The Voss Dufour World Tour

We miss:

1. The radio selection, or at least Jo does. All late 80′s, early 90′s like Phil Collins. At loud volume. Sweeeeeet.

2. Cheap and abundant advocados.

3. Speaking Spanish.

4. Cheap street food.

5. Cheap Chilean box wine

6. The boulders at La Serena

7. Cheap lodging

8. James misses toying with street vendors….aka practicing his Spanish.

9. The dramatic scenery.

10. Pollo (chicken) broasters (eateries)

What we don’t miss:

1. Totallly BS excuses for a hot shower

2. The inability to operate a speaker at anything less than maximum volume

3. Not being able to throw TP into the toilet.

4. Not having to carry TP everywhere.

5. Bus rides with drivers that pass while driving uphill, in the rain, in the dark, on a mountain side, in the outside lane. Or more succinctly said by James, any ride in South America.

6. Not having people understand us….it rarely happened, but whenever it did, it was fustrating.

7. The lack of O2 at high altitude

8. People’s lack of comprehension about line formation.

9. Coffee fail after coffee fail.

• Chileans don’t throw the tp into the toilet after using it. It goes into a waste basket. Not necessarily as gross as one would think, but definitely gross in the whole scheme of things.

• Being 5’5”, I am about the average height of a Chilean (which is nice for a change.) It also makes finding James in a crowd to be pretty easy.

• Advocados are absurdly cheap here…about $2 for 1 kilo, or 2.2lbs. Almonds, on the other hand are quite pricey. ½ kilo for $6, or about 1lb of almonds for 6 bucks.

• You should travel with tp and hand sanitizer. It’s not something to be taken for granted in a public restroom.

• Bathrooms usually cost about 200 pesos or .40 cents. I am support paying for bathrooms, except when I really need one and don’t have any change on me.

• Chileans kiss on one check, the right one, upon greeting each other.

• Anything of significant purchasing importance has inflation adjusted pricing.

• Anything in Argentina of significant purchasing importance is priced in US dollars.

• They play music in cars, public locations and on their phones absurdly loudly.

• Vendors board the long distance travel buses to sell pastries. They continue to travel with the bus for miles from where they boarded, then the vendor gets off at a random location on the side of road.

• Dogs are EVERYWHERE.

• Math is not a strong point for the Chileans.

I meant to sleep off the wine tour but ended up staring rapt at giant granite cliffs.