easin' on down, easin' on down the road.

HOLA! It's been a while, but Terry and I are finally heading into CHILE! I can't believe it. No more Cusco, no more Peru, no more CUY! I could cry! It's been such a long time, traveling like this feels strange. And we are carrying everything we own with us, which has been entertaining for locals, but somewhat of a burden on us. Our first stop was Ica, which was a lot of fun! We stayed in this hospedaje, which is a cheaper hostal, for one night, and decided to move on to Tacna the following day. So, our first day in Ica we walked around the plaza de armas for a while. It is really hot here! In January we are stripping because of the sun, I'm pretty sure this blows Florida out of the water. However, this town does have ice cold beverages figured out like nobody's business! So tasty! And the mall here is something to behold, it's three levels, all the fast food that we missed ( yes, I know I just left the states and have only been gone a month, but still, the second you return to Peru, you feel like you never left, and so all the good, fulfilling, unhealthy crap that I dined on repetitively back home was gone the first time I ate a menu in Cusco.) We stuffed ourselves on Pizza Hut and then watched Avatar in a cinema. Granted it was in Spanish, and without the 3D effects, but it was still awesome to be sitting in a movie theater, with a large screen, and stale popcorn, and obnoxious people all around you. We also went and visited one of the local bodegas, which are vineyards that produce wine and pisco. Our tour guide took a shine to me, so we received a wicked tasting after the tour, there were quite a few types of wine we tried, and then for a special bonus we were given four different types of pisco to try. Walking down the dirt road to the main highway back to Ica was fun! However I got quite burnt in the span of 15 minutes. Luckily a cab came by and picked us up! So it was quite a day, we also had cable in the room, so we spent one crazy Saturday night livin' it up by watching RV on a small t.v. and passing out early. We left Ica and made it down to Valparaiso Chile in the span of three days and several VERY long bus rides. After the last 27 hour bus ride from Arica to Valparaiso my arse was begging that we not use it of several days, so we
We did not stay in one place longer than a night on the way down to Valparaiso. We only stopped in Ica, Tacna, and then we stopped in Valparaiso. We did all this in five days. It was disgusting. Once we got to Valparaiso we stayed for two nights in our hostel and just relaxed! The graffiti in this town in absolutely incredible, so we walked around and enjoyed the lively decoration. Our neighborhood where the hostel is is very young and chill. The other night we stopped for a second to watch these neuvo hippie street performer clowns do a free show in a tiny plaza. There were bleachers set up, and they had trapeze set up, but we didn't stay long enough to see them really use it. And i didn't even notice until we were about to leave, but our hostel also had one set up in the hallway area, but it was high enough I'm not really sure how people boarded the vessel. anywho, our first night was very calm. we walked around, found a place to eat and tried our first pisco sour with chilean pisco. there is a difference; peru might have created the liquor, but chile has the soil, climate, and knowhow to mix it with ingredients the way I like it (strong). Shooey, it was good! So, we had several of those and shared some fajitas. There were two things about these fajitas that led me to start falling in love with this country.
1) they had yellow corn, that was fresh, not canned, and
2) the fajitas were regular white corn tortillas. On our way home we stopped off in a little tienda and they had
3) GINGER ALE! The world makes sense once again for me. The next morning I went to the grocery store to get food for us for the day and tomorrow's lunch so we could save some money instead of eating out.
4) I was waiting in the deli checking out cheeses and meats when this woman came up and asked me if I had taken a number, which I hadn't because I didn't know about that, so she let me use her number as well so I didn't have to wait longer.
5) I was getting bakery bread (which was loose in bins and you put the amount you want in a bag to price) when this different woman came up to me and let me know that I needed to go to a different line than I thought to weigh the bread, and she just handed me several bags to put the bread I had in. HUH?! I do not know how to react to such kindness without hints of suspicion in my mind. All of these acts of kindness happened in less than five hours of me being conscious. I would like to say at this point that I truly did enjoy my time in Cusco, it was an incredible experience and I met some amazing and kind people; however in 8 months I met almost the same amount of kind nice people in Peru as I did in Chile in less than a day. I really do appreciate how honest everyone here is; and they all are friendly and helpful. I have been a complete idiot with the Chilean currency. Everything is 1000 or 10000 pesos, and the zeros throw me off, however
6) everyone has always corrected me and made sure I got the correct change back. There were many times in Cusco vendors tried to trick me, and I understood their money system. I seriously cannot keep up with all the things that have happened to us that I was impressed by.
So, continuing on with the days recap: BEACH! It does exist, we were there, and it was quite incredible! There was sand, salty water, bathing suits (not on me) tans (again, not on me) and lounging. Good times! We did wet our feet, but the water was pretty cold, which i don't think is fair... haha. But so we stayed out in the sand and sun for a good while eating lunch, reading and listening to music. That evening we cooked an absolutely incredible dinner. I just remember there were two other just plain wonderful things I came across in the grocery store.
7) There were real steaks. Big, juicy ones that had this color of red I've only been able to drool over in dreams. Something you could cook for more than 10 minutes and it would still be rare. So tasty.
8) Stroganoff mix. I know it's not Patti's homemade, but it was really nice to see it there, available to buy, because I didn't have the recipe, the money to buy all the ingredients (then only use part of them and waste the rest), nor the fridge space in the hostel we were staying in.
So our dinner was THICK steaks, noodles cooked in stroganoff mix, and then some veggies. It was healthy in the sense that we haven't had a home cooked meal in a very long time, and it was much needed to add our own spices, sit down at a table, wash our dishes and talk without the general clutter and noise pollution of a crowed restaurant.
The next morning we walked around, sat in plazas, smelled the funkiness of salt water in a port city, ran into a homeless man dropping a number two in a very busy boardwalk behind a tall pillar, went on a hunt for the post office and ran into a very friendly and helpful older couple who gave us a bit of a chat, and then we headed off to Olmue, which is an hour inland from Valparaiso. We took a subway/metro from the city to Limache, which is another city, and from there we hopped a bus to the plaza in Olmue. This is the city our farm is located near. The actual farm is 30 minutes into the country, but the family owns a pizzeria in the main plaza so we stopped there first. It's a really nice small restaurant, the wife and daughter live in an apartment above the pizzeria, and Mario, the husband lives on the farm. One of the people that work for them is this girl from Lima who's been with them for quite a while who's only 21, single, and has a 1 year daughter who is by far the most adorable and well behaved little kid i've ever wanted to play with. At first she didn't warm up to us, we were strangers after all, but finally she started to smile at us after we talked to Maria, her mom, for a spell. It got to the point where we were picking her up playing with her and dancing her around the kitchen to old Madonna hits. This is what our days consist of. After two weeks we had helped in the pizzeria some, made a compost pile, kept the dogs happy and renamed them, made sure the horses were still alive, and managed to not kill any plants or any flies. There is some sort of fly haven in this house and it's completely out of hand. It becomes second nature to slap your arm or leg, fan your hand near your ear and sleep under heavy comforters in very hot weather to keep the flies OFF! They are incessant and evil. You could kill an entire battalion of them and still their armies rise again, stronger than before... They are crafty, flying so that your vision is blurred, a cyclone that attacks your ears, goes up your nose, tickles any exposed skin... I rue these vicious creatures with a passion that even my anger driven heart has not known before. After two weeks it is definitely time to move on. The shower water has the most foul smell and up until two days ago there was no pressure. i have managed washing for the most part while watering the trees, and kept my hair from scaring anyone away by washing it down in the kitchen sink. Everytime it makes me think of Patti when she lived in Enon. How she would wash and curl her hair before bed. I don't remember it the same way when she moved out to Gloucester, but it's a distinct memory from waaaaaayyy back, with the wickedly awesome tacky 70s decor in poor lighting and her talking about plans for the next day or whatever, always good times. On that note I am out of steam and this is already long enough...
LOVE!