catching up

FOREIGN PASSPORTS 
[failure, attempt one]

Our last adventure ended with us in Santiago, waiting to visit the swedish consulate so Zoe could get a new swedish passport before going to Bolivia (so as to avoid paying the $135 dollar reciprocal entrance fee that they charge americans).  This process has been over a year in the making, with previous attempts made both at the swedish consulate in Seattle, and actually in Sweden itself.  So after many headaches and a lot of wasted effort, everything seemed to be lining up for success in Santiago. 

We found our way to the Swedish embassy in Santiago (one of only three in all of South America) and took a number, waiting in the incredibly organized office, admiring the lovely swedish-designed furniture and curtains.  After some time, Zoe was able to talk to a real swedish person, in swedish, only to discover that before she gets a new swedish passport, she needed to do some more swedish stuff - make an appointment.

Apparently, the person who actually operates the magic passport machine, which zoe has searched for in several continents now, only likes to work once a week.  So we were told (quite dramatically) that we wont be able to have an appointment with this magic machine opperator "at least until April."  Mind you, it was like March 26th or something...

Slightly downtrodden, we left the embassy, met up with Cara and Xav (who we were with from the farm) and proceeded to explore the rest of Santiago.  Santiago is one of those cities, kind of like Lima, that everyone we met said was just like any other city and not really worth the visit - crowded, polluted, and more or less uninteresting, so we weren't particularly excited to be there.  After some time there though, we really started to like the place.  First, it's a little polluted, owing to the fact that it is gigantic and tucked into a valley in the desert, but all of the streets were incredibly clean and well taken care of, there is great architecture, colonial and modern, to walk around and look at, impressive museums, and beautiful parks everywhere.  In general, the place felt super livable and comfortable.  Also, something like 40% of chile lives in Santiago, so it really is the cultural center of the country.  There are parts that are super young, bohemian, and energetic, with lots of packed bars taking up almost all of the sidewalks.  The barrio of Bella Vista, which is basically an outdoor grafiti museum, with some of the most impressive pieces of street art blanketing virtually every buiding in the neighborhood.

We also happened to meet up with some other friends from the farm (rafael, from brazil and ruben, from spain) for some drinks before everyone went their separate ways - had a great time cruising with them and reminising about the good ol days (like a week ago) of apple pickin'.

Since we had a week to kill before Zoe's appointment with the Passport machine and Cara and Xav's flight from Santiago to Auckland, New Zealand, we decided to make our way to the coast to spend some time in Valparaiso.


VALPARAISO 
[forty-two hills]

Wow, having not really known anything about the city, we didn't really know what to expect short of what we have seen in photos.  This place is just simply unbelievable and the photos do it absolutely no justice.  It's like a magical, run-down, frenetic fairy-land built on top of 42 hills overlooking the Pacific Ocean.  As the earlier capitol of Chile, and South America's largest port before the construction of the Panama Canal, it grew with incredible grandeur, despite being sacked by priates some 8 times.  In the last 100 years or so, with the capitol moving to Santiago, and the loss of its importance as a crucial stopping point for shipping, the city continued to grow slowly, but lost much of its opulance and developed a fine coat of grit and grime.  Now, it still sits perched on its hills, with 100-year old ascensors (feniculars) still carrying its inhabitants up and down from brightly colored tin houses on winding little streets, to the super busy, dizzying center. 

While there, we stayed in what has been quite possibly our finest accomodations to date, a hospedaje called La Biciclette, run but a super gregarious and helpfull frenchman name Gilles.  Both we and Cara & Xav had beautifully decorated, spacious rooms to ourselves and there was a barbeque, and a super nice outdoor patio that we could use whenever we wanted to.  Also, since Xav also enjoys to just sit around and drawing, we had lots of time to sketch the fully impressive scenery, while the ladies got to ditch the boys and go shopping leisurely, which worked out for everyone.

One night, while at a bar, someone we met dropped the hint that Valpariso is also home to the widely acclaimed "best chorrillana in all of chile".  For those of you who have never seen a chorrillan: http://www.google.com/search?hl=es&biw=1003&bih=567&site=search&tbm=isch&sa=1&q=chorrillana&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=  It is a bed of french fries, covered by layers of sautéd green onions, beef, chicken, etc. etc. all topped with fried eggs.  Pretty impressive engineering.  We were told that you can find the particularly famous one in a restauarant called J-Cruz, which is hidded, by all accounts, somewhere in valpariso.  After an incredibly amount of asking everyone we could about where this mysterious J-cruz is, we were able to track it down.  (I say we, but I unfortunately needed to sit out for this due to some slight stomach issues induced by maybe one too many piscolas the night before).  Nonetheless, Zoe, Cara, and Xav got to enjoy this miracle which is a true work of culinary genius in the junk food category, in an quite classic locale.

All said, a big reccommendation goes out to all even considering going anywhere, anytime - check out valparaiso.


HORCÓN¨
[OG hippie/fisherman hangout]
At the end of our magical time in Valparaiso, we said our farewells to Xav and Cara, wished them luck on the next six months of their travels through New Zealand, Austrailia, and Asia, and caught a bus headed north up the coast.  We didn't have a set destination really, but our guide book said a little town called horcón, about two hours away from valparaiso, was chile's original hippie hangout.  This seemed like as good of a reason as any to stop and pass a couple of days while we were waiting for the passport appointment back in Santiago.  When we arrived, after the longest two hour bus ride of our lives, we disembarked in a town that felt very similar (climatically and geographically) to the little depressed pacific coast beach towns we know back home.  Despite a sense of familiarity, this was a really unique place, with colorful little ramshackle houses crowded up along a peaceful bay full of small wooden fishing boats.  Our book was definitely correct in saying that this place was chill, but maybe they were targeting a different demographic...  Sure, the scene was totally tranquil and laid-back, with people and mangey dogs just hanging out on the shoreline talking all day, but hippy hangout?  That's a stretch.  Where we're from, I think we would call these people fishermen.  Not a hippie in sight.  Although we didn't make it the kilometer or so out of town to chile's only nude beach (SUPER cold), you would think at least these chilly exibitionists would've needed to walk through town for an empanada or something, considering the incredible crab-to-bread ratio of those suckers (seriously like a softball).

Horcón was beautiful, quiet, and indeed relaxed but we had business to attend to back in Santiago so we packed up our cable-equipped hostel room and grabbed some crab empanadas for the road.

SANTIAGO 
[promises, yet fulfilled]

Round two, sweden embassy versus z. viklund.  In perfect scandinavian form, we (zoe) arrived at the embassy early, took our (zoe's) number, waited briefly, and (zoe) stepped into the passport machine while I (again) adrmired the fine swedish furnishings.  The passport machine is a thing of the future. It looks a little like the offspring of one of those x-ray machines at the dentist that you step into to have some whizzing camera spin around your head and a photobooth.  It is basically a super efficient way to sum up a person's stats;  it measures your height, scans your eyes, takes your fingerprints, stores your signature, takes your photo, and probably does your tarrot.  The whole thing took like five minutes, and everyone said some stuff I didn't understand in a language whose only word i know is grandpa (far far).  After all was done, zoe translated for me and said the passport would be ready to pick up in 2 to 3 weeks.  This was great news.  We had a wwoofing gig lined up in southern chile in a few days and figured we would  beeline it down there and explore a bit before we went back to working.

So, off we went on nightbus #10 (for those of you who've been counting), headed towards the northern regions of Patagonia on an island called Chiloé.


We have much more to say, as this only covers up to about a month ago, but for everyone's sake, we wont drone on too long.  Also we are here in Salta and we hear theres some kind of bar with 40 artisinal beers (!!!) that we need to check out before heading to bed to get some sleep before our 7am bus to Bolivia tomorrow.


Keep an eye out, we'll be writing more in a little while!  Upcoming chapters include but are not limited to:


CHILOE: mystical misty island of the deep south

PUERTO VARAS: helping restore a UNESCO world heritage house and some furniture and learning to cook on a wood stove, oh and a reeeaaally cute baby

PASSPORT ROUND THREE: frustration and failure. swedes.

MENDOZA, TUCUMAN, TAFI, SALTA: zipping through the wild and wooly north! rad artisinal cheeses, bike misadventures.

until next time, and i really hope next time is sometime this week, peep our pictures! heres that link again for those of you that forgot:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/zoe_vik_lund/

LOVE,
scott (+zoe)

too loooooong!

i know i know i know it has been an AGE since we last posted on here! scott said he would post a few days ago but first he had to make an outline (scott, so organized that one) so, it´s like halfway there! in the meantime sate yourself by looking at a TON of new pics, like really, try not to get bored halfway through because there are like, 150! we are really almost up to date now.

just briefly, we left chile and are now in salta, northern argentina. hopefully we will be in bolivia and cruising the salar de uyuni by this weekend! but you know, NOTHING goes according to plan. just know, BOLIVIA!


here are the promised pics, check them out!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/zoe_vik_lund/