Thickening Our Hawaiian Skin In Chil

Last spring, Carine Camboulives, Manu Bouvet, and their two daughters left their Maui home for a coastal village in Chile for a half-year-long house exchange and sup adventure. Between this South American country’s endless point breaks and mountain lakes, there is a new life to embrace, experience and share.

- Manu Bouvet

It is a foggy day on the deserted coastline of Peru. Carine and I stand a few meters above the ocean, but we can’t even see the waves because the fog is so thick! The rugged landscape made of grey sand and rocks over hills as far as you can see turns into a ghostly atmosphere when the sky, earth and ocean melt into one colorless entity.

That’s when I hear a voice: “Chile is much better than this place, I can tell you that!” I do not see my interlocutor until his silhouette comes out of the fog a few feet away from me.

He continues with a grin, “Waves are more consistent and the landscape more appealing—that is without mentioning the quality of the wine.” I will find out later that Felipe is an architect who, like all the Chileans we will meet later on, has an unconditional love for his country with a contagious enthusiasm to share it.

“Have you been to Chile?” I was reluctant to confess, fearing an avalanche of tourism brochure-like arguments that sometimes flow from home-sick travelers after several days of bad weather.

“No, I haven’t,” I finally confessed, “but it is a place on our list. We’ve actually been thinking of taking a long trip to South America in the future and maybe settling down for a while so we can work on our Spanish and get to know the continent better.”

“Chile is the place to do that,” started Felipe while sipping on a glass of pisco sour. “Do you actually know that the original pisco sour is from Chile and not Peru?”

“No, but I think it is actually a French drink,” Carine replied with a laugh.