#102 - ¿Dance with me?

14/05/2011

My bus arrived in Temuco at 7am.
I am due to stay with my dad's friend, Robert, who lives her but 7am is way too early to call on anyone so I decided to kill some time by finding a place for coffee.

That was easier said than done. At this time, Temuco was groggily rolling over in its bed, checking the alarm clock and lazily stretching in preparation for work a bit later. What I'm trying to evoke from this metaphor is that nowhere was open, there were just a few street vendors setting up their stalls.

I eventually found somewhere: a gas station. The coffee was Nescafe which goes against my morals but I had no choice in the matter, so bought a Nescafe Mochaccino and sat down in the warmth. I had been wearing the same clothes for two days and probably smelt awful, but this was a public place so nobody could complain.

I sat drinking and writing some stuff (finished Absolute Power last night by the way - brilliant ending) and then it got to 8:30am. I decided this was a sociable enough hour to call in to my house for the next few days so called a taxi and off I was.
It took about half an hour for him to find it so I turned up at 9am, a very respectable hour though I looked and smelt far from respectable.

I sat and had some tea with their daughter, Belinda, and then Robert and his wife came downstairs and we sat and talked about where I'd been and this sort of thing.

Then, at 10:30am, I finally got into a shower and it was beautifully warm and felt really damn good. I was in there for ages and never wanted to get out to be honest.
But eventually I did, and the FA Cup final was on so I watched that with Robert - shame Stoke didn't win.

In the afternoon, I went with Robert to see his farm that he has outside of Temuco. When I say farm, I mean 13 hectares (a LOT) of land with hazelnut trees on them that he grows and sells to chocolate-making industries.

In the evening, we had some dinner and Natalie, the eldest daughter at 24, made some drinks. It was beer with some lemon juice and tabasco in a glass with salt all around the top. It tasted ok but all the tabasco settled at the bottom so the last sips were a bit full-on.

After that, I sank a couple of beers and Natalie had the idea of going to a pub.
Why not? So we went to a Chilean pub and watched a band playing some native music. To drink, I had some Pisco and Cokes which were good. What was also funny was that people were dancing the traditional dance as a way of flirting, and this was fun to watch. Instead of making eye-contact or trying out a chat-up line, they fully went for a dance which was interesting to see and the whole evening was a great insight into Chilean culture.

JG