The past ten days have been hectic, to say the least. The Good Doctor arrived in the madrugada of Saturday (4th) / Sunday (5th). I did my best to surprise him at the airport, but it turns out that my thoroughness bit me in the behind, and The Doc spoiled my surprise by calling me and informing me that he was leaving the airport now. I was forced to say "NO DON’T...WHERE ARE YOU? I AM HERE WAITING FOR YOU!" It turns out he hadn’t even exited customs yet. Jerk. I punished him though, by trying to force him to eat vegetables. Later I made him pancakes and fresh squeezed orange juice, so I am not all that bad. We left Santiago on the 8th, but before that we passed time getting reacquainted, cuddling, watching movies, taking walks, and checking out our new home. The Doc and I agreed that the downstairs blue room is much nicer for a variety of reasons. Namely that the color does not make us feel like we´re in an institution, and it is not next to the television!
As I said before, we left Santiago the evening of the 8th on a bus headed directly to Castro. The ride was long, but not totally unpleasant. We got into Castro without a hitch, and spent our first day there napping excessively and watching superfluous amounts of Spanish subtitled American television. Good times. We eventually left the house to find our first... Chilean (and thus mediocre) meal together.
I wont talk too much about Castro except to say that it was lovely, and sunny. We took a boat ride around the bay, and got a bit of color as we watched seal politics in action. First come first serve is a tough way to be, but maybe the big seals were on the buoy and the little one was in the water for issues of size alone. Nature blows.
The next day we went on a tour thing that took us to a few different spots on the island. We saw a bunch of the old wooden churches, one of which had a secret passageway filled with birds (or one bird flapping around wildly, rather). In the secret passageway there were two peep holes that seemed to have been designed for the purpose of spying on the parishioners.
After the church, we continued along the road to an ice factory in the middle of nowhere. We stole ice. I don´t know if it should be considered stealing though. We drove up a dirt road in the middle of nowhere to a cooling tower with a conveyer belt that carried ice to the outside world for no particular reason (that we could guess). To maintain the senselessness, we took a bunch of ice for no particular reason.
Being as how our trip started out with peepholes and ice of questionable origins, The Doc, the blasphemous guy he is, felt it improper to leave the next destination without making some sort of unique mark upon its memory. He rang the church bell. An amused Chilean gentleman informed us that soon the parishioners would head to mass. Then we went to a little cemetery that had actual houses for the dead. Not tombs, but little tiny houses. It was so cool. I accidentally stepped on a regular grave, and my foot felt icky and my soul felt wounded. Sorry dead guy! Eventually we ended up at Parque Nacional Chiloe, where we had a snack, wandered around a bit, took a cup of tea, and made friends with Chileans from Santiago. We traded phone numbers! We made plans to say hello when we get back to the city! How fun!
The Doc remarked at some point that I have Hunter Thompson good luck, and fittingly enough, the evening after our fantastic adventure just happened to be Castro’s birthday party! We enjoyed one of the most pleasing fireworks shows of our lives. We then went out in search of food, and found a pretty good snack not too far from home. We decided that the fireworks had been a good note to end on, and so we left the next morning for Puerto Montt.
It was in Puerto Montt that we discovered just how expensive car rentals are in Chile. We bought a bus ticket to Cohaiyque and found a hostel. We napped for a few hours, and decided to walk around in search of food. It turns out that it was Puerto Montt’s birthday party that evening, so we sat about 6 feet from the sea, and watched another great fireworks display. It wasn’t as good as Castro, but heck it was still pretty great. The sound of fireworks booming off of the open ocean from not so far away is fantastically deafening. We were squealing with delight through the whole show.
Finally we found a place to eat, and we enjoyed some ridiculously American snacks and a couple of Chilean beers. We crawled into bed, perhaps too late, and woke up the next morning, also perhaps too late.
We made our bus, nonetheless, and I only stressed out a little too much. Anyhow. Now we are in Cohaiyque, and we are leaving soon, despite our good intentions. It seems that buses only leave this place once a week, and we aren’t up to spending a week here. If only we had two months to travel, there would be no problem. Sigh.
