Date Night Con Karlito: Liguria!
Last night Karlito took me on a sweet date, a walk to the Baquedano area for some Santiago exploration, and then dinner at a restaurant that's hailed as the best in the city: Liguria! Chock full of atmosphere, the restaurant sports black and white checkered floors, classic bar stools, and the waitstaff look like they belong in a good ol boys club.
We had a spectacular meal! We started with some homemade bread and
pebre, a fresh, mild salsa that is deliciously spectacular. We then had Scallops Parmesan that came with a delicious cheese and were cooked in butter. Amazing! Our main dish was grilled Chilean sea bass, accompanied by Pure Chilena, which were basically mashed potatoes with onions, bacon, and cheese, very much like funeral potatoes. Everything was incredible!
Here I am showing off one of the sea shell baked scallops. (Also, I love it that Karl brought me a delicious bass.)
Here we are with some Chilean friends we made across the aisle. Pisco Sours make everyone Amigos!
Bellavista shopping = a great date.
A cool statue at Baquedano.
Karl gets a kiss for taking me on such a great date.
A taste:
[Lago Villarica]
Pucon: an adrenaline junkie's paradise, and possibly one of the most incredible places on earth. Karl and I and eight of our buddies jumped in a van on Friday and drove 10 hours south to Villarica, where we rented a cabin, and Pucon, where we went river rafting, zip lining, geothermal hot tub soaking, and volcano climbing.
Karlito and I also had a really awesome experience at the Villarica Branch on Sunday. The Chilean people here are incredibly friendly, and in this branch someone came all the way across the chapel to find out who we were and what we were up to in small-town Villarica. And! I could actually talk to this guy! In Spanish! In, probably, the slowest/worst Spanish of all time, but he understood! And over here, understanding is a huge victory for me.
Okay, so I took about 300 amazing pictures of the weekend, and when I tried to put them on my computer, I ran out of memory space. Yeaaah... that's not so good. So I'll post a few of the pictures that some of my friends have posted online, and hopefully by tonight I'll have some more pictures of Pucon to share.
[Just getting warmed up]
[I can't believe no one fell out]
[Volcan Villarica: An active volcano]
Cascadas de las Animas
This weekend's adventure was a collectivo ride into Maipo Canyon, where Karlito and I and a group of our BFFs spent two days pretty much doing all things fun. Karl and I met up with our buddy, Paul and we went on a guided hike to the Cascadas de las Animas, or the Waterfalls of the Spirits. The switchbacks were lined with orange wildflowers and the horizon cut by the Andes.
Nightfall brought a bonfire, a barbecue, some old camp songs (much to most everyone's dismay), and some new international friends together for a real fiesta, punctuated with the discovery of a scorpion living in the grill. That night we all bunked up in a two-story cabin (that incidentally has a nicer bathroom than I do at mi casa en Santiago).
On Monday the lot of us went horseback riding on a steep trail up to a place called Meseta. For those of you just joining us, I have been terrified of horseback riding for, let's say, my whole life. I tried it last year, with limited success (my friend Wes ended up holding the reins and guiding my horse for the entire time, as I choked back tears). This was different. The horse was a complete sweetheart, and even trotted a little just to make things fun for me. Next up: Kristen the horse-whisperer.
Back to the ride. It was an enormous amount to take in: everything you'd expect (hills, trees, vistas, etc.) but on a sublime scale, everything terrible and fantastic. Walnut groves, vineyards, ponies (ponies!), cliffs and incredible angles.
Pros: Amazing fruit, mountain water, excellent company, the rush of seeing something for the first time.
Cons: I managed to fall down a flight of wooden stairs (while carrying Karlito's laptop) and banged up my arm pretty badly. Thankfully it's not broken (well, I have full rotation, which leads me to believe it's not broken despite the nasty color of my elbow.)
And your reward for reading this whole post without pictures is: a link to the pictures posted on facebook. (Trust me, the internet here takes a super long time to post pictures, so rather than do it twice, we're just going to link.)
Hasta la Pasta!
k.
Saturday, October 24
This morning Kristen and I woke up and decided to explore our surroundings a little more. The weather finally warmed up a little after several days of 50 degree weather, so it was a great opportunity to get out and walk around the city a little bit more.
We decided to walk the route to our assigned ward so we could get there quickly in the morning without getting lost. Upon approaching the address we realized our ward is literally next door to the Santiago temple! We met a very nice couple from Vina del Mar whose names were Christian and Carol. We thought it was funny since our names are Karl and Kristen. They were so nice and talked to us for a few minutes. They even gave us their email address and offered us a place to stay when we go to Vina del Mar in a few weeks.
We took a few pictures of the temple and walked the grounds for a bit. A lot of people had come up from Concepcion in groups via bus and stayed in the LDS hostel on site. We then started walking through more of Providencia.
We stopped for a quick bite to eat at our new favorite place, Castano. It's a chain bakery that has very good food, from muffins and rolls to empanadas and juices. We tried some empanadas de pino. They were alright, not as good as the empanadas de pollo, though (chicken).
After lunch we continued walking and found an arts and crafts fair that was going on at the Providencia City Hall. 
We perused the different crafts people were selling and took some pictures of the grounds. The building is a mansion that's been converted to a city hall. We walked around inside and a nice woman named Victoria started telling us all about the different features of the buidling. Even though she didn't speak any english and our spanish was broken at times, we were able to understand quite a bit, a testament to our Spanish classes this week over at BridgeLinguatec. Kristen and I both really enjoyed the tour and got to practice our spanish quite a bit.
We then walked over to the Santiago Municipal Park and walked around for a bit. It is a large park situated on a hill in the city. We hiked up the mountain a small distance to get to a Japanese Garden on the hill. It was beautiful and offered fantastic views of downtown Santiago and the Andes mountains in the distance. Because the weather hasn't been so great lately, there has been an inversion that obscured the view, but it was still beautiful.
We then joined our friends from Notre Dame at a sports bar called California.
They had the Notre Dame vs. Boston College game in HD, so all of our classmates were there cheering on the Irish! There were even a few Boston College fans there. We had an amazing BBQ chicken pizza with pineapple. It was so tasty!
Tomorrow we are going to go to a place outside of Santiago called Cascada de las Animas. It is in the mountains and has small cabins. A group of us are going there for a few days to enjoy the mountains and the outdoor opportunities Santiago has to offer. More pictures and stories to follow for sure!
Y Hola de Kristen!
Hi everyone! Karl's already given y'all the run-down on the last two days, so I'll just say HOLA! and post a few pictures of our adventures: