Last Night In Valparaiso

We have now spent three days in Valparaiso. Last post, we had basically just checked into the hostel. I said that the hostel was like the other ones, but dirtier, and that was an understatement. The hostel is located on some pretty steep hills, and I think in the event of an earthquake the building would just come undone. The walls do not form right angles with each other, and it appears to be leaning towards the street. However, it has a few redeeming qualities. In Argentina, breakfast is really light, usually just a piece or two of bread and coffee. Here, we get fruit, bread and butter, and scrambled eggs. The hosts are helpful, but not nearly as professional as our last places. Oh well.

Our first day here, Luke and I went out around 3 or 4 to get lunch and just walk around a little bit. We really wussed out in the end. I really don't remember what we did until 9, but around 9 we decided to take naps and just ended up going to bed. At this point, two girls had checked into the room but there were still 4 open beds. I slept very well, probably because I needed it badly, but Luke had a hard time sleeping and with good reason. There were dogs fighting outside, the final four people showed up around 12 and 4am, people talking, and some jerk playing guitar and singing loudly like all night. Normally this would all bother me a lot, but thankfully it didnt, and I slept for about 11 hours. Luke was pretty pissed at the guitar player. We found out later that the hosts are the morons playing and singing loudly were hosts. Not very professional to keep your guests from sleeping. In the morning we invited Lisa to come get some coffee with us. Lisa is a Cal Poly Pomona grad from June so we had to give her crap the whole time, but she is pretty funny and actually agreed with most of our jokes. We went to this cafe a few blocks from the hostel, and ended up eating breakfast. It was okay and the service was good. We went back to the hostel and tried to plan out our day. We really didn't know what to do, but I came up with a pretty loose loop to do around the city. In Valparaiso they have what are called "ascensors", which are like gondola lifts that take you up maybe 100-150 feet the hill because some parts are really steep and taking roads would be long. We road one and got a good view of the city, then walked around to the port, walked to a museum that ended up being closed, picked up our laundry, and got back to the hostel around 6. We had lunch that day that was awesome, and I think it's a Chilean thing. It was fried steak with two eggs on top and grilled onions, with a huge side of french fries and we split a liter of the local beer. It was awesome.

Later on that night, Luke and I went out again and bumped into this guy Olivian, a French-speaking Belgian who is in the same room. We ate dinner at this Mexican restaurant that is a block from the hostel, and that was pretty interesting. The dishes were all Mexican dishes, but the meat was cooked like locals would and the ingredients were all local as well, but the food was still tasty. We chatted with the Belgian, then bought some more beer at the liquor store and brought it back. Back at the hostel we had earlier met Ben, a bloke from Manchester who's travelling with the Belgian, Maria and Nicki, two girls who are graduates from university in the UK, Gorgie, this girl from Australia, and Lisa. They were all sitting in the room and so I got some cards and did the usual icebreaker: Kings Cup. It ended up being a pretty fun night, we just played a game of Kings which they seemed to enjoy, and chatted afterwards til about 3:30. I'm pretty sure Gorgie thinks Luke and I are idiots or something, and was making jokes to Maria about how the way we talk is like American high school movies or something in a sort of condescending way, which I ignored but thought was a pretty stupid thing to say. And later we made a new friend, "David", who was this shitfaced local whose brother works in the hostel and apparently he does to. This guy was smashed, and had the most standard drunk look on his face while he tried to talk to everyone. Understanding Spanish is hard enough for me, let alone when someone is hammered, but it got pretty annoying. Again, pretty unprofessional for an employee to be smashed and annoying the guests. All in all though, it was a good night and nice to meet more people.

We got up today around 9:30 or so and had a great breakfast at the hostel. Our plan was to meet Jamie and her mom in Viña del Mar, the city north of us, and I wanted to early in order to watch the inauguration. That didn't quite work out, but we met up with them later at their hotel. Our plan was to go to the beach and hang out. Ben joined us, which was fun, but the trip didnt go quite as planned. We took the train into Viña del Mar, but the hotel was actually quite north. We probably walked about 3 miles along coastline to get there, and since I had the right address but marked in wrong on our map, we overshot the hotel and lost about an hour of just wandering. We really had no idea how the buses worked either and didn't want to end up somewhere completely different. Regardless, we got there and chatted with them for a few hours by the pool. Jamie decided to spend one night in Santiago before heading back to Buenos Aires, so that will be nice having a third member of our entourage when we roll into the hostel.

Right now, our plan is to grab some food then go back to the hostel and shmooze with the people staying there. About half of our room left today, but this way we get some new faces.

A few random things Luke and I want to talk about regarding Chile so far:
1. Mullets. Mullets are extreme here. In Argentina, they were around and seemed to be pretty hip, and we got a kick out of that. Here, people go wild withthem. Some have hair two feet long in the back, some have them in dreads, some have them dyed wild colors. It's pretty rad. If I had my hair longer, I definitely would cut myself a mullet. I think the local girls wouldn't let me leave if I did that.
2. The toilets here kinda suck. They don't flush well, but worst of all you are not supposed to flush toilet paper down the toilet. Instead, you put it in a wastebasket next to the toilet. We were really confused, because if water treatment can handle my dumps I'm pretty sure it can handle some paper, but apparently the water just goes into the ocean. It makes just being in the bathroom unpleasant to smell.
3. Dogs. There are dogs everywhere in this city. Dogs just wandering around and living in the streets. All the dogs have humorous looks in their faces, kinda smug but also quietly content.
4. Unlike Argentina, there are tons of fat people here. I really don't think there is a difference in body shapes here versus California. I am disappointed, because the US gets so much crap for being fat, but I see plenty of fatties here.

That's it. Tomorrow we are in Santiago. Bye.