Tuesday, July 15th, 6:56PM

I’ll try to make this short and sweet. Town #2 was too high tide and bunk on Sunday, but Louie paddled out anyway and tried to score a few nugs. He didn’t have much luck. We hung out all day and caught a bus at 3:30 for Town #1. As we drove away to our horror we witnessed the entire coastline on fire: all the reefs were going off with the lower tide and a shorebreak we hadn’t seen before looked insane. Damn. Barred.

I have one piece of advice for travelers to Chile: Tur-Bus sucks!!! There is absolutely no ventilation, the movies are crap, and the buses stop randomly for no reason at all. What should have been a 5-hour ride to Town #1 ended up being a nine-hour hell ride. It was hot as hell and we broke down multiple times. James was snapping. He kept arguing with the two ladies in front of him who wouldn’t let him open the window. Finally, sweaty and pissed off, he took a swig of his 40, raised his hands, and yelled "Tienes una problema?" Luckily the situation was diffused before shit really hit the fan.

We arrived back at Carol and Joe’s pad after midnight, hit the sheets, and took Louie to the airport the next morning. Louie was making a death trip from Town #1 to Santiago to Lima to LAX to Cabo for the No Friends/Option Freakfest. It was sad to see him go. Louie keeps quiet most of the time but when he talks its usually something funny. He charged Crackers super hard on the knee too.

After dropping Louie off we ventured back to The Coop. It was pretty shitty but crowded thanks to a group of American bodyboarders who were in town. Jason Bitzer, Tyler Weinman, Josh Wills, Sebastian Slovin, and a few other tag-alongs had hired a photog and were making the same trip as us. We nicknamed them Team Boogie USA.

Today was pretty much a carbon copy of yesterday: shitty Coop (I didn’t even surf today) with Team Boogie and the locals followed by a lunch of awesome empanadas and a nap.

This afternoon we drove Carol’s car around looking for some secret spot but had no luck. Instead we ended up at this quaint little fishing village in the middle of nowhere. This place is dusty and desolate, but it does have its charms. Tonight we’re gonna hit the town.

Saturday, July 19th, 11:37

Finally we’re on the plane home. Three weeks have felt like four. Time goes slowly when you’ve got all afternoon to kill after the morning surf session.

The last few days at Carol and Joe’s were all basically the same. An early surf session at The Coop followed by lunch, a nap, an afternoon surf check, possibly another session, dinner, drinks, and sleep. The waves were OK, fun by normal California standards, but somewhat frustrating after the epic waves in Town #3. We also found another sick wave a little south of The Coop with some major potential. Unfortunately Team Boogie USA was on it the only time we saw it breaking. It had some major potential for a big swell though.

Team Boogie is actually pretty cool. Wills and Weinman are friendly, Sebastian stares at his muscles all day, and Bitzer… well Bitzer is pretty much what I expected him to be, super amped on bodyboarding to the point of goofyness, but really friendly and outgoing.

One night we went out to an awesome steak dinner with Carol and Joe. It was a really nice steakhouse with piano players and drunk Chileans singing love songs to their wives. Everyone got pretty toasted off the wine. Afterwards we ended up going to an Irish bar full of Australian copper miners and later checked out "Ladies Night" at a local club.

Another night Carol made dinner and we all played a Chilean dice game called Cacho all night. Later a local bodyboarder named Eric (who we nicknamed "Grill") came over and watched footage.

I’ve got to give props to two local bodyboarders at The Coop who will remain ingrained in my mind forever: "Raton" and "The Wizard". "Raton" fucking rips. He was busting backflips and forward airs on almost every wave and pretty much owned this spot. He was a really friendly guy and had the most insane calcium deposits I’ve ever seen on his feet thanks to his fins. "The Wizard" bears an uncanny resemblance to Mike Stewart, not only in appearance but also in riding style with his straight-legged reverses. The Wizard gets any wave he wants at Coop, no questions asked. I sold him my scraped up board before we left for $30 and James sold his to "Raton" for $50.

Thursday morning we had one last session at The Coop before Carol drove us to the airport. The next thing we knew we were checking into The Hotel Paris in Santiago. We had two and a half days to mob around the city and cause some ruckus.

I wasn’t expecting much out of Santiago, but it was awesome. First off, the percentage of hot chicks is off the charts. Secondly, the city is gorgeous, hilly, and bustling with people. It’s kind of like San Francisco, but instead of the bay you have the beautiful backdrop of the snow-covered Andes Mountains.

The first day we walked around the city with no plans at all. We got lost and eventually found our way again. We climbed this big hill in the middle of town and got an awesome view of the city. Then we went back to the hotel and took a nap to prepare for the night of partying ahead. At about 11:30 Nick and I cruised downtown (James pussed out) and hit up a pretty sick bar with live music followed by a DJ.

The second day we hit up the Pre-Columbian Art museum. It had hundreds of these cool little statues thousands of years old. Somehow we made it through the museum despite James’ ADD.

Afterwards we were cruising through the central square when a little gang of fifteen-year-old hip-hop kids started messing with us. These guys were really into African-American culture: basketball, hip-hop, and tagging. They kept asking us if we knew any black people. They tried to bait us into a one-on-one basketball-dribbling contest for cash. We declined (mostly cuz they were really good), so instead they took us on this insane tour of an underground Chilean mall where all the teenagers hang out. This mall had a couple of underground floors with stores selling gear for every possible subculture: hip-hop, skateboarding, basketball, tagging, metal, punk, etc. The girls in the malls were chasing us around like movie stars. The punks hated us and kept flipping us off and saying shit like "Fuck the USA". After a fruitless search for chewing tobacco for James, we hit up Burger King and the kids tagged up some notebooks for us and we did the same for them.

After a nap, we cruised the city some more before returning to the hotel for a couple Cristal 40s each. Shlammed, we all grabbed a taxi to hit up the bars again.

The taxi ride was one of the most insane things I have ever experienced. This psycho was weaving in and out of traffic with no concept of staying in one lane. We were inches away from being sideswiped by a bus. Nuts. Before we knew it we were given free entrance to a club. We were all blown away by the girl/guy ratio in this place (4/1, and three of every four chicks were hot). The place was sick. Late night, James pulled a fire extinguisher off the wall and sprayed it all over the club. Somehow we avoided getting kicked out. Hours later we stumbled home in a drunken stupor.

Today we cruised around looking for gifts and recovering from last night’s drankfest. We witnessed a drunken toothless nutball get full-nelsoned out of a restaurant for trying to panhandle from us. Some idiot tried to reach into my backpack as I walked down the street but luckily I caught him before he could snag anything. Our taxi ride to the airport was also memorable thanks to another psychotic mullet-sporting cabby with a horn on his car that could whistle at chicks.

Santiago was the shit, I must return.

Finally we’re on our way home after three weeks of madness. I think we are all ready to get home and see our families and friends again. But I guarantee it won’t be long before we start to miss the epic waves, friendly people and beautiful land of Chile.