Chile- progressively downhill after Pucon

Friday was our last morning in Pucon. I said goodbye to my amazing bed, and we headed out to a cafe for breakfast before hopping on the bus to go to Valdivia. After a relatively short ride, we arrived, only to discover that there is nothing to do in Valdivia. Kind of disappointing, especially because Pucon was so amazing, but we made do. We found a restaurant by the water and sat down to eat at around 12. The service was SO SLOW that we didn't make it out of there until almost 4:30, in spite of the fact that we ordered quickly and asked for the check as soon as the food arrived. After we escaped from the clutches of our evil waitress, we wandered through the local craft fair and fish market, and watched the sea lions lie around and fight with each other for a while. Later on in the afternoon, we got some vary disappointing ice cream and decided to just pick up some groceries for dinner later instead of going out. After the grocery store, we went back to the hostel and played with their pet duck. We also tried to play with the pet rabbit, but the duck got super aggressive and attacked us whenever we got near his friend. Cute, in an odd kind of way. The rest of the night was spent watching Garden State and eating our grocery-store dinner: bread, cheese, grapes and wine. I was a little jealous when the other kids in the hostel cooked up a five-star dinner that smelled amazing, but then we found out that they're all in their thirties and have been cooking for themselves for a while already. After that I didn't feel so bad about our lack of culinary abilities.

Saturday, after breakfast at the hostel and racking our brains about what to do all day, we decided to explore the island across the river and walked to a park there, only to realize that there was an admission fee for what looked like a jungle gym and some grass. We decided that our $500 pesos was better spent on hot chocolate and coffee, so we made friends with an adorable old guy in a cafe and then set off in search of the German brewery nearby to take a tour. Once at the brewery, we had some beer and decided the tour was not worth the entrance fee, so we went in search of a restaurant, since Catherine didn't like the vegetarian options at the brewery. The restaurant we found was essentially terrible- awful food, terrible service, and they miscalculated our bill by several thousand pesos, which we immediately threw a fit about and got fixed. We picked up some groceries again and went back to the hostel to do our homework, since we had officially exhausted all of our options for things to do in Valdivia. We had dinner and went back to the grocery store to raid their bakery counter for delicious cakes, watched a bootleg copy of Slumdog Millionaire, and went to bed.

Easter Sunday, we woke up for breakfast (the hostel owners gave us chocolate eggs with our breakfast for Easter) and got on the bus to Santiago. I insisted on stocking up on groceries before we left, so we'd have something to eat on the bus, even though an eleven hour bus ride should include two meals and several movies according to our previous experiences on South American bus lines.

Fourteen hours later, we had still not been fed, (and had already gone through all the food we brought) had not been shown any movies, and had to deal with the smell of the bus bathroom for the last six hours because they ran out of toilet paper halfway through and then clogged the toilet. Overall a miserable experience, and if I hadn't had so many good ones, I would have sworn off the bus system forever. However, I think I can limit myself to saying I will never go on the Chilean bus lines again.
When we FINALLY got to Santiago, we piled into a cab to go to our next hostel, which is run by a tiny little old man named Oscar. The sign on his office door literally said: "If you need something and there is no one in the office, look for the old man. His name is Oscar, and he lives in the violet room." He was really cute and gave us advice on where to grab food at 12:30 in the morning, since we were starving. The only place open in the immediate vicinity was a gas station/fast food place, which had absolutely terrible food that, at the time, was delicious. After wolfing down our food in two minutes or less, we went back to the hostel and went to sleep.

Monday was our last day in Chile, and involved breakfast, a cab, lunch at "Gatsby's Airport Cafe", the flight to BsAs, and getting ripped off by our cab driver on the way home. Great welcome back to the city. When I got home, I discovered that Lauren had been trying to install our internet modem (supposed to be installed by professionals while we were gone, mind you) for hours. After harassing the tech guys multiple times, she finally got it working, only to discover that it was not wireless as promised, but a single connection. At this point, we were ready to throw our realtor off a cliff, so we took a break and met up with the girls to go to an empanada place for dinner. Fortunately those improved our mood enough to get us through a few hours of hw before we crashed.