Yo Quiero Comer........

Whew! It´s been a little too long and I´ve got a little too much to report. Hoping to avoid some finger cramping on this post, I will attempt some mild hand yoga and hopefully all will be fine.

Let´s see, well, we left Punta Arenas and arrived late last Tuesday in Santiago. Brandon and Annie had arrived earlier in the day and took a bus to Valparaiso. We meet our new good friend Jocelyn and her husband Ari. These two extremely nice people picked us up from the airport at 10 even though they had to wake up early for work. They live in the Santiago hills and have a great house near a creek and lots of countryside to view, it does not feel like you are in a big city at all. Ari had to take their two year old son Saul (hopefully I´m spelling that right) to school in the morning, and would be back at their house around 11 to leave for work downtown and could give us a ride. Compared to our last time in Santiago, we took a very extended walk around the neighborhoods and got alot accomplished, completing alot of errands. I stupidly left our copy of the Peru guidebook on our plane ride down south and it needed to be replaced. Luckily we found a copy (paid double what we would in the states but it´s worth it), and I had a lovely visit to the Mercado Central. I say ¨I¨ because it is mainly a fish market, and Melanie was plugging her nose from the strong stench and visual feast of fishies. There were dozens of restaurants in between vendors, all had aggressive salesmen at the front of each establishment, doing all they could to get your business. I found a nice non-touristy place and ordered a small bottle of chilled wine for us. Our waiter was talking fast, looking to get our order in so he could get back to attacking the aisles for more potential customers. He recommended something, I said yes and I´m still not sure exactly what it was. I can say that it was one of the best pieces of fish I´ve ever had (I should also mention early in this post that there are more ¨best of´s¨ coming in this long winded post, and my taste buds have been hula-hooping in ecstasy). It may have been a tuna steak but seemed a little different. The texture was perfect, and it was served with a little bit of browned butter and salt. I could have kissed my waiter but his modern jheri-curl was dripping and I didn´t want to ruin the flavor that was still in my mouth. After we found a vegetarian restaurant for Melanie, food was decent, good enough to return in a pinch. The restaurant had been around for roughly 80 years, which is the oldest vegetarian restaurant we´ve ever encountered.

We meet up with Ari who had our bags in his car at work and he dropped us at the metro station. We caught a late bus to Valpo and called ahead to have the hostel let B&A know that we would bed a little late but still wanted to do dinner with them. Jocelyn and Ari happened to have an extra cell phone and lent it to us for our Chilean portion of the trip, score! Definitely has been very handy so far.

We arrived in Valparaiso and took a taxi up some very windy roads on the way to our hostel. The town is very reminiscent of a coastal Italian town, only with more variety in culture and an open art scene that is both beautiful and has a hair of squalor. The combination makes the city unique and worth visiting. After several near death experiences in the taxi, and him cursing out some would-be horrible drivers, we made it safely to our temporary place of rest. We were greeted by their adorable staff, they sat us in their living room and chatted with us for thirty minutes about the town and some other juicy stuff. Brandon and Annie arrived, and even though it had been less than 24 hours since we saw them, it was a welcome reunion. We were only going to have a few more nights together and we wanted to make the best of it while we could. There were several restaurants we wanted to try but many were closed (not really sure why either). We hit the streets, gallivanting downhill and taking in all the art painted on the buildings. After lots of ¨ooohhing¨and ¨aaahhhhing¨ we found an old timey restaurant at the bottom of the hill, the name was good enough convince me.

We entered Cinzano (yup, just like the drink, and the logo was exactly the same, and no they are not owned by them) and it was like entering a Chilean time machine. Lot´s of antique furniture, old black and white photos plastered the walls in between small animal heads and other figurines, a small cloud of smoke traipsed along the ceiling, and the music coming from the back of the cavernous room was tickling my ears. There was a small trio hammering out old Chileano folk tunes. We couldn´t see the piano or guitar player, but the women in her mid-fifties was belching out some latin goodness as we planted ourselves at a table in the rear. Our waiter was very kind, and luckily the advanced spanish student Annie helped us navigate our food order over the loud music. We arrived at a good time, the place filled up soon after we arrived. The food was decent, nothing to write home about (I suppose that is a bad metaphor since I am technically writing home about it right now), but I can say for the record that this is the first time I had my new favorite fish. It´s called Congrio aka conger and is pretty much like an eel. For visual enhancement, look here.

http://pescabenaluense.es/Images/Congrio/congrio3.jpg

It tastes pretty similar to cod, but is generally thicker and fatter. Pablo Neruda´s favorite dish is a Conger soup, I haven´t tried it yet but I hope to do so before we leave the country. I order it every time it´s on the menu and people here love it deep fried. We started a conversation with the table next to ours, two guys and a woman eating a pile of char-broiled sausages and steaks that was served over a small bed of flaming coals to keep it warm. They spoke some english and we some spanish, after several pisco sours and two bottles of wine you´d have thought we were best friends. They taught me a very important phrase, forgive me if my spelling is totally incorrect as I am an ignorant gringo, ¨bakativa de la casa¨, which effectivly means the ¨house¨ will give you a free digestive after a large meal. After practicing several times with our admiring teachers, I conjured up the courage to ask the waiter and it worked!

We slept in till at least noon and had a great breakfast of fresh fruit and home-made bread at our hostel. They even had real coffee rather than the norm which is Nescafe. Several games of cribbage and three large beers later (Brandon and I finally got some good cribbage time in), we hit the streets for a daylight walk around the city. We walked to the opèn air museum, which is pretty much like a barrio within a barrio with exceptional art and cobblestone streets. We walked all the way to the bottom of the hill and then hired a boat to drive us around the bay. The view was stellar from the water, and we got a close up and personal look at the massive cargo ships and navy boats parked off the coast some ways.

We walked up the steep roads to our hostel, stopping by a small mercado for some dinner groceries and a cheese empanada to hold us over. We had a simple risotto with lots of zucchini and a heaping pile of basil. Oh, I forgot to mention that we stopped by a an outdoor vegetable market earlier in the day, mostly uneventful except the really tan and hairy guy working the corner while blaring Bob Dylan said Brandon and I looked like the beach boys.

We went to bed early so we could wake up and rent a car. We headed north along the coast, our plan was to hit up one of the small sleepy beach towns which promised less people and cheap accommodations for a beach cabana. We landed in Maitencillo (I´m pretty sure I got this name wrong, please don´t quote me), and it had everything we were looking for. We found a nice little two bedroom place with a kitchen and a patio with view, and it was less than a 5 minute walk to the beach. The waves were roaring and perfect, the sand was soft in our toes, and guacamole never tasted so good while being kissed by the sunshine. The fierce cribbage action continued, I ended up beating Brandon 6-2 with alternating dealers (for those who care). We had leftover risotto with avocado and hard boiled eggs for lunch, sounds gross but believe me it was awesome at the time. I´m not sure if I mentioned our Tapitio situation, but Brandon and Annie had an extra water bottle full of Tapitio for us and we´ve been ravaging through it. You can see the bottle in some of the photos, bare in mind that the bottle was full just a few days before, I will continue to post updates on the situation as it is dire. We´re hoping that we won´t need it as much in Peru as they tend to eat spicier food in general.

We drank pisco and watched the sunset, our balcony providing excellent views. We cooked up a feast, shrimp cocktail with avocado and home-made sauce from Annie (we went through 4 avocados in our one day at the beach), Roasted taters with corn (notice the gigantic corn I´m playing with in the photo) in a peanut chili sauce, and refried beans made of fresh purplish beans we got from the Bob Dylan produce dude, and the first tortillas we´ve had in weeks. We played cards late into the night, it was our last night together (potentially, B&A might rejoin us in Peru if they are smart) and it was very special.

It was hard to leave the beach house the following day, we could have easily spent another week there doing nothing but cooking food and having some serious beach time. We drove back south around 1pm, we were meeting up with Ari and Joce in Vina Del Mar where we would be getting dropped off to stay with them for several nights. Brandon and Annie joined the group for lunch before heading back to Santiago. We were joined also by Ari´s parents and Saulito, and I got my second helping of conger served fried with slices of lemon. Ari let me try his plate of Macha, which is mussels that had their shells removed and then cooked in white wine, cream, and cheese. We said our goodbyes to B&A, the headed to Ari´s parents beachside apartment on the 17th floor. The apartment was immaculate, and had more great views of the beach and Valparaiso in the distance. Ari, Saul and I left the girls at the pool to try and attend a nearby soccer time, which had a big team from Santiago and the local team in Valparaiso. It was going to be Saul´s first soccer game ever (mine too for that matter) and he is mad about the sport. The game ended up being sold out which was a bummer, we could hear the crowd a mile away from the stadium of 10,000 going crazy after the first goal.

Later in the evening just the two couples went out to dinner in Valparaiso. Caruso´s ended up being one of the best meals I´ve ever had, and the cuisine was Peruvian influenced. We started off with some mixed seafood empanadas along with some type of raw fish with maybe a spicy saffron something or other sauce on it, damn good. The mouth watering entree was a type of strudel, a puff pastry wrapped around a giant serving up crab meat, nestled on top of a bed of sauteed spinach and lightly covered with hollandaise. The picture above does not do it justice.

Ari had to leave with his parents the following day, leaving Joce, Saul, Melanie, and I all by ourselves. We spent most of the day walking around the beach front, I had a had a fresh churro stuffed with dulce de leche. We talked until the sunset and went to bed early. The following day on the way back to Santiago we stopped and did a wine tour at a beautiful winery that was built over looking the casablanca valley. They were in the middle of harvest, and the smell was strong all around. The wine was decent, we grabbed a bottle to bring with us on our next leg of the trip. It really is too bad we can´t bring home a few cases with us, some extraordinary wines down here.

We drove back to Santiago and chatted, Melanie and I barely able to keep our eyes open after the wine tasting and the sleepy afternoon. Back at their house we got a chance to regroup, repack, and rethink our remaining days here in Chile. Ari and Joce highly recommended the City of Pucon as a great place to visit. We had a great meal with them at their house, it was great to have something home-cooked after eating out so many meals. We had some simple fish, veggies, mashed potatoes, and some great habanero hot sauce out of Ari´s stash. We tried some delicious little fruits that were green, very seedy, tasted very melon like, and no I can´t remember the name. Then we had some great ice cream, chocolate with fudge and another kind with a type of fruit that was delicious and has a name that I can´t remember either.

We caught a flight down to Temuco, then took a few hour bus ride out to Pucon. Had a brief layover in another town, we got off the bus and thought we were in the right spot, nope. Pucon is a great little town, looks alot like tahoe, very cabin like and lots of little shops. It sits right next to a large lake, and there is a gigantic active volcano that casts a shadow over the town, the perpetual smolder is omnipresent and creepy. But since we are close to a volcano, there are over 20 different hot springs around here, hopefully we will get a chance before we leave, our time seems to be disappearing rather quickly and we still have alot of Peru planning to do. Tomorrow we leave for a two night stay in Huerquehue national park. Lots of hiking to be done, only right now we are recovering from a 10 mile bike ride earlier this afternoon. It was epic in both beauty and butt pain. We got to a very private part of the lake that was great for a relaxing dip along the black sand beach, little chickens from a nearby ranch danced around us while we had a snack. The road was unforgivable bumpy, the rental moutain bikes were awesome and definitely helped us get there and back in one piece, only one of our pieces feels like it needs to be soaked in thermal water for several hours. We´ll have to settle for beer and nachos for the time being.

Whew! Didn´t think I was going to make it through that one. I´ve been having to split these suckers up in two days as it is quite the time sucker. Thankfully our hostel has beer on tap and happened to play some Parliment while I´m writing this.

Keep your fingers crossed for us dear readers, tonight we have to buy groceries, buy two plane tickets (on a peruvian website that has beeen giving us challenges), pack our bags, and feed ourselves within the next 70 minutes so the stores don´t close and we can get enough sleep to catch our early morning bus to the park. Gotta ask ourselves in this situation, what would George Clinton do?

-T&M

p.s. check out the Yerba Mate section at the grocery store, intense!