CHRISTMAS!!!!

The last two weeks have been really full on, hence why I'm pretty late in writing this post. I'm going to split this into two posts, one for the week of Christmas and one for New Years. In the lead up to Christmas we had a staff BBQ to kick off the peak season in a good way. We all met up and spent the night eating, drinking, chatting and playing pool.

   

We knew that the coming week we had a big family float trip on the Río Tolten, a big river starting in Villarrica. Considering none of us that were going to guide knew the river, me and Daniel headed off in a tandem kayak to sprint down the river, look out for any tree hazards and learn the put-in, take-out and lunch spots. It's a beautiful section of river, 20km long and crystal clear the whole way down.

Not a bad day in the office.

I was invited to spend the Christmas weekend with Roberto's family. Here in Chile, the big day is the 24th. Everybody meets up as a family on Christmas Eve, and they open presents here at midnight of the same day. To celebrate, we had a BBQ (common theme as you may have noticed). It was a really fun and kind of weird day, which included: a goat getting killed and skinned to put on the grill, having to walk two cows back to their field and fetching the volleyball we lost from the pigsty...

Here there was once a goat.

Here there was once a volleyball.

Here is a cow.

Here is said goat.

Christmas day was nice and chilled, we got a good lie in and then spent the day enjoying the sun (yup, Christmas in summer is definitely as good as it sounds) and watching films. Of course the film choice included "Mi pobre angelito" ("Home alone") dubbed in Spanish, an interesting experience... As we sat down to Christmas lunch (not that similar to the English affair if you're wondering) the table started moving. Yes, that's right, there was an earthquake on Christmas day. It was further south and so we only felt the tremors, but it was the strongest one of the year.

"Home Alone" seems to be an xmas tradition even here.

Poor Roberto had an exam on the 26th so I also spent a little bit of time studying with him, what kind of evil teacher schedules an exam for Boxing Day?!?! I'm eternally grateful to Roberto's family for taking me in as one of their own and sharing their Chilean Christmas with me!

This is what happens when people have exams on boxing day!