where the plains are green and Pablo Neruda is king

Ain't no chance if you don't take it - (now finished)
So now I am back in Hawaii counting up the losses and gains, the almosts and nicely dones. I lost my cell phone in Providence, left behind Brad's camera in Boston, and, with a crazy mission to save my pictures more than his camera, I almost left behind Mark's camera in Punta Arenas. Each day was an experience that was exciting, challenging and memorable. Days that add up to something intangible and magical. I almost saw all three of Pablo Neruda's houses in Chile. On my last day in Chile, when I went to Isla Negra to see what I was told is Neruda's best-preserved house, I found out that it is closed on Mondays. Doh! It was a nice jaunt though because it was sunny yet cool on the beach as I wrote my last set of postcards and the beach was beautifully populated with locals frolicking in the water and laying out. It was a nice slice of life in what seemed to be a sleepy town.
My whole trip was a series of chances taken, some that seemingly turned out poorly, in the end didn't really. Because everything was new and different for me and taking place in a beautiful country under sunny skies, nothing could possibly be too bad. My one complaint, if you could call it that, is that for the first half of the trip I was always having to eat dinner by myself. I don't mind eating breakfast or lunch by myself because those are quick and relatively innocuous. But dinner, that was usually a sit down meal at a nice restaurant and I felt like the lonely man going into restaurant after restaurant and asking for a table for one. But even that wasn't so bad because I met people that way, both wait staff and other people traveling alone who got sat at the bar instead of a table. The best time was at azul profundo when I had my first taste of a pisco sour. As most people know, I am not much of a hard liquor drinker. but the pisco sour was good because it had a prickly lemony taste and was slightly sweet. The guy that made it shook it up like he was doing flamenco or something, real art went into his craft. I don't know if he could serve up the gift of pardon but if not, he came real damn close.
Four days on the cruise was pretty nice because it gave me lots of time to pause and reflect on things that were happening or going to happen in Chile as well as back at home. I didn't get as much alone time as I thought I would get because I met people and we did stuff. one night I drank some beers and four bottles of wine with this French guy. I liked him because he made roofs on house in southwest France. It was kind of hard talking to him because French was his first language and English is mine, so we struggled through Spanish and flowed through the wine. It was fun.
I didn't think I was going to see the Penguins in Punta Arenas but that turned out to be real nice. Seeing the glacier in Argentina was pretty incredible too. Waiting for a big chunk to fall off in the ocean, making a loud crack and a big splash seemed sadistic but when it happened it was truly awesome. But it was slowly dying and I felt a bit sorry for it. All that potential energy though, that's the part I couldn't get over. Like a huge frozen river just waiting to be released. Very amazing. Now I would think twice about going to Argentina and the chaos following the devaluation of their currency.
All in all though, I am just incredibly happy that I went and had a chance to live. I won't get too preachy about how most days I barely do enough to survive and exist, and how fantastic it is to really live - but it's very nice. It made me feel unique and special in a very gratifying way. Wishing you all live life to the full during the holidays and new year!

have you ever been experienced, well, i have
Itīs Sunday afternoon and soon i will be heading back to santiago and from there back to SF. it was an excellent trip and i am pretty bummed about having to leave so early but this way i have reason to come back again soon. i would like to see the lake district in the winter and just meet more great Chilean people. i could go on and on about all the local people i have met that have been so nice to me during my visit. In retrospect it might have been better to fly into punta arenas and go up to santiago, taking my time. but the way i have done it was great and really wouldnīt want to undo any part. even the smog choked streets of santiago have a certain charm to them. i am surprised to find down here near the bottom of the world, punta arenas is a large well-planned city that is a great mix of industry, facilities and natural beauty. i donīt know if i would sing the same song if it were cloudy and the wind were howling but today, like almost every minute of my trip, it is a sunny day and the smiles are in full bloom. it will be weird to be back in SF and the Hawaii but i have had a good go of it here and i now it is time to return. i like that i have missed the commercial part of Christmas and will be returning for the good part, the festivities. i can only imagine all that has happened in the big world while i have spent the last three weeks getting smaller and smaller in my scope. the only international worry i had yesterday was whether or not the argentinian peso was going to be severely devalued and cause unrest in the country. i was only there briefly to see the third largest glacier in the world. it was impressive, to say the least! i also wanted to go because i wanted the argentina stamp in my passport. itīs the little things, always. there are lots of little things that i look forward to upon my return but right now i am still caught up in the rush of thoughts and memories from the winding down of this trip. i guess i can only put an experience like this in true perspective after it is over and i return to whatever it is i am returning to. but Alex is coming back to the US after being gone for two years - how is it possible to put that in persective!? thatīs full on crazy. well i have to get going and have a little almuerzo before i head to the aeropuerto. hasta la vista. itīs nice to say i have seen the sun rise from the bottom of the earth. and the day was good. again and again.

someone get a doctor, quick!
I donīt know what i was thinking. i knew i was going to be flying back to santiago from punta arenas at the end of my trip. but instead of buying a ticket i just thought i would get one right before i left. doh! i am getting a plane ticket, not a train ticket and when i first looked at prices it was about $100, now, because i have waited, it is like $250! somebody get a brain surgeon, quick! oh well, thatīs a nice lesson learned. besides that all is still going well. i had a crazy bus ride from pucon here to puerto montt this morning. not crazy because the bus driver was like those you would find in Mexico but because of the close timing. i had to catch a 615 bus to Valdivia this morning, which i almost missed. then it arrived late and i had to try and find the next bus out of Valdivia for puerto montt and hope it wasnīt late because i had to be here by 2pm to check in or i lose my spot on the boat. i got here at 115. too close for me. but i met a cool older guy on the bus who told me about a guy he knows from college that runs a hostel in puerto natales, where i am going next. so i got the hook up, he wrote me a note and i think it should be a good gig. beyond that i am looking to get a ticket back to the mainland for new years. i donīt know who is doing what but it should be a good time. i would stay home longer but Kathryn is coming out and has some stuff i left with her so it will be a good timing thing. sheīs always fun to hang with. maybe others will email me and tell me what they are up to so i donīt have to email each one of you. anyway gotta catch my boat. hasta luego.

sun soaked and tired in Pucon
09,12,01 i probably already mentioned how much Chile is like California, and it just gets more true all the time. Temuco kind of reminded of Ukiah and Pucon is like Lake Tahoe. Except the population growth and pollution levels are probably what it was like 50 years ago in CA. itīs pretty damn pristine. just beautiful! after my adventures with that rent a car in temuco i decided to go the safe route and just tool around the city yesterday and then i went white water rafting today. after that i went for a pretty good bike ride in the hot hot sun. two hours later i was wasted. in the future i will need to use more sunscreen because i could feel the sun getting me today. i went white water rafting today for the first time in my life because of two things. the upper part of the river is class 4 and because i wanted to have something to brag to Helen about. i drank my share of water but i never fell out of the boat. none of us did. there was seven of us including the guide. lots of fun, i will have to try it in cali now. last night i had a nice long dinner with lots of wine and then i decided to walk to a hotel along the main highway that i had never seen before. after about half an hour of walking along a fairly busy highway i decided to give up my search for the sasquatch. actually i was close because i went there today on my bike. a lot of up and down that i didnīt notice so much when i was walking with a few drinks in me last night. today i will make another go of having the best times of my life and stay out until i canīt stand no more. well, my bus to get me south leaves at 615 so i guess i wonīt be out too late. this sure is a hell of a lot of fun. i highly recommend it to anyone who doesnīt what to do next in life. once i get on that boat tomorrow i will just veg and look at glaciers and write. i might read the book i got in santiago but it is in spanish so i donīt know if i want to work that hard. drink, watch the glaciers pass, sleep. thatīs gonna be pretty damn nice. i think my Christmas cards are gonna be late this year :)

last day in Santiago
just past midnight on a horribly outstanding day. i still do not have time for spelling or hypen errors so please just bare with. at the end i decided santiago had a lot going for it and i should not have concentrated on feeling like a chimney sweep by walking those smog-choked streets. i am glad to have moved on to the lake district though. my romantic ass had to take the train down to temuco when i knew a bus would have been better. but no, i took the train and got here two hours late. being freshly ticked about that i went to the tourist office and asked them questions which they basically had no answers for. so i went to a travel agency and started peppering them with questions about different things i wanted to do. they basically had no groups in town doing anything so everything was gonna cost me through the --- to make a special tour for me. i said bullocks! and took a page out of the sun also rises and decided to rent my own car and go wherever i damn well pleased. i shouldnīt have read book before i came here because now i feel like i should live large while i am here and not care about my future; if that exists. so i set out to a national park of my own and i thought i was hot stuff. then the road ends and it is just gravel. that bumpity bump got old real quick. and to top it off i was looking at something to my left and the next thing i know i am bouncing through a ditch on my right. i gained control of the car but not until after the damage was done. besides hitting plants and scratching up the side of the car, I got a flat tire. it gets worse. i jack up the car and get the tire off with a lot of effort only to realize that because the right side is in a ditch there is no way to get the new tire on. the car is leaning to that side and the new tire is much fuller (duh). so i start digging with the tire wrench to try and clear out enough gravel to let the new tire fit on. after a lot of strenous but futile digging and slamming of the tire iron. i maybe cleared an inch or two and i need about five or six more. then i decided to just clear enough more to be able to put the flat back on and drive the car a few feet so that it is not in a ditch. i did that but still the whole jack thing wasnīt working for me because it didnīt give me enough room to put the new tire on. right about here is when i felt like giving up and sleeping with the cows or find a Mapuche indian tribe that might put me up for the night. i didnīt. instead i read the instruction booklet over and over again until i figured out a better place for the jack. that worked. it was two hours later and i was heavily soiled and beat tired tough. but like wally world i had to go on. my fear was that i would get a second flat tire and that would be that for me. anyway, i continued on a road that was worse than a loggin road. like something your grandfatherīs war buddy lives down, except it goes on for miles! when i get to the park i talk to the guy at the office and he says park guides are on strike and he could only give me basic information. before going on my way i took an extremely needed bathroom break. thank God i brought some kleenex with me! anyway. after that i wasnīt sure if i should follow the road to the right or left. i went to the right but road got skinnier and was steep. so i went back to the ranger dude and didnīt understand what he said. so i just try to the right instead. i went over a very sketchy bridge only to find a dead end. i was right the first time. let me tell you that oad got worse and worse, and i always thought, damn, this is as bad as it gets. but noooo. anyway the park was BEAUTIFUL. and no one was there. it was like have shasta park all to myself. if i had more time i would have gone skinny dipping but of course i didnīt. i took lots of pictures and just loved the park. but i took the other way out and it was no better at all. by the end i was like Smilia and her sense of snow. i could find a road where most people would see a creek bed. it was crazy. i was going fast and fishtailing the whole trip. i thought that i was going to lose it a die a few times, but guess what, i didnīt. i picked up hitchhikers in the beginning and the end and they were very useful in helping me get to where i was going. besides i was real tired of singing to myself. and making up songs based on road signs. and the number one sign the apocalypse is upon us is . . . . . . . . Chris got a dvd player! we might as well just start calling him mr. gadget! go go gadget emo! just giving you grief for not emailing me your address like you said you would and forcing me to carry this postcard around since Boston! two kinds of people do that ītopher and i am thinking you might be one of them :) beauty serenity and personal struggle. it was a damn good day!

the journey begins, 04,12,2001
Do you like how I used the foreign way of putting the day then month? pretty clever, no? All right i am in Chile now and if i donīt capitalize stuff or use wrong punctuation it is because their keyboards are different when it comes to that stuff. the letters and numbers are all in the same place, itīs just the fancy stuff thatīs all mixed up. going from boston to providence my train was delayed 1.5 hrs so i missed my flight. luckily i was able to get a later flight to chicago and there was also a later flight from chicago to sacramento, in my book that is nothing short of a miracle. plus they didnīt stick me with any change fees. i was sweating it for awhile there though because i had visions of me not making it for my flight to chile. anyway i got to sac at like 1115pm and went to my momīs. we had pizza and then i went to bed at 1am only to get up 3.5 hrs later to catch the 525 train to sf. i am glad miles got me to the train station early because i thought the train left at 545 - lucky me. i had breakfast with Mark, ran around the marina doing errands and before i knew it, it was 1215 and my cab was there to take me to the airport. my 155 flight was on time and before i knew it i was on my way to miami. when i got there they told us not to leave the terminal area if we had a connecting flight because it was going to take another two hours to get back in through security. BUT i had emailed my friend mike black and asked if he was going to meet me at the miami airport for a drink that night. i had mentioned it once before but we hadnt talked about it for awhile. anyway i just shot him an email in the off chance he could meet me because i havenīt seen him in 4 years. i left to see if he was around, he was and we gulped down beers while he showed me family pictures and we shot the breeze. time has been kind to him. great to see him. i got on my flight to chile in plenty of time and i was off. the guy sitting next to me was very helpful in helping me try to decide on places to visit while in chile. it dawned on me while i was talking to mike that i had absolutely no reservations and wasnīt too sure how things were going to work out. but the only one i have to make happy is myself so thatīs easy enough. after i got here i went to lunch at a place listed in my frommerīs guide and realized just how lacking my spanish really is. it was amazing i got anything to eat at all. but it was a nice place and the food was very good. all for like six bucks. that incudes a Cristal beer too, mmm. from now on i will try and sample the native wines though. after lunch i did my best at walking around in circles looking for places that must not exist. finally i found a couple tourism offices and now i am straight. i was thinking that i would try and do a group tour of valparaiso and viņa del mar but instead i am saving dough and going it alone. i also know the rest of my itinerary in a general way. the second tourism office was really what i needed. i canīt believe i am in chile. but here i am, losing my way at every turn. and i must say, getting lost is quite nice.