We're still alive!

Wow, three days without posting. What's happening to me? Must be the bad influence of those Pennsylvanians that are down here distracting me from my faithful blogging. Anyhow, I don't think it's possible to fully recall all of the past 3 days, but here's what comes to mind: (no doubt this will be crazy long so I'll break it down by days, thereby giving you time to pause, catch your breath, get a coffee, stretch, take a nap...)

Tuesday: This day started out pretty rough. My flat tire from the night before came back to haunt us when we went to the rental place, thinking we would just quickly stop in and switch it for another one. Wrong. We're in South America and things just don't work that way here. Long story short, we spent the morning sitting in the office, waiting while calls were made to figure out who had a spare tire and where it was and how we could get it. Two hours and thirty-five thousand pesos later, we were on our way...

... and then we got lost. Again. We were told it was EEEEASY, just go down such and such a highway and get off on Av. Florida and it's right there! But Av. Florida isn't marked; somehow one just has to KNOW that you have to first get off on 'Los Torres' and THEN you will find Av. Florida. They don't feel the need to mark much of anything here, nor to put the street numbers in any sort of sequential order. Dad, the King of Maps, just loves it!

Anyhow, we finally found the town we were looking for and ended up zipping right through it and onto an amazing, winding road that ran through the Andes. We drove for at least an hour without a stop sign or a traffic light, all while seeing amazing scenery and quaint little villages along the roads. Our new destination became El Volcan and, after about two hours of driving, we got to a point where we were just 8 kilometers (about 5 miles) from it and the road turned to unpaved stone and started going uphill. This would be the point where the as-yet-unnamed person in the backseat decided that we simply could not go on. We tried giving her more Xanax but to no avail. We headed home. Grrrr.

Wednesday: This morning we piddled away trying to get an ever-elusive map of Chile and Argentina. No one here has maps so I'm not sure why we even try. But we (correction, the folks) foolishly thought the Chilean Automobile Club (like AAA in the US) would have them. After waiting about half an hour, we found out we were wrong. Again. They don't have maps and they don't route out trips for you. So what does the Chilean Automobile Club do, you ask? I'll let you know when I find out.

Then we decided to head back to El Volcan. "Someone" was feeling better about it today and assured us repeatedly they would be game this time. Fortunately, we knew where we were going this time so it saved us about an hour in aimless driving. We arrived right back at the same spot and, yep, things got shaky. But this time we made it about a half a kilometer up the road before the freaking out kicked in. I don't remember exactly how many times we turned the car around before finally deciding to go with a majority vote (binding and gagging was also discussed) and forge ahead. I'm SO glad we did!

El Volcan is written up as an abandoned mining town where one can "peek into the abandoned mines and houses". It was set down in a low valley and, from the road above while looking down, seemed to be just as billed. Run-down, falling-apart buildings and houses with no signs of life anywhere. Spooky but cool. We made our way down the bumpy dirt road and started poking around... only to see people running around. People were living there! You can't imagine this place, by all appearances a ghost town, yet with little kids running around chasing tires, horses roaming around free, guys hanging out on porches, dogs roaming the streets. There was even a little pub and a teeny tiny little chapel, which I can't believe more than two adults and one very small child could fit into at one time. Impossible to believe that people still live like that. Wow!

On the road back, we stopped in another little town, San Jose de Maipo, that for me embodies a typical little South American town. Cute little center plaza where everyone congregates, just hanging out and chatting leisurely, surrounded by a butcher, bakery, little church, pastry shop, fruit market, tiny mini-market. Darling. And exactly what I love about South America.

Thursday: Today we decided to go to Argentina. How cool to be able to just "go to Argentina" for the day! We heard about a natural reserve there which contains the highest mountain in the Andes and, in fact, in all of the Americas and the western hemisphere. This time we actually found what we wanted without getting lost! It was very exciting. The last half hour of the trip was going up a STEEP mountain full of switchbacks. The backseat passenger loved that!

We got into the country with no problem (other than the hour or so it took for us go through customs; we had to drive into a building to go through customs, a first for me) and spent some time first at a little market and checking out the area. Then we got to the reserve and it first struck me that it wasn't at all like the "park" I was expecting. There was no visitors center, no souvenir shop, no bathrooms, no rangers, it was just truly a natural reserve in the middle of nowhere. We walked a trail that took us back into the mountains and overlooked that famous mountain glacier... stunning.

And then we thought we'd head back to Chile... but we were foolish to think it would be that easy. First I drove the wrong way through a tunnel and almost got a ticket (I'm kind of getting used to that by now) and THEN we ended up in a line of traffic that was, I kid you not, at least 2 kilometers long. It wasn't slow, it was stopped. Dead stopped. As in people had their cars shut off and were just hanging out outside their cars. It was traffic for as far as the eye could see, literally. Turns out that during Semana Santa (Holy Week), everyone in South America travels and it seemed like every single one of them was there in line in front of us. It was a drag but what I loved about it was how the people handled it. No one got mad, no one beeped their horn, no one threw a fit, no one ranted or raved. People were just hanging out, hiking up into the mountains, going for walks, taking pictures, talking, laughing. Come on, you have to dig that! And that is what I love about South America in a nutshell.

Four and a half hours later, yes four and a half, after the sun had set and we were prepared to settle in for the night, we saw a light on the horizon. It was like seeing water after days roaming the desert! We didn't realize that our journey had just begun. Yes, indeedy, Chilean customs is a most "interesting" experience. It involved getting out of the car and going into a building and going from one window to another to another and another (about 7 in all), stacks of paperwork, forms, paying an entrance fee (on top of the exit fee we had just paid to Argentina) and, finally, having our car searched by two officers. In the end, we spent more time in customs than in Argentina!

Oh, and of course we got lost on the way home.

Friday: Since we didn't get home til after 2 am last night and because it's Good Friday and nearly everything here is closed, today we decided to chill. And that's what we did, in a big way. Mom made it downstairs for breakfast, I went to the grocery store and we all walked to Starbucks this evening. And those were our major accomplishments for the day. Aaaaaaah.