Night out on the town (Pre-signing over of soul)

So my flight yesterday went off without a hitch. When the whole plane was boarded, about half the plane was full which meant that I had a whole row to myself. It was one of Frontier’s new airplanes, real new. It was manufactured in November of 2007 so this was probably the newest one in their fleet. It showed – for the first time ever, I saw leather seats on a Frontier plane. They’re really moving up…after moving down (see their bankruptcy). I was estimating I’d get to my buddy’s place at around 3 PM, but we landed 20 minutes early, I got my bags, and took the metro to U St. Station and got there at a quarter to 2. It was perfect. I was left with plenty of time to be lackadaisical. So after chatting with Drew in his furnitureless (but very nice) apartment, we headed up to his rooftop balcony and drank a couple of beers. I was starving, but we kind of forgot to eat until around 4 PM. After grabbing lunch in Adams Morgan, we went back to his place and had some more beers. It started get a little cold so we figured we’d start the night out and headed back to Adams Morgan around 8. Many beers later we stumbled home due to Drew’s lack of funds (thank god), and the crappy atmosphere and old person smell in Madam’s Organ.

This brings me to this morning.

I woke up with a life preserver and apparently added a brimmed hat (in addition to the sombrero) to my hat arsenal. My hat was in my back pocket which I apparently slept on the whole night. Maybe I forgot about it and was seeking a replacement? Or maybe I remembered Peace Corps advice to bring a brimmed hat? If you’re missing your hat, let me know. I might have taken it from you.

Anyway, I’m going to pack up my stuff here….sometime and head over to the hotel in Georgetown. Despite having three bags, I’m going to public transport it. One – because I’m cheap, Two – because I want to get on the bus during rush hour and impede the rush due to all my crap, and Three – because why not? I can get there on the bus.

How did 79 days turn into a couple of hours? Nuts.

The last day of my South American journey

So this journey is finally coming to an end. It´s kind of weird how time really just flew by. After a while of travelling, time just kind of jumps into cruise control and flies by quicker than anything I´ve ever experienced before. Everytime I´ve gone to a hostel I´ve chatted up a group of people and end up passing my whole day galavanting around the city with them. Yesterday the German girl I hung out with at the beach the previous day left (I think I´m meeting her in Santiago today before my flight leaves) left, and I bought my bus ticket for Santiago so I´m not pressed for time when my flight finally rolls around.

Upon returning I watched the Arsenal v. Blackburn game with these British guys (never seen so much televised soccer in my life – it´s awesome). A guy I met in Santiago showed up at the hostel (Issei Nakaya – a 28 year old freelance boxing journalist from Japan). We went with James, a former Australian lawyer (got tired of his job and quit), as well as Johannes, a 21 year old uni student in Germany, to Mercado del Puerto which is supposed to be the best place in the city to get fish.

The weather for the day, which had initially been overcast and disappointing, suddenly immediately changed to blue skies and bloody sunny during our walk to the restaurant. The restaurant is in the part of Valpo that is really falling apart, and that adds to the experience. That experienced is further enhanced by the band that plays in the restaurant, the paper-thin 2nd floor we sat on, along with the makeshift homemade staircase that goes up to the 2nd floor. Menu of the day – 1800 pesos. Sounds good. Following some difficulties while being lost in translation (cebolla = onion), we got our amazing fish (scales, tail, and spinal cord included!) along with some potatoes and some onion and tomato sidedish – ensalada chilleno.

Issei, who has enough trouble with English (in light of him having lived in Brooklyn for 5 years), let alone Spanish, ordered a 1.6 litre water. Upon receiving the bill he discovered that his water cost 2000 pesos (a little more than 5 dollars, and 200 pesos more than the meal itself). He then proceeded to flip out in English, Japanese, and Spanish all at the same time, and did his best to argue the ludicrous price he was to pay. He did so, albeit unsuccessfully.

We returned home where I took a siesta (which was shortened due to the vicious bedbugs, or whatever the hell has been crawling in my bed the last 3 days, biting me) and Johannes, Issei, and I headed to Concepcion (the rich part of Valpo) that night. We were famished (moriamos de hambre!), so we stopped at an empanada place that can be described as no more than a tiny rectangular room, a glass jewelry case (which had an upside down 40 inch flat screen tv in it), a leather sofa behind the case (which was being used as the ¨counter¨), and an oven. Amazing empanadas though, and only 690 pesos (470ish = $1). Concepcion was not too impressive as it looked mostly like the rest of the city minus the grime. We then returned back to the hostel where we made pasta (hey, gotta save money), which might have been the best pasta I´ve ever made (bolognesa sauce).

Speaking of money – the first 2 days in Chile I spent 70,000 pesos. In the last 8 days, I´ve spent 48,000 pesos.  During these 8 days, I´ve been in Santiago, Punta Arenas (bottom of Chile 3500 km away), Valpo (150 km north of Santiago), and Vina del Mar (5 km from Valpo). Lot of distance, little money. So I accidentally became quite a penurious lad. This leaves me with 22,000 pesos to spend in the next 15 hours – I´m not bringing this monopoly money home with me.

72 bites (I counted), 3 days, and not enough pesos later, I´m leaving Valpo.

Then Chile for the States tonight at 10:40 PM

Montevideo continued…

So yesterday after strolling around the city, I met some people at the hostel and we all sat around and drank a bit while watching Stranger than Fiction (terrible movie by the way). Afterward, the hostel (like most of the city) was pretty boring, so after getting word of some sort of Carneval party, we decided to check it out. Danny (An Australian riding his bike around the continent), Kat (A Scottish girl from Portsmouth), and some American guy (whose name I´ve forgotten) headed to the Carneval festival. The festival itself was more or less like a fair – there were bleachers set up, concessions, and a stage where groups performed. We watched about 2 acts (both of which were dressed in ridiculously bright clothing), but it was really unexciting. When I was talking to our taxi driver on the way to the Carneval, he told me that everybody in the city was on vacation (which was extremely apparent with the COMPLETE lack of people/cars on the road at 10 PM) so there weren´t many people in the city. After that was over, we simply went home and went to sleep.

Montevideo isn´t the most exciting place. More of a place for relaxing it seems.

Today, Kat, Danny, and I headed over to Mercado del Puerto (a huge former train station or something that now houses tons of restaurants) to complete our tour of the city. I saw that the Queen Elizabeth 2 was docked in the Montevideo port when I got off my ferry from Buenos Aires, so we headed over to take some pictures (HUGE boat).

However, apparently this was also on the naval base, so we needed a Buquebus boarding pass to be able to enter the area. After convincing the naval guard (who was a softy it seemed), he let us go to the corner, but flipped out when he saw his boss was around the corner. But we got our pictures, than got a picture with this paranoid naval guard. Good times. Then we headed over to the Mercado del Puerto (one of the top things to see in South America apparently) and had a medio y medio which is some sort of wine and wine combination that is REALLY sweet. Cost? 25 pesos (a little more than a dollar).

In other news, I´m finding myself becoming stingier with my money since things are so cheap here (FOUR dollars for dinner? I don´t think so.)

Then…I walked around the perimeter of the city because…there´s that much to do.