Una Semana Loca

Hola!
So I realize that it's been a long time since the last post so here it goes, my best effort to bring you all up to date!
Classes started but my first day was rather uneventful. My class was cancelled, indefinitely. So I rescheduled and now I have classes on Tues-Thurs. I've only had one week of classes though, this past week they were cancelled. Yay for going to school in a Catholic country, lots of time off for Easter!
During this free week the other exchange student from the States (Laura from D.C.) and I decided to take a little vacation. Basically we got onto a bus going south and got off at the last stop, it took 14 hours.
Day 1) We left Vina at around 10pm and headed south, ending up in Puerto Montt after a rather long bus ride. Luckily we had some Mission Impossible (dubbed in Spanish of course) to keep us entertained...
Day 2) We arrived in Puerto Montt and booked a hostel for the night expecting to leave by boat in the morning. Puerto Montt turns out to be not the loveliest town in the world. Lots of gypsies waiting to steal your money and shady characters around every corner, we mostly hid out in our hostel after it got dark.
Day 3) Went to the boat terminal only to find that the boat we wanted was late and may not show up for a few days. Thinking that anywhere was better than Puerto Montt, we booked a bus to Chiloe. Chiloe is a large island off the southern coast of Chile. On our bus we met another traveller who recognized our US accents, she was from Manhattan. We all three decided to spend the night in Castro, the capitol of Chiloe.
Day 4) Woke up in Castro, a very fun, very lively little town. It was such a change of pace from Vina that it's hard to believe they are in the same country! We spent all morning sea kayaking around the little islands close to Chiloe. There were also some cool houses on stilts that we could paddle under. All in all, a very fun town to be in. We left Castro that afternoon and headed across Chiloe to the tiny town of Cucao. It's the last town before you hit the National Park. It was comprised of a few thrown together houses and a road that supported one crazy bus driver and his ghetto bus once a day. We went through Cucao towards the park and found El Fogon de Cucao. It is an architecturally sweet house/restaurant/bar/hostel/campground/ranch built and run by a man named Miguel Angel Allendes. We stayed at his house that night and he made us an incredible dinner of the biggest hunk of salmon I have ever seen. Then he played music for us the rest of the night, he is in several traditional Chilean bands that travel the country frequently. He was a very interesting man with a never-ending supply great stories and advice. He will be in Vina in two weeks and he is planning on looking us up to show us the music hot spots he knows in Vina/Valparaiso.
Day 5) Marissa from Manhattan had to take off early to catch a bus to Valdivia so Laura and I set off on our own to check out the National Park. Since it is the off season down here, mid-fall, there were maybe 4 other people in the entire park. It was crazy! Huge sand dunes with crashing waves of the ocean as far as the eye could see. *There were cows along the beach eating seaweed, they looked very out of place* Then if you turned around there was a big thick lush forest with a large lake. We spent most of the day hiking around and picking our jaws up off the ground. Then we packed our bags and sat on the side of the road waiting for our bus. We had a momentary panic attack when we thought we saw it pass by without stopping, but luckily another one came along about an hour later and rescued us. We spent that night back in Castro.
Day 6) We had a bright and early 6:25am bus back to Puerto Montt (unfortunately it's the only town with access to and from Cucao) where we met up with my friend Dan from the University of Montana. He's studying in Concepcion this semester and also had some free time to travel this week. The three of us hopped on a bus and headed to Bariloche, Argentina! The drive over was awesome. Such a change of scenery again. We all kept saying that certain aspects of it, like the trees or the hills remind us of home or someplace else we know...but all together, nowhere else in the world looks the way it does down in Northern Patagonia. We got to Bariloche in the early evening, set ourselves up in the hostel and went out for a night on the town.
Day 7) We spent this last big day of our trip exploring Bariloche. It's a fun city, a little bit of a tourist trap, but with lots to offer. We got some good food and sat at the edge of the lake looking out at the mountains. Most notably though, this was the day I started to get sick...more on that in a bit.
Day 8) Due to it being Easter, bus tickets were a bit hard to come by so Laura and I had to leave earlier than planned. Which turned out to be a blessing in disguise. We went from Bariloche to Osorno in the south of Chile. We had an 8 hour layover in Osorno and then we got on another marathon 12 hour bus ride back up to Vina. We got home this morning around 10am. The blessing in disguise is that I clearly have Strep Throat and any more time on the trail would have been difficult. I called the doctor's office today and when I told them I was an exchange student, they insisted on doing a house call. He actually showed up with a little black bag. So, now I'm on a round of meds (don't worry Mom and Dad, no penicillin) and should be back on my feet in no time! I went to the supermarket to buy some comfort foods (cranberry juice, sprite, and tomato soup) all of which had to be purchased in the "World Foods" section, aka a shelf with Safeway stuff :)
It is, of course, completely impossible to sum up this week long adventure in a blog post. Even the pictures (that I will hopefully post tonight) can't really convey what went on. It was the best vacation I could have asked for and never before have I been so happy and content to just take off into the unknown. All I can think to say is that my life is ridiculous, and I love it!