Mote con huesillo

Hello, hello! I am currently in Pucon, Chile! The rest of my week in Valdivia was very chill and nothing too crazy happened. It was sad to leave the town just because I had such a nice time there, but I was ready to explore somewhere new. It was a 4-hour bus ride from Valdivia and super easy. The bus was not as luxurious as my other ones have been but that makes sense because those were more long-haul trips, and this one was pretty short. Also, I love bus rides where I don't have to transfer buses. That is something that I have been loving about the bus travel here. Coordinating different buses is always so stressful so when I just take one bus from Point A to Point B, I love it. I arrived to Pucon in the early afternoon and dropped all my stuff off and then had a decent part of the day to explore. My first afternoon in Pucon I spent at a nice, relaxed beach. I took a sandwich and just read my book for a couple of hours. 

Then on Saturday I explored around the downtown of the city. Since it is summer here, everything is busy. This is a very touristy town and so there are lots of local tourists as well as international tourists. There's lots of cool shops and little artisan markets so I explored a lot of those. In this town there are stores for each of these brands: North Face, Patagonia, Columbia, KUHL, and Merrell. That is so crazy to me to have so many outdoorsy stores! I spent the afternoon of Saturday at the more popular beach, and it was packed. On my walk into the beach, I stopped at a cart and bought mote con huesillo. I had seen it the day before and was feeling inspired to try. Mote con huesillo is a cold summertime drink and it is "dried peaches cooked in sugar, water and cinnamon, and then once cooled, mixed with fresh cooked husked wheat berries." They also put a slightly fermented peach in there. It was actually so good. You eat the wheat berries with a spoon and get some of the juice as you are eating it. Then you get to drink the juice and eat the peach as well! It was something new and I am glad that I tried it. Next, I want to try some sopapillas and churros. I have had both but not the Chilean version. And as far as traditional Chilean food goes, it is pretty heavy on the meat. And they don't really seem to replace things. Like in the US you can get any burger replaced with a veggie burger. So far that has not been the case here. So, twist my arm, I am going to have to keep trying the desserts of Chile. I took my mote con huesillo down to the beach to hang out in the sun and read and I did not get sunburnt! On the beach there were so many vendors who were walking up and down yelling about whatever they were selling. There were empanadas, suckers, chocolate covered strawberries, water shoes, water floaties, mini M&Ms, and more. It was a bit annoying but also really interesting to see. 

On Sunday I was supposed to go on a tour to a biological reserve but nobody else had booked it so I was not able to go. The weather was supposed to be bad, so I think that is why no one had booked a tour. I even checked with four different companies and none of them were going so I took it as a sign to just chill out. I had a relaxed morning and did some grocery shopping for the upcoming week. The place that I am staying only has a fridge and a kettle for me to use so I am getting creative with my food this week. Then I went back to the main beach and was there for an hour until it started to rain a bit. I decided that I would just head back and chill rather than run the risk of getting drenched. And I am glad that I did go back because it started to downpour at one point in the afternoon. The rest of the day was gloomy, so I just spent some time chit chatting on the phone. I went out for dinner, and I had already picked the restaurant earlier because they said that they had "spaghetti con vegetales" which is spaghetti with vegetables. I was excited about it and when I got to the restaurant it was pretty empty which is good for me. The waitress walked up with a small sheet of paper with 15 things handwritten on it and that was the menu. I ordered the spaghetti and double checked that it was vegetarian. The waitress said yes but then said something about soy. I thought she was telling me that there was soy protein or something and so I was like "okay, sounds good." Turns out she was telling me that the dish was in soy sauce, not tomato sauce. I love soy sauce and hate confrontation, so I ate it up. AND IT WAS SO GOOD!!! The rain was pounding on the plastic roof, and I had a huge plate of delicious noodles in front of me and it was perfect. Sometimes things don't work out how you expect them to, but you end up still enjoying them. 

This week is another full week of work and so far, the Wi-Fi at my place has been working well. The last Airbnb I was at did not have great Wi-Fi which is just really stressful and ends up getting expensive when I have to run a hot spot or go to a coworking space. I plan to just get outside for walks during my breaks and hopefully get out on a kayak at some point. We'll see!