Good or bad news?

Hello...
As you all know my hard drive got busted a while back. I had all my pict's on that little piece of equipment. I've been in contact with a company that does retrieval. They have a office in Santiago so I went to see them last week. The diagnostic took about 6-7 hours so I left my hard drive with them. The next day they sent me an e-mail with the info on what the problem was and how much it was going to cost to repair it. The cost was 400.000 cl. That is about 4600.-Nok.  Ugh..... Sorry to say it, but I don't have the cash to retrieve those pictures. The good thing is that the diagnostic was free, heh.....

Anyway, I'll write about what went down in Argentina and in Bolivia, then I'll go back to Villa Alemana and start things from there. (or end things) I've been taking more pictures from the surroundings just to try to make up for the loss. I'll skip Christmas since I lost the Christmas pictures too :b

I'll post the new stuff soon so we can carry on :D



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www.nekiori.cl

Argentina: Mendoza pt.1

Allright. Me and my cousin were supposed to go to Bolivia first. We bought some super cheap plane tickets and were ready to go on a sweet adventure. The day of the flight came and we were making the last preparations when we saw that the ticket were a month off! WTF! We booked the tickets wrong! Well, no biggie, I'll have to find somewhere else to go in the meantime.

EMERGENCY STOP!

Oh, No!
My external hard drive just got busted! And I had all my pictures and movies there :(
I will try to retrieve them but I do not have any high hopes that I can get my stuff back. I know that retrieving data is very expensive and I do not have a lot of cash with me.
Anyway, I do have the next post at hand, but the rest of the adventure is kinda lost.
I had pictures from other places in Chile, Argentina and Bolivia ++
So right now I'll wait a while to see if I can retrieve the data, but I will not wait too much.

Like I said, I do have the next post with pictures and I will post it asap. I was lucky that I didn't loose that one too, heh...
You guys will hear from me soon,

PJ.

Chile: Villa Alemana pt.1

Hellø,
I've been exploring my home town this couple of weeks, living as a Chilenean. Eating good food, drinking good beer and sunbathing a lot :)

Chile: Grandma's House

Grandma's crib.

Allright
I'm gonna stay at Grandma's House for the remainder of my visit here in Chile. My Cousin Gerhard is living there right now. He kinda is watching over the place since the house is going to be sold in a couple of months. Guess I should say that my grandma is no longer with us. She passed away last year, That's why he is taking care of the place so it doesn't deteriorate anymore. Here in Chile if you do not take care of the thing they just fall apart, and Grandma's house was all empty for about 6 months before Gerhard began to take care of it.

Grandma's garden

Back of the house

Grandma had 2 lemontrees

Little dog Lupita

Gerhard lives by himself, only in the company of liitle dog, Lupita. She take care of the place while Gerhard is out working. The place looks smaller than when I was a kid. The long hallway seems not so long anymore. Used to play around here. Things are kinda the same, but different at the same time. Strange...

Anyway, I'm going to be sleeping in my great grandmothers old room. My old kiddie room was used as  a storage for the remainder of my grandmothers stuff and some things belonging to Gerhard.

Today I went over to take a look at the store that Gerhard owns. He has a computer part replacement store here in Villa Alemana, Here is the link to the store's web page. http://notebookmundo.cl/
It's a small store, but with lot of potential. He works with his friend and business partner Ariel.

Here at the store the workday goes from 10:00- 14:00 and then from 15:00 - 18:00
That gives us a hour to have dinner. Yeah, we eat at 2 o'clock. A bit early for my taste but that's the siesta time here. Almost every shop here closes down between 13:00 and 15:00. They don't have lunch here, hehe. Gerhard and usualy eats dinner at a place called "La Biblioteca" that is just a block from his store. The place is a small bar/restaurant with good food and cheap drinks.
We ate todays plate and had a beer for about Nok 65,- And that's for the 3 of us! No wonder he eats out everyday :)

Anyway, after that the workday was over he asked me if I wanted to taste a special beer that a german guy makes. Hell yeah, let me taste that! So, Gerhard, Ariel and myself went for a little drive to somewhere. We had to drive through dusty roads and a hillside to get to the tavern. We were welcomed by a gentelman that spoke spanish only as a german can :) Guess this is the guy that makes the beer. He had only one sort of beer, since this past week had been a week of party (because of the national day, y'know) and a lot of people had been at his place to taste his beer. Well, the beer he had was smoked beer. Never heard of that kind of beer, but my goodness what a beer! The taste was like smoked, well... Beer. Man, we really have to get back here ASAP!

Beer this way!

Smoked Beer, Sweet nectar of the gods!

Next up....
More Villa Alemana adventure

Panama/Chile: Hello homeland

Today I'm leaving Panama so I had to wake a little earlier than usual. Had my breakfast with M and the house keeper. While we were there a lot of people were gathering at the other side of the food hall. I asked the keeper what the gathering was all about, cos' they started to sing jesus-songs. He said that they were churchgoers.

Panama: 2nd day in sweet Panama!

Allrightynow!
Today woke up with new energy after a good night's sleep. Slept like a baby :)
Well, I found M hanging about, guess she is a early bird. She was waiting for me to have some breakfast, so we went to the kitchen to make us sommething. The place was almost desserted since the people that is comming for the convention is supposed to come tomorrow. So it was just me, M and the house keeper. The keeper was an elderly man, but he was really nice and told us many stories about Panama and gave us usefull information on the what's and how's in Panama. (Talking about what we should say when looking for a cab to get it cheap)