Logistics

There's an old adage that states 'Amateurs talk strategy; professionals talk logistics.' There's a certain logic to this, as it applies to vacation planning: the logistics are the tough part (which is why many people hire others to deal with it). Among those who actually get involved with the logistics side of things, one school of thought involves planning out every single moment of a trip, from where to eat breakfast to which park benches to stop at (you know who you are). The downside of this, of course, is that it doesn't allow you a lot of flexibility. For example, if you sign up for two weeks of Spanish classes and decide that you want to stay for four (or that you want to leave after a day), you need to rearrange all your flights and hotels as all of your carefully laid plans fall into ruin. I have cleverly designed an alternate approach, which involves never making any carefully laid plans.

This has its downsides.

Take today, for example. I was scrambling last night (as I have every night since I got here), to make plans on multiple time scales - what am I going to do tomorrow, the next day, this weekend, next week, etc. I'd finally worked things out - a trip to Huelquehue today, to Huilo-Huilo tomorrow, and Villarrica on Sunday - when I discovered after my classes today that a) the trip up Villarrica was cancelled due to rain in the forecast, b) the trip to Huilo-Huilo nature park was being replaced by a trip to San Martin for culture, food, and shopping ("BOOORRRING!"), and c) in the time it took me to figure out these things, I'd missed the only afternoon bus to Huelquehue.

So, instead I hopped on the same bus I'd gotten on yesterday, and took it one stop further, to Lago Caburgua.

And this, right here, is where strategy comes into play: if you pick the right general area for your travels, even a last-minute, poorly planned decision can still turn out pretty darn good:

Well, that's enough of photos. Now, to figure out what I'm going to do tomorrow...