I meet Daniel on the corner of our streets at 9:30, the usual meting place and time. Tonight we had been invited over to the house of a bartender, Diego, we had meet the night before. We haden't really undrstood the directions he'd given us, but this is small town, most people know each other. His day job is that of a highschool teacher here in the valley, and he was interested in talking to us about what we do here. I get the vibe that he has an unwilling acceptance of us, like most teachers. I feel they probably put us in the same category as all he other tourists who pack the camping grounds for the weekend, squander their money in the bars, litter the streets, and leave with some really unappreciated pictures of mountains and sunsets.
A man named Herman saw us walking on down the street, he said if we wern't doing anything tonight his nephew was having people over, we said we had other plans and continued walking to 'El Tosoro'(a German resturant/camping ground), the usual meting place for the volenteers and young germans of Pisco. I failed to mention that since I don't have a cell phone, everything is sort of spur of the moment, and this is the best place to find someone who knows, for example, where Diego lives.
All of the Germans i knew working, so we waited out front (their shift ends at 10). Strangely, Chile is a strange place but no Chilean will ever tell you that, Herman drove by and asked again if we were sure we didn´t want a life to his nephew, Diego's, house. I can't see how you could call anything coincidence here. We agreed and he drove us a few minutes up at dirt road into the valley where we camped two weekend ago. It was now dark; as we started up an almost nonexistant rocky road, Hermans car stalled. He pointed to some lights a hundred meters above us (i think in metric now), and said we'd just have to walk the rest of the way.
We reached a house on a plateau and saw a roaring bonfire in the distance with two shadows standing next to it. I've learned that in ambiguous stiuations like this, its best to just shout '¡Hola Amigos!' They shouted back something muffled in the night air. I was relieved to find that when we neared the figues they were Diego and Marco (a twenty something German who seems to know 'where the party at').
The night held a few incredible stories about how Diego drag races muscle cars in the dessert below San Pedro, how he encountered a jaguire while camping alone in the Andies, how back at home (Easter Island) he and his friends surf down grassy slopes on banana trunks wearing only a loin cloth and decorative fethers. As the shame of living a relatively unadventurous life was beginning to set in, I learned that the real reason he wanted us at his house was to see the moon rise.
Over a horison of black jagged mountains sat a mass of whispy clouds that were being slowly illuminated by an unseen light. The stars over the east began to fade, a large red ring formed in the cloud and a bright white orb at its center broke the peak. As the moon rose we stood, chuckling at the rediculousness of the bearty. The mountain range behind us became a projecton screen for the bands of moonlight were striping through the layers of clouds at the oppisite end of the sky. The rock mountains became a pool of rippling light and dark stripes. Diego explained that the ring, which is now shades of red, orange, yellow, and blue, is a moonbow formed by the light of the moon through the clouds. I took a few pictures, but it was difficult to get the color of the Moonbow without over exposing and loosing the shape of the clouds. Some aspects of nature refuse to be captured. God Bless.
A man named Herman saw us walking on down the street, he said if we wern't doing anything tonight his nephew was having people over, we said we had other plans and continued walking to 'El Tosoro'(a German resturant/camping ground), the usual meting place for the volenteers and young germans of Pisco. I failed to mention that since I don't have a cell phone, everything is sort of spur of the moment, and this is the best place to find someone who knows, for example, where Diego lives.
All of the Germans i knew working, so we waited out front (their shift ends at 10). Strangely, Chile is a strange place but no Chilean will ever tell you that, Herman drove by and asked again if we were sure we didn´t want a life to his nephew, Diego's, house. I can't see how you could call anything coincidence here. We agreed and he drove us a few minutes up at dirt road into the valley where we camped two weekend ago. It was now dark; as we started up an almost nonexistant rocky road, Hermans car stalled. He pointed to some lights a hundred meters above us (i think in metric now), and said we'd just have to walk the rest of the way.
We reached a house on a plateau and saw a roaring bonfire in the distance with two shadows standing next to it. I've learned that in ambiguous stiuations like this, its best to just shout '¡Hola Amigos!' They shouted back something muffled in the night air. I was relieved to find that when we neared the figues they were Diego and Marco (a twenty something German who seems to know 'where the party at').
The night held a few incredible stories about how Diego drag races muscle cars in the dessert below San Pedro, how he encountered a jaguire while camping alone in the Andies, how back at home (Easter Island) he and his friends surf down grassy slopes on banana trunks wearing only a loin cloth and decorative fethers. As the shame of living a relatively unadventurous life was beginning to set in, I learned that the real reason he wanted us at his house was to see the moon rise.
Over a horison of black jagged mountains sat a mass of whispy clouds that were being slowly illuminated by an unseen light. The stars over the east began to fade, a large red ring formed in the cloud and a bright white orb at its center broke the peak. As the moon rose we stood, chuckling at the rediculousness of the bearty. The mountain range behind us became a projecton screen for the bands of moonlight were striping through the layers of clouds at the oppisite end of the sky. The rock mountains became a pool of rippling light and dark stripes. Diego explained that the ring, which is now shades of red, orange, yellow, and blue, is a moonbow formed by the light of the moon through the clouds. I took a few pictures, but it was difficult to get the color of the Moonbow without over exposing and loosing the shape of the clouds. Some aspects of nature refuse to be captured. God Bless.
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