Calbagata y Asado

Yesterday I went on another excursion to the Cajon del Maipo organized by Cristian. We went to the end of the Cajon, and we rode horses up into the mountains! It was by far the best excursion I've been on thus far. First of all, it was more or less efficient--Cristian had reserved a private shuttle to take us, so we actually left on time and made the trip in less than 3 hours. We spent more time doing the activity than in transit, which was a first. Secondly, the scenery was beautiful--once up in the mountains we were surrounded by snow covered peaks and brilliant colors. Finally, riding horses was fun! Initially I was pretty ambivalent about the horseback riding aspect of the trip, since in general horses don't excite me much. But it was great to relax rather than hike, it was easy to take tons of pictures, and trotting was fun too. Although today all the muscles in my torso hurt. It's hard to choose which pictures to post, but here are some:

Starting the ride up the canyon

group shot

a lovely pool and peak

almost at our lunch spot in a high valley surrounded by snow

Volcan San Jose from our lunch spot--apparently that whole ridge is a volcano, even though it doesn't look like it.

We arrived back in "town" (called Bano Morales--really more of an outpost) around 4 and we hadn't arranged for the shuttle to come back until 6, so we enjoyed some beers and the one restaurant in town. It was a fun group--Geert, another September Spanish school student from Germany named Sebastian and his friend Daniel, and three current students, including an American from San Francisco named Joe who just got certified to teach English down here. (a random aside--other than Terri and Ryan-the-other-poli-sci-grad-student, all the Americans I have met down here have been from California, in fact all from the Bay Area. Seriously, every one of them). By the time we got back to Santiago everyone, especially the guys who had bought six packs for the road, was quite happy and they wanted to have an asado (BBQ). Daniel invited us to his house, where he said he had a balcony and a grill and good times would be had by all. I had originally planned to go home and spend the evening relaxing, but an asado did sound fun and the group was pretty convincing.

So after a somewhat annoying trip to the grocery store to buy supplies (grocery shopping in big groups is never fun, especially when some are a little tipsy and loud and we all stick out because we're speaking english), we arrived at Daniel's house. Which he shares with his Chilean girlfriend and her roommate. And apparently he never called to tell he we were coming. And they had been fighting recently. We walk in (there were 6 of us at this point, 4 of whom had never met the occupants), and most of us are introduced to/greet Daniel's girlfriend and another male friend of theirs who is there. The other roommate is sitting in the couch, already looking kind of grouchy.

Now, some important background info. In Chile it is customary to greet everyone when you enter a social event, men-women and women-women with a kiss on the cheek. It's a nice, friendly custom that I generally enjoy. But sometimes it can be excessive--once at a party I was talking in a group of 4-5 people, and we were interrupted by people who just entered the party who wanted to greet us. I thought that was kind of weird. So, even though I've lived here for 2 1/2 months and I know the custom, I still like to follow the lead of others and I don't like to march up to people who aren't also approaching me just to give the requisite kiss. So, as a result, I didn't greet the roommate sitting on the couch because no one introduced her and she was just sitting there. Neither did the others, and I'm pretty sure that neither Joe nor Christina (from China) knew the custom because they hadn't been in the country long enough.

After arriving, I went out on the balcony because it seemed like a nice place to be. I chatted with their guy friend, and that was fun. Suddenly I felt that I could finally spit out my schpeal about who I was and what I was doing in Chile relatively completely, coherently, and with minimal grammatical errors! I also started chatting with Daniel's girlfriend, but soon he came out and they talking, so I felt I had to leave. By this point it was 10:00, the grill hadn't even been started, and I decided I should just leave so I could catch the last metro (10:30) and go home to bed. I went into the kitchen to tell the rest of the group I came with that I going to leave, and it turns out they were discussing how uncomfortable the situation was and how they wanted to leave too. Just as we were about to tell the apartment occupants that we were tired/didn't want to impose/etc., the grouchy roommate on the couch came up to us and told us, in English, that she was very upset with us because we showed up unexpectedly, didn't introduce ourselves to her, and then were hanging out in the kitchen instead of socializing in the living room. The circumstances of our arrival were definitely rude and uncomfortable in any culture (which is why everyone wanted to leave), but it was clear that in her eyes our biggest sin was not greeting her with a beso (kiss). We then had a somewhat awkward conversation about how we didn't mean to offend, how obviously this night wasn't planned very well, how we were sorry to impose, and perhaps we could try to get together again another night. The strangest thing was that, after being mad at us for coming there in the first place, the roommate said "now that we've had this conversation and you've apologized, you all should stay and we should have an asado and have fun." And then she was further upset by the fact that we still wanted to leave, as much as we tried to explain that it was nothing personal we just were tired, etc. We finally extracted ourselves, but the whole thing was a truly bizarre intercultural/interlinguistic miscommunication experience.

At this point I really did want to go home and go to bed, but due to my compatriots' inexperience with the city and slow walking, I missed the last metro. I was annoyed, and I was planning to ignore Cristian's insistence that we join him and his friends and his girlfriend's house for an asado, but then Christina (who happened to live near me) said that we could take a taxi home at the end of the night and her company would pay for it. Ok, free taxi and finally some dinner, I couldn't say no. And it turned out really well. Cristian's girlfriend's family was super nice, the food was great, and it was a lot of fun. So the evening ended on a high note, but wow what a long, interesting day. I was out of the house from 7:00 am to 1:30 am, and I experienced the full range of Chilean outdoor adventure, cultural rigidity, and wonderful hospitality. Oh, and I spent almost the whole day talking in Spanish, and it felt ok. Maybe I've learned something here afterall!