Talca

After Valparaiso we went south. We stayed in a German hippie/yuppie retreat (there are so many goddamn Germans in South America) in a little town called Talca a 6 hour bus ride from Valparaiso. The book said that it had nice hikes and vineyards nearby, and we like both those things, so we decided to stop by for a few days. The first day we did a nice hike, the second day we hit a few vineyards.

We liked our activities in Talca, but once again we hit a few snags with the accommodations. Getting to the hippie hostel was a total pain in the ass. The hostel’s website told us that we had to call for a ride from the bus station in town then to take a bus out of town to a little bus stop, and they would pick us up there. We tried. . . and tried. . . and tried to call. It turns out that neither Kenneth nor I am smart enough to figure out how to use the payphones in Chile. Apparently, we are just not good problems solvers. You would think that it would be fairly intuitive, this whole “how to use a payphone system” thing. I would have thought that there would be a simple enough system going on with the public pay phones that your average simpleton would be able to figure out how to make them work. Well, I guess that the average simpleton is out of our league, because we simply could not figure out how to make a phone call. So we couldn’t call the people we needed to talk to. (Seriously, how frustrating is it to not be able to figure out stuff like that?) Finally Kenneth just got online and emailed them to tell them that we were on our way, and asked that whenever they got the message to please come pick us. So we go take the bus to where we are supposed to meet our ride (which was also stressful because we weren’t sure until the very end where we were supposed to get off) and went into the little bus station at our stop to see if anyone from the hostel was waiting (unlikely) or to see if there was a way to call this hostel and ask them to come get us. We got inside and, to our relief, they had put up directions on how to call the hostel. (Triumphant! Other people have had a hard time calling too! Phew, maybe we aren’t idiots. I guess confused foreigners come through that bus stand with enough regularity that they had to put up instructions. ) Even with the directions though, it took Kenneth and me and these 3 guys hanging out at the bus station to make the phone call the hostel. We kept pressing buttons and whacking the side of the phone to make it work. After all that, when it was finally dialing, one of the guys showed us how you have to press the deposit button at the right moment to make the phone accept your $ so that your call goes through. Ah, so mystery half solved. That explains why some of our tries didn’t work. (It didn’t explain, however, why the phone made angry beeping noises when we tried 2 of the 3 # given us by the hostel, but whatever.) When our ride came I was ready with a whole “here is what I think of your incompetence at not giving proper instructions regarding how to call and how to get here on your website ” speech ready to go, but then the ride gave us some candy and she was all nice, so I decided not to spoil the mood. I will save my complaints for my online review.

Speaking of buses, buses are privately owned in a lot of places here. They were only just recently switched to being a public service in up in Santiago. Allowing city buses to be run by private companies is a problem because it means drivers compete for fares. So they race each other down the street to get to the pile of passengers waiting at the corner. And sometimes they won’t stop for students because students pay a reduced fare. Fabulous system, right? Safe as mining.

The hostel was beautiful though, I will give it that. Gorgeous setting, pool, deck chairs to relax in, bucolic country roads, mints on the pillows and flowers on the towels. It was like Eden after our hot, dusty bus ride, like quenching our thirst in a desert. On the other hand, it was too expensive and they nickel and dimed us on some stuff. But on the original hand, the surrounding area was really fabulous. Absolutely beautiful, like we were at a resort.

Our hike the next day was beautiful too, in a less commercial way. Mountains and wilderness. It was good to go on a nice day hike, but it got me thinking about how much I am going to be hurting after 4 straight days of hiking down in Torres del Paine, one of our later stops. I was ok on the hike, but I wasn’t ready to go out and do another hike after that one.

We trekked (people say trek instead of hike here) with an Austrian woman from the hostel. She was funny and had lots of good stories about traveling. We also hiked with the park’s caretaker’s dog. He escorted us all the way up and all the way back, even after he realized we wouldn’t be feeding him any of our food. Nice little doggie. He kept running along with us, then he would get tired of our slow pace and run ahead, then stand there looking reproachfully at us for taking so long.

On our way back down we heard a cow and her calf in the woods wandering around, which I thought was really weird. I mean, when do you see a cow hiking? They must have gotten onto the trail from one of the farms adjoining the park. The dog was with us when we saw then; he jumped like 3 feet in the air when he heard them lowing to each other. Mroooooooo. The cows did a pretty good job hiking, they were heading up a pretty steep track when we saw them.

When we got back to the trail head we had to walk down the road a bit to get to where the town bus would pick us up. A group of people were hanging out, and one lady kindly told us that we might need to go down the road 20 meters, because sometimes the bus didn’t drive all the way to the end of the road. So we thanked her and walked down the road a bit. Oh, and it turns out she had a little shop 20m down the road and she had cold drinks for sale. When we were on the bus a little while later, cold drinks in our hands, we noticed that the only place there was room for the bus to turn around was at the end of the road where we had been standing originally. Oh well, good for her. Have to make a living.

The bus ride home was fine, it was interesting to see all the locals getting on and off the bus- school kids, people heading home from work, people heading into town for stuff. One guy was bringing his broken weed whacker to town. He pretended to threaten the bus driver with it as he was getting on, and we all had a good laugh. The bus driver and the weed whacker guy over their joke, Kenneth and I over the two of them messing around.

At one stop along the dirt road a sweet, grandmotherly old lady got on the bus with a young man who appeared to be her grandson. They sat behind us and chatted quietly until the next stop, where there were a few old guys waiting for the next bus(not our bus, the one after, I guess). As soon as our bus stopped in front of these guys, the little old lady behind us stood up in her seat and opened her window and started shouting what sounded like (from the tone of her voice) some of the filthiest, most lascivious epithets I have ever not been able to understand. The whole time the bus was there, she just kept hurling it out. Some of the old men at the bus stop sort of nonchalantly looked around, or stared at their feet, embarrassed. Some of them tried to ignore her and maintain a dignified poise, waiting there by the side of the road. One guy focused very hard on playing with his cell phone. I don’t know why they didn’t shout some stuff back, maybe they were thrown off guard by her taunts since down here it seems like the men do most of the shouting. Or maybe they knew her grandson and didn’t want to start anything. Or maybe they had traded insults with her before and knew not to get into it. I don’t know. Whatever the case, she had morphed back into a sweet little old lady by the time she got off the bus 20 minutes later, clutching her little basket and holding onto her grandson’s arm, nodding politely at people she knew as she walked down the aisle. That act didn’t fool me though, I made sure to get my shit out of her way while she was moving through the bus. I didn’t want to draw any of her fire.

The next day we toured 2 wineries with an Australian girl from the hostel. One was a very small, fourth generation family run operation, the other was owned by a corporation which was big enough to do contract brewing for other vineyards. We took a cab to them; they were both fairly close to the hostel but not walking distance. We were a little confused, because we thought from the information at the hostel that the two vineyards had tours running every day at 2pm and 3pm, so it would be no problem if we just showed up. When we showed up though, neither place seemed ready for us, and were confused as to why we were there. So I guess the hostel should have called ahead for us, but they either forgot to or didn’t know that they were supposed to either. Didn’t matter though, both places were very accommodating, and gave us tours anyway. The first place, the little family owned one, was able to give us a tasting even though they weren’t prepared for us, the bigger one couldn’t because they needed to do something with the wine first, prep it or whatever. So they gave us a free bottle. We drank our bottle back at the pretty hostel with the Australian girl, since we couldn’t carry it anyway. It was good that the second place gave us a bottle, because we were able to drink it slowly. At the first place, they gave us two big glasses of wine to try, but they didn’t give them to us until the end, and we had to sip them down relatively quickly. So we were glad to not have to toss back two more glasses of wine within the same 2 hour period.

That evening we took the bus back into town for a 12 hour overnight bus trip to Chiloe, an island that is just below the beautiful lakes region in Chile. The bus situation in Talca almost screwed us again. Hate bus. The bus took a different route through town on its way in than it did on the way out. So we didn’t know when were near the main bus terminal. So we rode the stupid bus all through town to the other end, and had to get back onto another one and go all the way back through town to get to the bus terminal. On the way back through we sat right in front and kept asking the bus driver when to get off, because it was getting perilously close to when we had to make our next connection. These little old ladies kept giving me dirty looks for not giving up my seat for them, but I figured that the little old ladies could go to hell. I didn’t want to miss the connection, and we hadn’t been sure were to get off before because we were in the back and couldn’t ask the bus driver anything. Finally, much to our relief, we got there and made next connection, barely.

Next: Chiloe!

First pictures, as promised.

Central Square in Santiago














Some of the fun colored houses in Valparaiso














The beach with the kids who got knocked over by the wave, playing

Valparaiso

(Hi! I did have time to put another one up, so here it is! I am working from not-my-computer though, so I can´t access pictures. I will get one or two up next time though.)

Next we took a bus out to Valparaiso and spent a few days there. Valparaiso is a port town about an hour and a half northwest of Santiago.

I got a vegan lunch at a falafel place, which was super awesome.

We spent some time hanging out on the beach. I suppose it probably goes without saying, but the beach was beautiful. Clear, blue sky mirroring the mingling shades of aquamarine water, sparkling in the sunlight, waves rolling in with foamy white crests and spreading themselves up the beach, reaching as high as they could go before sinking into the wet sand. The pictures just don't do it justice.

No suits with us, but that was ok because the water was too cold to go in anyway. That didn't stop the kids who were there though. They kept laughing and running in and out and in and out of the cold water. The waves were pretty high too, and unpredictable. Not dangerous, but as a kid you could get knocked over if you weren't paying attention, or if you underestimated a wave. A few of tweenage boys were playing near us, screaming and yelling whenever the cold water snuck up on them and swept high up the beach, further than they were expecting and drenching them with cold Pacific ocean. At one point they were running from a particularly strong wave, and one kid got swept right onto his butt just in front of us. He laughed it off, but he thought it was really funny how funny we thought it was. He got a huge kick out of us laughing at him, and flashed us a big, toothy white smile. We gave him a thumbs up.

One beach kid impressed us by being the youngest person with tattoos we had ever seen. We guessed that he was about 14.

After sitting on the beach a while, drying out our slightly-wet-from-wading clothes, we walked around town and saw the pretty houses. Valpo is known for its brightly colored houses; the Chileans are not shy about painting their houses any color on or off the rainbow. We got some fun photos of a few of the groups of the houses. Enough of the houses are painted to make the town look kind of artsy and bohemian. Not too many, it doesn't look like Disney designed it or anything. There are about the right number of showy houses- you know people like to do it, but there aren't so many that people feel like they are living in the Wizard of Oz or something.
We also saw lots of cool artistic graffiti in Valparaiso. We have seen plenty of graffiti throughout Chile, but the stuff in Valpo was of the highest quality.

We tried another bar recommended by the guidebook. It wasn't bad, but it smelled like a grandpa. The bar definitely had character. There were lots of photos of ships and seaport paraphernalia around, and a few regulars, solo and solemn, and sipping their drinks at the bar, watching whatever happened to be on the tv. On the whole we liked the bar, but we might have liked it more later in the evening. Apparently crooners hit this place around 10pm and it becomes more swinging during the hours later in the evening. (I guess we were early birds again.) We didn't feel like sitting around for a few hours waiting for Sinatra impersonaters though, so we grabbed a cab home.

The cab system in Chile seems to be odd. I have never heard of a cab system where you have to actually figure anything out, with a cab you just stick out your arm, an empty one stops, you get in, say where you want to go, and get dropped off. Sort of a universal system, like how red means stop and green means go. Well, in Chile the taxis are on some weird system. Only certain ones go to certain neighborhoods, and you have to stop the right one or they won't take you. In Valpo there is some sort of number code that indicates which taxis go where, but we had no idea where on earth to access that information, so we just kept (Kenneth kept) hailing them until we got one that would take us where we wanted to go. I think we got charged the "it is getting dark/you don't know the system/also you are a foreigner" rate, but whatever, it was no hardship for us and we got home safe.

People seem to share taxis here too. Strangers, I mean. They just all get into a cab together. Or a cab will have people in it, but then stop and pick up additional people too. I guess it is like hiring a little mini bus that specializes in taking you to your door. I think that cabs run specific routes or something, and if they have room you can stop them and they will take you where you want to go. Some of them appear to have information on their roofs that tell you where they go, but I have yet to see one moving slowly enough for me to read it.

The next day we hit a few of the funiculars and saw some great views of the town. We wanted to go to a museum in one of Neruda's old houses, but it was closed for "staff enrichment." Sucky, because the museum sounded sort of interesting, and it would have been a great view of the area. Neruda allegedly made it a point to always be there for new years to see the fireworks. Oh well, Chile has been a little rough for us re museums. Just doesn't want to let us see stuff. So we called it an early night, since Kenneth had a paper to write for his class anyway. I annoyed Kenneth by not writing any papers and watching Ali G (a show by the "Borat" guy) and "The Truman Show" instead.

Next: Talca!

Santiago

Our trip down to Chile was fairly uneventful. The only interesting thing that happened in the process of our entering Chile was that at the airport in Santiago we got in trouble for not declaring the dried fruit we has with us. We were stopped and asked to empty out our bags because they didn’t want us bringing the fruit and raisins into the country. The customs lady was very nice about it. She started out by scolding us for not declaring that we had fruit, but then was very understanding when we explained that we thought we only had to declare fresh fruit. (It was weird, because the visa forms do only mention fresh fruit.) She patiently explained that dehydrated fruit was ok, but our packages said dried fruit. We started to explain, but halfway through the first sentence Kenneth saw how the conversation was going to go: broken Spanish to broken English. So we stopped, and smiled and nodded and handed over the fruit.

The raisins were a big no-no though. Even if they had said “dehydrated” they wouldn’t have been allowed. I guess that is because they have so many vineyards here and don’t want to risk any American grape diseases. No Grapes. The customs lady shook her finger at us sternly.

After the airport we went straight to our hostel. It was a really nice place, with killer views of the “Plaza de Armas” (central square.) Every town here has a Plaza de Armas.

We had one or two little snags with the hostel. The hostel itself was nice, and the staff was great, we had access to the kitchen, the location was perfect, but the door to our room didn’t lock. And it is nice to trust people, but not that nice. So they called a locksmith for us. Then the door locked, but as we were leaving the room, we noticed that one wall had been a window out to the main area but it had had the glass removed and had had a reed blind put in instead. So it really didn’t matter if you could lock the door, because anyone could walk right in through the one wall. So our belongings were safe from any thieves who have a deep, irrational fear of reed mats, but not really anyone else. Oh well. We didn’t feel like complaining again, so we just hoped that only reed fearing thieves were about. Luckily, this proved to be the case. Nothing got stolen.

Then we went out to explore. Santiago is a very pretty city. It has a lot of European architecture, mixed with lots of sunshine and palm trees and people with black hair. Kenneth and I stayed there for a day longer than we had originally planned, because we liked it so much. We saw the city’s big park, visited the indigenous art museum, sat at cafes and just generally wandered around.

The first day we took a walking tour around the city. Unfortunately though, that first day Santiago was the “City of No.” The tour took us around a bunch of museums and sites downtown, and then we planned to hit a vegetarian restaurant at the end. However, not a single museum or “building of interest” was open, throughout the whole walk. The only things we could go in and see were the churches. We were pissed. I mean, churches are great and all that, interesting to see, but there were a bunch of things on the tour that looked interesting, and it was Saturday and our guide book said that they were all supposed to be open. About half way through the walk Kenneth started talking up the veg restaurant to cheer me up, at least we have that to look forward to at the end, even if we can’t see the museums, right? Let’s keep going, because even though all this stuff is closed, we can still go to a veg restaurant. Not surprisingly, however, the vegetarian restaurant at the end of our walk was closed. Apparently it and the museums had gone on strike for the day. We couldn’t figure out what was going on, I mean, even the library was closed. How is the library closed on a Saturday? In what sort of city can you not return your books on the weekend? Don’t Chileans do any reading? Don’t they need to check out books on the weekend? Do research? And what about the homeless? Where do they bathe on the weekends if the libraries are closed?

We stomped into a public courtyard so sulk and eat a peanut butter sandwich. We were trying to figure out what to do next when the security guard came and kicked us out because they were closing. What? But the sign says open until 6! He shook his head and pointed to the holiday hours. Oooh, so that is what is going on. It is a holiday. That explains why nothing is working today. But what holiday is Dec 8?

We checked at the hostel, apparently it was Immaculate Conception Day, which was why all the churches were open but nothing else was in this Catholic country that we are in. I had no idea that these people believe that Jesus had a, what would that be?, 17 day gestation period? I don’t think that Mary’s skin could adjust to such a rapid pregnancy. Gross. But whatever, no one was going to open their museums for us, regardless of my issue with the dates.

We looked in the guidebook for something that was open on holidays, turned out the park was open. So we went over there and rode the funicular up the side of the hill.

A funicular, I learned when I went to the park, is a little car that goes up the side of a very steep hill, and then back down. There are two tracks carved into the side of a hill, and cables attach two cars to the tracks. One car is at the top, and one is at the bottom, and they are counterbalanced so that when one goes up the other goes down. They are fun. Funicular.

So we went to the park and went up the funicular. Then at the top, we saw a huge sculpture of the Virgin. We couldn’t go up to see it very closely though, because it was Immaculate Conception Day, and we weren’t the only people to think of taking the funicular up the hill to visit the Virgin. About a third of Santiago had thought of it too. So we took a few pictures from the bottom of the area, and listened to some of the singing for a little while, then walked around to the other side of the hill where there were little cars hanging from a cable that you could ride to the next mini mountain, over the top and down the side. So we did that and took some great pictures.

Then we went to a bar that the guidebook recommends. We were getting worried that we might not be able to get into the bar because by the time we got down to the right neighborhood, it was closing in on 7pm. We hurried down the street, looking for the bar. Finally Kenneth spotted it, and it was completely empty. Closed for IC Day? No, just dead. Oh, right. The guidebook mentioned that, how if you want to see a club when it is busy in Santiago, don’t bother going out until midnight. Ah, ok. So we went into the deserted bar and had a drink. We decided to try some pisco, a liquor of some sort that is made down here. It was ok, not great, so we won’t be bringing any home with us. The bar was cool though, great ambiance and fabulous music. They had up a screen and were projecting this pbs produced-looking music program of some Brazilian singer.

After the good bar, we went to a shitty restaurant that charged us 7 times what it should have for supper.

Then we went home on the train. We were super lucky, because the train was basically closed, all the ticket sellers were shut down and most of the doors were locked. The last train for the night was about to run. We looked around for some machine to buy tickets from, but they haven’t heard of that technology in Santiago yet. We went over to a guard to ask where we could buy tickets for the train, and we must have looked really sad/stupid/desperate, because –much to our relief- instead of shaking his head and telling us that we were out of luck, he nodded at our unintelligible Spanish and waved us through. So we made it home. That guard has some good karma coming his way.

The next day in Santiago we went to the indigenous art museum. It was a quality museum, lots of really good native art. We liked the pottery and sculptures, and there was a decent amount of English translation around the displays.

There was also a nonpermanent exhibition of the art of the Moche people, illustrating some of their religious practices. I don’t know how much Kenneth said about this, but it was, to say the least, disturbing. Little pottery sculptures of anal rape, and people with their eyelids, noses and lips cut off, beastiality. Not so much coffee table art, although I bet having something like that sitting around would start some conversations. I was a little traumatized after that, and it took the whole rest of the pretty pottery and wooden sculpture collection to make me feel better. Our feeling afterwards was “At least we weren’t part of that society. Our society isn’t perfect, but at least we aren’t part of that society.”

One thing at the museum that was cool were these tiny little mummies. Apparently the people in this obscure little Chilean fishing village a couple hundred years ago hit upon a way to preserve, or mummify, their dead, by stuffing them with some leaf dirt rock mixture. We couldn’t really figure out what they did, because our Spanish isn’t good enough (Kenneth’s Spanish, anyway), but the mummies were really small. So either the process made the bodies really little, or they only mummified children, or these people were super tiny.

After that we went to a craft thing outside the city. We broke up like 3 times trying to figure out how to get there, then we finally decided to take a cab, and we got back together. Then we almost broke up again when Kenneth started talking about how we should have been able to figure out how to get there by bus. Then he shut up.

The craft shops had some nice stuff, but it was pricey and felt too rich touristy for us. We want cheap, poorly made junk. So we didn’t buy anything.

While wandering around Santiago we saw some other fun stuff. On Conception day, I saw teenagers dressed like boy George, and it was funny to see people dressed like eighties counterculture in a church doing the Catholic shoulder shoulder forehead chest touch thing.

We saw tarot readers near the main square set up along park benches doing readings for people walking home from work.

We had kids try to sell up roses as we sat in a restaurant, which I have only ever seen in the movies.

The restaurants all had displays out in glass counters by their front doors of the plates of food available. Rows and rows of plates of plastic food, so you could see exactly what you might want to order. Mmm, appetizing. Shiny, glazed, plastic food glued to a plate. The steak/eggs/french-fries combo was particularly popular. I started to wonder if there were little plastic people around who liked to order the little plastic plates of food.

The big fashion statement in the city appears to be wearing a see through black shirt around. We saw several women showing way too much. Some were also, . . . hmm. Well, I don’t want to tell anyone how to dress, and if you feel twenty on the inside, then that is really great. But if you are 55 on the outside, mmm, maybe the no bra/really thin shirt look is no longer for you. I mean, I don’t really think it looks so fabulous on a twenty year old, but you can at least get away with it. At middle age, maybe not so much.

Another thing I thought was weird in Santiago was the number of bottle fed four year olds I saw. A few times we saw kids being cradled on a bench or walking down the street holding someone’s hand and drinking from a bottle. But they weren’t babies, they were kids who could walk around and talk, and looked well beyond the age where they should be drinking out of a bottle. I am not exaggerating when I say they were four year olds. Time to put the bottle down. Learn to drink out of a glass, kid. Develop that life skill.

People don’t run for the train here. Or, not many do. There were several times we were on the train and it had another minute or so, if you had just run down the stairs you would have made it, or moved a little faster across the platform, but -no. No need to hurry. Another train will come. I guess I just thought the whole “run for the train/bus/ whatever” thing was universal. I thought it was wired in that when you see a mode of public transportation about to take off, you rush to get it if you possibly can. But people here would continue casually walking down the ramp, looking at the train, and if they make it, great. If not, well, another will be along soon. There was a very studied, relaxed attitude about it. Why run so that I get to work earlier than I have to? -Don’t get me wrong, some people definitely ran for trains, and would jump on at the very last second. It just surprised me that not everyone did.

We encountered a lot of Beatles muzak in various places across the city. So I guess Chileans like the Beatles? We just kept running into it. Or they really like muzak and only the Beatles were available.

You can get “coffee with legs” here. We saw a few cafes where there were very few seats and waitresses with very short skirts and wondered what was going on. Because they weren’t bars, they were definitely cafés. Then we read in the guide book that these are cafes where men go to read the newspaper and hang out, where they get served coffee by women who aren’t wearing a whole lot. The Chilean men take it in stride, but the book warned that as an American you might feel a little weird going in. There are a range of them, some of them where the waitresses are dressed enough that women feel ok going in, but I told Kenneth that we wouldn’t be exploring them. He said that was ok.

Next: Valparaiso! and a couple of pictures.