The First Weekend
I’ll blame it on naiveté, but my first Friday afternoon was plagued by that “now what?” feeling as I walked home from school. I suspected my weekends here would differ from the predictable activities I generally partake in at home (see below).
As you can see, I no longer have a car, a dog who loves me or friends. Nonetheless, Friday evening I met up with two other volunteers (they would later become my BFFS. 1/3 ain’t bad, right?) in Ovalle at an establishment named Bar Cafe. It’s a bar. It’s a cafe. Why not leave it at that? Bar Cafe has working WiFi and our mission was to collaborate and make a list of things to do in Ovalle. It should be noted WiFi here is a novelty, so any time we catch wind it’s available, we’re like famished vultures feeding on freshly deceased meat. Facebook…Instagram…Snapchat…Google Maps NOM NOM NOM.
One of my favorite “customs”, for lack of a better word, in Ovalle is their happy hour (simply called "happy"). You pay an extra 1,000 pesos (approximately $1.50) and get two drinks instead of one. It’s quite the deal if you ask me. A few drinks in and some research later, this was our final product:
After analyzing our overwhelming list of things to do here (in retrospect, not finding ONE activity to do in a town of over 100,000 is a bit dramatic), we decided to head to La Serena, a sleepy beach town an hour away, on Saturday morning. We figured the beach is just what we needed after a long week of classroom observations. Instead of beach time, we ended up taking the bouncy hour and a half bus there, walked over an hour to a restaurant perched atop a hill, ate a glutinous amount of food and waddled back on the bus with our pant buttons undone to go home. Honestly, I can't think of a better day trip itinerary.
HOWEVER. The real MVP of Saturday was what transpired later that night. My host mom had previously made mention of going to some charity folklore dance party.
I obliged.
We rolled up around midnight to a nondescript building with two men standing at the door with their arms crossed for what could only be attributed to dramatic effect. The venue inside looked like a small, abandoned warehouse. Health codes aside, there were elderly women serving meat kabobs, french fries and a concoction that resembled mulled wine. The show started with two men singing and doing improv bits only they found amusing.
Then it somehow evolved into this.
I live for these kind of unexpected nights.
We ended up leaving at 5am and even then the party showed zero signs of stopping. I was clearly a zombie at this point, but my host mom bizarrely took me on a tour of her old stomping grounds across the city and introduced me to all the stray dogs she used to feed every day. Her car chugged up a steep hill until we reached a stop at the top. She got out of her car, whistled a few times and patiently waited with a smile on her face. Out of the darkness of the early morning came four massive dogs, prancing frantically toward the car. Witnessing this reconciliation was similar to watching dog reaction videos on YouTube when owners return home after an extended amount of time away. However, I was so tired and my contacts were essentially Gorilla glued to my eyeballs that to this day I’m unsure whether this dog reunion actually happened or if it was a mulled wine-induced dream.
Regardless, the takeaway here is that I now have something to add to my “Things To Do In Ovalle” list: folkloric ragers.