On homelessness

In Australia and New-Zealand my tent came to be my portable house. With camping being infinitely less frequent in South America, I needed to fill the vacancy. The candidates at hand: the long distance bus and the hostel dorm. Although the bus certainly triggers homely feelings by now, a moving bed just doesn't do it for me. So hostels it had to be. Unfortunately they have been a bit on and off on fulfilling the role of second home.  

Hostel blues
The hostel in Santiago certainly didn't. Nothing wrong with either the room or the beds, but alcohol pickled eighteen to twenty year-olds bawled me out of my sleep a few nights too many. You might know the type. If not, their nickname flashpacker says it all. Backpack swapped for XL trolley, these boys and girls come straight from their fully serviced family homes. These tourists don't 'travel', 'learn', or 'discover'. They 'do'. Do Machu Pichu, do Chile, do the Uyuni salar. My favorite: a perfectly manicured, blonde fashionista proclaiming she 'did' Mount Fitz Roy. At my astonished look she asked: "Well, didn't you?" As I naively progressed to explain it was a bit hard for me to climb all the way up, she was quick to agree. The walk from El Chalten was sóóó uphill and at least twó hóúrs! And I finally understood she hadn't been talking about summiting Mount Fitz Roy, but about walking up to the viewpoint. Duh! After a few days, my endurance for sleepless nights and pub crawl adventure stories started to wear thin. So I decided to pick up my backpack once more, and move to the dodgy side of the neighbourhood. Dead quiet at night, perfectly styled, comfortable beds, and all this for a very reasonable price. Too good to be true? It only took me two days and about seven same-sex-friends-sharing-a-room pairs to realize I had ended up at the gay hostel. Absolutely perfect, from now on it was me and the boys!  

Feeling homely
Home became the central theme of my Santiago time. Because to my surprise I felt at ease with the energy of this multi million people city. Local habits such as unblinkingly ignoring the 'no pasar' signs in the metro and crossing red traffic lights in front of ever present policemen came naturally. As for social life, Dani introduced me to her climbing friends, who introduced me to more climbers, who shared ropes, chocolate, and laughs. And bombarded me with more Chilean slang then any poor foreigner should have to endure. I got to watch the Latin American top at the North Face bouldering competition, manouvered through an all-Spanish-speaking party, tried my hand at an utterly unsuccessful escape attempt to Mendoza in Argentina (rain), and ran into Swedish Hannah for the fourth time. But invariably intertwined with the good vibe, was the feeling of missing the familiarity of my pre-travel life. An accidental run-in with a chalkbag from my home rock gym managed to cause a veritable wave of emotionality. I guess it has finally happened. After 1+ year on the road I actually feel the need to be in one place for a while. Don't worry though, I'm still me. A while means months, not years. And the word place certainly doesn't conjure up images of Holland. So if anyone could find me a place with some mountains, friends, and - god, it hurts to write this down - a job, that would be awesome.