Chapter 12

After three days I'd had more than enough of Pucon. Barioloche, Argentina was the next destination, but I wasn't sure if I wanted to get there via Puerto Montt, Chile or return to San Martin de los Andes to break up the trip. I decided to try Puerto Montt just because I figured I had already seen SM de los Andes.

Ever since I'd gotten my music stolen, I prayed for a movie every bus ride. Eight out of ten times there was no movie shown, one of out 10 times it was the worst movie ever and the other one time the movie would be tolerable. From Pucon to Puerto Montt I got “Walking Tall.” This qualified as somewhere between tolerable and the luckiest bus ride ever. Unfortunately the audio was badly messed up. At the start of the film Dr. Dre's “Next episode” oddly played over the movie. I would have loved nothing more than to listen to Dre's Chronic 2001 over the entire movie, but tragically the Dre died out after five seconds.

At the time I was more worried about forgetting what Dre’s drums sound like on the Chronic 2001 more than forgetting what some of my family and friends’ faces look like.

One of the more fun aspects of my trip is going to places with zero clue how they would look. I feel like anywhere in the States I will know how it looks just from watching movies and television. In South America I often knew nothing about a town until I showed up.

The Notre Dame crew and weird Oregon duo spoke highly of Puerto Montt, so I decided to check it out. The Lonely Planet called it “unscenic,” and when I arrived there I realized “unscenic” was a nice way of saying “shit hole, if Chile had a Detroit it would be called Puerto Montt.” I got off the bus and was greeted by a kind, old lady who sold me on staying at her place.

On the 4-block walk from the bus terminal to her house we had to take a detour because we almost got mugged by a deranged-looking bum. A great start for my first 10 minutes in the town. I dropped my bags in my new room and walked around the town enough to realize that Detroit is probably a lot nicer and safer than Puerto Montt. My place was nice inside, but was located in what I'd call the 8 mile/ kilometer district of Puerto Montt.

I was starving so I prepared myself a dinner in the vintage kitchen. Vintage may not be a strong enough word to describe the interior décor, which made my late grandfather's house (which hadn't changed since his wife died 20 years ago) look modern chic. After I cooked a potato dinner I crashed my host, Senora Maria Fresia's tea party. I felt pretty silly as I ate my dinner with three Chilean women all over the age of 60, it was like I crashed the set of a Chilean version of the "Golden Girls."

I walked around the town the next day until I learned there was nothing to see at all in the town. So I retired to my homestay, lied there and watched television all day. It was actually nice to take a vacation from my vacation. I caught an episode of “Will & Grace,” “The Weeds” and some CNN. I learned that during my mission to break my routine and try and change everything I forgot how happy I was doing nothing laying around watching television. Actually that was just the moral of the story in the “Scrubs” episode I watched.

Chapter 11

The following night a group of eight kids from Notre Dame invaded my hostel. Despite the fact that I came down to Argentina as an exchange student myself, I despised every exchange student I met.

While I was in Mendoza a group of kids from Duke took over the ping pong table to play beer pong. After a month of living in hostels, I learned that the only way to prove your country's superiority to another's is by holding your own in a game of table tennis. That being said these stupid Yanks were making a mockery of my homeland by using the sacred table for a bullshit drinking game. Everyone else in the hostel just glared at them with a look of death.

This group from Notre Dame was far worse than the Duke posse as they spent the night talking about drinking beer, shotgunning beer, doing beer bongs, talking about beer, drinking liquor and drinking beer. The following morning they stumbled into the family room and spent three hours analyzing what they had drank the night before, how hungover they were and trying to pinpoint the very moment they officially blacked out the night before.

Please don't ask me to justify my own actions of watching TV or bring up the Leonardo DiCaprio "Beach" theory because it will make my head explode.

Additionally my first meal in Chile consisted of a hamburger that contained living bugs on it and this was at the place the hostel recommended.

Chile wasn't all bad though as I went on a 40-kilometer bike ride by myself and I saw some of the most beautiful sights I have ever seen in my life. I made it to a secret waterfall where I sat alone, with no other tourists and no kids from Notre Dame for an hour in front of a gorgeous crystal clear waterfall contemplating how good life is. I thought about how fortunate I was to be on this trip and have health, happiness as well as the health and happiness of my friends and family. I then moved to a nice grassy valley, where all I could hear was the river gently flowing and the wind rustle between the trees. There in the middle of nowhere I thought about all the nice things I thought about in front of the waterfall in addition to how fortunate the world is that we can all watch LeBron James dominate the NBA for at least another 10-15 years.

I sat there for 30 minutes trying to capture the absolute tranquility in my day journal. Then I began to bike the 20 kilometers back home. The ride home wasn't as perfect as the ride to the waterfall. Rain began to pour and I was dead tired with no money or food on me. I started peddling in the direction of home and after a couple of kilometers I got lazy and put my thumb out with the intention to hitchhike back to town. I was told it was quite safe to hitchhike everywhere in Argentina and I assumed Chile would be no different. I also knew that if things got ugly and I was tortured, killed and left in a shallow grave in a country I hate, perhaps one day somebody would find my journal, be able to translate it and eventually turn it into a lame movie that was narrated by Katt Williams. Then I remembered that I didn't have my name or Katt Williams name in my journal. So I took cover in a bus stop (I didn't have enough money for the bus, nor was there room on the small bus for my bike) and wrote in the front cover of my journal “Si buscas este diario por favor escriba Justin Adler a justinadler1@gmail.com,” then I wrote in English that I wanted Katt Williams to narrate my life story should the situation present itself.

Chapter 10

I had never even heard of Pucon, Chile until a day before I hopped on a bus heading to the town on the Chilean/Argentine border. Truthfully, I hate Chile. I don't like their weird 2,000 pesos for a hamburger currency. I don't like their flag's colors. Even the shape of the country pisses me off. But I decided I should give it a fair shot. 

On the bus ride over I met two guys from Bend, Oregon. Neither one was much of the talkative type, but the younger one, Jason, did not say a word for the first eight hours we hung out. Eventually I directed a question toward him, forcing him to break his unwarranted vow of silence. I learned he was a senior in high school who had been home-schooled by his mother for his entire life. Outside of parents who lock their kids in a basement and keep them alive only for sexual gratification, I can't think of a better way to socially retard your child other than homeschooling. 

His friend, Kalon, who was slightly cooler, older and more talkative, told me he worked as an underwater welder, which if you are  going to travel and make up a fictitious profession is as good as they come. However when I tried to ask him more about his career in aquatic assemblage, he really wouldn't tell me anything. He also had seven tally marks scarred over his heart. When I asked him about the tally marks, which appeared to be self-inflicted, he gave me a weird stare before saying, “Yeah... I really don't talk about that.” 

I assumed he did it while high on crystal meth because the only other time I'd seen such ugly, painful looking body art, my co-worker admitted to giving himself a tattoo with pen ink, a needle and an RC car battery during his third straight day of doing crystal meth. Whatever, more power to Kalon for overcoming his crystal meth addiction to become an underwater welder. 

One day as I sat alone in the hostel eating lunch, I noticed Jason's journal sitting on the family room table. I decided to read it because I knew I wouldn't get caught, and also because I felt entitled since my travel journal is a blog in the public domain, but mainly because I knew I wouldn't get caught. Hoping for some outrageous psychotic writing, I was disappointed to read the most boring entries ever. It was nothing more than where he had been, what he bought from the grocery story and how it tasted. His mother is a shit writing teacher.