An Unexpected Shower, A Slight Let Down and Tons of Smog

I wrote my last post while waiting for Eric on Saturday; however, I left out something that happended on Friday. So while heading to Boca de Lobos I got an unexpected shower. You see the drainage system in Temuco isn't the greatest; when it rains the streets tend to flood a little. As cars drive by some make huge walls of water splash onto the sidewalks. I was one of the lucky ones that got literally drenched by one of these lovely "showers" of drain water.....let's just say I was drying my hair with paper towels in the bathroom at the bar.

Now on to the slight let down. It never stopped raining in Temuco, sure it would calm down for a bit but it was always gloomy and foggy. Thus when Sunday rolled around I decided, along with Eric, not to head to Pucon as the weather was the same there - more or less it wasn't worth the money nor the time to get there and see more rain and fog and maybe, just maybe a bare outline of a volcanoe shaped form. Although, all together I had a ton of fun in Temuco and I'm very very happy I went there - at the very least I got to see where some of my friends are from and begin to explore the possbility of applying for the teaching position at the Colegio Bautista.

The Smog...
After class today we went to Wasabi, an amazing (and super cheap, for lunch at least) sushi place. Next we headed to San Cristobal, a sort of overlook up a mountain with it's own statue of the Virgin Mary - very South American. We took a gondola ride to the top which was quite fun. After exploring for a little while we headed back down in a type of train type thing that was very "Jurasic Park" like. However, the most interesting, and disturbing, part of this trip was the amount of smog. Pollution is a huge problem in Santiago. The government tries to fight it by heavily regulating cars (each day a certain number of people, based on the last numebr of their license plate, can't drive) and making things such as chimenys illegal. However, the government doesn't regulate factories as they think it will hurt the economy. The result is a permanent layer of blackish gray smog over the city. I took some pictures (which should be on flickr soon) but all you can really see is the smog.

I only have 4 days left in South America as I leave on Sunday night. On the list of things to do is visit the city center, visit the city cathedral, by some things, eat (maybe cook) Chilean Sea Bass and eat in a Chilean restaurant.