Well, two days left in this big ole place I like to call “South America.” After finishing Torres del Paine and spending a couple of sweet days hanging out with a couple of other wandering gringos I know from my days as a kitchen slave in Montana, I headed to Santiago and then Valparaiso, a bohemian-feeling seaside city in central Chile. It’s the kind of place where graffiti is encouraged (there’s a outdoor musuem dedicated to it) and a traveler can spend days – nay, weeks … nay, fortnights – just meandering tilted streets, stopping every ten minutes to drink cheap wine in artsy cafes. You can also regularly use this sentence in conversations with the locals: “Hey, there’s a college in the U.S. called Valparaiso and their basketball team is sometimes a sleeper in the NCAAS.” I said that to one woman and she immediately invented a whole new internet. I’d put in a picture of Valparaiso, but the blog-creation/circus-management company I use changed around their interface and I can’t figure out how to add photos. Well, just imagine colorful buildings perched on hills above a busy port. Oh, also throw in Tom Brokaw in a mini skirt. You got it? Good. Let’s move on.

I guess since my trip’s about done (I’m taking a bus to Buenos Aires tonight and then fly home Tuesday evening) it’s a good time for some reflection. You know, looking back. Also, it’s raining outside and I really have nothing to do today except wait for the bus so, yeah, please use caution: random thoughts are approaching…

-Uno: I’m glad I decided to part with vegetarianism for this trip. The meat in both Chile and Argentina has been pretty fantastic. The first thing that comes to mind is chorizo, really tasty sausages that are a standard part of the Argentinian asado (barbecue) experience. I was a vegetarian for about two and a half years before coming down here, and I found that if you really, really wanted the taste of any meat product, you could find it to some degree in some brand of imitation meat. But chorizo. Hot damn. The Morningstar company cannot replicate that. Impossible. Brokaw in a mini skirt. Also, I definitely would have missed out on a central aspect of life down here if I had insisted on only lentils. I enjoyed quite a few really great evenings that were wholly centered around cow consumption. When I was in Trevelin back in February, there was a guy who was friendly with the owners of the hostel where I was staying and he was having an asado to celebrate this new cabin he had built and I got invited to come along. The cabin was way out away from town and he didn’t have electricity up and runnng yet … all we had was the glow of the fire where the meat was cooking and some of the most ridiculous stars I’ve ever seen. There were maybe 12 of us there — Argentinians, Belgians, Americans — and we just ate and drank and ate and drank and drank and drank. There wasn’t a veggie option. There wasn’t even a veggie. It was just meat that came off the fire and onto your plate. The quantity of steak I ate that night was probably equal to the amount I ate throughout my entire childhood. It was excessive, and really fun. That’s one thing Argentinians have figured out: enjoying excess. You basically eat cake for breakfast here and steak the rest of the day (well, there’s ham too). Yeah, it’s unhealthy but I think the mind set is: if you’ve got your family around you and the food is good, nothing else is really that important. A lot of people have asked me if I’ll go back to vegetarianism once I go home. I think I’ll once again probably keep meat out of my diet for the most part. But every once in a while when the company and beef are both stellar, I’ll gorge myself on steak and chorizo. Absolutes, I’ve decided, just make people go loco.

-Dos: While I think I could stay down here for years just seeing the beauty of the land and people and whatnot and meeting other people traveling, I’m also ready to head back home. It’ll be real nice to just put my bag down and know I won’t have to decide a few days later whether I want to stay or go. In that way, traveling gets tedious. Especially traveling solo, you constantly feel like you’re starting all over. A new town means you’re telling a new set of people where you’re from, what you’re doing, where you’re going next. Obviously, this introdcutory part of a conversation is over and done with in minutes, but still, it’ll be great to see people that already know my whole back story. But even though I am kind of tired of that aspect of traveling alone…

-Tres: Traveling alone is absolutely amazing. I can’t express how wonderful it’s been to just do exactly what I want to do every step of the way. The only thing I had planned coming down here was that I’d work on the farm for an unspecified length of time. Everything else has just been pure feeling. When I saw that there was a boat to Puerto Williams, for instance, I could just kind of say “Yeah, I’m going.” It was a pricey trip and I didn’t even know that much about what was there. I just knew it had an allure and I wanted to get there. If I had a companion there would have been a bunch of deliberation, hemming and hawing. It was priceless to just be able to follow my own feelings, regardless of the rationality and reasoning behind them. Also, coming into a new place and knowing absolutely no one means you either strike up conversations or you talk to yourself. I’ve already heard everything I have to say (and none of it is too interesting or based on fact), so I got pretty good at meeting other people. And I think while I was a little intimidated at first to go up to someone sitting quietly in a hostel and start talking to them about nothing in particular (especially if I had to do so in Spanish), I found out that for the most part everyone I approached wanted to talk to me just as much as I wanted to talk to them. If you’re backpacking down here, chances are you’re not a complete asshole. You’re looking for experiences and new people and long, drunken talks about whaling regulation — well, SOME of us are into long, drunken talks about whaling regulations. I think I’ve had conversations with at least 70 or 80 people here over the past three months. Maybe more. I haven’t kept a log. And even if I did, I don’t know how to count. But really. 70 or 80 people that gave me viewpoints and stories. In this way, traveling has been like the an explosion of friendship. Back home you have the people you know well around you and you talk to them constantly, but it’s a bit of a rarity (for me at least) to move outside that, to get to know just random people you see somewhere. If I walked into a Starbucks at home and saw someone sitting alone at a table I never would have gone up to them and started talking. But here, if I’m in a hostel and someone’s sitting there, I’ll talk to them without hesitation. I guess the difference is that there’s an underlying feeling that everyone traveling wants to get to know each other. I will certainly miss that, but hope to bring a bit of it back with me … so if you’re sitting alone in a Starbucks and I come in, look out yo.

-Cuatro: The worst thing you can ever say to a traveler is: What’s the best thing you’ve seen/done on your trip? It’s impossible to answer for one thing and, also, the response changes, I think, based on your mood or whatever moment happens to come to your mind. Also, sometimes all you can think about is a car made out of cats and that response just freaks people out. But, still, I’ll try to answer it here. The best thing I’ve seen/done? I think first of Torres del Paine … because every step there was stunning. For five straight days I either had a glacier, a spectacular mountain, a perfect valley or all of the above surrounding me at all times. Also, the hike I did with my Welsh friend John was really memorable – I had such a good time hiking around and eating dulce de leche and talking about the genius of Ricky Gervais. Then there was the two weeks on the farm during which I was probably more relaxed than at any other time in my life. And then there was Mt. Fitz Roy. And Tierra del Fuego. And the views and sunsets during the Nahuel Huapi hike. But the BEST thing I’ve seen? Brokaw. Mini skirt. Fo real.

Cool. The next time I write it’ll be from the other America.