Camila en Cerro Alegre: Mil Tambores

Well this week and weekend was another great one! On Wednesday for class we went to La Sebastiana which is Pablo Neruda's house in Valparaiso. It is exactly what I thought it would be like; a beautiful, old house filled with odd, beautiful objects with a great view of the ocean. It's five stories tall and it looks so funky from the outside but the whole ocean side is practically window and you can see the whole city from the bed.

Friday I don't have class and so I got to baked an apple cake for my family! My dad's special recipe, however I think he makes his much better! It still turned out really good and everything was gone in about 12 hours. And then Friday night I went to my brother and sisters school where they had a big festival and a singer named Francisca Valenzuela come and sing for everyone! She was great. I'm not sure how famous she is but it was pretty cool to see her! Her music is very pop-happy-girly and all the girls were screeeaming their heads off.

On Saturday I went to lunch with my friends Luis and Ariel and we had a traditional cazuela! The cazuela is a soup with meat, a little bit of rice, and potato and it was so, so good. Sometimes I forget that drinking here is allowed in restaurants and such, so buying a bottle of wine together and sharing a delicious, cheap bottle with them was a special treat! We got a carmener which I've learned is a special grape that everyone thought had been lost during the plague, but a chilean was growing it and it was discovered. It was delicious and sweet and I am excited to have finally tried it! (Marisol told me about it last week). Then after our lunch we walked around Valparaiso, got delicious ice cream and then stopped for some fanchop at a local bar. Fanchop is Fanta and beer mixed together. It's very refreshing and crazy full of sugar and you feel so terrible after drinking it but it's so nice while it lasts!

Saturday night with Leah, Kacey, and the Benito crew we all headed out to PROA which is the dance club that only plays latino music! It's so fun to only dance to that kind of music, it's so much better than the music they play on the radio and min most clubs. It was nice to go to a club, I haven't been in a long time! Definitely still something I prefer to do rarely, but fun nonetheless. We stayed until closing time which is 6 am! How crazy is that. It was the first time that I've stayed out until closing time and it felt good to be like a real chilean party-goer. We woke up somewhat early and decided to make yummy breakfast burritos! It's fun to see how much of a little family we've created at this little house in recreo. There are a group of chilenos and a group of gringos and we all have spent so much time together and they really have become another family for me. There were 8 of us happily cooking, laughing, dancing and hanging out while we made eggs, guacamole, corn, lettuce and cheese to be wrapped up in warm tortillas. We also made fresh apple/ kiwi and Pineapple/orange juice. Fresh juice is very common here, I think because it's so good and fruit is SO cheap! On Wednesday I've gotten into the habit of going to the Valparaiso market and buying half a kilo of some kind of fruit, either apples, oranges, pears, tangerines, or strawberries all for around a dollar. I eat those fruit along with these fig patties that this woman sells at the market which are delicious. It's so fun to go to the market and be surrounded with noise and fresh fruit and vegetables. I've also gotten into the habit of buying almonds and raisins at these little family run stores where you can buy grains, nuts, dried fruits and other goodies by the kilo. I love these little stores, it feels so much better to buy from them than from Jumbo or Lider which are the Walmart type stores. As time has gone by, I've been forming all my favorite restaurants, cafe's, stores, and vendors and it is so fun create relationships with these people. I love feeling like I know this city, or at least part of this city, as no one can every truly know this whole city. Anyways, after making breakfast we headed to the Mil Tambores!

Mil Tambores is a yearly festival that was actually cancelled by the city this year because it causes a lot of disruptions with traffic, and safety. However, the mil tambores organizers decided to do it anyways. The main event on Sunday finally ended up being permitted by the city. I heard it was smaller than it normally is, which is saying a lot because it was a huge event. It was SOOOOOOOOOO FUN!!! Different groups of drum players walk down the boulevard with groups of dancers, artists and people intermixed. There is constant drumming the whole time and constant fun. We got there around 2:30 and I didn't get home until 9:30! I thought it would be like a little afternoon event that we would go to for a few hours but it just kept going and going and going. The number of people that were drunk was ridiculous but everyone was just there to have a good time and nobody cared. It is a custom for women to paint their naked upper bodies with cool designs and colors. We were actually planning on doing it with them but we arrived too late. All the paint happens earlier in the day and we missed our opportunity! Which actually was something I was okay with, as you can see in the pictures it was a grey and rainy day and it was much too cold for no clothes. The walk is probably a mile or two long, and the bands were playing the whole entire time. By the end all the drummers, dancers, and artists were exhausted. I was exhausted!! I didn't make it to my early morning class today I was so tired (don't worry it's only the first time I've skipped this class). The pictures below are all from the festival. It was one of my best days here in Chile I believe :) We were only six, so that made it easy to keep track of each other and we were all in the mood to carete! We danced along with the dancers that walked by, we danced with each other, we danced for hours. I remember having the thought, "everyone in the world knows how to have a good time except us ". I just realized that we are suuuch a lazy country consumed with making money and we have forgotten to live in the now and live wildly. So many people were out yesterday celebrating. It was so alive and chaotic and it was a mess, but it was a beautiful mess. I'm so happy I got to experience Mil Tambores and I'm just sad that I don't know when the next time will be that I experience something like it again.

One of many groups of drummers: