We met through CouchSurfing.com and stayed with Karina for three nights in Santiago.

Karina was born and raised in Ecuador, and due to certain reasons left with the age of 18 to Chile. Here she started from the bottom and worked hard to settle down in this contrary to her own culture. She is just about finishing her studies in Psychology, which she did besides working for a psychology clinic as office assistent. Her current dream is leaving everything in Chile behind and set off to travel the world, searching for oportunities to work in indigeneous communities.

Karina's open minded attitude combined with her special, truth-speaking humor are a guarantee for feeling happy and cosy in her company. She loves astrology and knows to indentify her sun star characteristics well, having conciously experienced them on herself and friends. Her passion is cooking, which makes her take out the pots as soon as guests are stepping into her apartment. Karina loves to learn about new recipes, although she most likely knows a way more about delicacies than her visitors. It is lovely to spend time with Karina, listening her funny - and deeply serious - stories about life, where she weighs histories always depending upon the circumstances in which they developed.

Often we believe that the most difficult burdens we carry in our lives are the most heavy, making us suffer most. Give sense to this suffering by searching the simplest side to better bear it. Convert the weight of your suffering from kilograms into grams imagining to carry feathers instead of stones. Think about a year as if it was an hour. Transform kilometers into meters. Today You Are. Yesterday I was. And tomorrow...your burden will be much lighter provided that a part of the world will be shared with you. Give your burden the value to which we least appeal. The value of simplicity. Karina searching her way...

Augustas found a post of Cristobal in the forum of the Argentinian website http://www.Lituanos.com.ar, because of his keen interest in meeting Lithuanians or its descendants in Chile. Both were in contact for several months, until we finally managed to visit Cristobal in July 2008 in Hacienda Maria Isabel, an Olive ranch existing since the 1550.

Cristobal is of Lithuanian, French, Italian, Scottish and Irish origin. His family history is large, having active roots in Chile, Uruguay, the USA, Canada, and Europe, which mainly his father keeps alive. Cristobals grandfather was Lithuanian, which makes him carry a Lithuanian surname, and having knowledge and experience about Lithuanian traditions.

Cristobal is about to be an agriculturist, currently writing his thesis about olive plantations. He loves "el campo" (the countryside), although he grew up in Santiago (capital of Chile) and has not have any relations to working in the fields before. Being passionate about nature and animals, he choose his agricultural studies by feeling, and landed seemingly on the right feet.

Cristobal is very sportive, too, being an active player of the national Chilean youth Rugby team, with whom he won on international level in France.

Being a Rugby player and countryside worker did not stop him from deepening his spiritual knowledge and insight. He used to practice Meditation, but nowadays prefers to get lost in literature about spirituality, and especially history.

A current big dream he is following is to travel through Europe, in search of experiencing the nowadays cultural life of countries of his origin. He is planning to leave to Europe in March 2009.

Dear new friend, I am a young student writing on my Thesis in the Atacama Desert.

I had the pleasure to receive Katya and Augustas for a few days, achieving to know them a bit and understand their basic motivations.

I would have liked to know them better, and I hope that you will realize it. Now you have the chance to share with them, learn about their habits, their way of life.

I am a Lithuanian descendant and know and admire the German culture, and for this reason shared a great sympathy with them; I am as well traveller, adventurer and sportsman. Probably you will also manage to establish a good bond with them, because they are very interesting. We have the luck to be part of their Latinamerican adventure, and you will in a certain way help our nations, cultures and traditions to meet each other.

We contacted Diego one day before we headed to Copiapo through CouchSurfing.com and he invited us straight away.

Diego is an Adventure Guide, currently working in the family business, which is a supply and repair shop for bicycles. He loves the outdoor, especially mountains and desert, as well as travelling.

Diego together with his whole family are very hospitable. They understand a travellers needs from the first moment, offering the basics like washing clothes, taking a shower, enabling to use anything in the kitchen, and simply offering help in any possible way. They invite strangers in their house, making them part of their family during their stay. Though they are not able to travel as much as they want, they live the philosophy of opening the door to any passer-by. They have had uncountable foreigners in their house, enjoying the personal enrichment and knowledge other cultures bring into their lives.

Additionally, they are completely in love with the animal world. Besides sharing their house with foreigners, they host two dogs, 4 cats, and 3 turtles. Their care for animals is not limited to their own, which they took in from the streets. Their efforts to make lonely street dogs feel loved and fed sufficiently is significant. Diegos mom even meant, "If I see a begging dog and a begging human in the same street, I would definitely go for helping the dog because the human choose this life himself, but the dog is punished to accept whatever he can get."

My grandmother says, "When you open your door and let a foreigner sit on your table, somewhen, in the present or future, someone will open other doors for you or a being that you love."