I have lots of pictures to post, but they’re not for the dialup connection of the beautiful ranch house I’m now typing from. So here’s text through yesterday (in two posts).

I need to learn to slow down. In Puerto Montt, a pretty girl stopped and looked at me, popsicle in pose. “¿Tienes un cigarette para la chica?” I could have said a dozen things: “Not on me, can I offer you something else?” Instead, just like I would some days in English, I mumbled a “No,” and moved on. But she was there: “¿No fumar?” “Not today– want some fruit juice?” Instead, another, “No.” Still, she tried, as I walked by, but too fast for me to follow. I half pretended I didn’t hear. It’s must have made her feel crumby.

My first afternoon in Puerto Montt, I headed out along the shore, walking well outside of the town center. Suddenly, I came apon an interminable row of tourist handicraft stores, and was surrounded by elderly, camera-toting, English speakers, like there was a great granparent relocation program. The street finally ended in an resort-looking, fish-smelling shopping center, with a big entrance and no exit. I decided to pull a Vandiver and took for the hills. I didn’t get much into the wilderness, but I did get yelled at by Chilean from his window.

The next day, I went on a full-day tour of Chiloe, the first island drip off Chile’s sopping nether-regions. The jolly tour guide, who kept tweaking his nipples, told our group plenty in Spanish that I couldn’t follow. A dutch hosteller came too (which created a pocket of English around us), but the tour was fun for the pictures and the boat trips. The plantlife has a huge diversity there, but Chileans are not to be outdone. In the US, the Smith house is white (with picket fence). In Chile, I think it’s blue, with green trim, and has an orange roof.

At a fort in Chiloe, another tourguide asked if I wanted him to take my picture for me. “No, gracias.” “Oh! ¿Que pais? ¿Frances?” “Los Estados Unidos.” “Ah! So who do you want for president? Osama? Edwards? Clinton? Who are you going to vote for?” “Um, probably Obama.” He shook my shoulder. “Yes! I too think Obama will bethe next. He’s young! Brings change.”

Valparaiso is the most turisty town I’ve ever encountered (filled with Chilean turists, but still). The sidewalks are crammed with street sellers, food stands, performers of all sorts. Commercialism is rampant: the parks are filled with holidayers, but also with rides and cotton candy. The historic area is small, and overgrown with street vendors. It’s exciting in a way, but I’m happy to leave. Valparaiso’s one redeeming aspect is its hills, which stretch so erratically that the sidewalks need elevators when stairs don’t cut it. I visited Pablo Neruda’s house– ah, to be a poet.

I *love* public transit in not-the-US. The Santiago Metro comes about every minute, and there are buses everywhere all the time. I took el cheapo bus from Santiago to Valparaiso– it was half the price of the Fung Wa (for half the distance, but still), twice the comfort of Greyhound, and it left every 20 minutes.

Hmm, I wrote that before taking an overnight bus down to Puerto Montt, which wasn’t much fun. The guy next to me kept singing to his mp3 player; there was a toddler and his even-louder parents right behind me; and after showing a movie (an English made-for-TV adaptation of Paolini’s Inheritance cycle), they left it on the DVD’s skipping intro music screen until after I fell asleep. So it goes.

“The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in Puerto Montt.” Is that how the saying goes? It’s not actually that cold here, but you’d never know it by the way the Chileans are bundled up. Puerto Montt is a charming and bustling seaside town in southern Chile that forms the gateway to Patagonia, a place so beautiful I don’t have time to see it, and sits on the southern edge of the Chile Lake District, a region so beautiful I slept through most of it. But with any luck, I’ll be spending the next couple days enjoy some pockets of beauty before busing across the Andes into Argentina. I just heard that from my first couchsurf-host (couchsurfee?), and I’ll be staying on a farm in Neuquén. Wee!

Here are pictures from my last two days in Santiago.

Happy House Hostel	Political Mosaic	Santiago Cathedral	Church in Barrio Brazil
Santa Lucia “Castle”	Santiago from Santa Lucia	Santa Lucia Park	Penis Drinking Cup

My hostel has really cool atmosphere– crazy wood work everywhere, bamboo and candles; the public computer is sitting in a rock garden.

The Penis Drinking Cup is a neat invention (I couldn’t take pictures in the museum, so it’s from their book). The holes in the crown make it so you have to drink from the tip.

One of the powers of travel– or maybe it’s of truered‘s book– is that it makes you think about the direction of your life. I told a friend recently that what I wanted in life more than anything– more than enlightenment or good friends or incredible experiences– was to leave it a better place than I found it. But instead over the past two years, I’ve spent my time chasing after women, spending gobs of money and time to start a travel blog business, and spending more to see the world. And for what? To better be a person, to make something cool, to understand the world? It’s all dry-runs; practicing instead of doing. I’m the only one to benefit. And for all the fun I get out of my contract work, it’s just fun; I can’t take pride in it, because it’s isn’t helping anyone.

There are a million ways my skills could go towards making this world a better place. I have a project already made to help college students find host homes in swing states so they can change the political sphere. My aunt is bringing infrastructure and computers to the wilds of Costa Rica. One Laptop Per Child needs skilled programmers. And if all else fails, there’s always Pakistani schools.

I’ve been thinking of where to go when I leave Cambridge. Prague has a huge appeal. It’s a place for artists, and people who live life as art. We are all artists, desperately trying to manifest our deepest selves, and let our art shine so that someone else will want to share its glow. That (translated, distilled, reduced) was the understanding that came from my recent acid trip.

Now I disagree. Life is love, and a love of art is to mistake the finger pointing for the object it’s pointing at. Loving is easy; I don’t want to love my art– I’d rather love children in third-world countries.

Of course, I won’t totally give up life as art. It’s too much a part of me. Or for that matter give up chasing women (especially not in this lovely country) or my travel blog (it will be great and useful) or travel (it continues to serve me well). But Prague? I’m more likely to move to Africa.

Sorry to hear that Massachusetts is swimming in snow– I’d happily send up some of this heat if I could. I’ll bring some when I come back!

Have I mentioned recently how much I love travel? Last night, one of the hostel workers grabbed a bunch of alcohol and and told anyone who wandered by to come drink. I met a dozen new friends, talking late into the night, two of whom told me to stay at their houses when I next visit London and Germany.

I spent some time getting Santiago under my feet over the past two days. The city is peppered with parks, tripping over its trees, peddling in pedestrian bridges. And there are couples everywhere: smooching in the Metrored, or humping in the parques, or holding each other on the sidewalk– I can only guess what they do behind closed doors! Don’t these Chileans have any decency??? Not even in Verona have I seen such public affection. And I saw them everywhere drinking in the (ample) nightlife or just enjoying each others company.

A bar near my hostel in the student-heavy Barrio Brazil was blasting a Spanish version of the Pixies “Where is My Mind?”. Dogs share the streets, in couples as often as the humans. There are minimarts and convenience stands on every corner, and food (stands, holes in the wall, tables outside) everywhere. And the whole place is also rather… pungent.

Yesterday I hit up the Precolumbian Archeology Museum, which was having a temporary exhibit on Sexo y Poder y Muerte (sex, power, and death) in Moche society. So I got to look at little stone figurines engaging in all manner of positions.

Santiago’s other great love appears to be shopping. The city center is a maze of stores spilling into the sidewalks, . I went to my two favorite treasure troves of culture: the grocery store (very little readymade food; I had to try checking out three times as two of my three purchases needed little custom cost stickers) and the sex store (The biggest of the three I found had more dildos than I’ve ever seen in my life! Also in vogue appear to be underwear shaped into animal faces– I must get myself a pair.)

Today I’m headed to the culture-hyped port town Valparaíso. Pictures uploading…

Getting to South America was an uneventful trip, except for the beginning and the end. My 10:30 pm bus to New York City got in a little early, but I ended up wandering around for a bit finding the Metro and then taking more time changing my mind about how to best get to the airport. All said, I finally got to the terminal less than an hour before my flight. I asked the closest desk person for directions. “Where are you going?” “Panama city.” “I think they already said that flight was bording– when’s your flight?” “In less than an hour.” Her eyes got really wide, so I tried to act sheepish. She made a quick call, and then directed me. The woman called out to me as I approached. “You’re the last one! Get your bag up here before they kick me off.”

But it all worked. 22 hours of travel from Boston, and I touched down in Santiago. I was apparently the only flier from the US– no one else went to pay the “reciprocity fee” that Chile makes us pay because we make them pay it. The moment I came out of the baggage area, a nice man asked me where I was going. “I’m looking for an internet cafe.” He ushered me out, “Not possible here; you have to go to the city center”, and then over to the ATM when I said I didn’t have pesos yet. “Get 100.000 out.” (That’s about $200) I did. He held out his hand, “That’s for me, I help you.” Nooooo. I explained that I knew there was a bus that could take me to the city for $3. “The same, the same, that’s 60 (thousand) pesos.” Nooooo. More like 6. The bus I wanted drove by as he tried to usher me to the taxis. No, thanks. He tries another tact: “I help you. The tip is up to you.” I only had 20.000 peso notes. No, thanks.

Now I’m in a nice Internet Cafe in beautiful Santiago, Chile, a city which appears to love its food. From the plane, the area looked gorgeous: jagged sillouette mountains, cupping fog-hidden valleys. A river shone like a tangled ball of gold yarn toward the sea. Santiago is in a big flat valley, surrounded by fields, with the Andes never far away. I’ll post pictures after I take some. My couchsurf didn’t respond, so I’m headed to the Happy House Hostel.

stars_gone_nova mentioned needing a 2008 calendar. And I recently made a very simple half-sheet calendar that I carry around with me as a proxy for the detailed calendar I keep at home. It’s a replacement for the Harvard Book Store bookmark that served as my travel-calendar in 2007. It occurred to me that other people might want to use it, so here it is.

Get the PDF or Visio Source.

I printed it on card stock. If you want one printed on card stock (and you’re willing to wait until early February), I’m happy to make it for you. I can also make smallish changes, if you want something differently sized, for example.

Behind the cut is the list of my favorite 500 songs as of now. Or as of some nebulous time over the past several months, since that’s how long it took me to put this together.

One of my 101/1001 goals is to either own or get directly from friends at least half of these songs. Why does it matter how I get them, since I already have the audio? Because bit quality matters, and getting the song in the context of the full CD matters, and if the artist is little-enough-known that my well-versed friends don’t have their music, they could probably use my money. So help me out! What of this can you lend me?

Or suggest more songs I might like! I don’t listen to radio or Pandora much, so I either get my music from my friends or from my grocery store (sad, but true). I’d rather it be from you’all.

These are songs for all of my moods. These are the songs I sing to when I’m alone (which I do loudly). I know that some of it isn’t good music. It’s just what I’ve run across, or thought to chase down, or was easy to download. I don’t exactly endorse this music– I’d only recommend a fraction of it– but I do enjoy it a lot. Maybe you will too. I will gladly pass on any of this (or all of it), just ask me.

My Top 500 Songs

I’d been waiting for the day to be right for me to talk to my neighbors about late-night party noise. And then today happened, and I realized we were here.

I visited all the houses around and rang all the doorbells. With one exception, the answer I got was “I didn’t hear a thing.” One neighbor said, “I would never have a problem with it. I’ve lived here for 30 years; I play my music loud; you guys have fun.” That’s what my neighborhood is good at. One person wants to come to a party. I think another is hiding a dead body in their apartment.

The exception was from the neighbors who called the cops the first time (not last time). They said the problem was people on the porch talking. That night, they talked to the porch-talkers, who quieted down, but an hour later it was just as bad, so they called the cops. They said that even when they came down to talk to the people on the porch, they couldn’t hear the noise of the party.

I collected email addresses, and distributed my contact information. The bottom-line, as far as I can tell, is everything’s cool, but there needs to be a new rule: keep it really down on the porch! I might place a limit on the number of people who can be out on the porch at a time too (any thoughts on that?).

My next Rocky party will be February sometime.

Diana’s New Year’s party was excellent as always. Endless good discussion, and some fond farewells and goodlucks. And more food than you can shake a crystallized fondue fountain at. There’s a beauty in never knowing when a Rocky party will hit its high. For me, it was after most people had left, with the phrase “moist pussy shit”, and the surrounding discussion such as only Rockies can have.

Below are my pictures from visiting my sister in Utah. My brother Terrence has discovered the apathy game, but he isn’t very good at it and tries too hard. I love my nieces! I hope they get out of Mormanland alive. But while there, at least they can appreciate the god-smackingly gorgeous Zion National Park. Serene [eldest niece] trekked a good trail without any help, despite Joe’s [my step-dad] over-bearing parentalism.

Joe, Serene, Jasmine	Mom, Terry, Jarrah, Joe	Jade	Terrence
Sandy Hollow	Sandy Hollow	Sandy Hollow	Sandy Hollow
Serene in Zion	Zion National Park	Bird in Zion	Along the Trail

This year’s holiday season has been the best in recent memory, and full to overflowing. But I’m glad it’s over, because the next six months are filling up fast.

My friends are truly incredible people. But as wonderful as you all are, I’ve never seen anything as beautiful as the swarming bacteria here. Talk about god-smacking…