El Tabo, el mar, y mi corazon

So one thing that has been completely, totally, 100% confirmed is that I love the sea.

Middle Chile (the part in which I live, and the part in which we traveled last weekend) is cold right now. Again, a reminder: it is late autumn these days here (making it really hard for me to cognize 90+ degrees back home in Los Estados Unidos). It feels especially cold because, just like Mexico, there is no centralized heating ANYWHERE. It’s not that the temperatures are that low per se (it never drops to freezing), it’s just that the humidly chilly and overcast 50 degrees outdoor times translate into humid, 45 degrees, nose-dripping, dark indoor times. A confession: my favorite part of my days in the city right now is being squished into a metro train during rush hour on my way to my volunteer position at a school for the blind. Being completely bereft of personal space and essentially spooning strangers on the metro is the ONLY time I ever feel close to warm and toastified. Um, that’s kind of pathetic.

Let’s get back to sea. We traveled to a small, sand/dirt road, beach town called Tabo last weekend because our Chilean friend has a getaway cabin there. He invited a group of us expats, plus another Chilean friend of ours to accompany him and his family. So very, very nice of them. We’re so lucky. So, like, it is autumn, it is cold (it was super-cold in the cabin), it was sometimes raining, but that gorgeous Pacific Ocean with its big waves crashing into the rocky shoreline was totally and perfectly palliative. The best part? The added peace and calm due to it being the low season. The beaches were deserted, making the walks and exploration that much more serene.

The old, massive cabin (it had AT LEAST eight beds)! It was rustic, barebones, and perfect:

Rocky coastline...

...mixed with strange, unique, and lush vegetation:

Close-up, the green stuff looke like this (succulent, aloe-style plantlife):

This patch was rocking its autumn colors:

We took a day trip to the port town of San Antonio (where we saw those amazing sea lions):

Pelicans scrambling for fish guts thrown into the water by fish-cleaners at the market:

Phase I. Ciudad de Mexico

My first thought after deplaning and entering the airport: Whoa, this place is so amazingly, dizzyingly busy (and, um, I kind of like it). The past 24 hours following that first impression have not proven otherwise. This is the most hectic place I’ve ever seen, heard, smelled, and dodged my way through. A population of 20+ million will do that, I guess. On our flight from Miami to Mexico, we sat next to an Argentinean who’s lived in Mexico City the past couple years. He gave us some very helpful advice about good day trips and the like. We told him that we were moving to Santiago de Chile after our time in Mexico. He told us that he thinks Santiago’s nice and all, but that it’s a little too small for him. I almost choked on my lukewarm, weak coffee, and in my head retorted, “Dude, what happens when Mexico City feels too small? You’ve got only Jakarta and Tokyo left!!” Imagine that; a city of more than six million, Santiago, feels a little too quaint.


Our hostel is cute, and the manager is a sweetheart. It’s very small (only four rooms) and no frills. We are staying for $30 USD per night, including breakfast. "Not spendy at all," the Minnesotan in me would say. However, it is quite amusing that our private room has two stiff TWIN beds. I guess we’ll make like Carol and Mike Brady for the next couple nights. In fact, I think the twin beds just give us more incentive to start apartment searching like tomorrow.


Today’s forecast was not “rainy.” “cloudy,” nor “sunny.” Oh, no. It was “SMOKY.” Um, okay. Pray tell, how do you dress for smoky? Last night, it rained like crazy while we walked home from dinner and, thus, left us stranded for some time under a shoddy, leaky business awning. The thunder was amazing, though. Because Mexico City’s surrounded by mountains and inundated with tall, concrete buildings, the thunder just reverberated off everything, to a thrilling degree.


In sum, so far, muy bueno.


Expect cool pictures of sights in the next entry!