First, I travelled back to Curicó and second, I am in Curicó. While the first is quite obvious as I named it clearly in my last entry that after BA I’ll travel back to Alba. The latter indicates more, that I am staying here. And this refers to the intro of the last entry in which I wrote about being 5 months on the road (meanwhile 6) and I couldn’t yet quite interpret what it means not being able to tell people about places I had visited. Not that I am fully aware of the significance now, but the effect to me was that I settled down and got myself accommodated with Alba at a house that was offered to us for free from her uncle.

Looking at my original itinerary and my actual travel I can see that I nearly followed my plan by 100%. Exceptions are Patagonia, which I had to shorten due to known reasons and the falls of Iguazu, a miraculous water spectacle at the border between Argentina and Brazil. This was just no more on the way as I hurried back to Chile. Maybe I can fit it in somehow later… I haven’t given it up.

But please keep on reading if you want to get to know some details of what I added to my adventures.

Buenos Aires

I was often told that BA is a crazy city which offers everything regarding culture: theatre, tango, architecture, art, music and a mentionable underground culture scene. In other words, its groove can easily be compared to hip places like London, Berlin, Amsterdam or Zurich. In my short time of being there I can only confirm it. So on one hand I really liked it because of all these things, on the other hand these are not the things I’m seeking while travelling, though of course I appreciate it. But if I want to dive into a hip scene I just take the train for 20 minutes and I exactly know where the hip people are and I don’t need to travel to another end of the world. Which I normally don’t do anyway. Nevertheless, I enjoyed BA with the company of people I’ve known from before. Thanks to Ana Julia, my previous guide at the GAP trip, I didn’t even have to pay for accommodation and lived in the middle of the city. Here are some Must-Sees in BA:

A short trip across the river Plate to Colonia de Sacramento, Uruguay

Evita on Avenida 9 de Julio

Congresso

The Obelisk

The cross I bear with the Argentinean post office

Since Patagonia was over for me and I would spend the rest of my stay in South America in warmer zones there was no more need for my super warm clothes I brought for climbing mountains and Patagonia. The sleeping bag was another thing I had no longer use for. This all would reduce the size of my overall luggage enormously and would give me some room for more purchases.

On the morning of my departure day to Santiago I stepped smiling into a random post office and told the lady behind the desk in my overfriendly Spanish: “A very good morning to you, señorita, I have here a couple of clothes I would love to send to Switzerland. Could you, as you please, sell me a box and…. “ The lady stopped me and told me if I want to send an international package I need to go to the post office at Retiro”. Ok, would cost me some time, but I’m early and I could take the tube. A little bit of nonsense, as I would have to go there later again to catch my bus while all my other stuff is still in the center… well, nevermind, I still got time.

On the way to the Retiro post office I got the first time a little pissed off on the last bit I had to walk, because it was raining badly and of course I didn’t have much protection. It took me a while until I found the right entry in this absolutely unnecessary complicated architectural failure of a post office only to find many more people waiting. Luckily I found out before waiting my ass off that I had to go to another place next door which was almost empty. I received my box and could put my things inside it. Then the lady sent me over to another desk for customs clearance. I was glad it was just 5 steps away. The guy talked to me in another hardly understandable BA accent. He told me something like I need to disinfect the clothes with a spray. It is required by law and he showed me the paper with the law on one of those 4 sheets that were attached to the wall beside him. Ok, I told him… no, I didn’t disinfect them, but if you do have a spray we could do it right now. I got no problem with that. He told me he hasn’t got a spray. I told him never mind, where could I get one easily? He explained to me that it is not the disinfection that is most important, I only need a certificate that says the clothes have been disinfected. Ok, where can I get that? He showed me the address that was written on the sheet attached to the wall. I asked again, maybe with a little more expression in my voice, which door or building that is. He pointed again at the direction. Where is that? He pointed in one direction and said an unremembered, but ridiculously high number of blocks. I shortly checked the map and realized that walking is out of question if I want to finish this business today, always remembering I would have to be at the bus station by 4 pm. As I was not a frequent metro user and the map didn’t show me a station nearby, I saw my cheap method of having this thing done flying away. I would need a taxi.

For a moment I fought with myself if I should do it. I went out and took the nearest taxi and caught myself being rude to the taxi driver as I had the impression (with the map in my mind) he was not using the fastest way. The whole thing already cost me too many nerves. I arrived in that “office of national disinfection of clothes that has to be sent abroad” and told that guy I would need that fucking certificate. He told me there is no problem, I could come back tomorrow to pick up my clothes and the certificate. One moment please: tomorrow? My bus leaves this afternoon, I need it now. It’s only a shitty piece of paper and all you have to do is spraying my couple of clothes for maybe half a minute. He told me, nonono, this is not possible, I would have to wait. The next moment I exploded. You guys who know me would agree with me that I’m the calmest guy in the world and even if things are really, really bad, I keep cool and try to solve the challenge in a smart way and not show my anger that is maybe inside me. But here they went too far with me, I had no more humour and told that guy something like this: “What the hell is wrong with your country? Why should it not be possible to send a lousy package with a couple of used clothes to Switzerland? It is the easiest thing in the entire fucking universe to send some shitty underwear around the world. I know many people have done it before and told me to do so too. And nobody ever mentioned difficulties. So why are you guys having so much fun in fucking somebody else’s ass and sending people from one fucking end of the city to the other without chances of results?” He sat there saying not much but sorry, there’s nothing he could do and he’d understand me. That didn’t help much. I sat down for a moment and considered my options: 1) Tell that stupid idiot to keep my stuff and give it to Caricas, 2) Pack everything together and just forget about it and carry all the stuff with me (which would have been a big problem as I now had a second computer to take with me, as you know), 3) bring everything back to Ana Julia and ask her to finish it up for me. While desperately sitting there and hating all three options, the guy stood up and told me I should leave my stuff here and come back at 2 pm. I could then pick up my stuff and receive the certificate backdated (obviously the date was the point; it needed to be previous to the date of sending the clothes). I said thank you and went for a walk to calm down my anger.

After I picked up my stuff, the open box with the “disinfected” clothes in one arm, the certificate in the other, I took another taxi to go back to the post office at Retiro where to my surprise everything was suddenly going smooth. I told the guy at the customs that this whole shit was just a fucking cheap joke. I could have replaced the clothes, piss over the clothes or do whatever nasty with them I could think of. He told me that my view is not wrong, but unfortunately this is the law. Stupid law. What highly paid idiots could think of such a nonsense rule? I’m a calm guy, but people with ideas like that just are to be sent to the moon and captured within high walls. The world is better off without them. Reminds me somehow at some accounting rules of IFRS…

I rushed back to Ana Julia’s apartment to pick up my clothes and went back to Retiro again, as the bus station is located some 100 meter away from the post office. I arrived there shortly after 4 pm, just in time to catch the 20 hour busride to Santiago, where I would directly continue to Curicó, where I longed to stay at.

Shaking with 7.2 on the Richter scale

Things in Curicó became soon really good and we had (and still having) a good life at “our” house. Michelli stayed a while there too. And Lis was a permanent visitor too. On Sunday 25th of March at evening time Alba and me were lying around, having Spanish and German lessons while Lis and Michelli were preparing dinner. Alba suddenly told me if I feel this? What? The earthquake. I looked outside the window and saw my triathlon pant whipping on the handle bar of the bike I used as clothes line. I stood up and felt it and asked Alba, experienced with earthquakes as she is, if this is dangerous and if we are supposed to get out of here. She took me by the hand and led me outside to stand under the door at the entrance, where Lis and Michelli already were waiting. There was a big noise going on and it was a very strange feeling to stand on a shaking ground. We, Michelli and me, asked whether this is big thing. The answer was yes, it’s one of the bigger earthquakes. It went on for some 30 seconds more. When it was over we shortly stepped outside to have a look along the street. Everything seemed to be in order, only the dogs were barking harder than usually. Stepping inside we checked our things and realized the only damage we could get grip upon was that the bottle of whiskey had fallen down. Michelli brought up the theory that it might had fallen before… we didn’t know. Sounds more adventurous to say it fell by the earthquake. Obviously Alba and Lis bothered to know more about it and we listened to the radio and searched the internet for information of what had happened. The full truth we only learned next day. The epicentre was just about 30 kilometers away from Curicó and the strength here was 7.2. In some places the communication lines broke but the damages were low. It was said that a man died of a heart attack and in some cities there was no electricity for a while.

I learned meanwhile that the highest possible score for an earthquake is 9,5. More is not possible because no kind of stone could buffer more power as it would release its power before. There was a 9,5 earthquake in Valdivia (yes, Chile too) in 1960 which had a lot of destruction power, not only the earthquake itself, but the tsunami that resulted out of it and the following eruption of the volcano Cordón Caulle. But not only is the power on the Richter scale important, there are many more aspects that lead to the actual severance of damages.

For me it was an eye opening experience which I so far only read about and saw at TV. The thing is there is nothing you can do but hope the houses stand the power. The people here live with that as earthquakes in this dimension happen every couple of months, without being noticed by the world press as there are normally no severe damages. Earthquakes of magnitudes of 4 – 6 are occurring every day in Chile. Beside this big one there were so far two occasions I felt the earth shaking.

Cooking

It is not a big secret that I was not born to be a cook. At home it’s usually no problem as for lunch I am at a place near work where I get very variable dishes. For dinner at home I usually prepare something easy cold or spaghetti with pre-prepared sauce. Super-easy and quick and very good too! In addition it served my extra need of carbohydrates. And why the hell should I bother spending much time, which I don’t have, in the kitchen? There are better things to do when time is rare. In exceptional cases where I had guests over for dinner it was always an event that cost me lot of stress and adrenalin. And you cannot just say every time: “Hey, sorry guys, I really didn’t have the time. This frozen pizza must do. But hey, is it not more about being together and talk than really to eat?” I usually managed my way through somehow as well through medium difficult dishes and my guests always could enjoy a good dish. But while cooking I always was remembered why I usually don’t.

Anyway, as most of the time I’m enjoying my Macho live here with my girlfriend while she is working, she asked me a few times to prepare dinner. Once I prepared, next to a Thai-Wok from the shopping centre and some noodles, a cold plate of cut vegetables, which she immediately turned into a salad on her arrival. She changed the things I prepared within minutes into a delicious side dish.

She asked me again to cook one day when we planned to have her mother and her sister and brother over for dinner. Ok, I thought, let’s do something easy but very good. I came up wit Rösti escalloped with cheese and tomatoes. Takes quite some preparing time to peel and grate the potatoes, but once this pain is through, it is super easy. And it is something typical Swiss too, which would be good for some kind of cultural exchange. On the shopping tour I made sure I bought the instruments to peel and to grate potatoes and the biggest potatoes I had found. That would save me most of the pain. It did. In only about half an hour the Rösti was in a shape to get fried. Then I thought I can prepare things as much as possible and fry them until they are crispy golden. The cheese and the tomatoes can be added later and fried again for short time.

The cooking sites in the internet all told me the same: it is super easy to do it and there is nothing really special you have to pay attention to. One comment was it is supposed to be the easiest thing in the world. Well, I’d rather solve a whole book of SUDOKU… but still in good mood I tried to get used to the cooking gear. Damn, at home at least I know my stuff and how it works. Here I don’t really have levels of heat, or at least I haven’t found out. It’s either full power or nothing at all. Ok, I could deal with that. After a few minutes a big part of the potatoes turned green. This made me a bit sceptic. But a quick check on the internet showed nothing serious. After 15 more minutes and a couple of turns of the mass I saw the whole bulk was still very moist though it’s lower part have been united with the pan and burned to black. Nothing to worry about a bit of a loss but the thing I worried about was why do the fucking potatoes just not dry? As I read I have to fry it for 20 to 30 minutes I still had some hope it would turn out right. After half an hour I gave up frustrated as the mass was miles away from being nicely crispy and golden and the whole thing resembled more to the horror fiction of a movie that played after the dropping of an atomic bomb.

The originally 1 kg potatoes for 4 people were reduced to a diet amount of a sparrow. After freeing the pan from the lowest layer of black potatoes and 2 or 3 more layers that were inseparable attached to the lowest layer I needed to clean and rub the pan until my hand hurt.

I called Alba and told her, well, why don’t we just go out tonight? We could enjoy more, everybody could eat what she or he wants and we don’t have to deal with cleaning the plates. A lot of advantages, no?

A quick emergency dinner mostly (in fact totally) prepared by Alba served well later on.

But I soon received another chance to redeem myself. And this chance I didn’t miss. I prepared some nice pasta and a self made sauce with lots of veggies and I was surprised myself how delicious it was. I’m not completely lost yet. 🙂

I comforted myself with the belief that I just got the wrong sort of potatoes to do Rösti. In Bolivia I learned there are more than 500 different sorts of potatoes available. I’m not sure, but I think at home we have the normal ones and the sweet ones, that’s all… so not much to choose from.