Who's Your Daddy?

Merle and Tren Long, making like tough guys at the Rio (Sur). Long's house near Pucon.

Head Shots and You Tubes

Head shots from our crew.

You tubes too.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T_eXEHFvSGw KJ trying to flat spin (boring)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xbb_35qVz8o Run through Pescador, (better)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-F5E782Ojw Dana left side of Pesky

No necessito Rachel Ray

Who needs the Food Network when you have Mamacita making you lunch.
Today our traveling circus takes a day off and we drive to Valdivia, a seaport of the Chilean coast. We check out the farmers’ markets and then go to the Food Court Grande!
This is home to ‘Carne on a Stick’ , plus myriad ‘foods in a bowl’ that you eat and savor and go back for more. Meat rules including vicuna broiled and soups of the region, plus empanadas. This is a place where 40 or so vendors serve street food to the locals, and Tom Long has pronounced it OK for our gringo stomachs. We eat ourselves silly! Mostly we try the potato balls (con carne y queso) and some thing that is shepards pie with corn meal on top. Of course, there are kebobs galore and then whole hunking sides of beef. I buy a beef plate for six bucks and cannot even make Luke full! We overlooked the fish avenue and regretted it. Salmon, sierras and all kinds of fishes grilled, steamed, smoked and served to happy Chileans with tails intact! I was trying to telepathically ask for ‘tastes’ from a Chilean family that was enjoying Pescador Fritas, but no luck.
The back channel story continues to be interesting with the ‘kids’ stepping out last night for some fun in town. Sergeant Cooley et. al. came home quite drunk (at 4am), but of course the story is lithe Sara mixing it up with some snooty Santiago homegirl. Both of them almost coming to fisticuffs. Most of the guys had stiffies just wishing they could have been there to watch!

Been freezing. We’ve had days of rain. One of our group did the upper the other day, but we are happy to not paddle. The fire roars downstairs and are thrilled that Luke has the job of making sure the gear is dry in the bodega! Big job.
Back on the Lower and Upper tomorrow.
Hot springs were the highlight of the last few days. ! Huife. And Trancura (Termas). That blob in the foreground is a kid on the zip line at Trancura Termas. The Huife springs was warmer, though more expensive. We loved the drive up the Liucura (?) valley.

Summer? Right!

Holy Mother of Rain Storms!

Skies opened last night and dumped about 2000 cfs down on our little chunk of the world. Out we went for kayak lessons, looked kinda like this! We ran the Lower Trancura and had some carnage at Pesky-dor. And then past the Liucura we went and then, blam past some mini riverlet that was throwing in another 500cfs and water the color of Mt St Helens ash flow. Actually, it was more purple than anything else. The photo on the left is Sara who works for the Longs. She's a very graceful boater, and usually looks much better than this. However, you can see how cool this spot is, that's Chad Long standing in the water, coaching and about to get his head sliced off!

Valpo - The Murals

We loved riding the ascensors (pics when I get around to it), but were really charmed by the Valparaiso murals. Look at the detail. These are from two sections of town, Bellavista and Cerro Conception, I think.

Of course, enough of this Frida Kahlo crap, bring on Beavis and Butthead. My favorite mural

was at the edge of the ritzier part of town. This large mural was really alive, but so many were just so beautiful. Even the graffitti was cool. Sorry for the layout, blogger sucks as a graphics program.

Valparaiso Recap

Oh how the heck does anybody keep up with their vacation AND their blog. Am a few adventures behind. No our Yellow House hostel did not look like this, though it was cute and wonderful just the same. After we found it.

Valpo is like a mini South American San Francisco and some streets just don't have roads in the front. Yellow House is on one of them. Regardless, the people can't be more friendly, puppies too. My friends here belong to the hostel owners, Patrick and Lizzette.

My pal Dana and I traipsed all over the city hunting for the murals that make this place famous.

Welcome to Hostal Land

We're taking a little walk on the wild side with our pre-kayak trip lodging. While I am kind of a Motel 6 girl when traveling on the cheap in the US, the Chilean hostel offerings look interesting. We are staying at the La Chimba in Santiago and then The Yellow House in Valparaiso. Looks like this, we hope! So far reserving La Chimba has been a snap. Easy e-mail communications and with luck we indeed can check in at the butt crack of dawn when we actually arrive Santiago. (7am-ish.) Will be very impressed if that works. We had to reserve the night before...hope they hold it for us.