*Note: Sarah and I were in Santiago from October 12th through 21st. Instead of creating separate posts surrounding different activities we thought it would be fun to combine some of the highlights to create a sort of week in the life in Santiago.
Part 1 - Hostel Living
Santiago is a city of avenues which intersect the grid of cross streets in a myriad of angles. Side streets and alleys in turn thread their way between the major arteries creating a network that resembles a maze. A few of the larger avenues are lined with long parks filled with small gravel walking paths and stretches of grass and park benches. Many of the streets are tree lined and the city is sprinkled with plazas, some of which are well kept up and others less so.
Like all big cities Santiago has areas of mass density and traffic as well as more residential areas that are tranquil and have corner cafés offering fresh bread and fresh pastries. On this trip to Santiago we opted for hostel living in one of these more tranquil barrios. We thought it would be a good change of pace from the solitary life of apartment living and would be cheaper than the big city's hotels. We were not disappointed on either account.
We stayed at the Eco Hostel, a place in a quiet neighborhood in the central district, not far from where we stayed our first night in Chile. I think this hostel is one of the few places in the country where plastic, glass and paper are all recycled. Our first night, Saturday the 13th, was an Asado, a barbecue common in Chile and Argentina that starts with Chorizo sausages, then pieces of beef steak and then chicken and then pork. Included are veggies (tomatoes) and lettuce (iceberg) and bread and beer and wine.
The Asado was hosted by the hostel and we thought it would be an easy and fun dinner. We were joined by a 20 year old woman from Sweden, two Frenchmen in their mid 30s and a 28 year old Polish woman who volunteers in the Caribbean, and our cook, a 31 year old Chilean. We started drinking and talking and eating and soon two large bottles of wine were empty as well as two liters of beer. Since we had three more liters of beer to work through and it was getting cold and the meat was gone and we were still having fun, I suggested playing cards.
I rummaged through our bags and came back with a smile asking Sarah if she thought it would be fun teaching our new friends the game, "Oh Shaw!", which in itself is the nice and polite Warren way of saying "Oh Shit!", the real name of the game. Now this game, a Dodge and Warren family favorite, is not always the most uplifting of games for those who do not know how to bid well.( The only thing you need to know as a reader is that two of the main rules are that you must follow the suit of the card that is led and that the highest trump takes the trick.) After a couple of practice rounds we started out playing and quickly realized that Alejandro, the cook, had no idea what following suit meant and that Ellen, the Swede, had no concept of bidding trump. Since we were only awarding points for correct bids and not deducting points for missed bids, we overlooked these handicaps and made sure the glasses were always full of some sort of beverage.
After a couple of nights in the hostel, I came to the conclusion that living in a hostel is like the mail. You never know what or who will arrive from day to day. And more importantly, you have no control over who or what arrives. The daily breakfasts at the hostel were basic: two pieces of bread, margarine, jam, one piece of fruit, tea or coffee and the option of cereal. For some strange reason it was never made clear to anyone where the milk was for the cereal as there was only powdered milk for the tea or instant coffee. This fact came to be a source of bewilderment for every occupant at Eco at their first breakfast and every morning some new arrival would shuffle in and ask an open question to whomever was in the breakfast room, "Is there milk for the cereal? How am I supposed to eat cereal with powdered milk?" To which most of us who had been there a day or two would just shrug and go on eating.
One morning, I was eating breakfast and enjoying a cup of milk tea when a young woman in her early twenties burst into the breakfast room and said straightaway, “What time is it?” No hello, no greeting of any sort. Just "What time is it?". Two nights before had marked the day in Chile when the clocks are moved ahead one hour and this woman had apparently arrived from Argentina the night before and was totally perplexed by what time it was. When I told her 9:15, she said that it wasn’t possible, turned back into the hallway and asked someone else what time it was. She made her way through the hostel asking everyone for the time, never believing anyone. I came to refer to her as “Señora Qué Hora” (Spanish for “Mrs. What time is it”).
Later that morning Señora Qué Hora was sitting in the common room and had asked me if it was always this cold in Chile. (For the record that day was a cool day.) I had said yes and had asked if she had a sweater or a jacket in what I thought was an innocent, honest tone. I had missed the fact that she was wearing a light cotton sweater with two layers on beneath. She gave me a dirty look with a dismissive "no". Then later that night after I returned from a day out in Santiago, she asked if all the hostels in Chile were as expensive as the Eco Hostel. I replied, “This expensive? This hostel is one of the cheapest places we’ve stayed in.” (Roughly, 20 USD a night for two.) I think I gave her even more worry when I said, "In fact, the cheapest place we could find in Temuco, where we live, was 48 dollars a night." Panic grew within her and was reflected in her eyes and she didn't reply or ask any more questions. The next morning we learned that she was leaving to go to La Serena to take Spanish classes. We said, "That sounds great." And asked, "How did you find out about it?" She replied, "I looked on the map."
After two interactions with Señora Qué Hora, I was convinced that she was from the States because she displayed all the characteristics of young innocents from our homeland – unprepared, needy, lacking in fundamental understandings of a culture (like the price of a night’s stay) and an intangible mania that courses through the veins and occupies the brain (the time). I have met quite a few young wanderers like her around the world, especially since there seem to be a disproportionate number who travel in India and Nepal. So I was shocked when I learned she was from Canada. In fact, I am still in denial and think that she may in fact be from the US but just tells everyone she is from Canada. (Friends from the Great White North, your erstwhile reputation as a cultured, intelligent and relaxed people is in danger as you will see in the story about another young Canadian who was in my Spanish class. I am gravely worried about this trend based upon my sample size of two, and I think you should be too as the Canadian name and identity is too good to squander on such waywards as the ones currently traveling in Chile.)
One of the great highlights of the week at the Eco Hostel was meeting two folks from California and learning that we have mutual friends in Madison. I kept hearing the Disney tune "It's a small world..." ring inside my head with this 2 degrees of separation. Jay and Alyse, a couple from Santa Cruz, were boiling potatoes in the hostel's kitchen one night when I started chatting with them. It turns out that they know Jill and Max formerly of Santa Cruz and now in Madison. We had an instant connection, which of course gave me the green light to talk their ears off for the next 30 minutes while Sarah was reading in our room. We had another fast connection when I learned that they had quit their jobs as well to travel around South America (I'm not alone!). We hung out whenever we could over the next few days before they headed North to San Pedro de Atacama. What's more, chances are high they will be coming through Temuco and we plan to show them a rip roaring good time in this town's one bar and maybe a tour of the mall and Jumbo!
Despite the fact that hostel living gets to resemble camp after 36 hours and the fact that the breakfast choices are slim (strawberry or apricot jam), the Eco Hostel was a fun place to stay. In hostels you can learn about the popular destinations of travel and observe the rhythms of travel as many travelers seem to come and go in waves. Hostels do, in fact, have slow nights (like Thursday). But every morning seems to bring someone new with a different story to tell and a different destination in mind.
Part 2 - Spanish Learning
I knew it was time to enroll in a Spanish class when during the normal course of a day’s events in Temuco (like trying to ask how much a kilo of bread was), a Tibetan word or phrase kept popping into my head. I knew then that no matter how much I tried to learn on my own, I would not be able to fill in my gaps of ignorance with smiles and head bobs and nodding yes to everything I didn’t understand. I was also tired of simply trying to study a few words a day from a Spanish dictionary and then watch movies with Spanish subtitles trying to see how the verbs are used in different contexts. (Note to the young readers out there: this is not a good language study habit no matter how tempting it may be!)
A few weeks ago, Sarah said that she was heading north to Santiago for a week. I decided that instead of staying home alone in Temuco it would be fun to join her and enroll in an intensive Spanish class in the big city. For the past month or so I have been taking private lessons twice a week on Tuesdays and Thursdays from two students at Universidad de la Frontera, one of the local universities. The two teachers work with me on conversational skills, verb tenses, adverbs, how to ask for a kilo of meat at the butcher shop and what to say when you want the special of the day at a restaurant. The lessons have been helpful, but they have been a bit limited. (It is surprising how far you can get by in a society without speaking the language.)
Because our week in Santiago included a holiday, the normal five day course Spanish course was condensed into four days. The Chileans celebrated Columbus day, Día de la Raza, on Monday the 15th. So my first day of intensive Spanish was on Tuesday the 16th, and it was a roller coaster. Upon signing up with this school in Santiago, I had to complete a Basic Spanish placement test. I did it via computer in Temuco. I had sent it into the coordinator the week before, and had assumed that I had done reasonably well seeing as I had taken a few Spanish classes. Besides I knew how to say, "Puedes repetir, por favor?" (Can you repeat that, please?) So I was a bit confused as to how and why I landed in the Basic Spanish 1A class. Surely there had been a mistake. When I asked the coordinator about it, he just encouraged me to sit through the first class and let him know if I thought I needed to be moved up to 1B.
Our first class started with a young charismatic teacher named Sebastián who forced us to stretch and talk and use the Spanish that we knew. There were 5 of us, two Brits that were around my age and from the commercial banking world, a 24 year old Canadian and a 66 year old Brazilian woman. After our first period – roughly an hour and a half – I went to the office to pay for the week of classes. Since we had been speaking so much Spanish during this first class, I assumed that the entire day and remainder of the week would be as much Spanish and I figured that the level didn't matter so much as the amount of Spanish spoken. (This is a decision I dreaded making at the end of the day.)
For our second period we had a new teacher who was not as charismatic as Sebastián and she more or less reviewed what we had just finished doing the previous period. I thought, well, a review is not bad, but then 40 minutes into this period, we opened up the exercise books and started reading the materials that we had gone over orally in the morning period and had just finished reviewing. One seemingly minor exchange occurred between the Canadian and the teacher when we opened up our notebooks. The Canadian, whom I sometimes call "The Hoser" from here on out, had a notebook that had all the work completed. (For a history of the term, click here.) The teacher asked him, "Have you completed the entire workbook?" When he said, "Yea, I had a private class last Friday with Sebastián where we went over all of this." The teacher said, "Well, maybe it would be best if you advanced to the next level." To which the Hoser replied with a laugh, "I don't know about that, I don't want to go too quickly." The teacher let this pass and we proceeded to spend the remainder of the period covering the same material we had spent all morning going over.
Towards the end of the period was the lunch break and I thought to myself, "What kind of intensive Spanish class is this? Three hours covering the same material?" I was also slightly peeved because the Hoser and the British guy were constantly interrupting the teacher during this second period, saying, "What was that she (the teacher) said?" or saying under each others' breaths, "I am so lost." Each time they asked a question in English, I noticed that the Brazilian woman shifted in her chair. The teacher hadn't seemed to mind that much though, which only added to my annoyance.
The lunch break came but before we left we were told that we would be having an extra group class after lunch, because it was a shortened 4 day week. Everyone filed down the stairs out into the street to find a place to eat. Most people took a left turn out the door so I took a right. I wanted to eat lunch on my own and found a place with my favorite lunch word, colación! I picked the chicken breast with an garlic au jus, rice and a glass of fresh apple and pear juice. (I had to ask the waiter 3 times what kind of juice it was.) As lunch ended, I wrote down some questions for the teacher so that when our afternoon session began, I could learn some new vocabulary regarding restaurant menus in Chile and, more importantly, learn the correct phrasing of, “What kind of fruit is in this juice?"
My intentions were short lived. Because before I knew it, we were speaking in English more often than we were speaking in Spanish. The Hoser and the British guy were joking and sharing each other's personal histories, even though the coordinator of the school had poked his head into the class and said that this was a Spanish class in which we should speak Spanish and not English. Obviously they had not heard this suggestion and within 10 minutes of this 3rd period the annoyance and discomfort of the Brazilian was discernible whenever anyone spoke in English.
As the afternoon progressed, it continued to unravel. One of the major reasons was that the Brits did not know and had not been taught the phrase for "I don't understand" or "Could you please repeat that?" Furthermore, the exercises that the teacher had us work through with each other led to long silences and anytime there was a silence the momentum for communicating in Spanish was lost. Added to this were the meaningless side comments and jokes that the British guy and the Hoser peppered throughout the afternoon.
Here are a few of the exasperating moments from that afternoon.
Teacher, to the British woman: "Who is your favorite singer?"
British Woman: "Umm....Ahhh....Paul McCartney."
Teacher: "Answer in a complete sentence please."
British Woman: "My favorite singer is Pablo McCartney."
Teacher: "How old is he?"
British Woman: "Umm.."
British Man in English: "At least 150 years old!"
Teacher, to the Canadian: "Who is a famous person from Canada?"
The Canadian: "Umm....Ahhh....Ummm"
Teacher: "Do you not know of anyone famous from your country?"
The Canadian: "Umm...Ahh...Bryan Adams?"
The British Man in English: "He's the only good thing to come out of Canada, eh?"
And round and round it went. Remember that most of these questions and answers were attempted in Spanish, and the sidebars were in English. There were times when we were asked to form the sentence: "The _(fill in the country)__ Independence day is the _(date)_ of _(month)__" in Spanish. When we got to the British couple, they said in English: "Well, we haven't really got one, now do we." And then spent the next 4 minutes discussing amongst themselves what would be a good day of celebration in England and couldn't recall the date of a single national day of importance, so they settled on St. Patrick's Day! (I am not joking!)
Each time we digressed into English, the Brazilian started to fume and I would try and re-establish balance by attempting a question to the teacher in Spanish, which just confused the British couple to no end because they had no inkling as to what I was saying. One of the only positives of the afternoon class was the fact that I could actually understand about 90% of what the teacher was saying. Even though it was the Basic 1A class, the teachers would still speak relatively quickly, that common fast talker trait of Chileans.
At one point during the afternoon class I felt like I was witnessing a marriage counseling session between the two Brits. As if you hadn't guessed already the six of us were seated around a circle table. I was directly across from the Brits and it was like I was watching a sit com. The exercise workbook had dialogues and the teacher asked the Brits to read through one. As per the norm, there was a person A and a person B and a disagreement erupted over who was to be person A and who was to be person B and the guy said, "You are person B and I am person A, so where it says B, you read. Okay?" And the woman rolled her eyes and said, "Yes, I know that." And he said, "Right." And there was a pause in the classroom, as he was expecting her to start reading. Only it was his turn to start reading and she was waiting for him. And after 35 seconds or so, he says, "Well.." And looks at the woman, keep in mind they have been traveling with one another for close to a year and are a couple, and says, "Are you going to start reading?" And she replies, "Well, I would but it is not my turn." At which point he looks at the page and gushes, "Jeez, I didn't realize I was to go first!"
As the third period ended, I was so annoyed and asked myself the whole walk home why I was placed in the class of runts. I was so peeved and my head was so full of steam that I could have walked half the length of Santiago and that still wouldn't have eased my anger. Sarah tried to console me that night by helping me look on the positive side of the class and how it may help me review the fundamentals of my Spanish. I couldn't stop thinking about how I wanted to walk into the school the next day and demand to be placed in the next class as this one was a total waste of time. Sentences like, "I am from the United States" and "He is from England", which we had repeated ad nausem throughout the day, were not going to help me get better with Spanish and a week of sentences like that were just going to drive me mad and be a complete waste of money. Oh how I huffed and moaned that entire Tuesday night and into Wednesday morning all along the walk to school. I kept thinking to myself, "Oh how I was born to suffer in this world!"
I had the entire discussion and potential disagreement all arranged in my head for when I would confront the coordinator of the school and ask that I be placed in the next level up. I would assail him with facts, ask him if he would agree that it was a waste of my time, and did they even look at my placement test because I couldn't see how I fit into the same category as the Brits who could not even say "I don't understand." Yes, I had it all figured out as I walked up those stairs one by one and when I got to the second floor, where the classrooms were, at 10 minutes to 10, I was ready to talk, discuss, cajole and even plead to move classes because otherwise my week would only be an exercise in misery.
At the top of the stairs, the coordinator was filling the coffee machine, saw me and said in his eager and happy tone, "Cómo estás?" and as anyone who speaks Spanish knows, the auto reply is always, "Bien." Which is exactly what I said, and with that simple word, all of my anger and just righteousness against being placed in the class of runts dissolved. "Well, there goes that. I can't say to him that I am miserable in Class 1A now, can I." And I prepared myself for another day in 1A.
But my settling for less turned to excitement when I walked into our classroom and saw that the Canadian was not there with us. His absence was what I assumed was one of our teachers bumping him up into 1B. Then a new teacher walked into our room at 10 on the dot and said, in Spanish, as he closed the doors, "We will be speaking in Spanish only. This is a Spanish class, not an English class, so we all will speak in Spanish, okay?" And from there the morning picked up considerably. This new teacher covered completely new ground, got us all speaking in what Spanish we could. There were no side bars or jokes in English and when he finished the first period we all knew more Spanish and had had practice with new vocabulary words.
The day continued to improve and after lunch I had a private session in which I got to ask all the questions I wanted. I was able to ask about different verb tenses that I didn't quite understand and was able to eek out a few sentences every 5 minutes of so. At the end of the day, I popped my head into the coordinator's office and said that the combination of the Spanish only rule in the morning classes and the private session, it had been a great day. I asked that the next day and Friday we could continue with that and move at a faster clip pushing all of us harder. He smiled and said no problem, and I headed out the door feeling as I was finally getting my money's worth.
On Thursday, as I made it to the top of the stairs, ready to take in a new day of Spanish lessons, I saw the Canadian sitting in one of the chairs with a cup of coffee. His eyes were still sleepy and I asked him if he had been moved up a class. He gave me a blank look and asked what I meant. I mentioned that since he wasn't in class the day before we had guessed he had been moved up. He nodded and informed me that he had not been moved up and, in fact, had not even made it in the day before because he had been out too late the night before last.
During the class periods on Thursday, the tone and mood of Tuesday, the first day, returned. It didn't take me long to realize that the issue on Tuesday had not been the teachers, nor the British guy's sidebars or even his asking a question in English. The source of the disruption was the Canadian. On Thursday it became all the more clear that he had very little motivation to learn Spanish, at least not anytime soon. We learned between periods that he was in a homestay with a very wealthy family that knew English and never spoke with him in Spanish. The boys of the family were in University had an Asado everyday and drank and smoked and went out every night.
One of the funniest moments on Thursday came when we were going around the table describing our home towns. The British couple described London as being big, having lots of history, culture and clubs with old buildings and a large river and lots of businesses. The Canadian had had over 10 minutes to think of descriptions for his city and when the teacher asked what his hometown of Toronto was like, he said, "It has a big tower (the Space Needle, I think)." And we waited in silence, expecting more. When none came, the teacher asked, "Is all that there is in your town is a tower and nothing else?" We laughed. The Hoser said, "We have sports teams!" The teacher said, "Yes, so it has a tower and sports teams?" We all laughed again.
In defense of this poor Hoser, that day was a very warm Spring day. (Weather Señora Qué Hora would have just loved had she not left for La Serena.) And the classes were getting warm and we were all starting to get punchy and the giggles. So after this momumental effort by the Canadian to describe Toronto in full detail, he said in English, "I am finished for the day. I don't want to talk anymore." And the teacher replied in Spanish, "If you don't want to talk, you don't have to. No problem." The teacher then turned to the Brazilian woman and asked about her hometown.
We then listened to the Brazilian woman describe her city. She talked of how it was near the center of the country, how it was the capital of the province and the types of people that lived there. She talked about how there were some hills, I think, and then tried adding some interesting facts, like it had the most bars per capita in the entire province with many different types of beers. At this point the Canadian's head snapped up (he had put his head down to rest) and he said in decent Spanish, "Beers? What types of beers to the bars have?" We were all shocked and after a moment just burst out laughing. The teacher then said, "Well, I guess he isn't done talking for the day."
Friday brought an end to the week of intensive Spanish. The Canadian was nowhere to be seen, which made our last class periods all the more productive. We learned fun facts about numbers, learned that you use "muy" with adjectives and "mucho/mucha" with nouns, and the different ways to tell time. I had another private lesson in the afternoon during which time I learned a few new verbs and the important verb tenses of the present continuous and the perfect tense.
The week of Spanish classes was great, other than the roller coaster of a day on Tuesday. It helped me have more confidence in conversational Spanish and gave me some direction on aspects to focus on as I continue to learn more. However, one of the best things to come out of this week was one of the assignments from Thursday. Due to our loopy behavior on Thursday, the teacher asked all of us to write a joke in Spanish. It was an assignment I completed with true zeal.
The reason this assignment was so great is because I shared it with my Spanish teachers back here in Temuco and after they heard it they couldn't stop laughing for 5 minutes. I have included it here for anyone to use should you take an intensive Spanish sometime in the future. (It may serve as a good study tool.)
Chiste: "el nudista"
*(Translation at the bottom.)
Había una vez un hombre al que le gustaba estar (y caminar) desnudo todos los días. Un día este hombre se muda de su casa y se instala en una colonia de nudistas, porque le gusta mucho.
Después de un mes su madre le escribe una carta y le pide una foto, porque no tiene una foto reciente de él.
Nuestro hombre sufre porque tiene una sola foto y en ella está desnudo. Después de dos días corta la foto en la mitad y la manda por correo a su mamá.
Después de una semana su madre le escribe una carta en la que le dice: "Qué bueno! Tu foto es muy buena. Tu abuelita también pide una."
Nuestro hombre está sufriendo mucho y dice: "Qué puedo hacer?"
Después de dos días el hombre manda por correo la parte de bajo de la foto a su abuelita. El hombre piensa: "Mi abuelita es vieja y sus ojos están muy mal. No se dará cuenta."
Después de dos semanas nuestro hombre recibe una carta de su abuelita, esta dice: "Nietecito, gracias por tu foto, está muy buena, pero tu nuevo corte de pelo hace que tu nariz se vea muy grande."
Part 3 - Limited Sight Seeing and Not-so-limited Socializing
This visit to Santiago allowed more time for wandering around the city streets, trying a variety of cafés and bars for meals and happy hours drinks, and learning where the best juice bars and ice cream shops are. We also had the priveldge of meeting some city residents who showed their true Chilean colors with their generous hospitality.
Since the hostel was in el centro, we got to know this district and the streets of this district rather well. We walked through Plaza Italia almost daily. We had café and late night drinks in Bellavista, an artsy and gentrifying part of the city. We found Lastarria, an old cobblestoned street in a section of town near Cerro Santa Lucia, that had great ice cream, restaurants with sidewalk seating that served great Tablas, giant appetizer/combo plates, and wonderful old buildings.
On the Sunday we were in Santiago, we caught up with relatives of Suzie Slope, a colleague of mine from BFW, who was so gracious as to put us in touch with her mom's cousins and their families. Sol and Isabel are the two cousins we met and their respective families. Both Sol and Isabel have 3 children and most of their children have children, so when we met Sol near a Metro stop and got in her car and she mentioned that we would be having lunch with the family, we had no idea how big the lunch table would be.
They took us to the Spanish Club for a celebration of Iberian culture. We walked around the grounds and watched a parade of all the different clubs. They had clubs for tennis, volleyball, dancing, gymnastics, lawn bowling, you name it. There were a couple of stilt walkers in costume of the king and queen and a police band. The sun was intermittent behind the clouds but there were smiles on everyone's faces.
We then went to have lunch and that is when we were introduced to all the children of Sol and Isabel as well as the children's children. While I was told the different childrens' names, our first pisco sour arrived, and I soon lost track of who's who. All I remember is looking to my right and seeing a long table filled with little ones eating papas fritas and ketchup and then running outside to play. We had a great meal with the highlight being "calamares en su tinta", which means calamari in its own ink. I didn't think I would like that dish, but I did. It was terrific, not like the fried rubber bands back home.
After lunch, I tried to get Lucho, Sol's husband, to let me buy two dozen churros for the family. Churros are like a Spanish funnel cake, only they are short sticks about 3 inches long. All of them are sprinkled with powdered sugar but some are filled with a carmel of milk filling. They are deadly after 3 or 4. Anyway, while we were in line, I told Lucho that I was going to sponsor this portion of the meal and he looked at me and said, "Your money is not good here in Chile" and laughed.
We met up with the family near a stage where one of the children would be dancing a traditional Spanish dance. There we all sat on the grass, drank wine and tea and café and passed away the afternoon. At this point in the day, there were easily thousands of people at the club, which we were told was open to the public for that day only, and everyone was enjoying themselves with wine, beer, and lots and lots of churros. If you imagine a cross between a rock concert, a school wide picnic, and Octoberfest, you have an idea of what this festival is like. All the age demagraphics were well represented.
As we made our way home, Sol asked us to join them for lunch on Monday as well. Sarah ended up having some work to do, but as my Spanish class had not yet begun, I met up with Sol, Lucho and two of their sons and we headed out of town to an Argentine Parrilla, think grilled meat. We had wine and piscos and great meat, and I enjoyed another afternoon of good food and fun company.
On Tuesday night, we tried meeting up with our new friends Jay and Alyse who were going to a jazz show, but we missed them and the performance as we were 30 minutes too late. Hungry for some food and in the mood for music, we went into another bar close by that was advertising live Tango music. We went in, walked up the stairs and found ourselves in one of those older bars with writing all over the wall, well worn, old wooden tables and a young Tango band warming up. We decided to eat an unhealthy dinner of pisco sours, sausages and papas fritas (fries) and listened to the young musicans play their tango blues.
Wednesday evening entailed drinks at the hostel with Jay and Alyse and a late night dinner in Bellavista with our old French friends from Saturday night. They had returned from their climbing trip and were anxious to try some Pisco Sours as they were heading back to Argentina the next day. We were anxious to eat some food as we had been drinking for a couple hours and so we walked to a sidewalk cafe where we drank some more and joked about travelers, drinking and people from around the world.
On Thursday we met up with another friend named Sol who introduced us to a pub on Lastarria where we learned that the draught beers are called Chop. We ordered three as they were half price during Happy Hour. When the waiter brought the beers in rather large pint glasses, I said with complete deadpan, "Are these the drinks?" He said "Yes," with a bit of concern. And I said, "They can't be, they are so small." He looked at me with bewilderment and then I laughed and he laughed. Sol, Sarah and I talked and joked for over an hour. The waiter came back to ask if we wanted more. I said that we would love to have more but can't as the happy hour had ended. To which he replied, "For others it has ended, but for you it is still going. I can't let you leave here thinking our beers are small!" So we had another round. This Chop was the Chilean beer Austral and it is my new favorite brew.
On Friday evening, we left for Valparaiso.
_________________________________________________________
*Translation:
Once there was a man who liked to be naked. One day he decided to move to a nudist colony and after a while (maybe a month) he received a letter from his mother asking him for a photo as she did not have a recent one of him.
He didn't know what to do and was worried as the only photo he had was one of him naked. After a couple of days he decided to cut the photo in half, in the middle. And he sent the top half to his mom.
After one week, he received a letter from his mom that said, "The photo is great. I told your grandmother about it and she would like a copy just like it!"
Now our friend was in deep despair and he kept asking himself what he should do. After a couple of days he posted a letter to his grandmother with the lower half of the photo thinking to himself, "Grandma is old. Her eyes are bad. She won't notice."
After two weeks he received a letter from his grandmother that said, "Grandson, thank you for the photo. It is very nice, but your new hairstyle makes your nose look too long."
Sunday, October 28, 2007
Santiago in Three Parts
Wednesday, October 24, 2007
A Weekend in Valparaiso
Valparaiso is a city of extremes. It is the loudest, dirtiest, smelliest, steepest, sunniest, most colorful, most run down, most artistic, fastest talking city we have been to so far in Chile. We arrived on Friday evening just as the sun was beginning to set. We had originally planned to stay at Sarah’s Dad’s friend’s brother-in-law's house for a couple of nights after the long week of work in Santiago, but it was not meant to be due to an unforeseen accident that required the family to travel to Santiago for medical attention. Instead of canceling our weekend getaway trip to Valparaiso, we looked through the guide book for good options and found our own place to stay. We settled on the bed and breakfast that reputedly had the best view of the city from one of its rooms and a friendly family.
Valparaiso is the home of the country’s legislature and is one of the country’s biggest ports. Its heyday passed with the opening of the Panama Canal, but it has hung on as a weekend and vacation destination for many Chileans. The city itself sprawls around the bay and up into the surrounding 2 dozen or so hills. It has a unique feel and in many ways it reminded me of Varanasi, India. Both are cities of moods and both give the gift of grit around the collar at the end of the day. Each day and each hour of our time in Valparaiso was different and changing. While the mornings were quiet, the afternoons bustled, which gave way to lulls at dusk, which in turn gave way to thriving night lives of various sorts in the different city districts. This constant change, sometimes subtle and sometimes overt was the city's most charming aspect.
Having waxed poetic with praise, we had to start somewhere and looking back, it is safe to say that we started the weekend out in a chaotic state that we wistfully refer to as our Friday twilight zone. Cue the music in your heads... Our cab from the bus stand dropped us at the bed and breakfast which we dubbed "the house on the corner of the hill". (Since the shadows were long by the time we arrived we didn't at first notice the ramshackle condition that was apparent on Sunday morning, as you can see from the photos below.)
We literally had to ring a school bell using a plastic cord atop a set of steel doors on which was painted a mural of a little girl in pig tails in a mushroom patch. The door opened and the owner, whom we will call Juan, opened up the door and ushered us into this century house complete with old banisters, smooth wooden floors, ceilings close to 20 feet in height, tall parlor doors, and all over the floor and in every available nook and cranny the most stuff I have ever seen in a house that purports to be a business. At this point we had only made it into the front hall/foyer.
Juan, a Chilean, and his wife, a European, asked if we wanted to see the room with the view and as we said yes and began to head upstairs, their 6 year old daughter walked by wearing black cats ears. I tried saying "hello" and "how are you", but she just kept walking not saying a word to anyone. On the second floor landing was a chest and bureau with the single largest collection of troll dolls we have ever seen. The second floor landing was easily 25 feet by 15 feet in size and its ceiling was papered with a mosaic of magazine ads and covers. Off of it were 5 doors. One to the bathroom, two to the families private rooms and two to rooms for nightly paying guests.
Juan motioned for us to continue upstairs on the wooden staircase that curved up with an old, rickety appearance. As we came to the top, Sarah was in front, the owner said, just lift up the door! Sure enough, at the top of the stairs was a trap-door, piece of plywood really, that laid flat and flipped up to reveal a room with windows on all sides and a view that takes your breath away. That is after you have caught your breath from the 50 or so stairs you just climbed from the first floor!
What a view it was and what a view it is. As you can see from the attached photo, you can see the entire city and the bay. During the day there is the promise of light and during the evening the promise of soft colors. We were lucky that the weather held up and that we didn't get any fog. The room itself was very simple room with a double bed and one small night stand. We saw another room option which was much less stunning and opted to stay in the tower for at least the night.
As we unpacked in our room, we heard some music from down on the first floor. We had promised the owners that we would be down for a cup of tea and coffee. We descended the stairs about 20 minutes after settling in and after taking in the sunset and fading light of Valparaiso. We arrived in the untidy living room (books, records and stuff everywhere) with music that was playing 3 levels too loud for a civil conversation. The volume didn’t seem to bother the owner who was alternatively standing before us or sitting next to his computer that he had hooked up to his old turn table and speakers.
Somehow the topic of the group who sang “99 Red Balloons” circa 1983 came up, maybe because the wife was German, and he diligently pulled out the album (no joke) and unplugged the computer and started up the turntable. The volume was still up too high and he started to sing along as only the most enthusiastic fan of Nena could. We sipped our café and tea while the wife smiled and sipped her beer and we all smiled politely. We began looking around the room while the owner expanded on the glories of the band. We saw a tower of books in a corner, shelves of old music albums, an old wooden armchair leg mounted on a wall with an ornate frame surrounding it and topped off with a giant rosary dangling over the top of the leg. We can only guess what inspired the installation and how long it had been there.
All the while, Juan (not his real name) shared with us some more of his music - both Chilean and international - encouraging us to sing along, telling us stories about Chileans, regaling to us why he hated Hippies and why Valparaiso should never be compared with San Francisco as it is its own city with its own style and its own essence and that comparisons rob cities of what they are. The wife just kept sipping her beer sometimes turning the music level down, which of course made the owner turn the music back up after a minute, and I had wanted to turn to Sarah and ask her what she was thinking. Maybe something like, "So would you like to see if the neighbors have a room?" But I couldn't because the owners spoke perfect English even though the dialect we had been speaking was a form of shouting Spanish. So we were sitting there stunned, silent and in complete sensory overload from the house, the items in the house, the people who lived in the house and the volume of this music when the daughter with the cat ears walked in eating a piece of raw spaghetti. The owner turned, saw his daughter, turned back to us and boasted as only a proud father can, "My daughter likes pasta, and she likes hers fresh!"
At this point, I asked if they had Internet and was told that they did. When I saw that their son was online, they told me to just kick him off and go online. The son, who had said nothing up to this point, just slid away in silence. While I tried to access 4 emails on my Yahoo account, the owner shared with Sarah the old Navy Barber shears that he had mounted on his wall in the computer room along with the doll collection of odd facial expressions.
23 minutes into using the Internet and only being able to open 3 emails, we decided to head out for dinner, utterly exhausted and speechless from our welcome into the bed and breakfast. We climbed into a colectivo, a shared taxi common in Chile, and we soon learned that the colectivo drivers of Valparaiso drive the hills of this city as though they were competing in the Monte Carlo hill climb. No hill is too steep and no turn is too sharp for driving at top speed. Keep in mind that we were heading downhill to get to the old part of town. Racing around the corners and through the steep turns, packed 3 in the backseat with some 80s music on the radio while the young woman next to us wailed some seductive lyrics on her MP3 player, we made our way to the old part of downtown where we got out and made our way to dinner.
Oh Valparaiso! What an introduction you give!
As I mentioned above, Valparaiso is a city built on the 2 or 3 dozen hills that ring the bay. Neighborhoods grow up the hills, not across the ridges and small valleys. Many streets dead end and the vertical incline is such that ascending and descending staircases are one of the main ways of getting from one place to another. For dinner we climbed the staircase up to Cerro Concepción and found a small Italian place named “Pasta e Vino”. Fantastic is a word that only begins to describe the experience.
We proceeded to spend more on dinner than one night’s stay at the bed and breakfast but it was worth every peso as we had a Syrah/Malbec blend from the Botalcura vineyard and snacked on the chef's appetizer of tuna carpaccio, arugula, capers, and olive oil. Sarah ordered the black raviolis whose pasta was made with the ink of squid and filled with salmon and I had a spaghetti with octopus, shrimp and red and green peppers. Absolute perfection! I never knew that I liked octopus, mush less what it tasted like. This is a small gem of place that we later learned is one of the hottest up and coming places in Valparaiso. We were lucky to have stumbled across it and after the meal, feeling more relaxed and realizing that the entire city did not share the same chaotic energy of our bed and breakfast, we felt confident we would have a fun weekend.
Saturday morning was a lazy one as we woke slowly and lingered in our room with the view of the bay. We shared breakfast with two Germans from Pottsdam on the back patio and talked travel and food and culture. They had just been skiing in Bariloche, Argentina and were headed up north to Bolivia and Peru. After our breakfast/brunch, we walked down to the old part of the city and had our sights set on visiting Pablo Neruda’s house. It is one of three that he lived in. The others are in Santiago and Isla Negra, a small town to the south. We had read that this house in Valparaiso was a self guided tour and was a short distance from the downtown district.
We took another racing colectivo up through the steep winding streets. The sky was a clear blue, and we were let out at a café that marks the entrance of La Sebastiana, Neruda's home. La Sebastiana is best described as a cross between a museum, cultural monument and an historical time capsule of Neruda's life and days in this city. As we quickly learned, Pablo Neruda was not Pablo's given name but the pseudonym that he used with his first publication. His given was Neftalí Reyes and we never learned if he ever legally changed his name but we did learn that he was born in Temuco! We also learned that he left Temuco as soon as he could when he went to University in Santiago.
Pablo Neruda’s house (here on the left) is a playground of inspiration. His “house” was actually two in one. On one side with its own entrance, staircase, kitchen, etc. was the living space of his good friends. They were neighbors with at least one door inside the building that joined the two living quarters. All that was mentioned of these neighbors was that the man was a doctor and the wife an artist. It would be interesting to know more about them because the art the wife created in the garden and on the floors, ceilings and walls of their side of the house is worth the price of admission to the entire museum.To give you an idea, on the wall of the staircase leading from the ground floor up to the first floor is a mural of a map of Patagonia made entirely of rock. Neruda had given the map to the wife as a present and she had created this piece for their stairway wall! To give you an inkling of the the mural (we were not allowed to take photos) summon in your mind maps of old replete with whales and ships dotting the seas and an elaborate rose compass as a legend in the bottom right corner. Now picture the bottom tip of South America (both Chilean and Argentine Patagonia) and the Straits of Magellan and Tierra del Fuego in the middle of the map with references to a couple of rivers, a few towns, the mountains and the thousands of isles that make up the bottom of the Patagonian world. And now imagine all of this with at least a dozen different colors of stones and small rocks that are ¼ the size of your palm arranged on and affixed to the wall and you have an idea of the awe this staircase instills. This is the map mural that greets all the visitors as they slowly climb up into Neruda's house.
La Sebastiana is filled with treasures both large and small. There are views of the city and the bay from every floor, Belgian trunks, an old French wooden carousel horse, stuffed birds from tropical forests, paintings of kings and queens, tables with inlaid tiles, doors made of banisters, colored water glasses and china plates decorated with hot air balloon pilots of the 18th century. He referred to his favorite sedan chair as “the cloud”. Every room has at least one stain glassed door or window. He collected old maps from all over the world. He "rescued" doors from condemned houses and reused them in his house. He had a bar and a drinking club that had an explicit rule that no one could be "too intellectual or too serious" when it was in session. And throughout the house, with the artifacts that are collected, you get the very strong sense that he loved freedom – freedom of the soul and freedom of thought.
We spent over an hour slowly moving through the rooms and just in awe of all that he collected, all that he had found and all that he had created either by himself or with others. We didn't want to leave the house and wanted to sit in the chairs, have drinks with the other visitors and just admire the light and the views and spend more time with the ghosts of Neruda and his friends. Obviously, we couldn't so we made our way back down to the central district ambling through the streets, admiring the colors of the houses and enjoying the bright blue sky day.
We spent the rest of the afternoon having lunch, eating ice cream, ambling through the city and reading in our tower of light in the house on the hill. Neruda's house gave us a new appreciation for our bed and breakfast, for our owner mentioned the night before that he had always wanted to be an artist, and every aspect of the house had a quality of a project that had been started at some point with the highest of intentions but had never been completed. We were in a living house to some extent and we wondered what brought people to this city and what made them stay and how the city and its moods instilled itself into its inhabitants.
That night we ate a local restaurant where a group of octogenarians play tango every Saturday. We were told they had been playing there for decades. We drank excellent Pisco Sours served in wide mouthed pudding dishes and then followed them with Chilean beer and fresh seafood.
On Sunday we had the entire day free as we did not have to be back in Santiago until 11 PM for our overnight bus to Temuco. Since we didn’t have to leave Valparaiso until 7, we decided to walk around the city, climb a few of the hills in the city’s old acensores and have a big lunch. Acensores are a cross between a cable car and an elevator on its side. Some refer to it as a funicular lift. Each acensor has two cars. One is at the top station and one is at the bottom. Both cars are on their own parallel track and attached to a cable, and as the top car descends its weight pulls the bottom car up. The city has a dozen of these that are active and quite a number more that have been closed permanently. However, we picked the wrong day to try and ride as many of these acenores as we could as over half of them were closed for repairs and no one knew when they would open again. We were able to ride two, but we had to climb a lot of the other hills the old, old fashioned way, via the stairs.
We stumbled upon a fun lunch place with great pizza and beer. Not surprising, it was in the same neighborhood as "Pasta E Vino", and then found a half dozen or so shops devoted to art. We were delighted to have finally found some art and artists that we would even consider buying. We even found some woodblock prints! We opted not to buy any though as we still have a few moves before we head home and the pieces we liked did not look to be the easiest to transport. So we spent the remainder of the afternoon walking through the streets of Valparaiso, enjoying the spring warmth and trying to uncover one last hidden charm of the city on the sea.
Thursday, October 11, 2007
A Lunch in Pucón
Last Sunday, we determined, was a good day to be frivolous. The sky was a clear blue, the weather was warm, and we wanted to take a day trip out of Temuco. Before we left the states, we read a number of travel articles about the Lake District in order to get a sense of where we would be living from September onwards, and the town of Pucón was always highlighted. If we had been asked to draw a map of the Lake District before coming to Chile, we probably would have had all the roads leading to Pucón.
We decided to pay Pucón our respects and journey there for a big Sunday lunch. We caught the 11:30 bus south which took us through the smaller town of Villarrica. Both Pucón and Villarrica are on the shores of Lago Villarrica. Pucón is on the southeastern side of the lake and Villarrica is on the western side. Both have spectacular view of Volcán Villarrica, another of the Lake District's active volcanoes, and Pucón itself sits just at the base of the volcano.
If you took a laid back lake front town like Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, and mixed it with the affluent architectural style of Aspen, Colorado, and then chose as your setting Mount Rainer, Washington, you would have Pucón. It is a small town that is built for tourists. This being the early part of Spring, there were mostly Chileans walking about and more than a few restaurants and shops were closed for repairs in anticipation of the upcoming summer season. Just outside Pucón's back door are close to a dozen thermal hot springs, at least two raftable rivers, a ski slope and a giant national park. This proximity is what makes it the tourist springboard for the northern swath of the Lake District.
We walked around town and contemplated indulging on an Argentine meat fest known as an Asado but decided to press on to a small vegetarian hostel know as eColé! This hostel and cafe was a few blocks off the main thoroughfare but was well worth the extra 3 minute walk. They served homemade bread with homemade, organic tomato salsa (surprisingly tasty!). Their menu of the day was a heaping slice of vegetarian lasagna, fresh green salad with homemade salad dressing and garnished with two slices of roasted beets. And that was just the main course. We mean also included a choice of either chocolate chip cookie or brownie and tea or coffee.
During my post entrée stupor of café and chocolate chip cookie, our question of the day took shape in my observations with Sarah as to why in all the places we have traveled, no one really knows how to make good chocolate chip cookies. Of course, the one we were eating on Sunday was rather good, maybe #19.5 on the top 20 list of all time best cookies. Still, it seems like the chocolate chip cookie is a U.S. invention whose recipe does not translate well in other parts of the world. We were stumped as to why this is. (If any of you readers have any ideas on this, please let us know.) And having no answers to this question of the day, we rolled ourselves out of the eColé's garden patio and down the street to the shores of Lago Villarrica. Once there we took a siesta by the glimmering water and under the shade of the nearby trees.
During the siesta, three things struck me about our lunch. The first was a faint memory that our guidebook mentioned it being a good idea to make your main meal of the day lunch like many of the local Chileans do. It is a faint memory because I read this exhortation about a month or so ago and thought, "Oh yes, what a nice thought, but I think I will stick to dinner as my main meal."
The second was an even more distant memory back from my religious studies days during which time we were always encouraged to keep in mind the differences and distinctions that exist between knowledge that is passed on through texts and the knowledge that is rooted in experience. The third was my most immediate memory: "This meal cost us all of 12 dollars?!"
I had doubted the guidebook, but now I believe. This lunch experience was too great of a truth to ignore. Whether it be a Menú del día, a Colación, a Plato de Fondo, or whatever name a Chilean restaurant wants to give their lunch special, I decided on the shores of lazy Lago Villarrice that I will always order it. It is almost always at least a 3 course meal with fresh juice and café and, and it is the bargain to end all bargains.
After an hour or more under the trees, we took a bus back to Villarrica and had some fresh ice cream for our Sunday Once. Then decided to walk down to one of the boat launches to savor the evening view of Volcán Villarrica. This is definitely a lake we will return to later this year when summer gets closer.
Saturday, October 6, 2007
A Ramble on the Coast...
A few weeks ago, Sarah and I took a walk up Cierro Ñielol, Temuco's public park on a small ridge. We went up to check out the view, snap some photos and explore. The restaurant at the top was a bit kitchy so we decided to meander home. On the way down we had the great fortune to see an Austral Pygmy Owl, a very tiny owl that looks like a living stuffed animal. We were doubly lucky in that it flew right in front of us and landed on a tree branch at eye level and stayed long enough for us to look, remark at what a cool bird it was and then gasp with the realization that was an owl before it flew off again. We didn't know what kind it was until a week later.
Today I knew that I didn't want to stay in Temuco and while looking for a place to go I kept thinking of that small owl and how I wanted to do more (active) birding while here in Chile, esp. since it is spring. One of the things I love about birding is that it often serves as an excuse to take a walk that can last for hours and there is no particular route that needs to be followed.
I had been reading about different parks and while the guidebooks provide scarce information on birding in general, they do always mention when a place has excellent potential for spotting Chilean birds. I had come across this place called Lago Budi (pronounced: boo-dee) in the book. I knew only three things about the lake: it was Chile's only salt water lake, it had black-necked swans, and it was close to Temuco. I made up my mind that this would be where I logged my first bird watching trip.
So this morning, I woke up at 5:15 and walked to the Rural bus terminal and was all set to take the first bus to Puerto Saavedra and Lago Budi at 6:30. I arrived with ten minutes to spare only to find that there was no bus to Puerto Saavedra at 6:30. The first one to leave departed at 7. I waited, drinking a cup of tea and watching the bus stand vendors get set up for the day. Temuco is a slow rising city. Many of the people I passed on my walk to the station were the dregs of bars making their way home.
This morning was very foggy and the bus ride was a slow meander to the coast. We left Temuco, went to Nueva Imperial, then through Carahue, and then down to Puerto Saavedra, about 85 kilometers in all. One of the interesting bits of history about Puerto Saaverda is that back in 1960 there was a massive earthquake (some say the most severe on record) and it caused a tidal wave that was equally massive. It was so massive in fact that it flattened Puerto Saavedra and changed the course of the river that runs through the town to the coast.
My Spanish seemed to suffice today. "Is this the bus to Puerto Saavedra? It is, so do you go to Boca Budi? You do? Can I sit? " However, I wasn't able to ask, "Can you tell me when we get there?" (This is the absolute next phrase I will memorize tomorrow.) After falling asleep halfway through the morning ride, I woke and was impatient enough to play with the idea of getting off early and walking. Instead I stayed in my seat, and when the bus came to an almost empty bus stop near an almost deserted street, I thought that we must be close to Boca Budi, the stop for Lago Budi.
Only when the bus actually turned around and started heading back the way we came did I get up and say, "Hey!" The subtext of course was "I need to get off!" (For the record they turned the bus around in less than 30 seconds.) The driver and conductor shook their heads and then said something to the effect of "Go that way for Boca Budi." And they pointed to the road at the rear of the bus.
So began my morning.
The fog had yet to burn off as I walked up the hill. Puerto Saavedra and its tidal flats and large tidal pools were behind me. All around me small finches and wrens were signing and chirping. Not many people were stirring in the houses that I passed. Closer to the beach there were cabanas with shutters closed until the summer season. This area seems like it draws people for beach holidays in January and February.
I came to a rise in the road and below was the beginning of Lago Budi. It is surrounded by rolling hills, pastures for sheep and cattle and to one side, the Pacific Ocean. The road wound down to Boca Budi, a group of houses just near the start of the lake. Boca has no more than 2 dozen houses, most of which seem seasonal, like Puerto Saavedra. A nice old man directed me to a footpath that delivered me to the place where the mouth of the lake meets the ocean in very high tide.
The black sands and black rocks reminded me of some beaches on the island of Hawai'i as did the roaring waves of the Pacific. The wind bit with cold but I was grateful it wasn't raining. I gazed over the lake and was excited to see cormorants and an egret. I was so taken with the lake, the ocean, the hills, the rocky coastline and the birds that I stayed in this one spot for close to an hour watching the birds and checking my Birds of Chile book to make sure I knew which bird was which.
The egret turned out to be a Snow Egret. The cormorants were Neotropic and I was struck by how much they ducked under the water like the Loons back in the Northwoods. I also spotted two Black-necked Swans, two Franklin's Gulls and close to twenty Yellow Billed Pintails (ducks) and hordes of Southern Lapwings (Plover-esque birds) in and around this area of the lake.
There was no clear path around the lake so I decided to follow the path that a local on his horse took up the hills. I knew that the lake was too large to walk completely around, plus some of the farmland that surrounds the lake is fenced off. So I made my way in the general direction of the unknown horseman and passed shrub brush, cattle and sheep. Along the way I saw two Long Tailed Meadowlarks with beautiful red necks and chests, Turkey Vultures gliding above and along the coast, a number of Chimango Caracaras (hawks of Chile that are as ubiquitous as Crows in the states), a few Black Faced Ibis and a dozen Rufous Collared Sparrows, one of my new favorites.
The wind was non stop most of the day with the hills providing small pockets of peace. I had a snack of sugared peanuts, a local confectionery favorite, around 11:30 and watched the Turkey Vultures and Caracaras and an unidentifiable hawk soar on the thermals by the coast. Then I noticed a flock of a dozen or so Black Vultures circle the lake and land in a distant field.
By 12:15 or so the sun had burned off most of the fog and I could see up and down the coast spotting what I assumed to be the Juan Fernández Archipelago* to the north and a portion of Chiloé to the south. Towards the east were partly sunny skies and a march of cumulus clouds. I soaked up the peace and beauty as best I could.On the walk back up to the bus stand I spotted a female Variable Hawk gliding upwards above the hills. She was just elegant with sunlight sometimes catching her auburn back and grey, black wings and sometimes back-lighting her white tail feathers.
*This is the island (collection of islands) that the story of Robinson Crusoe was based upon. The story goes that Alexander Selkirk, a Scot, was asked to be let off on the islands in 1704 because he was not getting along with the ship's captain. There he stayed for 4 years and 4 months.
Wednesday, October 3, 2007
Down South to Osorno
This past weekend we decided to head south to meet some real life Chileans. Of course we have met a few so far at the meat counter in Jumbo, in the bread lines at the panadería, on the bus into town and at the local empanada stands, but before Saturday we had not been inside anyone's home. While the Hospedaje in Manzanar had a wood burning stove and while the matron acted like a grandmother encouraging us to eat some cake and have a glass a wine, at the end of our stay she did not forget to tabulate our bill, making sure she forgot nothing, trying to count our dinner as double and all the while rounding up to the nearest 100 peso! Both Sarah and I have very fond memories of the homes we have visited and lived in over the course of our travels across Argentina, India, Nepal, Spain and Tibet and after this weekend we have warm memories of a Chilean home, too.
Our journey began to take shape when one of Sarah's Dad's close friend's Chilean daughter's son, Pepe, emailed us and said he was free on Saturday and we should come south to see him. We jumped at the chance because we knew that a friend of Hap's (Sarah's Dad's friend) would be a fun person to meet and also because we wanted to be able to tell a story with 4 possessive nouns.
On Saturday we woke early and caught the first bus south - direct to Osorno. We have come to understand that direct in Chile means that there are usually fewer than 4 stops in towns smaller than the town of embarkation. We had hoped for a clear day so we could sightsee from our seats but instead had to settle for overcast skies and the rather bad Wayans brothers' film, "Little Man". We made the best of it; Sarah slept and I tried learning some nouns and verbs via the Spanish subtitles.
Pepe picked us up from the bus station in his truck and after running a few errands we picked up his wife, 5 month old daughter and his mom. We then headed south to a restaurant near Puerto Octay about an hour south of Osorno. It was close to 2:30 at this point and we were hungry after the bus ride and errands. When we walked into Ranchos Espantapájaros and saw the buffet and then were told that it was an all you can eat, fixed price affair, we sighed with a smile. Then when Teresa, Pepe's mother, ordered Pisco Sours for the table, we beamed with delight. It was going to be a fun day!
The restaurant served pickled veggies, homemade breads, deviled eggs, ceviche, salads, stuffed avocados, 3 kinds of sauerkraut, chicken, steak, pork and boar along with many other prepared dishes. We had piscos, wine, coffee and a fresh mint herbed tea all the while seated next to a giant picture window through which we gazed out onto Lago Llanquihue and Volcán Osorno. The meal was spectacular and we stuffed ourselves to the gills. (Hint: if you ever have the chance to eat fresh boar roasted over an open flame on a spit and then cut from that spit upon ordering, don't hesitate!)
After lunch we drove further south to the town Frutillar, a lake side summer resort on Lago Llanquihue (pronounced: yawn-kee-whey) and took a short stroll. The town was quiet and had bed and breakfasts lining the lake, which looked to be crystal clear. It is not hard to imagine the beauty of the summer evenings in this part of the world after a lunch feast and afternoon cafe and a glass (or bottle) of wine to help watch the evening's light throw colors upon the water and light up the sky all the while staring at the almost symmetrical Volcán Osorno.
Upon arriving back in Osorno, we learned that the eating was not over, simply on pause. There was to be a dinner party that night with some of Teresa and Pepe's friends. We did what all polite people from the U.S. did...well, Sarah, did what polite people normally do in such circumstances. She smiled and nodded. I raised my eyebrows, and beaming at the thought of more food said, "Really, more food? What's are we cooking for dinner?"
The friends soon came over, the pisco sours were made, five wine bottles were opened at once and the fire was ablaze in the living room. Teresa has a great recipe for Piscos - fresh grapefruit juice mixed with fresh lime juice. (I have already added this key enhancement into my pisco recipe booklet.) We began talking about all sorts of things like where we were from, the adventures of the Chileans in North America, i.e. Pepe once drove from Miami to Seattle and Enrique, one of the friends, once was asked to sign along with a band in Regina, Saskatchewan.
For dinner, we had beef tenderloin and a hearts of palm cream sauce with Roquefort cheese, spinach salad with mushrooms, rice with fresh herbs and cucumbers with an olive oil and lemon dressing. The wine continued to flow, and towards the end of the dinner the men started having whiscolas, which is a simple whiskey and coke, a seemingly favorite local drink. We moved back to the living room and the fire and started listening to music. They asked about the kind of music that I liked and instead of trying to describe it, I pulled out my ipod and explained that I only had a few albums on it but that the best ones were African (Ali Farka Touré, Daby Touré, Mory Kanté), Indian (Shujaat Husain Khan) and Bluegrass (soundtrack to Oh, Brother! Where Art Thou?). My music went over with mixed reviews and they put on the CDs they enjoyed listening to, their favorite being Clearance Clearwater Revival as well as various others like Neil Diamond and Otis Redding. We drank and talked and told stories until the early morning. The quote of the night goes to Enrique who said, "We have a saying in Chile that goes like this: 'We may not make a lot of money, but we know how to have a lot of fun.'"
The next day we woke up late, had a small breakfast of café, bread and jam. We walked down to the bus station to buy our tickets back to Temuco and on the way back walked through Osorno's shopping district and main plaza. Along one of the plaza's streets was a parade of old women (although what they were parading for, we have no idea). A few were in old cars at the front of the parade but the large majority were carrying banners and walking in groups of 15 to 30. It was quite surreal and it felt like a movie set but there were no cameras.
After lunch, Pepe took us to the Termas de Puyehue on the edge of Lago Puyehue (pronounced: pooh-yeh-way) and also one of the Lake District's most posh thermal baths. It was incredible and felt like it could have been in a northern European country. The resort is a giant, old, stone-built resort complete with restaurants, a movie theater and two grand lobbies, along with all the other amenities a resort needs to be dubbed 5 star. We paid for day tickets for the baths which were both indoor and outdoor.
We only bathed in the indoor pools. The main pool was filled with guests and day trippers like ourselves and was a steady 35 degrees Celsius, and there was a hot pool which fluctuated between 40 and 42 degrees Celsius. You really don't swim at the termas in Chile. You just sit and float and talk and relax. But after 30 minutes we noticed that a few people would get out of the water head to a corner pool, jump in and then race back into the main pool. I decided to investigate and quickly learned that this was the freezing pool. I got in as far as I could go - my shoulders - and then got out and hopped into the main pool and quickly realized that this cold pool dipping was great. Both my arms and legs tingled and stung, and the heat and warmth made my whole body relax. I repeated this cold pool dipping 2 more times, once with Sarah, before capping off the visit with a hot pool soak.
After the termas we headed back to Osorno in order to catch our 8:20 bus. The whole way back we marveled at the lakes and pastures and mountains of the lake district and relished our second chance to soak in the thermal waters of the Chilean Andes. We will most surely see Pepe again as we greatly enjoyed the warm hospitality of his family and the good humor of his friends. The meals, the drinks and the laughs and especially the warm fires made us feel at home, as we approached the one month mark in our year long journey and stay in the Lake Districts of Chile and Argentina.
