Hacia el Sur: i.e. Gringo Train on a Bus

This past weekend my program had it's big "fieldtrip", which is part of the required distribution of funds that the mothership organization, IES, mandates. After being left in the dark despite many inquiries, the day before leaving we learned we were actually going not ambigously "South" but rather to Puerto Montt, the island of Chiloe (second largest island in South America), Frutillar, Puerto Varas, and some other places. Joy of all joys. We got on an airplane went South and then consequently spent most of our 4 days on a bus. And when I say on a bus, I really mean it.

1 marco polo bus
+ 23 gringos of aged 19 to 22
+ 1 tour driver named Claudio
+ 2 middle aged women who direct the IES program
+ too many locations spread out
+ squeezed into 4 short days

= Get on bus, get off bus, take pictures of a vista or some inane tourist site whose cultural significance hasn't been explained to us, get on bus, get shuffled to a bad restaurant, get on bus. Repeat.

And then we stayed in the middle of nowhere, i.e. Frutillar (which basically means Strawberryville...or something akin to that). In Frutillar there was one bar, Frutibar, which closed for the season after our second night in town. Ha. On Saturday we got to play in a national park for a bit, which was a welcome change. But, unfortunately, we still got carted around on the bus. A lot.

In short, it was a gringo-bus bonding experience. Not exactly what I was hoping for, but it was what it was. Photos of Chile forthcoming, probably on Facebook because Blogger is really slow with uploading photos.