Papa Hugo

We then arrived to Hugo’s father’s house. His father is also named Hugo so we call decided to call him Papa Hugo. He has a large beautifully decorated home with 3 vacant bedrooms, 1 for each girl. He told us “the rules are..there are no rules. You can do what you want in my house.” We would love living in a house like his in Calle Larga, but we know that his house is exceptionally nice especially compared to those in Calle Larga.

Stories of Papa Hugo:
1) Papa Hugo is a very charming, dignified, and funny man. We quickly found out that he is also quite a ladies’ man and therefore we coin him as the Chilean Hugh Hefner or Sean Connery. He comes home late, attends a cueca club twice a week and generally loves to dance, drinks generously (but eats very healthy), and loves oldies and romantic music. He was VERY interested in the ladies in our photographs that we brought with us from the US (including Kristy’s single mom) and could care less about the guys in our pictures. But he also does so in a jokingly manner without being creepy.

2) Papa Hugo loves cueca. We asked him to demonstrate sometime. So he did… by suddenly pulling off the side of a dirt road, turned the volume up on the radio during a cueca-like song, and jumped out of the car to cueca a little and hopped back in. It was very random and very funny.

3) Morrocan. Melissa explained that her husband is Morrocan and Papa Hugo walked over to my pair of jeans that I set out in front of the portable heater (NO CENTRAL HEATING IN CHILE) and proceeded to unbutton then unzip the zipper. I thought he was trying to strip by jeans, but we then realized that “morrocan” is similar to the Chilemismo for “zipper”.

4) Papa Hugo loves wine. He offered us some Pisco Sour then proceeded to his wine cabinet and pulled out a bottle of wine that said “Sexo Vino”. He then looked at us and said “No, this is not for you”.

5) Misunderstanding
I had really enjoyed staying at Papa Hugo’s home and appreciated how much more comfortable the bed was than those at the hostels. I said “Me gusta su cama porque esta mas duro y…”. He and Melissa both gave me a weird look. He proceeded to ask me “You tried my bed?” I quickly said “No, no, mi cama en mi cuarto en este piso (since we lived on different floors)”. The next day, during tea time with Alcande (Mayor) Nelson in his house, Papa Hugo decided to tell him about our misunderstanding that I had with him the night before. I was a little embarrassed but knew that the mayor had a good sense of humor too.

6) Broken Underwear. While we were still having tea with the mayor, Papa Hugo asked if we knew what “Calzones Roto” was and if we have ever eaten some. I said with a confused look “eat broken underwear?” He laughed and confirmed that it was a type of pastry called “Broken Underwear”. And boy they were delicious….plain donut texture, but crunchy with some sugar on top.

7) Cueca- We told Papa Hugo we'd like to learn the cueca, but after an hour of trying to call his female friends to come over to demonstrate with him, he decided that we would go watch a cueca class. We went to a dance class offered to youth and they demonstrated a cueca dance just for us and they resumed with a different Peruvian-Chilean dance that looked really cool. HEY, maybe I will try to find a dance class as part of my exercise regime.