| Jan 7, 2006 - Santiago, Chile
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 | | show all 30 | | With cousin Annie and fam, out to dinner | | The family and I, outside Plaza Brazil | | Another picture, just to be safe | | |
| Back in Santiago Tanner, Dan, and I checked into the same hostel, and then the 4 of us went out to dinner. We wanted to go back to Las Vacas Gordas (remember, from a few entires back?), but it was closed for the holiday. So we "setteld" for a Chorillana dinner. It consists of a mound of french fries, covered by fried eggs, and then doused with salted sauteed onions and pork. You order it by the number of how many are eating it. A local Chilean dish I dubbed "heart attack on a plate", it was delicious. From there I escorted Harris to the airport, we said our sad farewell, and I returned to the hostel for a quiet and early night.
The next day Tanner and Dan left to go back to Mendoza, where they were going to meet up with Brian, who had finally finished getting all his stuff sorted in Buenos Aires, and Carmin, another friend who I had originally met in Salta but had been travelling with them for a while. The plan from there was just to stay in touch and meet up in a few days to start the whole Patagonia stretch together. And this was fine with me. After the entire Harris experience I figured I could use a few chill days to relax, explore a city on my own, and spend some time updating this website and uploading photos to clear space on my camera that I would certainly need in the next month. (This is when I wrote the "update on me" entry). That night however, I met up with some cousins of mine. More specifically, my mom's cousin Annie and her family. They had just finished their own South American vacation and had a flight that night, but we arranged to have dinner together. One meal from Las Vacas Gordas later I said goodbye to them and went back to the hostel for another calm night.
The next few days all kinda blended into one, slow, long, relaxed, and peaceful stroll around Santiago with still a lot of time on the internet as well. I was waiting to get word from the guys in Mendoza about when and where we should meet up to start Patagonia, bu they were being sorta slow, lazy, unmotivated, distracted, and apathetic. But hey, I was in Mendoza too and that happens, so I completely understood. I was also in touch with Matt and Andrew, the two guys who I did the Santa Cruz trek in Peru with. Well they were in Santiago as well so we ended up having a little reunion and hanging out a bunch. We went out together one night, and on another day took the Santiago cable car up to the top of a mountain for some lookouts. That afternoon we realized it had been a long while since any of us had seen a movie in the theaters, so we went and saw King Kong. Liked it so much, that we went back for Narnia the next day.
And this slow movement through our days took us all the way to Saturday January 7th, The Love Parade. It is this massive, bigger and crazier than you can believe, street parade and party and celebration of electronic music. It is called the Love Parade, which happens at locations around the world, and this is Chile's second annual one. You can look it up online for some crazy photos and video clips I'm sure. Not sure how to describe it, just absolute chaos. The main road/freeway through Santiago was closed for a bunch of blocks from noon to 11pm, and they had these moving sound stages with dancers on the back of flatbed trucks. About 7 of them, just doing very slow circles through the crowd down one side of the main street and back up the other, for hours. Every now and then were these huge fire hoses spraying down the crowd to keep them cool. And once again, I ran into Felipe, the Swiss guy I originally met on the mountaintop in Peru, and then later in Lima, Huacachina, and Cusco. Its becoming a joke by now, and in the niddle of thousands of people at the Love Parade!? Turns out I had his email wrong, but as he said, it doesn't matter because we're bound to run into each other again. Anyway, at about 7 or 8 it all stops and goes to the main stage where there are these famous DJ's from around the world playing to the entire crowd. At 11pm the street shuts down and the after-party starts in this enormous old train station. Felipe was right, we saw each other again there too. Its like throwing a party in Grand Central Terminal or something, just massive. And that goes till 6am. It was wild, and a whole lotta fun.
The next day, after realizing that it would still be a while until I saw the boys from Mendoza, I decided to go check out another town. So I said goodbye to Matt aand Andrew, with plans to still meet up again somewhere down the road, and got on another night bus for Valdivia. |
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