Our funny Valentine

When we first arrived in Mariposas, the hostel with the view, the first other traveler we met was Jakob.

He is a nice german student living in Argentina, who was spending his uni holidays in Valparaiso. One of those people I envy because he speaks three languages fluently.

 He was very friendly to us from the very beginning and, when asked about a place to eat something not-meaty, he cheerfully recommended us his favorite spot: a hipsterish little vegan place down in the town "centro" with an extremely cheap daily menu.

Chey and I happily headed there, being hungry and excited about one veggie meal that was not bland pizza or bland pasta.

Heading down the stairs to the city centre.

Once at the vegan place, the menu didn't look too exciting, but we wordlessly agreed that it was too cheap to complain.

The lady handed us the first: a pretty tasteless and watery pumpkin soup. We eat it without complaining.

Then the main: salad with some sort of bean cream/paste. It was a very hard to swallow thing, thick and with a strong undefined taste that I couldn't really decipher, but since I saw Chey eating without pulling any weird faces, I thought it was just me being all foodie.

So I said nothing and tried to keep eating, because it was so cheap.

Finally we finished and left, without saying much to each other about our not too succesful lunch.

...

At our return to the hostel, it was almost sunset. The terrace was beautiful and there was a fire going and nice people listening to cool music around a table.

We sat at the table too, and met a swedish couple and a dutch solo traveler, had some beer with them and Jakob, and started playing a pretty funny game of word guessing that I can't really remember.

Slowly the stars appeared, the view of the city and the port got more and more beautiful and the game got very lively...

City view.

More city view, we couldn't get enough.

Valparaiso port, from our terrace.

It's all fun and games until...

...at some moment through it, I got up and said "I think I feel a bit sick", and left the table.

I really want to spare the readers the details of what followed, but I also really want to tell you all that I got so violently sick that I was surprised I didn't lose the insides of my stomach.

After 15 minutes of consistent vomiting I thought it was probably over, and pale-faced and dizzy I returned to the table, where Chey still looked perfectly healthy.

He gave me a "poor baby" hug, wondered what it could have been, since he felt perfectly normal and we had had the same food all day, and then kept playing while I sat next to him, too weak to continue.

The swedish couple and Jakob (all vegan, so their team for the game was "the vegan team") insisted that it couldn't be the vegan food. Vegan food doesn't make you sick. And it was obvious by the fact that Chey had also had it and was feeling perfectly well.

Until he wasn't.

Suddenly, around twenty minutes after my return from my throw up expedition, Chey said he wasn't feeling too well either...

That was the beginning of almost four hours taking turns to go to the toilet and throw up, then going back to the room and holding hands, cursing our "healthy" food choice.

Chatting between toilet runs, we found out that we both felt a strange taste in our lunch, but we both preferred not to tell each other because we felt it was "probably nothing", and it was so cheap.

(Also, none of us had never been food poisoned before, so of course we were not expecting it).

And his is the story of how Chey and I spent our Valentine's night in the nicest, most romantic place in Valparaiso... vomiting until we fell asleep, exhausted and with sore throats.

The moral of the story is: if it tastes bad, it's probably bad. And also: the cheap can be very expensive.


*Do not consider this post to be against vegan food in general by no means.

**Also, I forgot to mention that after I got sick, Chey (who was already feeling not too good himself) walked uphill just to get me a bottle of water, because he is AWESOME.