12/22/05
SANTIAGO, CHILE

Once off the bus in Valdivia-- a pleasant, German- influenced university town-- a Dutch guy and I were shown an unlicensed hostel on the river. It was an airy old estate in need of carpentry and weed-pulling. The proprietor, Juan Pablo, spread his hands proudly at the view from the backyard: downtown over water. The guestroom had a high ceiling, farmhouse doors, a shaggy dog, and no beds. Juan Pablo waved this last detail away-- he´d put a couple beds in there.

As we realized over the next few days, Juan Pablo was apparently starting a hostel just so he could throw barbecues, show us around town, take us to the salsoteca, and chop strawberries into white wine in the middle of the day. He mixed us with his friends and topped off everyone´s glass, over and over. The locals took us in rowdily.

To greet a woman in Chile, you do the simultaneous cheek-kiss (go left). When greeting a guy, if your hand is messy from oysters, you can just offer a forearm and he´ll shake that. At the salsoteca, men wear white shirts and women wear shiny things. The singer, with a voice like ringing bells, keeps time with her legs in front of the conga player, and when the club slows down at 4:00 AM you can take a cab to a dark restaurant run by a short lady and sponge up chicken broth with fried rolls.

So mornings were pretty late. I did get up early one day to go sightseeing with four Colombian women from the day before. We jostled on minibuses, sloshed on ferries, and meandered around Spanish forts. A grandmother in Corral took us in, put a giant bowl of cherries on the table, and talked about each framed photo in the room. I listened harder when she talked about Pinochet. He wasn´t that bad, she said sweetly. She´d adored his wife.

At the riverfront fish market, you can gulp oysters using a knife and a lemon and a concrete table just now hosed free of slop. Sea lions hang around a few feet away, also cormorants and gulls and pelicans. Now and then a fishmonger waves a wooden crate at a sea lion to back it up-- it bellows and undulates and maybe flops back into the river. I tried barnacles. Barnacles. Red, puckering, not nice.

After day three, the Dutch guy (Sjoerd) and I realized that we had to get out of Valdivia. We got a familial goodbye from Juan Pablo, his wife, and his kids, and we caught a bus to Pucón.

Pucón is in the Lake District. This is both as pretty and as touristy as it sounds-- forested hills, sunsets over purple water, Fuji-like volcanoes, wooden guesthouses. On Pucón´s main street, signs tout all kinds of excursions. It glazes the eye. The experiences are packaged for you, and, according to the photos in the windows, people like you are crazy about them. Fellow backpackers are speaking in checklists: done the Volcano Thing, doing the Hot Springs Thing, etc.

As advertised, the Volcano Thing is impressive. It´s a five-hour ascent with snow boots and an ice axe, and at the rim you´re hit with noxious waves of gas. The vent below is an orange furnace, breathing and glowing and spewing lava. The bigger eruptions kick black crystalized bits hundreds of feet into the air. To descend, you leap onto your butt and slide, fast, using your axe as a brake. The next day your shins are tender from those stupid boots, but you´ve gotten good photos and burned off the avocado that you´ve been heaping on sandwiches.

One day and one long bus ride later, Santiago. It´s overcrowded, has been repeatedly destroyed by earthquakes, and is so smoggy that you can only see the ghosts of the Andes to the east. I like it so far. Early travel experiences (Cairo) gave me a soft spot for urban monstrosity. Santiago has a great Precolumbian art museum, Chinese restaurants, grafitti murals, King Kong, and an antique hostel with hammocks in a big grotty backyard. Christmas will be here.