Puerto Varus

Saturday 29th - Monday 31st October

Saturday - Feeling our age

Despite all good intentions of burning the candle at both ends and desiring the coolness of meeting folk over beer and adventuring with them the next day, I woke up at 7 (obviously Ant was still snoozing), saw the room still spinning, was not yet able to acknowledge my head ache - still a little numb, and soon saw the vast ambition of meeting Andy and Moises by 9am, hitch hiking to a volcano, climbing volcano, then hitching back was slowly floating out of reach. Yes it would be super cool, but this is also a rest day and the total sum of: a Pisco sour, a glass and a half of red wine, and three pints of beer; was now it seems, enough to have me realing back to university Saturday mornings, longing for bacon, eggs and a good hard rowing session to clear the head. Being neither in possession of bacon, eggs, or an enpacker, it was my lot to lie and suffer, hoping gallons of water would solve the problem. Needless to say I messaged Moises and cancelled our part in their adventure. Obviously I consulted Ant on this matter and took the snore of a slightly different frequency as acknowledgement that my new plan of staying in bed all morning was most agreeable.

Several hours of watching the ceiling spin later, and we were munching our coco pops and contemplating braving the outside world. We gathered our washing to go on a lavanderia hunt, and naively hoped that the Breakfast Club had opened a cafe in Puerto Varus.
Two things scuppered our plan. Bank holiday weekend (to celebrate Halloween - the UK needs this!), meant that even the one or two open lavanderias were not even thinking of looking at our bag of sweetly smelling clothes until at least Wednesday next week; leaving us to take said sweetly smelling (and fairly heavy) bag with us on our adventure around the city. And it had started to rain. Not just rain, but  RAIN. Real rain, not the fake rain we see in the UK. So there we were, clutching our large sweetly smelling bag, in our one set of clean summery clothes (the 'posh' set reserved for good - my summer dress and Ants shirt and shorts), huddled under a shop shelter in the dubious back streets of a town, with stinking hangovers, waiting for the downpour to pass.
It didn't! We ran from shelter to shelter, watching our clothes get muddier and rainier hoping that the Breakfast club would reveal itself soon.

It didn't! Instead we found a bakers, that was in fact a newsagents that sold empanadas - they would stem the hanger for now - and huddled inside hoping they sold coffee.

They didn't! But the rain had now at least paused so we ran into the centre of town and found the cutest looking, bacon promising, cappuccino clutching, cafe we could find. Finally a good post lunch breakfast.

It wasn't! A plate of nachos and a lasagne were the only dishes remotely suitable and whilst the former was plentiful and almost tasty, the latter was tasty yet lacking in proportions. At least they had proper coffee.

It wasn't! The latte was more like a watered down version of a naff caff's attempt at warm brown liquid.

Feeling slightly more alive now at least, we ventured into town to hunt the shops for some trecking trousers for Ant and explore the city, went back to our home to put sweetly smelling bag to bed, ventured to a supermarket to grab washing powder to help our bag be more accepted in wider society (somehow via the rafting place to book a trip on a ducky for tomorrow... What?! How did that happen?!) and whilst in the fruit and veg aisle, stumbled across Andy and Moises!

Turns out Moises had the same thoughts as us, but Andy, to his credit, had an exciting day trekking and managed to skip all the rain! "wanna come back to ours - I'm making homemade pizza?'. Do we heck!

We were soon searching for pizza toppings, hurrying home to hand wash clothes quickly, munching a bowl of cereal to tide us over (9.30pm now - tummy gremlins approaching!), then venturing back into the dubious parts of town, walking along a deserted train track, hopping fences and jumping hedges whilst avoiding the scary yet polite youth of the night, to make it to Moises' lovely little wooden house alive.

And then a brilliant night of drinking, laughter, science chat, pizza making, Chilean swear word learning, cultural story swapping, travel tale sharing and eventually (at midnight!) pizza eating, ensued. We learned how to say things are awesome in Chilean: "vagina"; things are good: "bum crack"; and things are really bad: "dick"!!! We learned about the time Moises was the Chilean, who went to London to watch his favourite Bavarian rock band play, missed their set and the next day ended up being the Chilean, in Chelmsford chasing a Bavarian rock band around Essex, eventually seeing them play, but missing his flight the next day due to underestimating London traffic. Learning how Moises' friend (I forget her name) worked in a lab, which was set up in someone's house mass producing a protein sold to many companies (her and I spent many an hour discussing just how much we love protein molecules!). We imparted our wisdom on the grammatical difference between 'hangover' and 'hungover' - this took longer than you might expect - and were flattered when they thought we might be a similar age to them - not even close! And eventually we were driven home, tired but incredibly happy and frightful of the hair of the dog hangover that could ensue tomorrow morning.




Sunday - The day of the ducky

Relieved that we'd managed to build up enough resistance to alcohol over the last 48 hours to be alive and kicking by 11am, we ventured to a brunch cafe 'la gringa' (trip advisor recommended - we'd learnt our lesson!), for eggs benedict and a latte that almost resembled a good coffee. All this was in preparation for the more advanced battle with white waters we had scheduled for 2.30pm.
A 'Ducky' is an inflatable kayak for two people - a cross between a raft and a kayak I suppose. Ant and I would be harnessing our Mansfield rowing prowess to navigate through the white waters guided by a dude in a Kayak who looked like he actually knew what he was doing. Safe to say I was bricking it! We wet suited up, hopped in, practiced paddling upstream, then we were off.  We were sweeping through the waves, loving the adrenaline rush. Even I was loving the thrilling ride, yelping with glee.  The instructors were constantly telling us the next rapid would throw us in, we were overridden with pride as we clung on and stayed afloat. Apparently everyone gets thrown in at some point or other - you guys vastly underestimated the team work and competitive spirit that the EmAnt team have harnessed for years! We did it. It was awesome! And they even gave us a cold beer at the end to celebrate our success!

We were soon home again rearranging bag of sweetly smelling washing around room, hoping it would dry (it didn't!), and ready to venture into town for food. We found a food market which supplied us with three tasty sandwiches (pork, chicken and loaded hamburger), ate cake then collapsed in bed, soba and ready to catch up on sleep to continue our adventure tomorrow.