The Ensayo From Hell

I had an awesome last excursion to Cajón del Maipo the past two days. A lot of stuff happened and I really need to start working on my essay soon, so I'll try to update you all on everything that happened fairly quickly.

Thursday morning, got up and went to the Teatro to find our amazingly huge and comfortable bus waiting for us. It was big enough that all 22 of us or so got our own row, so no scrunching was necessary (thankfully). We drove to Santiago and stopped at this market called Los Dominicos which was essentially hundreds of small shops and stores of handicrafts all enclosed within this really big area that resembled a jungle. There was even a few small streams that ran all the way through it. Unfortunately, we only had an hour to shop in an area that we could have spent a day in. I was happy to board the bus again though because I was growing very hungry and couldn't wait to arrive at Cajón del Maipo to eat lunch.

Once arriving, we immediately headed to the fairly nice restaurant to eat our lunch which consisted of platters of food being brought to us gringos to pass around the table, and then the waitresses bringing large dishes of chicken and meat for us to grab out of. Shows what they think of Americans...bucket-o-meat for us pigs to eat out of like a trough. Though the meals were very good, I wasn't too fond of them because we never ordered anything, they just brought it out and we never knew how much to eat or how much more was coming out. (The only time I actually got full was lunch our second day...)

After lunch, we took our bags to the super sweet cabins. My cabin had a loft above one of the bedrooms that had another two beds hidden in it. I luckily got a really sweet group of people and we enjoyed our time together during the trip.

Next on our agenda was one of the greatest parts, zip-lining across the river that ran through the valley some 70 feet or so above it. It was so amazing and I had a blast, though I wish we could have done it more than once across and once back. I took video on the shorter run back and I'll upload it on facebook later along with all of my photos from the trip.

Free time consisting of exploring around the camp area and the river, followed by a slightly more classy dinner came next (we all got individual plates with meat and rice on it). After dinner, we hung around and talked until a few of us decided to go and sit along the river to star gaze. Since we were pretty far from any real civilization, we had an absolutely amazing view of the stars and the milky way galaxy. One of my friends mentioned how cool it is that we've never seen these stars in our lives before since we're in the Southern Hemisphere, it was a crazy thought. Later, we headed back to the restaurant for a dance party that they had. It was fun to be able to just dance by myself without caring what anyone else thought, though they did play a lot of salsa music which I'm not too fond of since I'm not good at pretending to salsa (I'm taking lessons with Alyssa next semester though, I'm super stoked).

They closed the restaurant at midnight, so I headed back to my cabin and we talked for a bit then decided to get some sleep so we wouldnt be too tired the next day. David and I were awoken by our friend jumping on our bed and yelling, so I got up and showered and read part of my novel for my Social and Political Themes class. Breakfast was a let down since it only consisted of more bread. It really threw us off when they offered special fruit bowls to the vegitarians, which caused us to think we'd be having some nice meaty meal coming (we didn't, by the way).

Next, we all signed our lives away for the third time (first was on the bus on Thursday, second was before zip-lining) before we headed out on our hike to two different waterfalls. We got to cross three different bridges, the first being a really big suspension bridge over the main river, and the second being a small and rickety suspension bridge that only five people could be on at a time. The third was the smallest and consisted of a few logs hooked together with railings along it. The hike itself was fairly easy, though our guide booked it so the few of us who managed to stay with him got pretty tired out. One of the coolest parts of the day, there is a natural spring that runs through the area that they have made pipes for and such, so we were able to all stop at one point and drink water directly from the spring. The waterfalls were pretty cool, though the bigger of the two was still less than half the size of Multnomah Falls. It did feel really good though to hike and just sweat (as weird as that sounds), since I haven't had time to actually work out here. A lot of us agreed though that the opening of our pours just felt cleansing somehow and very relaxing.

After getting back, we ate our lunch which was chicken pasta, so amazingly good. I've been wanting pasta for so long, and it actually filled me up. We still had a while before we were to live so some of us headed down to explore along the river again and I found a very comfortable rock that I just rested on for a bit.

Next, we hopped on the bus and headed back to Santiago to go to a winery. Literally every single person on the bus fell asleep and slept for the duration of the trip.

Fun fact: the bus had TV screens and they played these random hour long music video mixes with 30 seconds or so of tons of different songs, and after our trip to Cajón, we all realized why Chileans think Americans are all sluts. I cannot believe how dirty and scandilous some of the videos are. But anyways, as we were riding I woke up for a bit and opened my eyes and looked and thought to myself, "It looks like that girl doesn't have a shirt on, weird. Must just be a very scandilous bikini because I just woke up and can't see it very well...whoa, she's bending over now, and she just pulled down her bottoms?!?! OH MY GOSH, SHE REALLY IS NAKED!!!" Yeah, I picked the wrong fifteen seconds to look at the screen, and by the time I realized what was happening, it was too late for me to close my eyes again because the video changed. I definitely was shocked, to say the least.

The winery we went to was called Concha y Toro, and it's one of the ten biggest or most important in the world. It was so big, I couldn't believe the size of it. It definitely was much more touristy then the last winery we went to though, which I wasn't too fond of. We watched a video, walked around a bit, and then got to go to the rooms where they keep the thousands of wooden barrels of wine as they ferment. They also took us down some stairs into a really old cellar where they make a special kind of wine called Casillero del Diablo "Cellar of the Devil", which is based off of some old 19th century myth that the devil actually lived there himself. It was weird, and then they shut the doors and turned off all the lights as they told us the story. They even had a little room where you could "see" the devil (a light down the end of a hall with something in front of it making it look like its his silhouette). It was an interesting place, and I now have two different wine glasses from two different wineries that I have to try to take on the plane without them breaking, what fun that will be.

Afterwards, we all hopped on the bus for the last leg of the trip. I ended up reading 20 or so more pages of my book, and was so ready to go to bed as soon as I got home. Today, I woke up and sent some emails and such to get ready for the camp I'll be working at later in August. I was supposed to go to Santiago with my family but they never said anything about it so I guess that idea got shelved for now.

I only have like four more pages left in my book, then I have to start writing the actual essay. I was a little worried about it because I haven't been able to understand all of the book and a lot of it seems irrelevant to my topic, but I decided I'm just going to write the essay with whatever I think the book is saying and not waste hours looking up word after word in a dictionary, only to discover it really is saying what I thought it was saying. If he doesn't like the quality of my essay, I don't really care at this point. As long as he doesn't fail me I'll be happy with the class.

Rodrigo is using some electrical saw right now to cut stuff, it's going to be hard to want to read and write right now...poo. I better go though, I really want to get it done by tonight if possible. I hope you all have a wonderful weekend. Chao amigos.