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So if you don’t know yet, now you do. We’re home again. Home home. Chattanooga home.

Yes, yes, we are a week or two early. We flew on Delta Buddy Passes (aka Standby) thanks to some close and generous friends. We had been looking at the flights for when we were planning to leave and the flights for this past week, just to see our chances of getting out. We found something interesting. The flights were going out with all Standbys getting on the flight and still having tons of open spots. Our original flight was looking okay, but not that great. It was backing up to some Embargo Dates. Embargo Dates are used in areas where Delta ships out a lot of cargo back to the States. Chile is a huge exporter of goods, especially during Autumn. We learned that between the earthquake and the lull before the large Autumn export, everyone was getting on board.

We made a pretty rush decision (like some many of our decisions) to try to make it out this week. In fact, we picked the Thursday night flight out of Santiago which had 97 open seats. Yes, that is a 9 followed by a 7. You hardly ever see that flying Standby. Most of the time on Standby if you see 15 open seats and you’re in the top ten on the waiting list, you’re feeling okay about the flight. The flights next week started tapering off as Delta started taking on more cargo and more regular traffic started coming back on line.

I won’t go into the details of the travel cause it was a lot of sitting on a bus or plane between periods of hurryupand…wait. We took the plunge and started packing and saying our goodbyes. We got on the overnight bus from Puerto Montt to Santiago. Got into Santiago and spent the afternoon with some new friends, Sandor and Nancy, and had a fantastic time. We all met up with Tom (one of the WWOOFers we met on the Campo) at the bus station before we left for the airport. Had a few beers and got a recording of a song about our favorite pig (more to come on that). Got on a plane from Santiago to Atlanta and then barely got on one from Atlanta to Chattanooga. Whew!

And now we’re Home.

We love having the creature comforts we missed living in the Campo. Hot running water, HVAC system, dishwasher, washing machine and dryer, full bodied hoppy beer, not cooking on a wood burning stove, pushing a button to brew coffee, etc. But there are tons of things that I am going to miss.

I miss the Gringo Stare.

I miss being able to have a full conversation with someone knowing that the people around you have no clue what you’re talking about, which includes politely weaving an string of insulting curse words that would make a sailor blush to a vendor that I knew… know… nearly doubled the price ’cause I was a gringo (but I’m totally over it I promise).

I miss the stripped down life that we had for three months.

I miss the view from our house.

I miss being able to get almost anywhere on a bus for almost nothing.

I miss the Campo and all the people who live there and pass through. Scott, Lisa, their children, Nancy and Sandor and Marcela,  Don Ramon, Jorge, Vicente and Margot, Sergio, and of course all the WWOOFers (the Bumblee Bees, Tom, Caitlin, Megan, Rosie, Gus, and Francie(?)). It truly is such a special place and we already miss it terribly.

The one thing that I’m going to miss most of all is my family. In particular the amount of free, open, and simple time that we’ve been able to spend together. I worked maybe 20-25 hours a week so that left a lot of time to spend with Graham, Bennett, and Berry and all of that without the TV, cell phones, play dates, video games, school friends coming over, going over the school friends, meetings, constant email checking, and a myriad of other day to day distractions that we have living Stateside. I can not tell you how wonderful that was and how much good it did for our relationship as a family, as father and son, as father and daughter, and as husband and wife. Words really can’t even begin to describe it.

Now we are back Stateside and trying to incorporate ourselves back into society. We’re still adjusting and I have a feeling it will take some time to find our new niche. Thank you all for the kind words and thoughts on our little adventure. Thank you to all the friends we’ve met along the way. Thank you to Scott and Lisa for opening up your home and sharing your little slice of Chilean life.

Hasta pronto.

Bacon the Pig is an legend unto herself. She lives a life of a queen (granted a fat, smelly queen but a queen nonetheless). She is deeply loved and adored by everyone at the farm. She has had songs written about her where the words “stirred up” and “maple syrup” make up part of the chorus. She has a vast internet following.

Most of all, however, she and Berry have a unique special bond. A bond of friendship, kinship, and a few other “ship” terms. Berry calls her. Berry feeds her our vegetable waste in the morning when we get to the farm house. Bacon comes running and eats everything with gusto. Case in point…

Hope you all are doing well. Chao.

This was all taken a while ago during the Fiesta Costumbrista in Ilque. You can read more about it at Berry’s blog.

With the earthquakes recently and all the violence and looting in the Central Coast region, I wanted to show people what I’ve seen and what I think of when I think about Chile and Chileans during my family’s time here.

This is a traditional dance that people in the audience volunteered to do after one of the formal dance groups. It’s absolute mesmerizing and I wish that I could have gotten more.

And finally here is Bennett dancing with Valentina.

Chao.

We’ve had one stretch of sunny weather so far this summer. Everything else has been pretty hit and miss with rain and sun, with the rain always hanging around. Although with such chaotic and schizophrenic weather you have a good chance of seeing some rainbows.

Here’s one from last night.

Here’s one from this morning.

Chao!

Yesterday was Graham’s Birthday. Before the trip she was worried about having her birthday in Chile. She wouldn’t have any of her family or Stateside friends. It was a big sticking point with her about two months ago. Yesterday was another story. She had a blast and loved it.

Berry baked a cake Sunday in a wood burning stove. She created a delicious white icing with coconut shavings. She melted some chocolate and made a chocolate swirl for the top of the cake(some one thought Berry said chocolate squirrel and was quite upset when there was no squirrel). She then topped it off with fresh raspberries. Berry did a stellar job with the cake. It was fantastic and the ice cream on the side didn’t hurt either.

For dinner we had a little taste of the States. Lisa fixed some homemade pizza crusts and we all had personalized pizzas. It was so good. In fact we’ve had a few parties lately each one with a States feel to it. Of course we had Graham’s birthday, but last Friday Lisa and Scott finished one of their many marathon like goals. To celebrate this, Saturday night we had an traditional summer grill out with hamburgers, hot dogs, papas fritas, and potato chips. Some neighbors stopped by and brought along a couple of bottles of apple chicha which was quite tasty. Congratulations to them for getting one more piece of their puzzle set into place.

Here’s a few shots of the birthday celebration. Starting with Berry’s wood oven baked cake.

Here are some shots of the Birthday Girl and various hangers on.

The peak event of the afternoon, blowing out of the candles and the wish.

No photos of Cochamó yet. They’re ready, but I haven’t put words down yet. Berry has words down, but not all the photos up. We’ll get there soon, but here’s one from Cochamó that is now my favorite photo of our entire adventure so far. In fact it is now the background on my computer desktop.

We miss you all. Chao!

Whew! What an adventure! That was freaking cool! How many sentences can I write with and exclamation point!?

Ok, enough of that. We’re back at the farm. Long story short, the kids were great. We all had a good time. If you are reading these words you must visit Cochamó, more specifically the La Junta valley, at least once in your life. It is stunning. We spent two full days there and could have easily spent two weeks.

Berry and I have a ton of pictures and our own stories to tell, but that has to wait for later.

Yup, move along… no pictures here to see. No, honestly no pictures. Go look at awkward family portraits, LOLCats, or something.

Don’t look at me like that. No means no. Yeah, I know it’s mean. You’ll enjoy them when I have time… but… yeah… I gotta get back to work… but… um…

Ok… here.

Bridges are really over rated.

Now go waste your time some where else….

Things are starting to dry up around here. The rain isn’t as prevalent as it has been. The part of the road that leads up to our house is usually a small creek, but now with the drier weather it is a small brook.

Over the next week or so it’s supposed to be really nice and sunny just in time for our Christmas trip. Yeah, we’ve finally rescheduled our Christmas trip and it starts this Friday! We are heading to Cochamó. It is supposed to be simply gorgeous and magical. Bradley and Brandie (aka The Bumble Bees), the WWOOFers who have been at the farm just a few days longer than we have, went to Cochamó a couple of weeks ago and loved it.

We’re going with the outfitters called Campo Aventura. Weather permitting we’ll be going on a boat ride to a sea lion colony and then to a natural hot springs. We’ll also be heading up to La Junta which is a high valley about 8-10km from town. That is where a lot of the beautiful pictures in the above links were taken. All four of us will be going on horses through a temperate rain forests up to this valley. We’ll be staying up there for 3 days and 3 nights to hike, explore, and relax around the valley. To say we are excited about our upcoming mini-adventure would be an understatement.

This is all to say that we will be out of contact from the 22nd until the 29th, so the family and friends who naturally worry about us and our foolish follies won’t think we’ve dropped off the edge of Patagonia. When we get back we’ll have SD cards full of pictures and hopefully more really interesting stories to tell.

I’ll leave you some pictures from the sunset that I was looking forward to see in this post. All of these were taken from the front yard of the Hill House. We’ll be back on line on the 29th until then… Chao.

Nothing big today, I’m just posting a quick glimpse into yesterday morning. I slept in and Berry was very industrious. She cooked a nice big breakfast and the kids and I poked around on the computer and did a little bit of school stuff. All in all a pretty relaxed start to our day.

Wow! What a great day in Puerto Varas. We got up around 6am to get everyone ready to get to the bus stop at the end of the road at 7:20. It started out very overcast and a bit foggy. Mist was rising off the grass and flowers as we walked down the road. It was absolutely beautiful. A couple of buses later we were in Puerto Varas(PV). It was almost 9am and very little was open. Most shops open around 10-ish so we had some time to walk around the center of town.

It’s really easy to get around downtown PV. It’s only about about 10-15 blocks long and wide and Lake Llanquihue is always close. We found the only restaurant that was open, Cafe Dane’s, which is known for their large portions and their empanadas. After a nice big breakfast there, we went down through some tourist shops, through the Plaza de Armas, and then finally down to the water front and what they call a beach. The beach is a bit dirty and brown, but the kids took to it quickly and had a blast. Before we knew it they were soaked and they got down to their underwear and t-shirts.

We ended up staying at the beach for a couple of hours. The clouds that started our day burned off and we soon found our selves on a picture perfect day in Southern Chile. Berry met a girl from Holland via Canada who was heading down to Antarctica. She’s well on her way to visit all seven continents before she’s 30. She just has two more left, Africa and Australia. I ended up renting a canoe and taking both kids out on the lake. It was a blast.

We left the beach then grabbed some fantastic chocolate. We consumed about $6 worth of chocolate in less than a minute. After that we figured out we were all ravenous. We grabbed lunch at a nice place just down from the beach. We met some more people from Holland and Spain. Graham talked with them for quite some time. It was a nice afternoon. We tried a new beer called Kross that we heard good things about from Bradley. Their Mai Bock is absolutely fantastic.

By the time we finished lunch it was almost time to leave to catch our bus back to the campo. We walked quickly through some more markets and stopped by Cafe Dane’s again to grab apple strudel and empanadas for breakfast and dinner the next day (the apple strudel was delectable by the way). We grabbed the bus back to Puerto Montt. After a little bit of a wait we caught the bus back to campo, the Calbuco Por Costa. It was a Friday afternoon and the last bus that goes through the campo so it was jam packed with families, grandparents, workers, and gringos (the Bumble Bees and us).

It was such a great fun day for our family and we plan to make more trips around PV and the surrounding lakes. Berry and I are planning to try to climb Volcano Osorno later this summer. When we go we’ll definitely let you know about our adventures.

Chao!

UPDATE: Here is Berry’s version of the day.

Although the country side is beautiful, I find that my eyes always are drawn to the sky. We are about an hour from the mountains so there is plenty of open space to see the everything above. That is when it’s not raining. The picture to the left does not do any justice to what I actually experienced walking across the campo a few days ago. It was fantastic with the wind whipping around as the clouds were racing through the sky. Another front was coming and we would get a huge down pour that night.

We had a late night last night so we decided not to head to Puerto Varas today. We will go in tomorrow. We slept in and were greeted with an absolutely gorgeous day. We even saw the elusive Volcano Yates which is much more shy and rarely seen than Osorno and Calbuco. If the sky holds we will have some stunning pictures to come from the sunset this evening.

Below are a series from last night as the last batch of rain left. Again pictures just do not even come close to the magic that was on display.