Asado in Pto Varas

10/28/2013 Monday
I found a mug at the grocery store today ... good to hold what I consider a real cup of coffee, not the tiny demitasse with which my kitchen was furnished. So many adaptations are required by the new culture.
We had a fine time on Saturday out in Puerto Varas at the home of David & Katta and their 3 yr old son, Simon. David does a lot of mechanical work for the various yachtspersons at Marina Reloncavi, and since some of them are about to depart for other ports, he hosted a pot luck barbecue. Our friend collected Richard and me for the drive out thru the countryside. Capitan Frank and his Belgian crew, Jann, along with Julia, who might crew on another boat, and the Australians, Chris & Margi ... we gathered at David's suburban casa, where the big wood-fired grill burned outside the backdoor under the shelter of the covered patio, and the TWO volcanoes, Calbuco and Osorno, showed their lower slopes in the sunny weather, but maintained their mystery caps of cloud until the very end of the day. Chiri-pan ... a hot pork sausage stuffed into a fat bread roll; flank steak grilled in thin strips and cut into bite-sized pieces; and other steak chunks expertly grilled by Australian Frank ... plus salads, red wine, and Richard and I brought a dessert from the Jumbo bakery: raspberry cake with toasted almond slices and a green tea filling.
Australian Chris worked for many years as a family planning social worker, so we talked education; his wife, Margi, is a psychotherapist who still enjoys, on occasion, taking a job in one country or another. Both have been retired and sailing around the world for some 11 years now. They're heading south from here, but might just spend a good long time island hopping before they ever attempt the Straits of Magellan and the path to Antarctica.
Frank and Jann are heading north to Peru and might hang there for some sightseeing, inland travel, before they venture across the Pacific toward New Zealand.
Julia,  a young-looking grandmother from SW England, is aiming to find a way to Antarctica. She'll try to crew w. someone to Puerto Williams, Chile, and maybe across the Beagle Channel to Ushuaia, Argentina, but then she'll be looking for a ride, or a job, or a berth of some kind to the Antarctic wonderland. She'd been here in Puerto Montt back in March of this year, having answered Faraway John's call for crew. But his boat wasn't ready to go yet; an Argentine boat was leaving for Peru, so she jumped aboard with them and spent the last six months exploring Ecuador, Uruguay, the Amazon and a whole lot of other territory before returning here to find a crewing post.

These people have a lot more gusto than I do!

The other guest at David & Katta's asado was their neighbor, MariaLina (I think), a dynamic young mother whose two young kids played w. Simon, while her husband grilled the thin steak strips. She is Chilean, of Croatian descent, and studied for several years at the University in Tubingen, Germany. When she asked Richard where he was from, she definitely knew the territory between Seattle and Bellingham. She told him that the wealthy side of her family had moved to Anacortes, WA some time ago ... where they'd changed their name from Bestovich (or close to that)to Best. She spoke some German, spoke Spanish w. Katta, and English with the rest of us, including a fine little dissertation on the slangy, sleazy nature of Chilean spanish. I liked her immensely. While I was cutting the raspberry cake for dessert, she uncorked a bottle of Chilean champagne and poured for all. She gave us the "Chilean toast": Arriba, abajo, a centro, a dentro! After which she took a piece of cake across the yard to the neighbor on the other side of Katta's house, and returned to tell us that that woman is the teacher at the school where MariaLina's daughter goes, so it's important to keep her happy.

We rode back to Puerto Montt in the sunshine of late afternoon,over the Alerce Road, which crosses beautiful farm country, dotted with patches of bluebells and lilac in bloom. The volcano Calbuco held firm to it's cap of cloud, but Osorno bared it's perfect snow-covered cone against the blue sky.
The outer fringes of Puerto Montt, approached from that high plain are poverty-stricken and devastated; concrete-covered lots thick with trash and plastic bags ... I don't know what the story is there ... the destruction that precedes some new creation, maybe? The streets get clean and prosperous, closer to the edge where the road turns down over the ridge to curve on O'Higgins with its lovely view of the water to the next bench down, where our edificio sits.

I'll post some photos soon, I promise. Meanwhile, on Sunday we hiked down to the Mall to watch "Gravedad" ... the kind of movie that blasts your mind with images that echo for days. Hope you get to see it soon.