(no subject)
Dear folk,
we have, at this point in our expedition, settled down without ceasing to live it up. we live in a family home with an adorable baby named Catari with a strange haircut and his parents, the father with matching strange haircut. additionally, our house mates include a chilean rap star, Lalo, from the group Panteras Negras, and Swedish chef from Chile, Raul, with mad food skillz and a penchant for the bottle and la fiesta who has become our new best friend. all of this is in Valparaiso, Chile, which is pretty much in the middle of looong chile, on the coast. we currently are tongue tied about this place because we like it so much, suffice to say we can see boats and the pacific from our window and our posse of the famous and infamous lead to exciting times when the sun sets. the city is set on a bunch of hills and to get home we walk a picturesque route involving lots of stairs, turns and colorful houses made of aluminum-zinc siding.
we are keeping ourselves busy working on a mural, working in a park, assisting with chef duties for our community eatery including the making of bread in the brick-mud oven we have in the yard. we haven´t eaten this good in a while.
we got here in a truck. hitching here is easy because you can only go in two directions, north or south. so far exciting rides include a bread truck, a sugar truck (sticky and dark!), a long distance private mail courier, coal, a mineral truck for the army, once with a practicing sexologist, and a fruit truck. also a dood that took a detour into town to buy us beers, yogurt and sandwiches then tried to make us sleep in his gypsy friend´s tent. don´t worry, we politely declined and instead his friend flagged down the bus and we escaped by paying twice the amount of a regular ticket and drove into the sunset comfortably tucked in.
the road into chile from argentina was exciting. we stopped in uspallata and then went to puente del inca a la overstuffed vehicle with an argentine family. puente del inca is about 15 kilometers from the border and we saw it covered in snow from atop windy lookouts. also we hung out with about 20 17-year old french students while staying in a hostel/old train car and going on illegal night adventures. we hiked with the french to a glacier in the parque del aconcagua and looked at aconcagua respectfully from a distance. it´s the highest mountain, almost 7000m, outside of the himalayan mountain range. we also explored las cuevas, a ghost town with old buildings and falling down train terminals set amongst snow peaked mountains.
a small excited deaf man took us across the border in an 18-wheeler. he waited for us to go through customs where we were thoroughly sniffed by dogs (we passed!!), our first encounter with professional dogs so far. then we sped down haphazardly a crazy road called the caracoles that has 27 turns, down down down. carey says it look like a pile of toothpaste squeezed out. our driver was a very confidant maneuverer that liked to talk shit about the other drivers, "grummble grummble, he´s going too slow!", but his truck had a problem with gears.
we came to santiago first but we did not like it. we stayed with a girl named henrika who is one of the founders of hospitalityclub.org and has hosted some billions (about 400) of crazies and germans in her nice apartment. she made plenty of fun of irina for her new romantic acquisition of a typewriter. irina is currently working on a novel titled travels with typewriter. the sequel will be titled travels with shitdog. additionally, in santiago, carey tried to make ammends for her undistinguished argentine haircut by getting her first public haircut given by a man-lady with outrageous bangs in the unfashionable plaza downtown. many looked on, others gasped as foreign red hairs fell on the stone outside the cathedral. it looked good at first but when henrika asked how the "haircut came to be", carey had aged 30 years. her hair now resembles that haircut some of you may be familiar with from your grandmothers or say..the Golden Girls. on good nights Peter Criss, the uncool member of KISS.
santiago to valparaiso. we were greeted by a mountain man named carlos, who is a window cleaner extraordinaire, rock collector and mountaineer. he said, "my house is falling down. this is typical in valparaiso." in fact his house was amazing, with a complex door bell that involved a string that led to some wind chimes and an even more complex door opening system with which you could open the door downstairs by pulling on a string upstairs. we went on a walk and saw the pacific for the second time on this trip.
also, chiloe, a small cluster of islands in the south of chile. we knew about it so we had to go. there we found about the most attractive towns ever with abundant wooden ships, blackberries everywhere and rain. it was raining so we had to go. back to valparaiso.
that about brings us up to date. happy and healthy. ecstatic. missing you people, especially our expanding families. not thinking about coming home, however.
love,
carey and irina.
ps-please respond to us both at ..
pps- dear irina´s mom. she´s cutting off contact if you don´t write soon.
ppps- dear carey´s family, yes everything in these emails is true. however it is written in an intentionally humorous way. on purpose.
pppps- sorry for no pictures. pretty much we´re disconnecfted from the technical aspects of our lives presently. except for this email and qwantz.com
we have, at this point in our expedition, settled down without ceasing to live it up. we live in a family home with an adorable baby named Catari with a strange haircut and his parents, the father with matching strange haircut. additionally, our house mates include a chilean rap star, Lalo, from the group Panteras Negras, and Swedish chef from Chile, Raul, with mad food skillz and a penchant for the bottle and la fiesta who has become our new best friend. all of this is in Valparaiso, Chile, which is pretty much in the middle of looong chile, on the coast. we currently are tongue tied about this place because we like it so much, suffice to say we can see boats and the pacific from our window and our posse of the famous and infamous lead to exciting times when the sun sets. the city is set on a bunch of hills and to get home we walk a picturesque route involving lots of stairs, turns and colorful houses made of aluminum-zinc siding.
we are keeping ourselves busy working on a mural, working in a park, assisting with chef duties for our community eatery including the making of bread in the brick-mud oven we have in the yard. we haven´t eaten this good in a while.
we got here in a truck. hitching here is easy because you can only go in two directions, north or south. so far exciting rides include a bread truck, a sugar truck (sticky and dark!), a long distance private mail courier, coal, a mineral truck for the army, once with a practicing sexologist, and a fruit truck. also a dood that took a detour into town to buy us beers, yogurt and sandwiches then tried to make us sleep in his gypsy friend´s tent. don´t worry, we politely declined and instead his friend flagged down the bus and we escaped by paying twice the amount of a regular ticket and drove into the sunset comfortably tucked in.
the road into chile from argentina was exciting. we stopped in uspallata and then went to puente del inca a la overstuffed vehicle with an argentine family. puente del inca is about 15 kilometers from the border and we saw it covered in snow from atop windy lookouts. also we hung out with about 20 17-year old french students while staying in a hostel/old train car and going on illegal night adventures. we hiked with the french to a glacier in the parque del aconcagua and looked at aconcagua respectfully from a distance. it´s the highest mountain, almost 7000m, outside of the himalayan mountain range. we also explored las cuevas, a ghost town with old buildings and falling down train terminals set amongst snow peaked mountains.
a small excited deaf man took us across the border in an 18-wheeler. he waited for us to go through customs where we were thoroughly sniffed by dogs (we passed!!), our first encounter with professional dogs so far. then we sped down haphazardly a crazy road called the caracoles that has 27 turns, down down down. carey says it look like a pile of toothpaste squeezed out. our driver was a very confidant maneuverer that liked to talk shit about the other drivers, "grummble grummble, he´s going too slow!", but his truck had a problem with gears.
we came to santiago first but we did not like it. we stayed with a girl named henrika who is one of the founders of hospitalityclub.org and has hosted some billions (about 400) of crazies and germans in her nice apartment. she made plenty of fun of irina for her new romantic acquisition of a typewriter. irina is currently working on a novel titled travels with typewriter. the sequel will be titled travels with shitdog. additionally, in santiago, carey tried to make ammends for her undistinguished argentine haircut by getting her first public haircut given by a man-lady with outrageous bangs in the unfashionable plaza downtown. many looked on, others gasped as foreign red hairs fell on the stone outside the cathedral. it looked good at first but when henrika asked how the "haircut came to be", carey had aged 30 years. her hair now resembles that haircut some of you may be familiar with from your grandmothers or say..the Golden Girls. on good nights Peter Criss, the uncool member of KISS.
santiago to valparaiso. we were greeted by a mountain man named carlos, who is a window cleaner extraordinaire, rock collector and mountaineer. he said, "my house is falling down. this is typical in valparaiso." in fact his house was amazing, with a complex door bell that involved a string that led to some wind chimes and an even more complex door opening system with which you could open the door downstairs by pulling on a string upstairs. we went on a walk and saw the pacific for the second time on this trip.
also, chiloe, a small cluster of islands in the south of chile. we knew about it so we had to go. there we found about the most attractive towns ever with abundant wooden ships, blackberries everywhere and rain. it was raining so we had to go. back to valparaiso.
that about brings us up to date. happy and healthy. ecstatic. missing you people, especially our expanding families. not thinking about coming home, however.
love,
carey and irina.
ps-please respond to us both at ..
pps- dear irina´s mom. she´s cutting off contact if you don´t write soon.
ppps- dear carey´s family, yes everything in these emails is true. however it is written in an intentionally humorous way. on purpose.
pppps- sorry for no pictures. pretty much we´re disconnecfted from the technical aspects of our lives presently. except for this email and qwantz.com