My day in the hinterlands, a story by Eileen Smith

Say you want to do as we do. We being your new best friends who live here in Santiago. Well, first you've got to get together a group of friends. Take these for instance:



Then you've got to find a time when they're all free. Half of you work a half day on Saturdays, at the optical shop and at a family-owned business. The other half of you work from home and/or are students. So Saturday afternoon it is.

Meet in a central location and take a series of busses. In our case it was the 405 from Plaza Italia, which is actually called Baquedano, up to Clinica Alemana on Vitacura, and from there the C07 feeder bus.



Here you get of at Rotunda Lo Curro. Bring tissues for the possible nosebleed. You are way above the city in an area called Santa Maria de Manquehue. You will be the only pedestrians, unless you're lucky enough to see a gardener or a nana (household employee).

Walk up, past some houses of people who used a grape arbor as inspiration for their home's design.



And some others which have a more ginger-bready fantasy architecture to them (but who still did not invite you in for a coffee, despite wide eyed thirsty looks towards the castle itself).



Keep walking, not minding the security reconnaissance, which will pass you no fewer than five times, both by car and on motorcycle, and finally get to the entry at the end of Avda. El Condor. Take a right, and walk and walk. Get a little lost, then unlost, then lost again. wash, rinse, repeat.

Marvel at the view with the glider up above.



As it starts to get dark, take a totally different route home, accidentally surprising a group of 30 six year-olds at a birthday party, and musing on the irony of the street name, named for the logger/lumberjack who must have come to denude this hilltop, which used to be covered in native trees (though there are still some beautiful laurel-like groves and forested areas, with the native Peumo and Litre (this one you have to say hello to, or it gives you a rash, I am not kidding), and lots of other trees, which housed a virtual storm of chortling, flapping birds, but I forget which.

Street sign:



And don't forget to discuss the difference between a real and false chestnut, and if you're planning on planting native trees at your beach house, stop to fill your cargo pockets with seeds, including some from this tree (false chestnut).



And the best part? (aside from not getting a rash, because I did actually say "Hola Señor Litre), with one of these:



The whole shebang will only cost you 800 pesos (less than US $1.50 at today's exchange rate).

So what's stopping you?

What I've been up to since the judges at lonely planet disclosed that they do not love me.

Here in spherelandia, we were taking a short break. A short break from daily excited posting which generates slews of visits from all kinds of nifty places (Hi again Norman!). But don't you worry your pretty little heads, it's because work (yes, that) has been taking over, and the bitter taste of defeat was not as delicious as cooking and going out of the house and thinking about other things.

But in the meantime, my amazing editor at Bootsnall was running around (as were a bunch of other editor types) at conferences like SXSW and that one in Germany, and working at the same time, working hard to get articles like this one on six unexpected places to go winetasting in Europe up and running for your reading pleasure. What I have learned from writing this article is that I can think of few landscapes more beautiful than Croatia's winegrowing regions, and that if these places weren't so far away, I'd be there in a heartbeat. Instead I'm going to Uruguay in a few weeks with MamaJ, who constitutes the other half of the guffawing travelling duo, and who has promised me that in spite of the fact that neither of us really drinks, she's game to go winetasting. Maybe that will be the follow-up to this article, winetasting in unexpected regions (not just Europe). Now I've just got to find someone to finance my trip to Namibia. I hear there are also meerkats (suricate in Spanish) Anyone?

Enjoy the article, bootsnall in general and the nailbiting wait to see just where else my blatherings will appear. (Vague Hint: two more articles should appear shortly, on (gasp) different travel websites.)

As for whether I'll write an article on that absolutely bizarre situation in my personal life that developed and of which there will hopefully be no more installments, I'm going for the big guns on that one. If Marie Claire won't buy it, maybe I'll go straight to Oprah. I'll be in Chicago for Blogher '09 anyway. Where I understand there will be no meerkats. Alas.

No win for me!

You had to be a lover of twitter and patient to find out at #lpawards (twittersearch that), to find out, but in fact, we the readers and writers of this blog did not win. I'd like to write a fabulous tale of competition and woe, but really I'm happy to have made it this far, and incredibly appreciative to have won the popular vote.

For now, I have dreams of feta and an early morning bike ride.

Chau for now my sleepies. And keep reading. Who knows what kind of crazy stuff I'll think of next?

I'm going to pretty up the blog anyway, even though I didn't win. Anything you'd like to see? Keep it clean, my mom reads here!

Got patience?

Ever since I was little, I have noticed an air of impatience about myself. When I see my nephew being told to be patient, and see him kind of sigh and desist with the incessant Mommy Mommy Mommy Mommy Mommy soundtrack (which only sometimes refers to my sister), I think to myself, man, that -ahem- is hardwired. He looks like he might grow up to be patient. Maybe he's Chilean.

Since I was tiny, sitting in the backseat of the giant forest green stationwagon with the beige vinyl seats with the waffleweave that would burn the living bewhosis out of the backs of your tender baby legs, I would ask "when?" or "how much longer?" or "are we there yet?" Given the distances we covered in that behemoth at eleven miles to the gallon, it is perhaps somewhat understandable. So too, would it have been understandable had my parents made me just get out of the car and wait until they came back. But this I was spared, perhaps because they are/were quite a bit more patient than I am.

Even now, I notice that I am perhaps, not as patient as other people. I could count all the drops of rain that fell on the Cotswolds last year in the numbers I let race through my brain, saying to myself, if you count to 10, 30, 127, this situation will have resolved itself. And eventually it does, and my patience-facade is rewarded and we all go on our merry way.

Chileans tend to be much more patient than I am. Americans probably are too, but I feel the difference much more acutely here, perhaps because the pokerface Chilean tells you nothing about how much he'd like to strangle you, while if the number thing doesn't work out, I'm doing a circular high-stepping, footshuffling, fingernail inspecting, knuckle cracking, hair-twirling impatience dance. I once brought a knitting project on a long bikeride, so that when we stopped for lunch and everyone was enjoying their long sobremesa (lit: above the table, this is the after-meal banter that I love about Latin America), and I was itching to start biking again, I could knit (a scarf, I'm way too impatient to follow a pattern) and probably purl (though I never remember which is which) and staunch the need to just get out and ride.

Which brings me to another point. I'm incredibly patient with minutiae. In a recent post on bread I posed the marraqueta on a coffeetable, my own, which I mosaicked myself, tiny tile by tiny tile, each one with a glop of adhesive and tiny spacers between. I showed this same love for meticulous fixing and such on the spindles, banisters, and newell post in the built-in-1908 rowhouse I used to own in Washington, DC. So maybe it's not that I don't have patience. It's that I'm not patient when I have to wait for another human to do something, like make a decision.

Which is why for the next eleven hours and thirty-five minutes, I will be in tenterhooklandia, waiting to see what the judges at the Lonely Planet blog contest will opine. Sadly, the popular vote (thankssomuch!) only counts for half of the final decision. As I mentioned recently on twitter, I found a relatively reasonably-priced plane ticket to SF, but even I am not crazy enough to spend that much money to go to a party where I might not even be celebrated, and where I have no guarantee of cake.

So look for me at 6 pm San Francisco time (9 PM east coast time), rapidly hitting refresh, taking a spin around the room and hitting refresh again. I don't even know what the ramifications or the prizes for this contest might be, but still, impatience rules the day. Maybe I'll go get my own piece of cake.

A tale of my washing machine. And what should not, but often gets washed.

My mother says that when I was a child she used to have to go through my pockets before doing the laundry to find the rocks I'd secreted there and forgotten about. It doesn't surprise me, kids do all kinds of silly things and on our recent family vacation we followed my nephew around from pillar to post (or garden to flowerpot, if you will) in his quest to collect enough rocks to build a new country, perhaps to later call nephewlandia.

The apple doesn't fall far from the tree, de tal palo, tal astilla (A stick like that gives rise to a splinter that's the same), etc. You can't change a zebra's stripes. I'm not talking about my nephew's propensity to stick things in his pockets. Unfortunately, I'm talking about my own tendency to launder items that were never meant to go through the spin cycle.

I've washed lip balm on several occasions. This works out pretty much fine so long as it doesn't go through the dryer (which it doesn't here, as I don't have one). Though there was the great blackberry lipgloss explosion of 2007 in Ushuaia that left a bunch of my clothes speckled in blackberry, and caused the great Columbia zip-off pants disposal, along with a lot of "what happened to you?" questions when I wore the similiarly stained shirt, looking like I'd participated in some kind of sticky pink food fight. Which I pretty much had.

Other victims of the wash include credit cards, which by the way, get round and bendy if you let them go through the dryer, and the numbers flatten a little, but they still work. I also managed to send my passport through the washing machine once, and am happy to report it stayed fully functional, if a little softer and maybe a touch frayed around the edges.

Last week's catastrophe (please say with French accent, sounds much better) was the sending of 1/2 a roll of toilet paper through the wash. You think a stray tissue makes a mess!? Quelle surprise! It was riotously bad. It's because my tp holder is blocked by my washing machine, so the tp migrates around a little bit. Somehow it ended up on the floor and when I was mopping I tossed it in the laundry basket for safekeeping. Dummkopf! (this in German) Lesson learned: no bathroom floor mopping. Also, toilet paper? very clean. Clothes? not so much.

Today's laundry debacle is actually a gear report. The watch portion of my Polar f6 heart rate monitor took a dip in the whirlpool today, and by all accounts seems to be fine. In truth it was probably the most exciting thing that will happen to the watch today, as I don't get the feeling that being on my sweaty wrist during a spinning class during which I sing along in both English and Spanish is much of a thrill.

Thanks mamaj for the rock anecdote. I'm afraid to say this seems to be a lifelong affliction with the stuff in the washing machine. Good news? My rock collection now has a home, and they seldom go through the wash.

What have you washed lately?

The law of contrasts

The contrasts between old and new, practical and superflous, modern and old-fashioned never ceases to amaze me. Maybe that's why I find in Chile an utterly endless supply of blog (and other writing) fodder.

Today's lesson is about regulation, rules and the following thereof.

Our first installment finds me in the grocery store, buying an onion to make a roasted squash soup. I go to the weighing station and tell the woman, "No, I don't need a bag, you can put the sticker directly onto the onion." And she shakes her head sadly, indicating no, and fishes out a bag from under the counter where the scale is located. She carefully wraps my onion, which by all accounts comes pre-wrapped, you know, with the skin and all. As she applies the sticker carefully to the outside of the bag, ensuring that I will need scissors to get at the onion, she explains that it's a new supermarket policy: all produce must be bagged.

I've been known to be argumentative, it's true. But I'm not going to argue with a woman who makes maybe $500 a month, which isn't enough to live well on, not even here, about not having a bag. I know she's following instructions, and I'm not going to hassle her. She feeds me a line about people eating the produce en route to the cash register (perhaps themselves earning even less than $500 a month, who knows), and I mimic the facial expression of a person who's just taken a bite of a raw onion (did I mention the skin?).

Onion in bag and bag in hand, I picked up the rest of my essentials and commenced to waiting in the world's longest line because it was 8:30 on a weeknight, and though you wouldn't think it, this is prime downtown supermarket time in Santiago. Take note.

Later on that evening, as I was walking into the house, the gas man had arrived. In Chile there are two ways to fire up your stove, one with gas de cañería, which is municipal gas. It comes piped into your house, and with hoses is fed into your stove for all your cooking pleasure (See roasted squash soup, above). The other possibility is that your gas runs on gas from a balón (canister). Periodically these will run out, filling your house with a gaseous smell, and requiring you to call one of these gents to come and please bring you another one because the squash soup is only half-cooked, and you're getting nibbly.



There are also trucks that come with the same, announcing their arrival with a pingapinga on the gas tanks with a wooden stick. People sometimes open their windows and shout out to make them stop. Oh, urban life.

So, the gasman. As I've mentioned before, the elevator in my building is one of those old-fashioned jobbers, where you need to ask what floor people are going to and punch in the buttons one by one. Poor elevator, can't remember more than one floor at a time. So the gasman and I came into the elevator together, and I said to him, as is the custom "A qué piso vas?" (what floor are you going to), and he said, "sexto," sixth. To which I raised my eyebrows. You see, balones are illegal above the fourth floor in Santiago, which is probably because of fire truck ladder lengths or something equally encouraging. Hmmm, I said. "So that law about no balones above the fourth floor?" And the gasman shrugged, and said he'd brought balones up to the fourteenth floor of other buildings. I confessed I have one, too (though mine is for the gas heater, not the stove), and we shrugged our shoulders in unison, and then both got off the elevator, the gas man lugging the heavy gas canister behind him.

So my contrast point of the day was born: Let's flout the rules when it could lead to dangerous gas explosions and death and dismemberment, but if someone wants to eat a raw onion in the supermarket? This must be stopped!

So, dear reader, what curiousities have you seen today?

On the Chilean propensity to stay up all night. In two verses.

You know that old story about how Chevy introduced the car called the Nova and it wouldn't sell in Latin America because no va means "doesn't go?" Or that in some countries food items are pictured on the label and so nobody wanted to buy Gerber baby food because it has that pretty white baby on the label, and who wants to eat that?!

Well, today I present to you a magazine which I just took note of this weekend. It's El Mercurio's home decor magazine, a really pleasant read with profiled workshops and classes on horticulture, weaving, etc. Please view the magazine cover carefully and tell me if this is something you'd like to sign up for



VD? Should I comment on this? Or should I move ahead to the lullabies.

I think I'll move ahead. Lullabies, or canciones de cuna are not something I have a lot of contact with here in Chile. Most of my friends' kids are older, and the whole OMG, it's 8 PM, I must put the baby to bed thing doesn't really happen here. Kids tend to sort of fall asleep when/whereever here, and there is much less of a focus on ensuring that people sleep enough. Which would explain why my former students, on being asked what they did over the weekend, would often respond "I slept." I thought they were being cheeky, but really, if you accumulated the sleep debt that most Chileans accumulate over the course of the week, you'd spend all weekend asnooze as well.

But let's say you have a baby, and you want him/her to go to slumberland. A lullaby would be perfect, n'est pas? There's one lullaby that I know in Spanish, and in either version, you simply have to wonder how this is going to help a baby fall asleep. It can be sung to the tune of Rock-a-bye baby (which, for those who don't know, also entices babies to sleep by offering them a tumble out of the top of a tree in their cradle, whereupon they go crashing to the ground. I know that always makes me want to settle in for a nap, though maybe it does explain why dreaming that you're falling is such a common theme.)

Duérmete niño, duérmete ya (sleep little baby, go to sleep already)
Que viene el lobo y te comerá (the wolf is coming, and he'll gobble you up!)

or...

Duérmete niño, duérmete ya (sleep little baby, go to sleep already)
Que viene el cuco y te llevará (the boogeyman is coming, and he'll take you away)

You know, I have to say, between the VD and the wolves and boogeymen, I'm beginning to understand why no one around here gets enough sleep.

Bonus points: espantacucos (boogeyman scarer) is what you call a nightlite in Chile. Sweet dreams.

oh, and the voting ended, didja know? I didn't

I am incredulous. Thankful, grateful, agradecida, humbled, thrilled, gracious (I hope).

Thanks to the many, many of you who have visited the blog, pimped the blog to your friends, spraypainted the URL on buildings along the Pacific Coast Highway (kidding, I think, I haven't been on the west coast of the United States in at least seven years).

For what it's worth, we still have to wait for the judges' vote. Hi judges! Look at my tiny, untechfancy blog! Look at how cute, how humble, how "anyone (with logophilia and a spinny brain) can do it" it is. No fancy logo, no pretty layout. Just content, pure content.

Yeah, so when it's all over, I'm going to get on that. You know, the pretty. For now you'll just have to live with it the way it is. I'm also going to buy a tiara. You know, to better rule my kingdom.

I'll be accepting congratulations in the form of feta cheese, which is almost completely unavailable in Chile (I have seen it twice), and which, if you get caught bringing it in, will cost you $200 and a lecture. I don't want to count my chickens (because we're still waiting for the judges' vote, hi judges!), but maybe the Lonely Planet prize is a sheep. They have lots of sheep in Australia. What would it cost to ship one here? I understand they can swim. Oh, and please make it a ewe, you know, for the milk.

Thanks again. /fans self and faints.

The what and where of Santiago, trickier to find than you'd think!

Last Saturday I went up to the nosebleed section of Santiago with six friends, old and new to a Thai folk dance performance up at the Centro Cultural Las Condes, Apoquindo 6570. We sat and sweated up in the bleachers while we waited for the sun to go down and fanned ourselves with a list of phrases we will find useful when we visit Thailand, such as "Hong nam yoo tee nai?" which I am told means "Where is the bathroom?" Personally, I would also like to know how to say, I want it foreigner spicy, but not Thai spicy because I would like to maintain the integrity of my mouth and digestive tract." Anyone?

The dance performance was sponsored by the Royal Embassy of Thailand and the Corporación Cultural of Las Condes, one of the more adinerada (moneyed) comunas in Santiago, and entry was free. When I told people about it after the fact, or shared pictures, I got a universal, "awww, I wish I'd known!"

Which maybe is partly a desire to seem worldly (yes! I would love to go to a poetry reading of the famously depressing poet X read in a language I do not understand, and other assorted mainly false pretensions), but mostly is borne out of the fact that cultural events in Santiago are simply not well advertised.

According to a gringa friend of mine who will have been in Chile for ten years at the end of June (and she arrived in winter! and stayed, and look, I used the future perfect), the way you get information about events is that you talk to everyone you know all the time. On the off chance that one person has seen a tiny poster in the one metro station bulletin board on which it was posted, and manages to remember the information and disseminate it, this is how you will find out when/what's happening. Or they overheard it while walking down the street, or knows someone somehow connected to the event. Even so, getting details may be problematic.

I have to say, I think she's right. One time a few years ago I saw a news report saying that at the Parque Intercomunal La Reina ex Padre Hurtado (because everything in Chile has two names, the new one plus "ex the old one,") they'd be showing the old Godzilla movie. There was no mention of what time, and I searched and googled and called friends and never found out. I finally just took the bus up there before dark and waited for it to start. And they were giving away free pens (from a cellphone company) and a movie poster. Yay, useless swag. At the Thai performance we got fridge magnets with recipes for Pad Thai. I gave mine to a friend who'd lost his, but kept the handy phrase sheet. Sawasdee kaa (Hi!)

But the point here is that while events (even free ones) are plentiful, information is ridiculously hard to come by. Part of the reason is that there are 37 comunas (or districts) that comprise Greater Santiago, 26 of which are kind of within the city, and 11 of which lay in the afueras, or surroundings. Of these comunas, some are more likely than others to have fun and entertaining events. In any case, you must find the website of each, and read through until you find something that piques your interest.

Other fun events, like the cool movies they show at the Centro Cultural La Moneda (except on the 28th because they're participating in a money-saving lights out event), are not listed by comuna at all, and you'll have to sign up for their bulletin to find out what's going on there. Ditto on the museums, language institutes, public parks, spaces, churches and local community centers. I think part of the lack of dissemination of information is based on the idea that surely if it's in your neighborhood, you'll pass by, see a sign, hear about it at the grocery store, etc. And if it's not in your neighborhood, then you probably won't want to go, or the neighborhood itself hopes you don't come (we often suspect this about Vitacura and Las Condes, and to a lesser extent, Ñuñoa, cute, pricey districts with awesome, but often poorly-advertised cultural offerings).

To be fair, sometimes I am ignorant of cultural offerings because (gasp!), I don't watch television. The main reason I don't watch it is that I don't have one (which seems to upset people very disproportionately to how it affects them personally), and because I can't be bothered to watch the streaming news on the local news channels with any regularity. Call me old fashioned, but (surprise!) I prefer the written word.

What I would really love to see is a central Santiago website with cultural, sports and other offerings indexed and crossposted by date, location and topic. All comunas, organizations, religious institutions and other groupings of people could post there, and anyone with internet access (we're one of the most connected cities in the world, and even have free Wifi in the metro), could find out about them, and decide to go.

It would take away the "awwww, I wish I'd known" factor, but it would also really level the playing field. And then everyone could things like this:



Anyone up for the challenge? Don't look at me, I'm still trying to contort my hands into those elegant Thai poses (see first photo). And it's starting to hurt.

Who really knows Chile?

Every year, on the fourth Thursday of November, like many other families in that somewhat misshapen landmass of a country we call the United States, my family gets together for Thanksgiving. For the first three years I was in Chile I dealt with my weather sickness (November is warm, and nostalgia-rife), searched the Vega (main fruit and veg market) for overpriced hand-harvested sweet potatoes that would still be good at this time of year, and moped. Once year I celebrated it with a bunch of gringos in the basement rec room of a long-since-departed-for-California gringo who was kind enough to host the shindig. Another time I went to a dear friend's house, with her organic garden and her chickens cluck-clucking in the background, and we all sweated and swore and balanced ourselves around the giant table laden with hard-fought goodies like stuffing (you try to find celery in November in Chile!) and cranberry sauce. Strangely, the Brazilian-American put himself in charge of bringing the turkey, by taxi, and fully-cooked, of course. We didn't tell the chickens, but I think they knew.

Over time I decided that if I have one priority time to visit the states, it's on that fourth Thursday in November. Since we are (fairly secular) Jewish, it is our one big family holiday of the year. And like many other families, we like to invite other people to share in the fun and stomach-distending tasties that the family whips up. My brother-in-law would have a spiffy gourmet restaurant if he weren't a programmer, and he spares no effort in putting together an elaborate feast. Everyone pitches in and brings something, which in our case usually means a baked-to-perfection cheesecake or eight kinds of cheese produced from milk gleaned from three-legged sheep clinging to the Cantabrian hillside. We're like that.

Like many other families, we also include people that are not technically family. We have a partner-in-crime family, parents and kids, and grandparents too, who are like our cousins. Then there's the friends of the family we've known for so long that we wouldn't know what to do with ourselves if they weren't there. Part of this inviting-of-others is based on the spirit of the holiday. Another (sadder) part is that our family is so small, and has suffered a serious attrition rate in recent years (see: emergency flights home for funerals and such), that we just have to buoy up the numbers a bit.

Last year we had two new additions, a couple from (I think) California, one of whom, a fast-talking-comedienne and performance artist set to interviewing me about Chile. I found myself strangely embarrased, unprepared, like an ambassador for a country I didn't know. I didn't want to get it wrong. I didn't want to sell Chile like this when really it's like that. I didn't trust my ability to explain Chile tal como es (just how it is), because I didn't want to misrepresent it, perpetuate a lie, spread an untruth.

And the woman kept on insisting. Insisting that I tell her what Chile was like and how people feel and what they think, and what they eat for breakfast and the state of women's rights and what about gay people and the politics and where they go on vacation and what they look like.

And I kept on saying, I can only tell you about my Chile. The place I live, the people I know, the things I observe. But no. She wanted generalizations, pronouncements. I excused myself and went to help in the kitchen. Because no matter what I see, what I feel, the things I eat and drink, the places I go, the people I meet, the things I notice, smell, observe, proclaim, it's only true for one person. Me.

I can open my mind and my heart and let my fingers type my thoughts, but if you want to conocer (get to know, experience) Chile, you'll have to get on the plane and see for yourself. I know an apartment in Barrio Brasil that's free the fourth week in November. But you'll have to miss a hell of a spread out on Long Island. Your choice.

On airport strandings and invented airport spa treatments

Last night I was chatting with a gringo friend here in Santiago on skype, and wondering how his wife's arrival back from the states had gone. It seemed odd to me that I'd find him on the computer if she'd only just arrived, and lo! she had not. It seems that mechanical problems had sent her plane looping back from whence she'd come, with a night in a hotel airport, to boot.

As consumers of travel services, we compare our best and brightest with our worst and most dim. We try to figure out which airlines are likely to strand us overnight, and which have a generally-accepted good reputation. Asking my friend which airline his wife had flown (or tried to fly) was fraught with excitment. Would it be an airline I never fly? (reaction: whew!). Would it be the airline I am eyeing for my multi-stop open-jaw trip to the states during the northern summer? (reaction: oh crud) Would it be the airline in this part of the southern cone which we all agree should have a theme song and hats with little round mousie-ears distributed to all the employees, so excellent is the service?

It is of this brother-of-minniemouse airline of which I am most often reminded when I consider airlines not to fly if you a) need to be somewhere on time b) need to be somewhere at all or c) need to work with a company that feigns interest in you, your itinerary or your luggage.

There are two good stories in my story quiver today about this airline. One is sad and leads to me arriving to a hospital room too late, when this airline could have told me the connecting flight to NY was a no-go, and I would have paid the money to get on another plane. But nobody wants to hear that sad story, and we'll go with the footwashing tale, instead.

Last southern summer, I decided to explore the pointyish tip of the southern cone. If you look carefully (or even not so carefully), you will see that a sizeable island, Tierra del Fuego has cracked off the continent, separated by the Straight of Magellan. It was here I was headed. I had one flight to Buenos Aires, which would land at Ezeiza, the international airport, and nine hours later, I had another flight south from Aeroparque, the dingy little is-it-a-bus-station-or-an-airport for local flights within Argentina. I had planned a busride, a quick hostel check in, a nice dinner, a short sleep, and zoom, to the other airport.

Or so I thought. My first flight was more than four hours late, quickly shrinking my night-on-the-town to my night-in-the-airport. I shuttled to the second airport, fully cognizant that there would be no tasty dinner, no frothy beer and no sleep horizontality.

So what's this about the foot-washing? I have a little bit of a manic side (no?! really?), and before I leave town, I like to make sure my apartment is the kind of place I'd like to come back to. I sweep, dust, launder, and I do what I like to call "dish laundry." While I was engaged in dish laundry, and running back and forth between the kitchen and the satellite kitchen, where the dishes live, I managed to crash a green ceramic mug against a big glass bowl. The bowl broke, inverted and fell in slow motion (in Spanish called cámera lenta, or slow camera)and landed from waist height, cut-side down, onto the knuckle of my big toe, which was bare at the time.

Surely I needed stitches, medical intervention, to postpone my flight. But no. I am nothing if not stubborn, and I taped myself up, and taped myself up again, and bandaided until I couldn't see the blood coming through, and hobbled around on my heel, wearing crocs because did you know you have to squinch up your toes to get them into flipflops? There could be no toe-squinching for me. Squinching was tantamount to purposely reopening the wound, and this I would not do.

I asked my best medical references, doctor google and a friend who's studying to become a nurse back in Wisconsin what to do for the toe. The most important advice seemed to be, wash the wound. Twice or three times a day, with soap and plenty of water.

Which is how I found myself balancing on one hiking boot (on the good side), fully ignoring the sign that said "no bañarse" (no bathing) in the Aeroparque airport at four in the morning, with my wounded foot in the sink, washing it for all I was worth. I know bathing was prohibited, but between misdemeanor toe washing and losing the battle with bacteria, I knew I was in the right. The other foot? that one I washed just because, you know, to even things out. And yes, I did get caught, and I was given the evil eye by not one, but two homeless families that spied me. But hey. A girl's got to feel fresh.

Oh, and the best part? The second flight was delayed, too. I could have had that beer after all.

A-e-r... Are you really an airline?... o-l-i... I don't think I love you...

Namedropping the famous Tim Cahill, and the tiniest thing we have in common.

A while ago I was rereading a section of Road Fever, Tim Cahill's account of driving from stem to stern of vertical boat that is the Americas, starting at the end of Argentina's RN 3 in Lapatía Bay in Tierra del Fuego national park, not far from Ushuaia, that glittering port at the end of nearly everything, and ending up in Prudhoe Bay, Alaska. The book is a vivid and hilarious account of every fight he had with his copilot, a tale of smashed strawberry tetrapack milkshakes, of an immersion heater that took eons to heat up water for them to mix their nescafe into a paste with, of containers too small to ship the extended-cab truck in, gunfire, going completely loco, helpful and not-so-helpful strangers, and also of bureaucracy.

Certainly traveling from country to country in a private vehicle in places where theft is rife, and where it may be illegal or controlled to sell a used car generates bureaucracy. It involves stamps and sums of money and letters of intent and photocopies of the same and possibly a baptismal certificate, depending on where you're going. In Tim Cahill's case, he and Garry Sowerby, who was, himself the brainchild of the operation, and also a professional driver, which is good, because at many points, they really needed one, they had a dossier, a binder of documents organized by country, and obtained weeks and months in advance.

When I first read the book it was reasonably current, and I had no inkling that I'd ever live anywhere where it was taking place. By now, the trip is almost 20 years old, and while still absolutely burgeoning with information (and hilarity), it seems almost historical. They were GPS-less, blackberry-free. They didn't have a cell phone. Many of the rocky roads they traveled have since been paved, and I think now anyone would be wise enough to skip on the thousands of pounds of strawberry milkshakes, no matter who the sponsor.

The reason I was originally rereading the Lapatía section of the book was to see if the road had been extended between 1991 (when he wrote the book) and 2007, when I finally set foot at the same, having arrived by bicycle from... a point not very distant, and did I ever feel trumped by the motorcyclists who had just arrived, having traveled Cahill and Sowerby's route in reverse, with considerably more stops, more sleeping, and more getting held-up at machete point. Ah, but this is a story for another time.

What I do feel I vaguely have in common with Tim Cahill and anyone else who has spent considerable time in Latin America is the need to engage in the papeleo (paperwork, bureaucracy). The whole jumping-through-hoops and tiny pictures and stamps and deposit slips and vaccinations and proof that you're paying into your retirement account and that you have health insurance and whatever else has become almost second nature.

But then there are the letters. Occasionally I will be asked to complete my application (in this case, for definitive residency in Chile, and to travel to Bolivia overland, without round-trip reservations) with letters. What should the letter say? I ask, eager to follow instructions precisely, lest my application be rejected. In the case of the application for definitive residency in Chile, I was supposed to write a letter explaining why I wished to stay in the country. I was instructed by the woman at my former place of employment who was in charge of the gringos to write "because I love Chilean men and empanadas." Clearly I had to invent something more clever. This is a part of my permanent record! I stressed and fretted over the letter, asked other people to see theirs, and ultimately wrote a letter which I saved as a word document entitled "let me stay." I talked about culture and language and didn't say anything about Chilean men or empanadas, the mainstay of quick eats in Chile, a (usually) meat turnover with a secreted olive (with pit!) and sometimes half of a hard-boiled egg. I also didn't mention that I don't eat meat. Whatever I wrote, it worked, as I'm still here, and I have all the trappings of a definitive resident, including my five-year carnet (national ID card), and a weird certificate that is too big to fit in my passport and which I had folded and laminated because everyone said I should, but then I had to slice it open to photocopy the backside one time.

When I was going to Bolivia, I wrote another letter, this time saved as "let me in," in which I lamented not being able to spend more time in their delightful country and trotted out my best written Spanish. The whole getting-the-visa-for-Bolivia process was a bit of scene from a soap opera, complete with suspicious job offer and lots of eyelash batting (not mine). It also involved riding a bike up the street the wrong way and on sidewalks because the street that the Bolivian consulate in Santiago is on does not follow any normal street-numbering or direction convention that may exist here in Santiago.

What strikes me about these letters is not that I am occasionally asked to write them, considering that this is a minor inconvenience. What strikes me is that I suspect that somewhere in the breakroom at Extranjería (foreigner's affairs) or the Bolivian consulate that there is a wall of shame with the funniest, most glib, tongue-in-cheek, suspicious, and worst of all, worst-written letters, highlighted in yellow ink for everyone to laugh at. And if my letters are funny, or glib or strange, it is by accident, and I hope I will be forgiven. And if they are held up as examples of poorly-written Spanish then I should just hang up my brain and apply for a new one. I wonder what kind of letter that would require?

Hello Norman! And all you other cities! A shout out to visitors.

When I was a kid, there was this show called Romper Room, a sort of televised kindergarten for happy little children who never spilled or tantrummed or caused any ruckus. The whole shebang was run by a perfectly-attired-in-70's-polyester soft-spoken woman who was very excited when Doobie, the guy dressed like a bee would show up. Would you like to comment on the name of the bee? Of course you would. He existed to encourage good behavior. Be a good doobie! the troopleader would intone. And the kids ran around on romper-stompers, little yellow truncated cones as platforms that you put beneath your feet and pulled up towards you with green plastic lanyard. It was good times.

At the end of the show, the perfect 70's housewife/kindergarten teacher would hold up a fake looking glass through which she'd look at you and say, "And I see Bobby, and Billy and Emily and Petunia..." and any other name she could think of, except Eileen, never Eileen. But I would sit with rapt attention in front of the gihungous television that was deeper than it was wide, and wait for her to call my name. She never did, and later into my childhood, when we were traveling around the country in true 70's splendor in the pop-up trailer, and watching this same show on a tiny black-and-white tv while eating stale cereal in the damp mornings, I would discover that gah! The show was the same in other markets, but the lady? The lady was different! It didn't stop her from holding up that looking glass and saying hi to those kids though. All those kids, but never me.

So what does this have to do with bearshapedsphere? Since the beginning of the lonely planet expat blog contest (vote! time's a-wasting, the voting ends on Friday!), I've seen a marked increase in blog traffic. Thanks to sitemeter, I can learn a little about you, just as you learn a little about me. I can see where you navigated from, what browser you use, the town you live in, how long you spent, and if you clicked away through one of my outgoing links, which one it was. One of my friends told me that when she saw the "you see me? I see you, too" at the bottom of the right hand column of the blog, she felt observed, uncomfortable. No reason. I can't see if you're in your jammies or guess what you had for breakfast (though I hope it was french toast made from the bread you bought from the Hare Krishnas because man was that ever good).

I think you should all know that I think of you by your town names. In some cases that kind of makes sense. So I'd like to say hello (just like the lady with the fake looking glass) to Austin, Chandler, Clyde, Dallas, Douglas, Eugene, Norman and Victoria. I think of you fondly, and often wonder how you are doing.

See, it works just fine with the town and city names that are really names, as though those are the names by which you are called. But I also wonder often about Abbotsford, Bloemfontein, Cave Junction, Doha, El Cajon, Flower Mound, Garching, Hyerabad, Jokkmokk, Kaohsiung, Leningradsky, Melbourne, Nezahualcyotl, Oradea, Petaling Jaya, Quilpué, Reus, Shawnee Mission, Tipperary, Ulefoss, Vernon, Windhoek, Yokosuga and Zumrraga. I wish you could all meet each other and hang out. You have so much in common.

I also can't help but notice where you come from in computerlandia. A lot of you come from articles I've written, photos with links to me, or cross blog posts (like lonely planet's blogsherpa) or forums where I post about travel and the like, or links in email. A great number come from the Lonely Planet competition (oh! did I mention that?), and recently from travelblogs. And there's a ton of google hits for the following:

Torta chilena
Quill stem (bicycle related)
Should you tip your postman?
Tipping the courier
Shake bums (sorry, it's true)
Fruit in Chile
Climbing a volcano

Some of you are repeat visitors. We like that. Some of you google something really strange to find me, and then do it again and again to find me again, as if the bookmark function didn't exist on your computer. I don't mind, it takes you from the land of unknown (where many visitors also seem to live) to a place I can remember. And one of you, just one of you looks for me nearly every single day by plugging the words "bear shaped sphere" into Google. Hey Atlanta! I see you! Careful with the typos.

Now all of you, go vote. And tell your friends. I'm planning a giant trip to visit (almost) each and every one of you, so please get your couch, hammock, futon or space on the floor ready. I'm pretty low-maintenance but I will kindly ask that whatever the caffeinated beverage of choice in your neck of the woods is, that there be a plentiful supply of it nearby.

A tale of two trees

Everyone in Chile is crazy about the alerce (a-LEHR-say). The alerce is Chile's redwood, its giant sequoia. A huge hardwood tree that was overharvested almost to extinction. It grows gigantically tall and hugely round and for a thousand years. It fills an important ecological niche, is present only in a few isolated stands and rooves the old cottages and houses with a characteristic shingle that doesn't podrir (rot). In English it's the false larch. Which to you means nothing. But to lovers of ecology, of the giant trees you can look up the trunks of and perceive them disappearing into the sky, visiting the few remaining stands of alerce in the south of Chile is bittersweet. They're magestic, to be sure, but they represent what's wrong with resource exploitation and logging and disrespect for traditional ways and the environment.

The alerce is important, and I get what it represents, I just don't love this tree with my heart and soul. It doesn't reel me in. Also, despite the fact that they stand stock still, I was unable to photograph one to my satisfaction last summer while visiting Parque Pumalín, the humongous private park owned by American business mogul/environmentalist Douglas Thompkins that spans almost an entire degree of latitude across Chile. So there will be no photos of alerces today. At least not here.

Instead I will tell you about my tree. Yes, I have a tree. Well, many trees. It is not endangered, no one ever cuts it down to roof their house, and even monkeys find it troublesome. Not that we have monkeys in Chile, but you know. It's called the monkey puzzle tree in English, or the Arucaria in Spanish. (ah-ru-CAR-ee-a). And I love it.

I love how they look from afar.



And from below



from up close



and from even closer



Even after death by flame and smoke, they remain dignified, seeming to implore the sky for rain, a chance for a new generation to grow.



The araucaria is not particularly huggable, what with the sharp angry-looking spikes on every branch. But I still love it. If it's close, if it's far. Even if it's planted in Santiago, which it doesn't much like, as it's too hot in the summer and it becomes leggy, and has to strain to grow. Arucarias reminds me of the hens and chicks my mom grew on the back porch in an old sink when I was a kid in Brooklyn. Who knew that something so new could seem so familliar?

Pedrito paga doble

The other day on paseo Huerfanos, a (mostly) pedestrian walkway that stretches from San Martín (of the water-scooping-from-the-fountain fame) up to Cerro Santa Lucia towards the east, I saw a crowd huddled around something, so I had to go investigate.

Huerfanos is the backbone of pedestrian downtown, a wide street lined with stores with piped in music and people mopping the sidewalks every morning. At night the cartoneros take it over, breaking down boxes and selling their recycling to the raw goods people, each one with a scale with a giant sign saying "don't step here!" On Huerfanos there are two movie theaters (there used to be three), several Dominós (the hotdog shop, not the pizza place), a Dunkin Donuts and a number of arcades where you can dip into the belly of a building and come out with a new purse or having had your lighter refilled or a new watch battery installed or some new perfume. You can also accidentally exit the arcade through a different door than the one you went in and end up on a different street and blink in confusion as hoards of people stream past, thinking, this is not my beautiful street (or maybe that's just me, and yes that was a Talking Heads reference, because I'm that old).

Huerfanos has many stages. Morning, with the mopping, midday with the snack-seekers, later on the lollers at lunchtime and the eaters of oversized icecream from Bravissimo, one of only about two foods it is socially acceptable to walk down the street eating in Chile, the other being fruit, and the third, yogurt being mainly drunk. In the late afternoon vendors come out and sell bootleg CDs, sunglasses, cigarettes, hair-ties, scarves, etc. You know these sellers are illegal because only those with disabilities are legally permitted to sell on the street, and they set up shop along Agustinas, selling insoles and antennas and whatnot.

Among these illegal, cloth-on-the-ground sellers is where I found the crowd. And when I went over to investigate, I saw a man playing Pedrito paga doble, or three-card-monte there on the street. This is a game in which three cards (or in this case, disks) are passed from hand to hand to hand again on the ground, and the customer has to pick out which one is the queen, or in this case, which one had the Colo Colo (one of two very important soccer teams here in Chile) insignia on it. There's an element of sleight of hand to the game, of confusion, of growing distracted, and of course the palo blanco.

The palo blanco is the shill, the one who pretends to be a customer just like you and me, but really is in on the game. He may alternately win, giving you the idea that you can win, or lose, inspiring you to play so you can show him how it's done. The whole notion of the game is based on trying to get something for nothing, and thereby a) have more money to spend and b) feel like you're better than someone, whether it be the dealer the palo blanco or the other shnooks getting taken for their hard-earned lukas (bucks). The stakes were high, with Prats (Arturo Prat, on the face of the 10,000 peso bill) flying. Ten thousand pesos is five cheapie downtown lunches, or more than 25 bus fares. Not small change.

And just like I don't buy cigarrettes on the street (don't smoke), nor sell cardboard (though I am collecting cans to one day trade in for the kilo-of-aluminum price, which last time I saw it was like 300 pesos (50 cents), and do you have any idea how many cans are in a kilo?), I also didn't play Pedrito paga doble. But I did have a good snicker about it with some business men who were talking about it and I mentioned that I thought I knew who the palo blanco was. And they looked at me and said, "Do they play that in... your country, too?" And I said, "en mi país?" (in my country?) "en mi país, hay de todo" (In my country there's anything you could imagine.)

So what have you seen recently?

Ever wonder where the carwashers get their water? Wonder no more.

Content you want? Content? Show me the votes. Clickaroo on the badge to the right there, and vote for me for best expat blog. Then come back and enjoy your content.

The other night I was sitting outside one of my local cafés, one that used to have slices of cake and such for a little over a dollar, but the prices of which have recently gone up to the scandalous price of nearly $1.50 (900 pesos!), enjoying the cool evening breeze with a friend. We'd just eaten some apple kuchen, the word itself a tip of the hat to the giant German presence in the south of Chile. Who knows if the kuchen was authentic, I've only ever been in the Frankfurt airport in Germany and mainly I was amazed by how incredibly thorough the modifications were to the wheelchair-accessible bathroom, which even had a trapezey-looking thing above the toilet to use to lift ones' self onto the toilet, if the rails on the side don't work for you. Anyway, kuchen.

The café closed early, so my friend and I sat outside, and chatted in the plaza outside, which like many plazas in Santiago, has a little fountain. Someone came up and filled up a 1.5 liter bottle with water from the fountain. Clearly not to drink. To bathe himself? It seemed unlikely. Dogs run around in the fountains in the summer, and there's just got to be a better way to get clean. He disappeared, then came back, twice more, to fill up the bottle. Ultimately we decided his car had overheated and he needed the water for the radiator. Or maybe it was a bus. That's a lot of water.

And the evening wore on, and the temperature dropped, we wrapped our sweaters around us a little tighter, and two more gents arrived. These with not bottles, but bidones, the 5-liter jugs that water is also sold in. These they lined up around the fountain, like fans waiting to get in to a concert. One guy's job was to uncap the bidones and line them up, while the other busied himself buying beer at the corner botillería.

How were they going to fill what were more than 30 jugs of water? Surely they weren't going to use the same technique as the water-bottle guy, lying the bottles sideways in the water. No, indeed. A joint compound bucket was produced, and it was scooped along the bottom of the fountain, and inverted over each bidón, in turn, using the top half of a 1.5-liter bottle (of a drink called Japi Cola, which I've never seen for sale in stores) as a funnel. One by one, the men filled the jugs, and periodically checked on the temperature of their just-purchased beer, which was cooling in the very same fountain.

My friend and I knew immediately that these guys were helping themselves to water for their business. They must be the carwash guys (or their helpers) who mop off your car for you while it's parked downtown (for a price).

I suppose it harkens back to when public wells ruled the day. I guess it's as good a place as any to take water from. The municipality maintains the fountains, and if these guys didn't have work they'd surely be a drain on society. For now, they steal water, and sell you their services, you get a clean car, and the guy in charge of the fountain on the corner of Catedrál and San Martín asks himself at least once a week, "Qué chucha pasó con el agua?" (Where the h... did the water go?)

Flashback: The doll

The other day I got an email from this excellent, dynamic want-to-live-like-her-when-I-grow-up excoworker of mine who I know from when I worked in a truly wonderful Adult ESL program in Northern Virginia where I learned, among other things, that every country in Central America has its own word for a kite. Cometa, volantín, pisgucha, etc.

Among the questions this excoworker posed me in between compliments for the blog was: what about the juicy stuff, the romance, etc? To which I thought, "Oy." And not much else. It's like that 25-things meme that's floating around. Don't be greedy with the information. You already know enough.

But I would hate to keep it all from you, keep it secret, private, hidden, when in truth there are things to be told, told about my history that while not necessarily personal, touch on the personal, and which stand the chance of being the funniest thing you've heard all day.

And so I will recount the story about the doll.

When I first moved to Chile I suffered a catastrophic breakup of sad and crocodile-tear producing proportions. Oh! It was sad! I was sad, we were sad. Sad, sad. And time when on, and wounds were healing, like they do. And about a year later I was on a camping trip at Termas del Plomo with some friends, and I met someone. And we had a few things in common, like liking bicycles and both being at Termas del Plomo at the same time. Over time, we sipped milkshakes with two straws and walked on the beach at night (hyperbole here, no one drinks milkshakes, and Santiago's not on the coast). Eventually I was invited over to his house to rub shoulders with the family.

Meeting someone's family in a US-based relationship usually takes place several months into the dating, and as a sign of seriousness. Here it's kind of like, well, we've been hanging out for a month, and maybe you should come meet my moms (not as in two, though that would be revolutionary here in Chile, moms as in the slang for mom). Here in Chile some people call their mother their vieja, or old lady. I find this unconscionable, and would never consider it, both because to me my mom is ageless and also because, hey, that's rude. So back to the house, with the family.

The family lived kind of in La Florida, a pretty middle-class (maybe lower-middle-class) neighborhood with little houses where everyone knows each other and a giant gate surrounds every property, and sometimes there are grates on the windows and music thumpa-thumping as you walk by. It was a cozy little house, and the family greeted me warmly. We all had lunch together, during which I was not cajoled into eating locos (like abalone), about which I was very happy. I remember steamed cauliflower, salad, bread, not much else. As the afternoon wore on, I endeared myself to moms with my stunning ablity to get up and bring dishes into the kitchen. Apparently, due possibly to some class considerations and the fact that I'm a gringa, they thought I'd have had a nana (maid/nanny) my whole life, and wouldn't know that dishes go in the sink when you are done with them. And then they get washed.

I have to admit, I was uncomfortable. The guy himself did nothing to add to this, just the whole situation felt like I was watching it from the outside. The forced polite questions, the exclamation over the dish-carrying. It was just odd.

But the best was yet to come. At some point the mom looked at her family and said, that's it! I know who she looks like! She looks like the doll.

Now I've heard this before. I'm fairly pale, have dark hair, clear skin, kind of a round face, etc. "She looks like a porcelain doll", they'd say to my long-since-deceased Uncle Lou as he took me by the hand and walked me down 13th Avenue in Borough Park, Brooklyn. But in this other time and place, it caught me by surprise.

Also, I realized, she said the doll, not a doll. Vaya a buscar la muñeca (go get the doll), she instructed one of her daughters.

Panic, panic, panic. In all the times I've been told I look like a doll, never has an actual doll been produced. And here it came. White, in a frilly red dress, with those creepy eyes that open and close when you lean the doll backwards and right her again. I didn't know if I should accept the doll and pose next to her, hug her to myself, or begin combing her hair (peinar la muñeca, or brushing the doll's hair is an expression used for the very crazy here in Chile). At this point I thought I might lose it.

So we stood there in silence, me some kind of freakish doll come-to-life, and the family, oohing and aahing about the actual doll. I thought maybe a hole would open and swallow me into the earth, or perhaps the world would erupt into flames. But no Armageddon ensued. We drank tea after the meal, the boy walked me to the bus and I thought to myself, which one of us is from outer space? Because we are definitely not from the same planet.

And then I got on the bus and went home. And now, four years later, I tell you the story of the doll, and hope you can take something from it. Personally, I'm still wondering what happened.

Mujer que no se organiza... Sigue planchando camisa! (The woman who doesn't join the movement keeps ironing shirts!)

Yesterday was International Women's Day, here there and everywhere. If you're like me, and live in the United States, you have only recently become aware of this celebratory event. I have a vague recollection of hearing about it in 1996ish, when the Dalai Lama went to China to commemorate the occasion. I believe there were scarves given as gifts.

But here in Chile it's a bit of a big deal. Considering that divorce and reproductive rights are of paramount importance to women, and that the first was legalized about three years ago, and the second continues to be a tremendous fight (the availability of plan B/morning after pill has been particularly polemical recently, and abortion is not only illegal but criminal), well you can guess how excited people get about this event. There's also the issue of equal-pay for equal work, which may transport you back to the 1970s in the United States. Somethimes I think that 40 year lapse is just about right. According to the organizers of the event, women earn something like 30% less than men for the same work. There is also (of course) no municipally-funded child care, and no child care during the "mall schedule" which is what most young/undereducated women will work.

For the people representing the 132 women, daughters all, who were disappeared or executed by the military dictatorship it was a platform on which to talk about something that alot of the country wishes would just disappear already. It's in the past, they say. The communists were there as well, never missing an opportunity to bring their cause to the fray. Latin America for Palestine showed up, as well as a bunch of other fringe groups of questionable connection to the event at hand.

Like these folks, the evangelists who came to see us off (kidding, they often give concerts/perform at Estación Central, the starting point).



And despite the dictatorship talk and the other seriousness, it was fun. It was celebratory. We marched and walked, chanted lemas (slogans) like the above, and generally made a ruckus. The whole thing ended up in Paseo Bulnes with speeches and music and celebration.

My favorite sign award, both for its beautiful use of complex grammatical tenses and its message, goes to this young woman: (her sign reads: If men gave birth, abortion would be law.



Here are the ladies marching for the 132 executed compatriots:



These women are protesting to decriminalize abortion, and I just really liked the shot.



Here we have a combination of tiny protester mixed with an anti-dictatorship message:



Another tiny protester, this wee one is tired of exclusion and violence against women.



And this, everyone's favorite tiny protester, the darling of the event, deserves love and respect. Unfortunately, she also deserves a judicious application of spellcheck. Then again, she is only about three. (the word for "I deserve" is spelled with a z, not an s)



And the winner of the "wow, didn't expect to see you here" award is this gent, who, when not on the phone was totally participating in the proceedings. Go him.



Hope you enjoyed today's slice of Chile. I only wish Anthony Bourdain could have had a taste (see previous entry).

The famous come to rub shoulders with... no one, really

Anthony Bourdain! Presente! That's right, this foodie and world traveller is somewhere ensconced in this city of 6 million, probably drinking a pisco sour out of a sugared skinny wineflute as I write. He arrived and was whisked immediately to Fuente Alemana in Plaza Italia to eat some kind of meat sandwich I've never tried because I don't eat meat. Which is probably okay, because I was never planning on getting as famous as Anthony Bourdain, nor travelling as tirelessly, even if it did bring me to Chile on a fine warm March day such as today, which, by the way, was International Women's Day which has nothing to do with this famous television personality but might explain why my shoulders are a little pink. Man, it was hot out there. I read about Mr. Bourdain on the front cover of Las Ultimas Noticias, because apparently that is more newsworthy than a whole bunch of women marching for equal pay, reproductive rights, etc. More news on this to follow tomorrow.

I really hope they take the foodie to Galindo to try the porotos granados. I'd invite him here to try mine, but imagining a film crew in my apartment makes me want to vomit. Plus I have to work, and I can't have all these famous people traipsing around my capacious apartment and marvelling at my view of this fire-damaged building. Yeah, so maybe I should have noticed that as it was happening? Smelled toasty.



And with that, I bid you all a fond goodnight.

Por Dato

Datos are facts, as in information. Hechos are also sort of facts (El hecho de lees mi blog me agrada mucho/I really like the fact that you read my blog), but hecho-as-fact is not part of today's linguistic equation.

Datos are facts, as in the population, literacy rate and percentage of Roman Catholics in a country 16,454,143, 95.7% and 70% respectively in Chile's case). But they're also little tips we give each other when we've got a really great picada (cheap eatery), médico (doctor) or in my case, mecánico de bicicleta (bike mechanic).

You'll have to bear with me for a second if you're not a cyclist. Imagine it's your car. You have a vague idea of how it works, might be able to do some minor repairs, etc. But when it comes to something like... oh, I don't know, pick a complex car thing here, you'd rather bring it to the experts.

Here's where the maestro chasquilla (Jack-of-all-trades, master of none) comes in. Years of living with close-enough solutions for mechanical and construction problems means that alot of Chileans who make a living by fixing things can be very... creative at times. On the one hand, McGyvering a solution when the options are fix it or leave it broken (and leave me stranded) is a desirable skill. On the other hand, if you want your vehicle of choice to keep functioning properly for the long haul, you should just try to do it right the first time.

When it comes to bicycles, probably the most complicated system is the whole shift levers/derailleur/chain rings set up, which I believe is called the drive train. Ideally, all of these parts are from the same manufacturer, and of the same series. One part may wear out before the rest, and you may want to find something compatible if your exact desired part is no longer available (bikediehards beware, I believe in holding onto things until they no longer work, not until something shinier comes along). But in Chile, on the street San Diego, where most of the bike shops are, what will work with your drive train depends alot on who you talk to. Cheap repair parts are referred to as being "chino" (Chinese), which may be because they are from China, or may be because they are of inferior quality. Getting the right parts can be expensive, difficult (a common response to "I'm looking for this thing" is "de eso no hay" (you can't find those here) or very creative, including a stealthy 2 AM Ebay purchase and a trip to the Dominican Republic to pick up the parts, wrapped in a Colorado newspaper from your mom. But then, your mileage may vary.

Once I have the parts, or have identified that my bike has a problem that needs to be fixed and that is beyond my ability or desire to repair, I refer to my bank of datos. This is how I found my dermatologist, my gp, my favorite pizza place (which I will totally take you to if you visit, and please do not request corn on your pizza) and many other highly-valued get-what-you-pay-for and love the quality services. Among those is my taller de bicicletas (bike workshop). A friend recommended Doctor Bike to me, and I can't be happier.

Luis Cabalín, the grey-haired ex-competitive cyclist, listens to the problem, proposes a solution, seldom goes over budget and does darn good work. He also doesn't treat me like a dolt because I was born with double X chromasomes and once asked kindly after a hiking-induced double ankle wound (darn short socks!). He also installed my new shift levers, cables, front and rear derailleur and desperately-needed new brake pads (I supplied the parts) and exchanged pleasantries with me all for less than $20 (11,000 CLP). People call him a miracle worker, a bike surgeon, a master of bicycles. And it's all true. That's today's bike dato.

Coquimbo 1114, 698-4193. Tell him the gringa sent you. Or better yet, tell him I ride a "real" bianchi hybrid and a Shimano 105 series component roadbike. Cyclists tend to know each other by their bikes. He'll know who I am.

The connection between bread and civil unrest. Not as tenuous as you might think!

On March 29th two years ago, there was a giant bread conundrum. Giant! People were rushing from store to store, begging for bread. Do you have bread? Hay pan? Only sliced bread. Pan de molde? Yeah, sliced bread. Bueno, es lo que hay. Okay, I guess it will do.

As I have a memory for dates like a sieve (good thing I write so much), it would be noteworthy for me to remember an exact date. Yet I do. This is because May 29th is the Día del Joven Combatiente (Day of the fighting youth, more or less) here in Chile, also referred to less than affectionately by Pinochet-supporters and other diehards for orderly behavior as the Día del Joven Delinquente (Day of the delinquent youth). Ahem.

The Día del Joven Combatiente is the annually observed remembrance day of the death of two young students, martyred in 1985, who are considered symbols of opposition to the dictatorship. Though it's been almost 25 years, to say there’s a bit of a to do about it would be a grand understatment. Universities (the conflictive ones, like nearby ARCIS) closed, downtown buildings shuttered, in the case of the close-to-my house plazuela (tiny plaza, like a pocket park in NYC), the police booth smashed in. It's a great time to get teargassed, hold a lemon to your mouth as a supposed antidote to teargas, to take pictures of rioting, get hit in the head with a bottle, and mostly, to just leave work early and head home.

So what's all this about bread? As I have mentioned before, the national bread of choice is the marraqueta, or pan batido, a fluffy french-bread-with crust, an overgrown dinner roll which Chileans seem to eat nearly as much of as humanly possible. In fact, Chileans are second in the world for bread consumption, losing out only to Germany. In Chile, every man woman and child eats 211 pound of bread per year. That's 9.25 ounces of bread per person, per day (slightly less in años bisiestos (leap years)). The marraqueta, pictured below is highly prized, deadly delicious, and best purchased fresh, or even warm if possible.



marraqueta

It also, like French bread, has no preservatives. This means that if you buy it in the morning, by the time you get it home in the evening, it's a bit añejo (old). So people prefer to buy their morning bread in the morning, and their evening bread in the evening.

When civil unrest breaks out, as it occasionally does, on or around Sept. 11th (the day of the golpe militar, or military coup, though this has been less since Pinochet died in 2006), on May 29th and on some other assorted dates I'm probably forgetting about, plus the giant demonstrations that occasionally break out like the amazing one where 900,000 students went on strike for educational reform (called la revolución de los pinguinos for the traditional uniforms the kids wear), people prefer to be home than at, oh, I don't know, ground zero, La Moneda (the presidential palace). So when protests break out, businesses close, people pour into the street, and everyone is out there looking for bread for their evening meal.



La Moneda, with very nonviolent protesters from the Civil Registry, on work-stoppage (not exactly a strike) for pay raises and better working conditions, October 2, 2008.

So here's the situation. Your normal post-work routine involves buying bread. You are released from work early to avoid you getting caught in the protests, so you go to buy bread. But since bread is supposed to be fresh, and people usually buy it after work, the stores don't yet have fresh bread in stock when the you arrive looking for it several hours early. Of course, this is a predictable situation, and maybe the stores could pressure the bakeries to deliver the bread a little earlier, but they sort of have their schedules set and anyway, Chileans don't generally excel at planning ahead, and yeah, you want bread? We got sliced bread, which is considered inferior in every way.

Which makes you realize just how culturally based some of our expressions are. Try to explain "it's the greatest invention since sliced bread" in this situation, and watch you don't get a botellazo (hit in the head with the bottle, my explanation of the etymology here). Because some things just don't translate.

Let's talk about getting your coffee on

In place of a blog entry exactly, please read this nifty (and smile-worthy) article of mine recently published on Bootsnall. Many thanks to my excellent editor there (Roger Wade), and if you love the article, I'll give you my address so you can send me the whole bean goodness of your choice. Or you could just Stumble it. Or Digg, Delicious, thumbs up or sky write it. Or whatever it is you personally do in your free time.

Read the article here.

Bread piece on its way to your rssfeed or birdfeeder (carrier pigeon anyone?) tomorrow. And if you're new here, welcome! And by all means don't forget to vote! (and keep reading, and comment if you like).

Is there convenience food in Chile?

Your newgringostomach may occasionally ask you please ply it with yummy crunchy fresh-from-the-oven pizza bites or whathaveyou. In my case, I never really ate much of that food in the states, tiny quiches from Costco at the occasional novice art opening notwithstanding.

There is some convenience food in Chile. I can think of one of those packs that has yogurt on one side and cereal on the other, though in such tiny quantities of each that it kind of seems like a breakfast appetizer. There are frozen pizzas that turn into a soup of non-mozarrella cheese soup in your oven, boxed lasagna (don't get the veggie one, it tastes like a pile of delicious paste, minus the delicious). There are also frozen patties of beef, turkey, salmon etc. Not with the bun and everything, not precooked, just patties. If you were jonesing for a sandwich filling, those might qualify as convenient. There are deli "fresh" three-layered sandwiches with the mystery filling "ave pimentón" which presumably has chicken and red peppers in it, but what makes it into a paste? Occasionally these come in another variety, always on that wonder-bread-like pan de molde, always with three slices, sliced into triangles and nestled into a plastic pack, hypotenuse-out in the cooler.

In many corner stores (minimarket, in local parlance, please say it with a Chilean accent) and supermarkets, there are also plastic containers with cling wrap on top sold under the name platos preparados (prepared dishes) which might have pasta and meat, or meat and rice, sometimes salad, pastel de papas (kind of a sheperd's pie), etc. I guess you take these back to the office and microwave the carcinogens right into your food, and then enjoy. Except the salad, don't microwave the salad.

Now maybe it's just me, but with the plentifulness and deliciousness of the fresh produce we have available, I've gone pretty wholefoosdy. I don't seek out a lot of pre-prepared food or convenient little snacks. I eat breakfast cereal (cuadritos de avena, if you were wondering, they're kind of like shredded oats), but for the most part it's just food. You know, food. Like stuff our ancestors would have known was edible.

But I get into the convenience thing sometimes too. Which is why yesterday I bought a bag of soup mix. Soup mix? Yes, soup mix. You're imagining a tiny foil packet, or an envelope, aren't you? We have those things, sopa para uno, and crema de choclo (powdered cream of corn soup). I take them when I go camping.

But I'm in the city, with access to my circa 1945 two-burner stove and a giant pot left to me by my friend Rebecca when she moved back to Chicago (hi Rebecca!) So when I say I bought a bag of soup mix, this, my friends, is what I mean:



Maybe it's not "convenience food" like you think of it, but getting that giant quantity of white beans out of their pods would have cost me an hour and most of my fingernails. I chose to buy the cholco (corn) separately because all the soup mix bags with corn in them also had string beans in them, and I don't like string beans in my porotos granados, which is the soup/potage this bag was designed to make. There's basil tucked into the top of the bag, and I start by sauteéing the white part of the scallions, though I think maybe this is not traditional. The matchbox (the same standard size I used to measure my kitchen in this festive post) is for scale, so you can see just how oversized the ears of corn are. I wish I could show you how cornstarched I got while cutting the kernels off the corn, but alas, I've already done laundry. And eaten a bowl and two mugs full of the soup. mmmm, convenient.

Tune in tomorrow for "Do you have any bread bread?"

and now, talk about those annoying 1 peso coins or: your guide to the Chilean supermarket

Chile in general is pretty straighforward. You're not going to arrive and notice that everything is exactly upside down and opposite from how your expected. This, in fact, leads to something I like to call cultural seasickness. Everything is just a few degrees off of what you were expecting. It's unsettling, but eventually you get used to it.

I recently went to the supermarket (in my case, the Santa Isabel on Huerfanos) with my newgringoeyes on. Newgringoeyes is what I call it when you go where you've always gone, but imagine it's the first time and try to remember what would have jumped out at you.

So the supermarket. First, there is a security guard standing by the lockers, yes lockers. The lockers are where you may (but are not required to) leave biggish things you don't want to schlep through the supermarket, for the returned-to-you-later price of 100 pesos. The security guard though, is not optional. He will cleverly wrap a piece of unrippable tape around the neck of any plastic bag you may already be carrying, leading you to rip the bag to shreds to remove the contents later. But hey, it's his job. Don't make him sad; let him tape the bag.

Within the supermarket there aren't too many surprises. Sure, there's the nescafe and tea aisle, and the tunafish aisle, both of which seemed excessive to me. It's always fun to check out what's on the "international" shelf. Nutella, barbecue sauce, sometimes rosewater. No one knows why. Eggs sit unrefrigerated, so that might come as a surprise, and the milk is shelf-stable. Nearly everything, including cream, ketchup, tomato sauce and mayonnaise (which pretty much has its own aisle, too) comes in a bag. There's a whole case of cheese that all tastes exactly the same, and is attended by a crew of cheese-and-meat workers, who count out slices all day long, since most everything comes presliced. Don't forget to bag and weigh all your freshies, unless they say por unidad (sold singly) on them. Failure to do so will cause a major line backup and not a single bit of muttering by your very polite Chilean neighbors, but seriously, don't be a jerk. Weigh your stuff.

At the line area there aren't too many more surprises. We've recently started getting some American candy, so the impulse purchase impulse is greater than it used to be. I've seen snickers and milkyway, in addition to the long standing M&Ms and giant kitkat. You've got your old señoras with just one item who try to sneak in front of you (I usually let them, but I kind of make them say gracias), and your tottery drunkards buying another bottle of pisco at 10:00 in the morning. It's all very picturesque.

Okay, so it's finally your turn, and the cashier says "Buenos días." You should respond in kind. She will then say something to you that means nothing to you as a visitor. It might be acumulas puntos? (do you collect points), tienes tarjeta Jumbo (do you have a Jumbo card?) etc. At any rate, your answer to the first question you are asked is probably no.

Then the cashier will tell you the price. If you choose to pay by credit or debit, she will ask you cuantas cuotas (how many installments) because we have a tremendous consumer credit problem here from big screen tvs all the way down to Confort-brand toilet paper (which stands in for the name of the product, like Band-Aids in the United States). You may answer "una sola" (just one) or "sin quotas" (no installments) if you want to be billed all at once. If instead you pay by cash, well then fork it over.

Here's where you find out how well you did. If you pulled it off like a Chilean, with your body language, slang, hair and clothes just right, or at least like a foreigner who's been in Chile for a long time, the cashier will then ask you if you'd like to donate the singe-peso part of your change. Your bill was 2,632, and you gave her 2700. She'll ask you if you'd like to donate three pesos. Dona 3 pesos? It's for some foundation or another, and to be honest, I haven't really investigated too throroughly but I figure that for the equivalent of 1/6 of a US cent per peso, I'm not that invested in finding out. At this point, the baggerchick or baggerdude (who work as volunteers) hand you your bag/s, and you should, custom dictates, hand him or her some change. This might be proportionate to how much they packed, how good a job they did, how many facial piercings they have, etc. If I have 100 pesos (about 15 cents these days), I'll give that, or maybe more if I have more change around and am feeling generous. And also if they didn't give me the look of death when I suggested to them that I did not need eleventeen bags for the three items I purchased, or when I hand them the reusable bags I have brought.

But sometimes the cashier will not ask you "dona tres pesos?" and you end up with a handful of this:


Which is annoying because you can't really spend the one peso coins anywhere, except the supermarket (they don't even take them at the metro), and now you have more fairly worthless metal in your pocket. But the worst indignity of all is that the cashier didn't ask you to donate the pesos. Which means she looked you in your gringo face and decided that your Newgringoself doesn't speak enough Spanish to understand the question or hasn't been here long enough to know about donating pesos.

At which point I usually trot out in my best Chilean accent "Si me hubieses preguntado, donaba los 3 pesitos" (Had you asked, I'd have given you the three tiny pesos." And then I take my eleventeen bags and walk home.

And now: bonus coin picture! with explanations!



from left to right, 1 peso coins, 5 peso coins (nearly as useless, also accepted almost nowhere), 10 peso coins, 50 peso coin, old and new 100 peso coins (also referred to as gamba), and 500 peso coin (also called kina, referring to quinientos (500) pesos, shortened to quina, and written kina because we feel slightly subersive (but not too much) when we replace qu- with k. Like the rosewater, I'm not sure anyone really knows why.

Next time: Where can I find convenience foods in Chile?

Gasp! It's a Sunday update!

Herein lies a quick, nontraditional mid-weekend update to report several small items.

1. Even bringing only one pannier to the fresh market is not an assured way to limit fruit and vegetable purchasing when you insist on piling plastic bags onto the handlebars.
2. My bike genius at Doctor Bike on Coquimbo has turned my bicycle back into the nearly silent animal it once was, also greased the bewhosis out of the chain, and my right calf bears the proof.
3. We are moving along in the ranks and in the voting. You, my readers, are absolutely my 170 favorite humans on the planet (my gorgeous nephew, who at less than two does not yet surf the web freely, notwithstanding). If you are aware of other humans who you believe to be interested in sharing in the lovefest, do not hesitate to direct them to the voting page and instruct them accordingly.
4. I have coined a silly expression to describe the competitiveness and cutthroat nature of all of our bloggity madness both within the Lonely Planet Travel Blogger Awards (have I mentioned this?) and in other arenas.

It's a blog-eat-blog world out there. (you heard it here first).

Would anyone like to design a graphic? I'd happily display it, both here and in my window, which kind of faces the Panamerican Highway, which means millions of viewers could see it most days, with just a small set of opera glasses or bionic vision.

Coming tomorrow: Those pesky 1 peso coins and how the distribution thereof tells you one uncertain thing, despite all your slang and posturing and even (gasp) purchasing of clothing in this hemisphere: once a foreigner, always a foreigner.

Enjoy your weekend.