fred's blog:

Hi--this is fred filling in for kellyanne.

I sent an email with pictures to everyone but I don't think it made it---so more pictures included here. I met KellyAnne on wednesday in santiago. It was beautiful flying down the backbone of the Andes and then seeing Santiago tucked into the middle. The pictures above and below are from Pablo Neruda's house--which was quite beautiful. KellyAnne had been to all three of his houses and knew almost as much as the tour guide (he is chilean but had spent ten years in new york and was quite a character. Pablo Neruda had a penchant for women, drink (3 bars and two bedrooms in the house) and things nautical, even though he wouldn't get near the water. He built a boat and kept it in his front yard where he presided as captain over the libations.


The best part of santiago was, of course, seeing KellyAnne and the family and friends she was staying with. The city was fine, generally clean, but I don't think you could really spend that much time there if you were't visiting someone. I think most people go to chile on vacation for the wine tours, to see Pategonia, to go mountain climbing, and for the beach.

The night before we left, Jorge and Marisol had a barbecue (asado) for the whole house, plus we invited Luke and Cory (friends of KellyAnne's from silver spring. The onwers prepared the barbeque and cooked up alot of vegetable shishkabobs for KellyAnne and others. The grilled meat was great...and should be even better in Argentina. KellyAnne (and Alaina--from Montana and pictured below, baked three peach/plumb cobblers. All were devoured. At one point I counted one Colombian, 4 Germans, 5 Chileans, 2 French, and 6 Americans (4 of which were the Silver Spring contingent). The night ended, as evidently every asado evening, with a ping pong tournament. I didn't do too bad but the chileans who owned the table were far superior. The last picture is KellyAnne with the owners on the day we left. They were very kind to KellyAnne and i think she left her mark on them as well. Our joke was that in ten years all Chileans will be having vegetarian asados due to her influence.






We took off on Friday morning heading to Mendoza, Argentina with only one thing in our way----the Andes. I only included one picture here because they seemed kind of repetitve. Most of the snow had melted by this time. It was a very long climb up on the chilean side but for some reason was much easier funnelling out on the argentine side. I have never seen anything as incomprehsibly ineffecient as going through customs directly in the middle of the andes. The whole bus ride was supposed to take six hours to Mendoza but it took 8 hours because we spent 3.5 hours sitting in this absurd setting: something like a giant bus terminal at about 13,000 feet. it was pretty, but pretty insufferable at the same time. KellyAnne slept and I manage to scorch my bald pate taking a nap out on one of the big boulders.

We finally got through and made it to what turned out to be a fun and festive mendoza--the wine capital of Argentina.



Mendoza was mobbed with mostly local people there for the festival. Luckily, KellAanne was able to secure us the last room in what turned out to be a great bed and breakfast with wonderful hosts. We got there at last, dropped our bags and had dinner and a bottle of wine. The pictures are from the festival. Lot's of regional beauty queens vying for top honors as queen of the entire festival. Our B&B host's daughter was one of the queens and is pictured below. Then we had to catch an all night bust to Buenos Aires that night (last night) so we never saw the winner. I was sick with coughing spells the whole 13 hour ride so it was pretty miserable for me----but buses here are very comfortable and entertaining (for instance, the ride began with everyone playing bingo!) They also showed movies and very poor music videos.

I sat next to a woman from South Africa who had just climbed Acacongua (sp) the highest peak outside the Himalaya chain and one of the mountains that people refer to when they talk about climbing the "seven summits". She is the only woman from South Africa to have ever climbed it!

We crossed miles and miles of pampas (the Argentine plains--plenty of beef out there) in the pouring rain. We made it to our rental agent's office and had to wait over an hour for them to get there (along with a guy from wisconsin who comes twice a year fro tango lessons). We are now firmly entrenched in a very nice apartment which we have for two weeks in one of the wealthiest districts in BA. Buenos Aires is many blogs unto itself. let me just say it is massive in scope and somewhat overwhelming right now.

For those interested (Brooklyn/Patrick and others), we could not get tickets to see Boca Juniors, who played today. We watched the game on tv and they got trounced 3-0, as did river plate. Poor showing for the BA futbol teams today.

Fred