Damn it's good to be back. I pulled out of Bariloche last Friday at about ten in the morning, crossed the border back into Chile a couple hours later, then rolled into Osorno about 230 in the afternoon after losing an hour going across the border into a new time zone. From there I killed 7 wonderously boring hours walking around a rainy Osorno until my 940 bus pulled out at about 1015. Sometime during the night on the 12 hour trip from there to Santiago I managed to fall asleep while we were parked at some random bus station, then a half hour or so later when I woke up we were at the same fucking bus station. All these delays and shite knocked to hell my rendevous with Carola at the bus terminal in Santiago, but tried and true, stinky and tired, red eyed and lugging a 18 kilo backpack I made it back to Santiago and breathed a smog filled sigh of relief at the sight of my beloved and ridiculously polluted favorite South American capital city. Hell, make that favorite city in the world.
It's good to be back. I'm back in my house on Salvador, albeit not in the same room because two French people are visiting my cool French roommate Oliver. I was considering asking them to surrender the room but didn't feel like generating any bad blood in the house so soon upon arrival. Puma the housecat has grown like a fucking weed and bites harder than Jeffrey Dahmer, plus he's been running around the house with a bald ass where they shaved him to chop his nuts off. Apparently the first day he was all disoriented and couldn't seem to jump on top of stuff with the same Puma tenacity but now he's back to normal, kicking ass and doing his best to get stepped on while I'm cooking pasta in the kitchen. I was also informed of the semi sad news that he's going to accompany my housemate John when he heads home to Wisconsin next month. We're all going to miss him and all, but he really is John and Kat's cat more than anyone else's and we all know they're going to take good care of him. The people I do feel sorry for are gonna be the other people on the 12 hour flight to Miami seeing as Puma's gonna be in the cabin with John and I'm sorry but no amount of sedatives will keep him from crying from the depths of his cage for a good chunk of the flight. Be brave, you little bastard, be brave.
In the wintertime the clouds drop and so does the smog here in Santiago, and this combined with the unfortunate geography of having high mountains surrounding the city on every side except the one where the wind comes from turns the air a thicky, chocolatey brown for the duration of the winter. Oh well, at least I'll be a little extra excited the next time I see a blue sky. The city still rules though. This Saturday is the Mapuche new year, gonna go to some park to watch the festivities go down. Also gonna check concert listings and the like, there's gonna be more than enough to keep me busy for the next couple of months, that is if I come home. Which I probably will. But no promises. hehe.
Oh, I developed 133 photos yesterday, I ended up only losing 10 of the photos from the roll I thought I lost completely. The rest are slighty damaged but still okay, and the pictures I took of the foxes in Tierra del Fuego national park didn't survive (an omen?) but more or less I'm happy with the results.
And as we tend to watch way too much soccer in my house on calle Salvador, there's a match starting in a half hour or so so I'm up out this piece.