Traveling Outlaws

Deja vu is all I can manage to say. I’m sitting in a chair overlooking  the lake that my parents were looking at 15 years ago. They say it has grown, and I believe them. It sorta reminds me of Aspen, CO with a mix of Cour De Lane, Idaho. Sitting on a piece of land between a dormant volcano and Lake Villarica is sorta unnerving knowing that the volcano is still bubbling and rising every time I see steam rise after a chunk of snow hits molten rock. They have some beaches around the lake with sand, but guess what? The sand is actually black ash from the eruptions of Volcano Villarica. Every morning, I wake to the sound of Sheep, South American Chicken Hawks, Cows, and Horses.  After all, we are living on a farm sort of plot of land. Our typical schedule goes like this.

Gavin working at the little desk in our room – the view is amazing.

Read More

So yesterday we went to a local hot springs to hang out and soak our bodies in the luke warm water.  Gavin decided that it would be fun to swim around all the people – who were all stationary in the hot springs – oh well “tourista’s”.  The hot springs were about a 40 minute drive away so we spent the afternoon there and came back later than expected.  In Chile they sell “carbon” for charcoal – it’s not charcoal but basically pre-burned wood that you get going again.  I decided that our gourmet evening would be rice, marinated chicken and some pico-de-gallo that Hayden had made.   In my mistake, when I was at the store I purchased the largest chicken breasts I’ve seen in a long time (even bigger than Costco) – I was actually thinking, “Did I get turkey by mistake?”.  Anyway – I started the grill – hoping it would be shorter than the place in Las Cruces (1.5 hours) to cook our food.  Well let me tell you at 1.5 hours I was staring at some semi-raw chicken – so I covered in foil and 2 hours later we had dinner.  Cindy doesn’t think we were quite at 180F for the internal temperature – but well that’s ok.  She was in charge of the rice on the stove – we’re not used to making rice on the stove – we have a rice cooker… about 20 minutes after the rice had started I’m smelling this burning smell in the house – yikes – well let’s say our rice had a nice smoky flavor.  Ever seen the movie BirdCage with Robin Williams?  There’s a great scene in there where their chef/house boy brings out his soup and everyone takes a bite – then immediately everyone goes for the bread on the table – if I put bread on the table… you get the idea.

Read More

So it’s been cold – in the 68-72F range – at the beach – which largely we were expecting to be hotter.  It’s not humid at all – very comfortable.  We’ve been wearing sweatshirts and shorts – it’s nice but not 100% of what we were thinking.  When we were walking yesterday I asked everyone – hey – if we were in the US where do you think we would be?  Answers were San Francisco, Maryland (Cindy), Oregon (me), etc.    When Gavin was on Skype with his class they wanted to know where he was – it’s hard to explain.  it’s also hard to visualize why we are 4 hours ahead of Colorado, etc.

So here ya go – the red pin in the map is our coordinates if we were in the Northern Hemisphere vs Southern.  You can see the ‘blue dot’ in Chile – that’s us.   It looks like we are about the same Latitude as South/North Carolina Border.  Having been in South Carolina in the summer I can tell you that this is not South Carolina – much cooler, no humidity, etc.  Anyway this will give you a greater sense of where we are…  What’s interesting is that I want to map the tip of south america to see where it is against North America – doesn’t seem like it would be close to Alaska even – given our coordinates.

our Lat/Lon moved to Northern Hemishphere

Well I wanted to get some photos off the Nikon camera to share as well and figured a quick post might help.  We went for a walk to the beach last night as it was one of the best evenings we have had (no cloud cover and warmer).  Now that we are here on a Tuesday things are much quieter than on the weekend.  Gavin is highly interested in the ships at sea – Hayden was more interested in using the camera and some of these photos are his.  Got my chicken out this a.m. for fajitas and prepped it for marinade.  In the store you literally goto the meat counter and ask for a chicken – they have whole chickens and just the breasts or the thigh/leg connnected together.  When you get home you get to cut up the chicken and prep it.  Food seems to take much longer to prepare and cook – but it is all made from scratch and I like to cook so there you go…  The pictures of the food are from our first night of BBQing pork.  Hayden made the pico sauce – tomatoes, red-onion, cucumber, fresh lemon, cilantro, olive-oil and sea-salt – it was very tasty on top of our grilled pork.  There is a brown building here – it’s part of the university research branch – pretty interesting.    Here are some photos of what’s been happening… and we are going to make some lunch, goto the store and maybe the beach…

Read More