Pomaire

Ever felt an earthquake from inside a thatch-roofed pottery hut with ceramics piled a mile high? We drove this past weekend to a little village outside of Santiago called Pomaire, which is known for its abundance of pottery. We kicked around for the afternoon with Nicole. Since the pottery found here is all considered functional(most of it is fired as plain clay--no glazes), it's the old school terra cotta type pottery that looks very utilitarian. We did find one shop that had beautifully glazed pottery. We were standing in the middle of the shop, where we had been delicately placing the pottery back in its spot so as not to crack anything when a substantial tremor shook the whole hut. I nearly lost it, but Brett just smiled, shrugged his shoulders and let out his famous Brett laugh (the one my brother calls his Grover laugh). The woman who was selling the pottery looked at us with wide dark eyes and told us she was giving us a discount on our purchase. I dont' know if it was her way of creating good karma, but we walked away with some ridicously inexpensive pottery, not to mention wobbly jelly legs.

Gobble, gobble...mooo

Thanksgiving just isn't Thanksgiving without the...Bulgogi? Turkeys with all the traditional trimmings aren't exactly easy to come by in these parts, so for Thanksgiving we headed out with the Yangs for Korean BBQ. We went big and ordered the massive dish you see here in the photo. We walked into the restaurant and told them that we'd have whatever everyone else was having. Brett and I talked a big talk about eating beef, since it would all be a part of the experience, and since Pete and Ginny used to be our vegetarian cohorts. When it came right down to it though, we didn't walk the walk. Brett skimmed the dish for the peppers and onion to put over his spicy rice while I ordered a bowl of tofu soup. It was all delicious and, finally, HOT! Chileans aren't known for having a high spice tolerance. Whenever we go out for Indian or Thai, we have to ask them to make it really spicy in order to get a little bit of a kick. Not at the Korean restaurant. Their normal dishes were making us all break a solid sweat, which may have been compounded by the fact that no matter how much we begged, bothered, and sweet talked, we simply couldn't get our waitress to bring us a glass of water. She would, strangely enough, bring us whatever alcohol we requested. We all ended up quenching our thirst with a Korean liquor that I don't know the name of, but can tell you it tasted a lot like Sake. We were really grateful to be spending Thanksgiving with good friends! Above is a photo of the Bulgogi, and another of the swimming pool, where we spent the sunny afternoon working up our appetites.

Yang it!!

We were so excited to see our good friends, Pete & Ginny and their little guy, Bodhi who were down visiting in October and November.
Pete, Ginny, and Bodhi kicked around town for a few days while Brett and I were working. They did all kinds of fun things (many of which Brett and I have not done yet), like dressing up Bodhi in typical cowboy, or Huaso, attire and getting his photo taken on a giant stuffed toy horse. I have no idea who first came up with the concept of a nearly life-sized stuffed horse for photo ops, but my new mission is to take Brett out for a few cocktails, then convince him that it would be a good idea to get his photo taken on it.

On Halloween we all took off for a long weekend in the Lakes District, which is an incredible place. The entire region is one little farm after another. Each farm has a few sheep, a handful of pigs, some chickens strutting around, and a milking cow(complete with a bell around its neck). It felt like we were driving right through a children's storybook. I attempted, of course, to capture the cute factor by taking a ridiculous amount of photos of the farm friends. I spared you the detailed photos and posted only one.

Pucon is known for being the town that is nestled at the bottom of a still-active volcano. We had grand visions of taking Bodhi on his first volcano ascent with a peek down to the lava below, but we were greeted in Pucon with some gray, drizzly weather. This ended up being a great thing, as we spent the days soaking in several of the nearby hot springs. There is an eerie beauty to the Termas Geometricas (their locker rooms on the river are pictured above). We lazily soaked the day away in their pools. Despite the weather, we managed to get out on a good hike that led us to a nearby waterfall. Pucon is packed with great restaurants, many of which have (gasp!) vegetarian food! We bunked up at a the Hostel Ecole, which was an cozy, homey little spot. The only drawback of the trip was when Bodhi managed to graze his finger on the wood burning stove, giving himself a little blister. He warned us all weekend, "fi-yuh...'ot!"

After a super fun 4 days together, we said goodbye and headed back to school in Santiago, while those guys continued their month long South American journey.

Crunch & Munch

On the drive to Mendoza we stopped in a little town named Uspallata, where we visited a native cultural arts center. The center was simplistic and beautiful all at the same time. We nearly had our eyebrows nibbled off there by the guanacos from this photo. They were orphaned when someone shot their mother, and as a result, they were raised on the grounds of the cultural center. You can see that they just loooooooooooooove visitors! They actually scared the bejeebers out of me because I didn't notice them approaching the car until I felt their breath in my ear. When my brother, sister and I were growing up on a farm we each got to buy a pet goat from the county livestock auction one year. These guanacos reminded me of Lara's goat, who chewed the inside of the car to bits on the drive home, and earned itself the name of Nibbles. In honor of Nibbles, we nicknamed these guys Crunch and Munch.

Crossing The Border

We recently make the 5 hour trek over the mountains to Mendoza, Argentina for a great three day weekend getaway. We drove over with our friend, Nicole, who teaches with us. Mendoza is a gorgeous town--they've lined all of the city streets with poplar trees, so everywhere you look it's just green, green, green. Mendoza produces a ridiculously large amount of Argentina's wine, which means there are wineries every which way you turn over there! We found one great winery with an impressive on-site museum about the history of wine making. We tried to visit the Norton Winery, which unfortunately ended up being closed for the holiday weekend. Our friends from Carbondale, Kristin & Raul, introduced us to Norton Malbec when they returned from living in Argentina. It's a great wine that happens to fall within our price range (dirt cheap). We were looking forward to the free samples there, so we'll just have to hit them up next time we're in town. Nicole, who went with us on the trip, is quite the carnivore. She was eager to visit some of the steak joints to test out the infamous Argentine grass-fed beef. We happily accompanied her to the restaurants, though after hearing our pathetic attempts at feigning enthusiasm for her filet, I think she realized that traveling to the beef capital with two vegetarians is a pretty lame way to dine.

Bonedalians in town

We were lucky to have a visit recently from our Carbondale friends, Mustang Molly and Josh. After Josh wrapped up a season working on the mountain at Las Lenas, Argentina, the two toured around South America for awhile. They spent a few days seeing the sights and tasting the wines in Santiago before we headed out to the coast for a weekend of fun. We stayed at our favorite little place on the ocean, brought the guitars and had a beach bonfire. We also checked out the penguins, some sea lions, and kicked around the old port city of Valparaiso. It was fun to catch up with these guys, who were our very first visitors down here.

San Pedro de Atacama

We spent our week-long spring break up north in the area around San Pedro de Atacama. This was an absolutely amazing area. We did everything from sandboarding to watching neon-pink flamingos flying in to eat at the brine lake up in the salt flats. We flew up there for the week and camped with a couple of friends and their babies. It was an incredible experience to be hanging out in a desert area at high altitude. That combo makes for some crazy plant and wild life. We spent some time in an area known as Valley of the Moon, which was surreal and made us feel like we were...well, on the moon. The little town of San Pedro is known as much for its food as it is outdoor endeavors. We gorged ourselves all week on phenomenal vegetarian food, which, as you can imagine, is a bit hard to come by in these parts! On our final morning there, we headed up with a friend to the field of geyesers for a sunrise viewing of the steaming hot fountains. The geysers were great, but the real treasure of that trip was taking the back road down into town. We trapsed over roads and through farms that were stunning. The emerald green fields were a brilliant background for the dozens of llamas, all of which were adorned with colorful blakets and ribbons. Apparently, instead of branding their animals, the farmers deck them out in colors that signify which farm they belong to. All of this with the Andes framing it in the background. It is a mental image that is forever sealed int my mind, which is lucky, as our camera ran out of batteries that morning. Many of you inquired about the large-scale earthquake that shook parts of Chile in November. The epicenter of the quake was in Calama, the nearest town to where we spent our vacation week. It did a fair amount of damage to the roads and infrastructure there, but luckily there were very few deaths for an earthquake of that size. We're hoping to get back up to the region at some point during our time in Chile.

Living in Santiago

We've been here for 5 months and we're just getting around to doing our first blog entry. It's good to know that some things, like our procrastination, never change. We're settled into an apartment in the city, we're driving a teensy-weensy little car that we have affectionately named The Mighty Jelly Bean, and we've been doing our best to sample each and every tasty wine Chile has to offer. I guess that means we're settled in down here. We hope you all will come to see us soon!!