Afterglow

Woooooooooooooohooooooooooooooooo!!!!

Tom said level 3 rivers are nothing to sneeze at, so even though I thought it was pretty tame, I'll take your congratulations for mastering the Rio Todos los Santos on a paddle raft. Woah, I was drenched as I sang down the wild river paddling to my heart's content (from the front of the boat), and I can't wait to do it again (level IV next time?)! I even swam a bit in its crazy current, it wasn't that cold, just exhilarating!

It was funny, because I ended up with a group of tourists from the US, Canada, and England--the first native English speakers I've hung out with on this trip (besides Alexana)--even better, three were Californians. Ahhhh. The guides were a silly Irishman (now Chilean, due to love and a child here) and Chilean from Varas.

Which reminds me...did I tell you my latest scheme for getting to live back down here? I have been thinking about coming back to Chile to work, after I pay off the debt my current adventures have incurred and before graduate school...and now I'm trying to figure out how to become a guide, probably in trekking. Sounds fun, huh? Shouldn't be that tricky, with my language skills, and it gives me another exuse to learn more about Chile (flora and fauna and geography and geology, etc.) while I'm missing it up North. Made some good connections in my travels, so maybe I'll have a good chance of doing that in the next year or so. Hey, then you'll really have to come down here and see what all the hype is.

Two days to Christmas (in my family, at least, Xmas Eve is more like Christmas for me than the "day of") and I still don't have plans. Gotta work on that.

Wow, this is the longest I've lived out of a backpack, and I am marvelling at the Australians and Europeans and Israelis who do this for months at a time. I'm looking forward to traveling with Andrew for another few weeks, but it'll be good to be home for a few days first to get a little stability. It's all adventure, but still, the emotional stability suffers enough when my life is more predicatable...

In another couple of hours I'll be on the bus for Villarica, which is another "resort" town, though more modest than its neighbor Pucón. Both towns (like Puerto Varas) are famous for adventure, so I'll probably be seeking out more addrenaline-pumping activities. They say it's just gorgeous there--more volcanoes and lakes and rivers, but closer to the city than Puerto Varas is to its natural attractions. Yum yum.