Another description of the past -- this was my trip to Villarica, around new years:
After leaving Valparaiso, I took a night bus to Villarica. Villarica is a smaller city, about 30 minutes away from Pucón. It's right on the shore of Lake Villarica, with amazing views of snow-covered Volcan Villarica across the lake. I'd been wanting to get out of cities a bit more, and Villarica was a good place to go to do that. Pucón, next door, is a major tourist destination for hiking, rafting, climbing, and so on, and Villarica has all of the same options without as much of the tourist scene.
I arrived fairly early on the bus, and most everything was closed, so I walked down to the lake with my backpack, and just sat and watched the water for a while. Beautiful, and relaxing.
I spent a while trying to find the hostel that someone I bumped into had recommended, but it wasn't were the guide book said it would be, and I didn't manage to find it anywhere else. I ended up staying that night in a well-known hostel run by a swiss woman. It was full of Europeans -- I was, I think, the only one there who didn't speak some form of german. I didn't really like the place; I didn't feel comfortable with the people, and it was expensive for what was there. I mention this only because it's probably the first time on the trip when I've been uncomfortable around other travelers or people in this way. I don't know if it was just because it was a small island of a different culture, or if it was because I was American, or what, but something didn't click.
The next day, I took my stuff with me and left early to climb Volcan Villarica. I went with one of the local tour agencies to climb the mountain, as I didn't know what to expect and wasn't sure if it would be wise to do it alone. As it turns out the climb was technically very easy -- the snow was all soft, so we had no use for crampons, and the ice axe was just a walking stick. However, in different weather the climb could have been much more difficult.
The climb was absolutely beautiful. The views of the Pucón area were great, and the day was perfectly clear. From the top you could see several other volcanos, three or four different lakes, small, green mountains, large blue and white mountains... just beautiful. Villarica is anactive volcano, and many days you can see lava boiling inside the crater. Unfortunately, today was not one of those days, but there was still no doubt that we were on top of an active volcano. There was a lot of volcanic gas pouring out of the crater (which I'm sure was just wonderful for my lungs), scattered fumeroles, and piles of volcanic pumice and ropey lava. Looking down from the top you could see old lava flows extending out into the forest in all directions.
I didn't have any plans for New Year's eve that morning, and I was hoping to meet some people on the hike to spend it with. As it turns out, that didn't happen. When I got back to Villarica, though, I found a new hostel and ended up going out to the disco with one of the people in the family that ran the hostel, and several of his friends. They were a group of four guys, probably 19 to 21 years old. I must be getting old, because it felt like they were quite young.
This was an interesting evening. Villarica is a small town, and the bar/disco that we went to was not a particularly good one, but it was safer than the other ones in Villarica (one guy mentioned having a knife pulled up him last time he was at the other bar they were thinking about going to), and the people I was with didn't have a car to get anywhere else. The bar didn't even open 'till one, and things didn't get started until 2 or 3.
Unlike in the states, the dance floor was filled only with couples. Before getting up to dance, you had to ask someone to dance with you. I'm naturally pretty shy, and not speaking the language makes this much worse, so I wasn't really excited about that idea. However, before I really knew what was happening, the guy that I showed up with asked someone he knew to dance, and asked her friend to dance with me.
She was quite friendly and willing to tolerate my broken Spanish, which was especially difficult over the noise in the disco. She was older, blonde, and fairly tall, and did some sort of work in the public heath sector, though I didn't quite understand what. We spent a while talking about all manner of different things, including differences in relationships between the states and Chile.
Although on first impression Chile seems very similar to the states in terms of standards of living and infrastructure, the culture underneath has a different origin. Chile is still a Catholic country, and as such, has a population that does not use condoms, etc.. It definitely shows -- there are a large number of very young mothers everywhere. As I understand it, AIDS has not exploded in Chile yet, at least not like it has in many other South American countries, but health officials are clearly worried. (I think part of the reason why AIDS has not been a major problem is that Chile, historically, has been a fairly insular country, especially under Pinochet.)
I asked later about how the gender roles work out in marriage here, typically. I got the answer I was expecting -- "Very unequal. There's lots of violence."
After talking to her for a while, she asked me how old I was. When I told her she looked a little bit surprised, then told me she was forty. My turn to be a little bit surprised. She was also married, which shouldn't really have been surprising, especially given the ring on her finger, but wasn't something that has crossed my mind. At this point, I was really rather confused. We'd been talking for a while, and flirting a bit, so this threw me for a loop.
After a little while, I went back to the table and talked to the people from the hostel that I came with. They assured me that this was totally normal for Chielean culture. "She may be married, but she's not dead." Or, "She may be 40, but she's not dead." And, my favorite, "In Chile, everybody is single after midnight." I suppose this is to be expected in a country with no divorce law and a high teenage pregnancy rate, but it all seemed very strange. I went back and danced more, and continued talking and having a good time. After an hour or two, she said she was feeling tired and wanted to go home, but asked if I wanted to dance to one more song first. "Sure," I said, "I'd love to." We danced for a while, and after some amount of time I noticed her friends all giggling and laughing. At this point, I knew that I had missed more than one signal to make a move, but I didn't know what they were. Furthermore, I was feeling quite timid. After all, she's married, and 16 years older than me! She left, giving me the usual kiss on the cheek on her way out.
I went back to my table, where I took a lot of flack for not making a move. So it goes. Not long after, we left the bar and wandered down to the beach to watch the sun rise over the lake and the volcano. It was an absolutely beautiful morning.
Wandering around the beach, we ran into several different groups of people in their late teens and early-20s sitting in circles, drinking wine, playing guitar, and singing songs. I could follow along well enough, and it made for a perfect morning and a great start to the new year.
The rest of the first was uneventful. I slept a lot, and went to the beach with the rest of the town. Nice. Relaxed. The day after I took a day hike in Parque Nacional Huequeue, which was absolutely beautiful. That's a story better told by pictures, though...
Posted by vanwie at January 12, 2004 02:30 PM