Contentment, happiness, kayaking, and beer.

The cool biting nectar of barley slid past the gates of my lips and rushed into my gulping throat. I slammed the frosty mug on the worn wood table as the foreign words of my friends were cast loudly into the empty surf shack style bar. Reggae blared in the background, I took another swing, feeling the soft warm glow of the beer enter my mind. I smiled and listened. They chattered wildly and rapidly, hands moving in exaggerated gestures, the whites of their teeth highlighting tan faces. Behind the bar stood Franz, Daniela, and Che, all long time disciples of a minority hippie culture, all devoted to the consumption of liberation, all warm faces in the frigid spring Chilean air.  

I had come to this bar often in the past. I had spent hours slowly loosing the shackles of worry. It had been a year ago sense the last time I had hidden inside these walls, it had been in the heart of the most difficult year of my life. It had become a marker now proving a change of self. 

"Jon can play guitar" my Chilean friend Matias said while pulling his long dark matt of hair tightly into a pony tail. I was jolted from a deep journey of exploring the nothingness of my mind, and shoved into the sudden reality of a impromptu performance. "  I don't how to play..." I said, hoping the lie would allow me to return to my happy daydreaming, my aloof engagement. They insisted. The music was turned off. A guitar formed in my hands. My fingers took to the malleable nylon strings while I took my position on top the nearest table. My Spanish put to the test, I belted out an improvised tune about the joys of being a blond gringo in Chile. Their laughter fueled my performance, especially the dimpled bright face of a very spicy waitress from my old job. I strummed the final note and set the guitar down on the table across from me. The laughter died as I resumed my seat, finished the last of my third frosty mug. The spicy waitress, Daniella, shook a near empty bottle of white wine, and simply said, "Que Bacan." (Slang for "how awesome") That was all  it took, another day beyond happy south of the equator. We left, making our way stumbling into the street.  

The night was freezing.

After consuming comically large hot dogs, we jumped into a taxi, and headed toward the consequence of morning.

 

After waking in a house not my own, curled up warmly in blankets on the floor, I left and caught the first bus back to the countryside. I got off and my stop and started the few minute walk down the tree lined gravel road toward my temporary home, and my best of friends. "Hey lover boy is back!" said the wrinkled smiling face of Dan, the most hospitable man in the world, as I walked into his house. "So how did it go?" I related the details, then gulped down glass after glass of heavy spring water. After my friends woke up, we packed up and sped toward the river, we headed toward life.  

Recanting events sipping beer in Dan's Houe.

Another successful day of kayaking completed. As the stink of wet gear was washed from my body, the delectable cooking of Dan was deep inside my gut, and sleep found me headed for the plush leather couch, I once again was consumed in a life most content. My eye lids squashed my vision, thoughts turned to the adventure of the new day, and my mind was lost in dreams of the Chilean life, kayaking, women, and happiness.