiences in Santiago, I was smart enough to find a great hostel right by the metro station for the Bellas Artes neighborhood. Andes Hostel was a huge place and by the next day I had made friends with two of my dorm roommates, Smita (from London) and Paulo (from Sao Paolo Brazil), and we made plans to cook some food that evening, with Smita cooking some chicken curry using the spices she had brought along from the UK! In the meantime, I set off on a search for clothing and work boots that would actually fit me, as I knew very well that the clothes I had on me would not be suitable for wine work. After miles of walking and a million department stores and malls and shoe stores, I came back with two pairs of pants that actually fit me, and a jacket. It seemed that my search for waterproof boots would last forever, since my feet were much larger than any of the inventory of chilean shoe stores. The day was not a total loss since I had found a few things, so I was happy to call it quits and get ready for the dinner. After a long time preparing dinner and drinking wine in the kitchen, a group of us sat down to dine at around midnight, and had a grand old time together and talking about our plans and experiences.

The next day, Smita and I went to the bus station since she was planning to go to mendoza and I had to look into finding a way to reach Casablanca or even make it to Matetic on the tourist bus. I helped Smita to find the right place for a bus and to translate a little bit for her, and I made a few inquiries about making it to Matetic, but made little progress there and figured I would just figure it out later. We stopped at a few stores to find waterproof boots, and again my efforts were in vain - I was offered some aqua socks and some very extreme construction boots that were actually too big!! I was done shopping and Smita and I had to head back to the hostel because we had left our friend paulo waiting for us there! Once we got back we met up with paulo and also another hostel friend named Kristin, a bartender from Manhattan. The four of us were hungry and thirsty, so we set out for some churrascos and pisco sours at the first appealing restaurant. After lunch, things got interesting!

After some more walking and map deciphering, we made it to "La Piojera," the quintessential Santiago bar where the specialty is the "Terremoto." A terremoto is a drink that consists of a half liter of white wine, a shot of fernet, and a scoop of pineapple ice cream on top, and the result is a pretty unappetizing drink with quite a kick to it. A terremoto, which translates to earthquake in spanish, goes for only $4 at the piojera, and an aftershock (replica) is only $2! The bar was full of people and we were an instant hit!! We clearly represented the tourist melting pot, with an Indian from the UK, a spanish speaker from Brazil, an energetic manhattan, and a very tall guy from california! Many people offered us drinks and we took a million photos, including some great polaroids and some picutres of us eating hard boiled eggs and posing with numerous locals. We were having a ball and during the course of our conversations (and after plenty of drinks), we had someone read the fine print on Smita's bus ticket, and he told us that we had 30 minutes to qualify for a refund! We had decided that Smita and Paulo and I would all go together to Valparaiso, if if if we could make it in time to exchange the ticket. We ran the whole way, from the bar to the metro station, and then through the bus station, and made it to the ticket counter with 30 seconds left on the clock! Que suerte!

After a long day, Smita and I had to make some last minute changes in hostel reservations and we went out for dinner in Bellavista, where we come across an awesome drum circle next to Pablo Neruda's old house, and called it a night. We were looking forward to our journey together to my favorite city in Chile - -Valparaiso! Stay tuned for another delayed version of what transpired!