Pucon

Well your in for a treat this time, I have in deed attached a photo of Sudoku South American style, or what I call "Sudoporn" now why you disguise a perfectly respectable logic game inside a soft porn cover is beyond me, one wouldn't like fellow passengers on the bus to know your engaged in a semi-intellectual pursuit, no so much better that they think your a pervy type who is just upping your hormone level or something. Call it a culture chasm, and yes the girl I bought it off did look at me twice.
Other things I love about Sth America include that their is a section in the yellow pages entitled "Vigilantes" now I know it's just security guards but somehow being called a vigilante has got to increase your cool quotient.

There are stray dogs here, not so mangy and skinny as the Thai kind, more an unconnected tribe of hobos. So poopy does not get scoopied and the streets can be a little vile in the cities where there are no grass berms, but luckily Chile does have a lot of parks so things are not as bad as they could be. There is even a park in Valparaiso that has a bunch of dog statues around a very odd central statue which shows some midget men (possibly Mapuche men) nursing from a giant odd looking female dog.

The food here is rather repeatative, luckily I like avocadoes (a lot). But the "completoes" are more or less compulsory fare, they are basically a hotdog in a white bread roll with tomatoe, avocado and a wacking great dolop of mayo on top, I did take a rather bad photo of a promotion for one of these and a beer, it was (rather amusingly I thought) called a "gut promotion" (I know it's a german themed pub, but still funny).

When the light turns red you don't only have the junkies trying to wash your car windows for pesos, you also have acrobats and jugglers step out into the road and do their thing, which is much more fun in my book, I'm not sure of they make money out of it, but still, enterprising I think!

There is so much street art / grafitti here (it really is hard to tell which is which, I certainly prefer some of the "grafitti" to some of the "art") It makes me wonder about the personal reasons behind each work I've kind of concluded that some people do beautiful respectful work, while some people do thought provoking (sometimes) mass produced or political stencil art and others just do rude crude "tags" or the equivalent of territorial pissing. I guess it's kind of a window onto their personality, some people are rude and crude and others think about the context of their stuff before they start, maybe it reinforces the idea that every thing you do is an expression of your self, not only what you do but how and where you do it as well, obviously this form of public art if not exactly legal here is encouraged on some level (and many of the large works on public walk ways must be legal) and I'm sure more than one business and home owner have actually sought out someone to paint their house wall.

I have also had someone attempt to steal something out of my bag, I was amazed how quiet and efficient they were, I didn't even notice the attempt till well after the event, but I never carry anything valuable in the front pocket of my backpack for this very reason, luckily they didn't see any value in my glasses or contact lens fluid so they had wasted their time on that particular occassion.

I have left Santiago and gone South through Chillan and Villarica and am now hanging out in Pucon, it's beautiful here next to mount Villarica a still active volcano which I climbed (a 4 hour uphill trudge) my guide assured me he can do it in 2, argggh. Luckily we slid down the glacier at least half the way down, and got a numb bum despite wearing protective slidding clothes and a slidding "nappy" it was great fun if decidedly unglamorous.

Tomorrow I head for Valdivia while all remains relatively quiet on the work front, I've been offered a couple of language school gigs in Buenos Aires but I'm not sure they are what I want, we shall see.

Till next time, keep safe, besos,