Christina Travels: Chile: Punta Arenas

In the US, I live about three hours away from Boston, the nearest city. Here in Chile, my town, Puerto Natales, is about three hours away from Punta Arenas, the nearest city. The difference? There aren't any other towns here. You have to either enter Argentina or fly north to find another city. If you need something that isn't in Puerto Natales, you have to go to Punta Arenas. On the three hour trip between Natales and Punta Arenas, there is nothing but landscape, cows and sheep. The road between the two is called Ruta Fin del Mundo. Because Natales is small (19000 people) and centered on tourism, there aren't really places to shop. Of course there are plenty of grocery stores, school supply stores, and there are some clothing stores (and a lot of tourist traps), but there aren't stores where you can buy home goods and if you're looking for clothes your choices are very limited. So a trip to Punta Arenas is the only way to buy all the long term items you need.

On Wednesday, I had school until 3:30 (note: last week, not this week). After the bell rang, everyone streamed out the high school door (it's only used for exiting and on Monday's and Tuesday's for entering after lunch. Don't know why). Most people either right away start walking to their houses or wait for their friends to make it through the mad rush out the door. A significant percentage of students (I'd estimate at least a third) whip out their cigarettes and lighters as soon as they've stepped out the gate onto the sidewalk. (Smoking is very common here. To put this in perspective, out of my 10 closer friends, 4 smoke. Every day I walk home with my brother and two of our classmates. Bastian and Carlos don't smoke, but Checho always smokes at least one cigarette during the twenty minute walk.) I was waiting with Carlos, assuming we'd be walking home with Bastian and Checho as usual, but instead Carlos found Tomas and waited for the rush to clear then re-entered the building. I was more than a little confused. Turned out every Wednesday starting this week, there is a meeting of the student resource center group. Basically, they plan things for school spirit, try to make sure everyone is included and welcomed into the school, resolve any conflicts within cursos, tell the school officials what needs to change in order for the students to learn effectively, etc. Anyway, we got home an hour late. (side note: Carlos and I were walking with Tomas and they were talking about trying to get a bunch of the boys together this weekend to watch a movie and I kind of zoned out. All of the sudden, Carlos asked me why I hadn't said hello to her and Tomas told me it was really rude to ignore people. I asked them what they were talking about and they assumed that I didn't understand, very possible but not the case. They started talking really slowly and acting out greeting someone until I finally got the message across that I understood what they were saying but didn't know what they were talking about. Then they explained to me that Antonia from Alemania had passed us on the sidewalk and she'd waved hello and I hadn't responded. I explained I hadn't seen her but the two of them decided it would be good to tease the gringa. So they made me practice saying hola first with them then greeting strangers and pretending I knew them. The poor strangers were probably very confused why an obviously foreign girl in a Chilean school uniform was saying hola and waving to them. Just for the record, when I got home I messaged Antonia and apologized and then ended up talking to her for a good hour.) When we got home, my host mom told us to change out of our uniforms, which we usually don't for several hours cause we're all lazy, and pack some clothes into a bag. At six we were leaving for Punta Arenas and we'd be back Saturday.

We arrived in Punta Arenas around 10:30 and started off by dropping off a ton of eggs we'd brought with us at the house of my host dad's parents (they'd been staying with us the past two weeks and only arrived home an hour before we got there) and then we went to the house of my host mom's sister. We had un cafecito and I met mi tios y mi prima (I'd already met mi primo because Jorge had come to our house for the weekend before he started college). Then we came to the house of my mom's other sister and stayed there. They have a hotel as part of their house. It's hard to explain but essentially you enter the door from the street into a roofed courtyard area and the hotel is at the back and the house is on the left. Like everything in Chile, it's small but not cramped. Living in the house are mi tia, mi tio, a man who I'm fairly certain is my aunt's nephew but not my cousin, my 22-year-old cousin and my 10-year-old cousin. Plus the six of us. Because it's Chile, the teenagers stayed up until 3 am talking and the adults stayed up until 5 am. In the afternoon when everyone woke up, we had lunch and we set out for the day at 3:30 ish. It was a day of shopping. My parents and Nacho went off to buy things like rugs and comforters and clothes and I went with Coni and Carlos. Most clothes are priced about ten dollars cheaper than the equivalent items in the US but there are some things on sale that are much cheaper than you would ever find in the US. For example, there were skinny jean legging things in one store that were around $5 USD (Coni bought a yellow pair and a blue pair). All I bought in the mall was a sweatshirt/jacket that's soft and nice and above all warm. That's a lie, I also bought a completo (Chilean hot dog with guacamole, tomatoe, mayo, mustard, ketchup). Later, I bought a pair of jeans that were $6 USD. (Chilean sizes for pants are much better than American sizes. They actually fit. I've spent hours trying to find just one pair of jeans that fits in the US. Here I tried on one pair of pants and they fit nearly perfectly. And they didn't cost an arm and a leg.) Overall, a very profitable day though not because of the shopping. I'm generally not a very big fan of shopping and the reason this was different is it was lots of fun to go out for the day with my new siblings. Especially because I now understand when they're talking to me and it doesn't hurt my brain to listen to them and try to communicate.

Friday, my family and I slept until one o'clock and then had lunch, played video games, and otherwise relaxed on the couch until something like four pm. Completely normal. Not wasteful or bad in anyway. Just a typical Chilean relaxed day. So because we're in Chile, we left the house at four and went to the house of one of my dad's brothers. (He has four siblings.) We'd run into that brother at the mall the day before with his wife, but now we got to spend an hour or two with the baby. Seven months old and absolutely adorable. Two other brothers showed up and then left with the brother who lived there. My parents also left to go find some of the ingredients necessary for dinner. Coni, Carlos, Nacho, and I played with the baby, watched television, ate (this is a critical part of every visit. It's unusual that a Chilean doesn't offer you food or cafécito or técito) and talked with our tia. When my parents returned, we talked some more, ate onces, and set out for the Zona Franca. It's a mall slash game area slash attraction thing. My host dad bought us sushi (muy rico y muchas gracias a mi papa) and we went into this small movie theater thing. It's 7D and the seats move and it sprays stuff at you. We watched several different short clips designed to make you feel like you were in them (anyone who's been to Disney, it's a mini, adventure-based version of Soarin'). Several of them were like rollercoaster rides in make believe worlds, one was a motorcycle race but in air and on snow, and the last one was a dessert race like the pod races in Star Wars. Then Carlos, Cony and I went skating on the small rink in the center of the Zona Franca. My skates didn't fit properly so I had more trouble balancing than I should have had since I know I can skate perfectly fine and I can do fancier steps and turns. The problem was they were way to wide for my feet and the smaller size wasn't long enough to squish my toes in. Oh well. It was still amazing. After that, the three teenagers were dropped off in the center of town to take pictures in the plaza park thing. Pictures taken, we went to the mini casino- like-thing. I spent two luca and got one luca back (I gave Coni one luca cause she didnt have any money. She won something like three luca and paid me back then lost the other two luca. Nearly everything I played I lost. Note to self: I should never go to a real casino with real money). Carlos spent one luca and won seven luca. There were two types of machines. Regular old slot machines and these soccer machines that are like pinball machines but aren't. I should probably mention at this point that Chilean money is very different from American money. When I say I spent two luca, I mean I spent two thousand pesos. That's four US dollars.
We took a taxi to our tia's house (Carlos didn't wanna walk up the admittedly long and steep hill that makes up the entire return walk and he paid the 500 pesos/one dollar) and when we got there, essentially, my mom's whole family was there. We had a bunch of meat and seafood combined in a dish that I don't remember the name of. The way it's served is an enormous bowl of red meat, chicken, hot dogs, chorizo, a different type of red meat that tastes really smoky, oysters and mussels. The only thing accompanying this bowl is wine or Coca. The mussels were delicious and I must be getting used to Chilean food because the meat was yummy as well.
Saturday we were supposed to return early to Puerto Natales, but at 2 pm, Coni, Nacho and I were still in bed. My host parents bought so much stuff that there wasn't enough room for three teenagers in the backseat, so they sent us home at seven pm on one of the couch busses that regularly makes the trip from Punta Arenas to Puerto Natales. When we arrived at the house, we ordered take out and waited for our parents to arrive so we could all eat dinner together.