Livin´the Dream

Buenos días desde Castro, Island of Chiloe, Chile! It´s a lazy Wednesday, and I have much to report, so grab a cup of tea, coffee, hot chocolate, maté, pisco sour, fernet and coke - whatever your drink of choice may be for the moment - and ENJOY!

Chicago Joe asked me via gchat the other day, "What are you up to?" Hmmm...What AM I up to? I am up to a lot of things, no doubt. But the sum of all the parts that make up what I do each and every day has to be "Living the Dream." Seriously. I feel like I am living someone else´s dream. Someone is sleeping and dreaming up all these things I do each day and when they wake up from what no doubt has been a very very long slumber, MY dream life will come to a screeching halt. But in the meantime, I shall take advantage of the cards I have been dealt, and I assure you that I am beyond grateful for each and every dreamy day that comes my way. And that being said - just as we all have good dreams and bad dreams, my dream life here has its on-top-of-the-world dream days and its this-too-shall-pass (hopefully-sooner-than-later) dream days.

The past week has been a series of ups and downs for me. After los americanos and Kiwi Dan left, I found myself having a hard time adjusting to life without an English-speaking travel partner. How "spoiled" I was for a week there! But I PREFER only speaking Spanish - I just found it oddly disorienting to return to speaking only in a language where I am not always able to express myself. It was as if I overindulged in English for a week, spilling out every thought and feeling I had not been able to adequately express in the several months prior and then, all of the sudden, I had to return to a language in which I am not fully able to express everything I feel and think. Pero bueno, this-too-hath-passed and Im back to being in love with my second lengua!

Plus, I had the amazingly good fortune of being invited to stay with my friend Rosario who rents a delightfully tiny casita in Bariloche. I spent 5 nights sleeping in her attic feeling like a little kid having a slumber party in a tree house. I spent several days wandering around Bariloche, writing for hours in my journal, hanging out in the evenings with Rosario and her friends, and the big accomplishment for the week was one amazingly long run (13 kms!) along Lago Gutierrez.

This past weekend, Rosario invited me to join her and a group of friends on a 25km bike ride along the Río Manso some 70 kms south of Bariloche. The river is in a very rural area at the base of the Andean Cordillera near the Chilean border in an area that is VERY green and where the cows and sheep definitely outnumber the people by at least 10:1. I was really growing to love the city, but still feel like it is too big and touristy for me to ever live there, so I was happy to return to the middle of nowhere and spend a gorgeous sunny day in the naturaleza. Our ride began around noon and the next 5 hours were spent pedaling along the river passing through various people´s farms, saying hello to the many cows and horses along the path, eating lunch in a shady green patch al lado del río, huffing and puffing it up one long long climb near the end of the ride, and finishing at a sunny beach where we all proceeded to collapse from exhaustion. It was a gorgeous day and I was so happy for the opportunity to see this place and explore it via bicycle!

And the cherry on top had to be the farm house we got to stay in for the night. Rosario just so happens to be friends with one of the few people who live in this area. Her friend rents a house on the river where we were biking that brings to mind Little House on the Prairie. After a long day of biking, it was nice to bump 5 kms down the road to this little house, cook a yummy dinner, and pass out in a warm bed. And after an active Saturday, Rosario and I spent all day Sunday sitting outside in the sun on a beach by the river, reading, swimming, eating, and staring in amazement at the mountains all around us - our only visitors being the horses munching away on the grass. All the while I was thinking to myself, "How in the world have I managed to find myself here? What have I done to deserve such a beautiful place?" I was in love with the moment, the setting, the company! So thank you again and again, Rosario!

And then Monday, I once again found myself confused about what to do next. Should I stay another day in Bariloche or head on to Chiloé, a large island on the Pacific coast in the middle of Chile?? I had been planning to go there next, but other opportunites kept coming up, so my trip kept being put off. But now, on Monday morning, I had little holding me in Bariloche - Rosario left for a business trip, German was busy with his own family, and I had done many of the hikes, bike rides, and such around town. But still, I was hesitant to leave, and I could not figure out why. It was a beautiful day that I felt like I could take advantage of by going for a run, reading on the beach, or hiking to a nerby viewpoint. But I think I was mostly nervous to head out, once again, into the great unknown all alone. And, oddly enough, I was DREADING the bus ride. I know, I know, so very unlike me after speaking so highly of my bus adventures here. But the whole idea of having to sit on the bus - not to mention do yet ANOTHER border crossing - and deal with big scary bus terminals was just too overwhelming. In the three hours prior to my journey I must have flip-flopped 10 times!

But, alas, at 11:30 am, I was aboard a bus headed to Puerto Montt, Chile where I would then board a bus to cross onto the island of Chiloe. And I STILL was not sure I was making the right decision. But the thing is (and here I am going to get a bit philosophical on you, forgive me!), there is no such thing as a right or wrong decision here. It all simply has to do with my own perception of the decisions I make. I choose each and every thing I do here. That is the beauty of my lot in life for the moment, so I only have to believe I have made the right decision and choose not to think about woulda, coulda, shoulda, and until now, I have had NO regrets. And not only that, everything has worked out so beautifully. So as I sat on the bus feeling torn about leaving on a gorgeous day that should have perhaps been spent in the great outdoors as opposed to inside a hot stuffy bus, I told myself - "Chiloe is calling. Off I go." And tried my best to calm my fears for the bus terminal in Puerto Montt. Big city bus terminals - ok, big cities in general - give me the heebie jeebies. My plan was to try to get all the way to the city of Castro in the middle of the island in order to wake up on Tuesday morning and catch a bus to a nearby national park to hike along the beach. The island is known for nearly incessant rainstorms, but Tuesday was supposed to be one of the only nice days. So my plan had two advantages. Number 1 - I would spend as little time as possible in Puerto Montt - big, ugly and overwhelming; and Number 2 - I would get to the park in time to take advantage of good weather.

And as luck would have it, I got to Puerto Montt just in time to catch the next bus heading to Ancud, the most northern city on the island of Chiloe. After only 30 mins in Puerto Montt, I was happy to be getting the hell out of a big, bustling city and breathed the biggest sigh of relief when the bus pulled off the ferry onto the green, misty, magical island of Chiloe. The island actually reminds me of rural Mississippi with its green, rolling hills, large pastures with cows grazing in the distance, and very very few people - why is it that I get so overwhelmed by such large populations of people when Im traveling?! I really do like people, I PROMISE!! And once in Ancud, I hung out in the much smaller, much quieter bus terminal for 45 minutes before catching the next bus to Castro where I arrived around 10:30, and felt my way through the dark deserted streets of the city for the nearest hostel and proceeded to collapse from the exhaustion that accompanies doing a whole lot of nothing for an entire day!

And yesterday, Wednesday, I woke up to a gorgeous day in Chiloe! I had yet to really even see any of this island, and I was already in love with it. Now that I was actually here and had gotten the whole traveling section over with, I was feeling proud of myself for being solo again, for exploring a new area all on my own, and was excited to get to know a place that is so unique and full of lore. Chiloe is know for its fish and seafood markets, the mythical creatures that inhabit various cities on the island, its antique churches that seem to have been built anywhere where the population was at least 10 - sheeps, cows, and horses included in the census, and its houses built on stilts to withstand the drastic change of the tides - in the morning the boats on the "dock" look like they have been washed ashore, but by 3 PM, they are floating in water that would go well above my head!

So I pranced out into the streets to buy food and water for my day of hiking, and by 9 am was aboard a bus headed for the Parque Nacional Chiloe for a hike along the coast of the Pacific Ocean. And along the way, I met Ane, a delightful chica from País Vasco (ok, for those of you like me who are geographically challenged I will be so kind to inform you that this is an autonomous community in northern Spain). The two of us walked barefoot along the beach for awhile before finding the trail that led us through a misty arrayan forest on the shores of the Pacific Ocean. We followed the trail watching in awe as 4 or 5 horses crossed our path trotting out onto the beach to drink water (salt water?!?) and feed on the kelp that has washed up onto the shore. The mist lying over everything and the lack of all but a handful of people - mostly locals - made the whole scene feel so dreamy and out of this world. No pictures will do it justice. I wish I could have bottled up the feeling to share with you on here! And just before we headed back to catch the last bus to Castro, the whole trip was made that much more mystical when I turned to see 3 cows grazing on the same kelp - munch munch munching away on this misty beach - what a STRANGE sight! We hopped on the back of a pickup truck with some locals for a roller coaster of a ride through the sand for the last part of our trip back to the bus. Back in Castro, we celebrated the end of a great day with some super tasty - and cheap! - salmon overlooking the water and staring in complete awe and wonder at the full moon rising over the city. And once again, I found myself thinking, "Damn, I truly am living the dream." And I am so very very happy and grateful for this opportunity. Until tomorrow´s adventure...VIVA!