This weekend, we went to Pucon. its in the south of chile, not half as close to Antarctica as we were last time. Conveniently, I forgot my camera. so we're going to borrow photos from our good friend Google, because, well, i use it to translate my homework, might as well use it take pictures for me too. I ACKNOWLEDGE THAT NONE OF THESE PICTURES ARE MINE AND I HAVE NO RIGHTS TO THEM. (if i get sued for making a blog, i will have lost more hope in life than i have already by visiting camp 5. that, however, is another story).
This looks nothing like where we went. in fact, i wouldn't even know that where we went and this picture were of the same place had google not given it as the first search result when i typed in "pucon, chile". but alas, if google says so. then fuck it. Look at this great picture! this is pucon.
Also note that there is a volcano. You can climb that. I didn't. because, frankly, i'm f-ing tired of climbing mountains. if you want to see me climb mountains, you can look at the previous post or of the blog pictures of my friends. (really, im just tired of the team x-treme pose).
since i don't have any pictures of me in pucon, here's a picture of someone else:
Now, to get to pucon, you must take a 10 hour bus ride. This is highly inconvenient, seeing as my backpack had been stolen the very day that we were going to pucon. Of these items, which do you think were important:
1.) wallet
2.) $100
3.) ipod
4.) Chilean ID card
5.) debit card
6.) school notes
7.) did i say ipod yet?
8.) the backpack itself
now youre probably thinking ipod, but as i will disclose in the next few paragraphs of complaining, "all of the above" would have been a thoughtful answer.
have you even taken a 10 hour bus ride? how about a 10 hour bus ride without an ipod? some of you may be thinking, get over it. some people dont even have an ipod. and you would be right in that. I bet the guy who took my backpack, who i endearingly decided to name Pedro, didnt have an ipod. but it seems now that he does. so perhaps that was a poor example. The answer to that question for most of you is either: "why would i take a 10 hour bus ride when i can fly" <-- i'll answer that one later, "no", or "i don't believe in music or anything that closely resembles happiness".
sure. you can fly. theres the airport.
...aaaaand heres the plane you'll be flying
when we got to pucon, we found ourselves staying in a surprisingly nice hostel/bedandbreakfast/disney land castle/hotel thing. it was called el dorado. yay.
this image came up when i searched el dorado pucon
google must've decided it was a ninja who stole my backpack.
On the first day we were there we went on a tour of the area. it was wonderful. google doesnt have any cool pictures, nor do i remember what anything was called. so please refer to the fighting picture above if youre looking for entertainment.
Most of the program trip was paid for, so naturally, i thought it was a good time to have had my wallet stolen. unfortunately, the activities and lunches were going to be "reimbursed". i never really seemed to like that word. i liked the word less when i realized i had no money to give the waiter and he seemed to not like the word at all.
Luckily, due to Charlie's unyielding kindness, i was "covered". we signed up for a cave tour of the volcanic caves, but due to a miscommunication, we arrived 30 minutes late and missed our tour. weird thing was, we were eating lunch across the street. and watching to see if anyone came or left. they didnt. but somehow we missed them. apparently everyone in chile is a ninja. if you happen across a meeting in chile, it would look like this:
so we went to the beach. which was cool. its a big lake with black volcanic sand. Whats cool about black sand, you ask? well even when its cold, the sand is sort of warm. and, when you sit down you cant see how many spiders there are. unfortunately, my skin isnt black. so there was a point when i noticed.
We then had dinner at a fondu place. how romantic. there were like 20 of us. i was hungry.
The next day, we actually didnt miss the trip and we got to go rafting. it was just the dudes of the group so there were four of us and it was a lot of fun. it seemed kind of lame until they told us we had to get out of the raft. we thought we were done. but when the path lead back to the river, and we saw a giant waterfall, we realized it wasnt that we were done, they just thought we couldnt handle the waterfall. then we followed the guide expecting to be able to get back into the boats, but the path ended 15 feet over the river. the boats were down in the river. Jump, he said. uh. okay. ive actually never been that cold before.
thats a total lie. i have absolutely been that cold before. not only was i an extreme morning dipper at Camp wayfarer (shout out to Jim Bob), I also was on top of a snowcovered mountain in shorts as we waited for sunrise. (Jim bob, if you would like to take Morning Dip to a new level, try it in a glacial river. )
Here's a picture of someone else having fun rafting:
that one guy is crazy....
Since we missed our cuevas trip and our advisor had already paid for it, we decided we would go after rafting. the tourism guide guy was like "dude that cave trip sort of sucks. i would, like, totally not do it bro. horse back riding is gnarly tho dude" or as close to that as you can get in spanish.
so we went on a horseback ride. we walked down to see a waterfall. our chilean guide was 80 years old. he was 80. years. old.
and he SMOKED charlie down the trail. hahahaha. MAN. that was impressive.
Since i lost my Chilean ID, i thought it was important that i get a new one when i got back to santiago. Our advisor recommended i block my old one. I blocked it on thursday. I get an email that says the card is temporarily blocked until monday. today is monday. i still dont have a new card. This brings up a few questions:
1.) what could this ID possibly be used for?
2.)if the answer to #1 is, "nothing" why am i going to go through a hell of a bureaucratic process to get a new one?
3.) if my card is "temporarily blocked" should i reblock it? what good is a block if it becomes unblocked? is there a history of chilean thieves returning ID cards in a four day timeline?
as i thought this out, i realized that i didnt bring any of the necessary paper work with me to the registro civil. this brought up further questions:
1.) I already gave them copies of every important document i have except my pokemon card collection. what could i possibly bring them this time?
2.) why is there always a line of 50 million people in the registro? theres only like 23 million people in chile.
3.) has anyone reading this blog gotten tired of me complaining yet?
4.) so they stole my backpack. i feel like walking around with a bunch of copies of my passport and visa and EVERYTHING information is a bad idea. and i dont have very big pockets...
you're wondering, garrett, were the school notes important? please, tell us. I had actually just taken a test in all of those classes, so no they werent important. im sorry to have mislead you with the "all of the above" suggestion. Having followed that advice, you would gotten that question wrong. Which is funny because that's probably what happened on EVERY question on all 3 of those tests. So perhaps the notes were important. now you get the question right. yay. unfortunately, I still failed. so we're not the same anymore. Here's a picture to cheer you up:
