Just got back from the bus station, picked up my bus ticket for Bolivia. It leaves tomorrow night at 10:45 and arrives at the Chilean coastal town called Arica that sits on the Peruvian border on Sunday at 6:00 am. Yes, that`s right, 28 hours on a bus. But that`s not all, folks. I get to hang out in Arica for 4 hours, stretch my legs and get a bite to eat before getting on the 8 hour bus to La Paz. Holy fucking shit, and I get to do the exact same on the way back. Bolivia better be worth it, but from what I`ve heard from pretty much everyone I`ve met who`s been through there it is. And don`t worry about anything you`ve heard in the news lately about what`s been going on in La Paz, I`ll be safe. Of course I always say how cool it would be to witness a military coup firsthand, but that`s not gonna happen. And if it does I`ll just stop in Arica and go to Macchu Piccu instead. Not a bad way to travel, eh?
So I`ll probably get back from Bolivia on the 28th, then on the first I`m moving again. This is the last time till the end of the semester, I swear it. This new house is pretty much just like the one where I`m at now except my room`ll be a lot bigger and the kitchen`s not quite as nice, plus it`s in a ridiculously good location and not too far from Vince and Andrea and all my other homies at the house I got the hell out of at the end of January. The owner is a tiny Peruvian lady, she seems really cool. And of course there`s a couple germans there, but I`ve come to accept that you can`t escape the germans in Chile, there`s just too damn many of them.
I went to a barbeque a couple weeks ago at the chilean house of my gringa friend Rebbecca. Through some family connection she got a place for this semester at a mansion a bit outside of town kinda near where Pinochet is busy dying right now, and wow what a house. I didn`t write about this last week because I needed some time to digest what I saw, and to be perfectly honest I got pretty weirded out. The grandpop of the family worked in Chile`s largest law firm and the family itself is straight up fascist up to the oil painting of Pinochet in the living room. Before the barbeque I was in my wonderful history class where my professor showed us a documentary from a few years ago in which he and some other student leaders who were tortured and imprisoned for, well, being student leaders were interviewed and recreated what they went through. It`s kinda like I got the bends from moving really fast from one side of the political spectrum all the way over to the other in a couple hours. The sons of the family were there along with a bunch of their friends and we had some interesting conversations. I tried my absolute hardest not to say anything I`d regret but I slipped up and mentioned the sobering lecture my history professor gave us a few days earlier and the guy I was talking to looked at me with a stern face and said, "You need to understand that what was going on was supported by 50% of the population and that you should stand back from what your professor is telling you because he might have some opinions that don`t allow him to talk about the situation without bias." This, of course, was 5 seconds after telling him that my professor was tortured and imprisoned for a year and a half, and I realized that his robotic response is what he says to anyone bringing up an anti fascist opinion. Keeping my mouth closed after he got done letting that shit sentence spill out of his jaws might`ve been the hardest thing I`ve ever had to do. A little later Rebbecca gave us all a tour of the house and everyone was marveling at the architecture and the garden and the private chapel and the library and I felt a little alone because I knew I was the only person who looked at it and thought about how beautiful it would be if it were burning down. I stayed around another hour, then fortunately Vince was ready to go so we headed home. This has all been lingering in the back of my mind for the past couple weeks and it still kinda eats at me. I don`t think I`ll ever understand how those who supported the dictatorship could convince themselves that the torturing and the murder were necessary and good things and still believe that today. I guess it`s like believing that war with Iraq is necessary just so access to oil can be controlled better. In the end, the country I leave for tomorrow night has had more military coups than there are days in a year, so I ought to be good and fucked up by the time I get back on the 28th. This`ll probably be the last post till then, so have a fun week and I try to remember to pick up some llama fetuses for everyone at the witch`s market in La Paz. They`re good for warding off evil spirits.