XV Feria Vinos de Chile, a wine and photo-filled report

With the application of a little creative mojo and email grovelling, I went to the XV Feria Vinos de Chile at the Plaza San Francisco hotel in downtown Santiago this evening. (Quick deets: Sept. 30, Oct. 1, 2 6:30-10:30)

The hotel looks like this:



But the even itself takes place in a tent outside the hotel. This is not because they don't trust you inside the hotel, it's because the space is not really big enough inside the hotel to house this event, which is quite giant and also, who doesn't like walking around in a giant white tent a on carpeted concrete for several hours, only to have to go into the hotel to find a restroom later? Ahem.

Let's get down to the nitty gritty. But not gritty. Because though wine can be cloudy (though this is a defect), it should never, ever be gritty.

So. If you want to know about Chilean wines, you should definitely check out Wines of Chile because first of all, they have a map that shows you where all the wine is produced in Chile, and it's not all in the central region (near Santiago) and towards the coast, though these are certainly the wines that your average consumer has the most familliarity with. They also have people all over the country dedicated to bringing you the latest news on great harvests, innovative production, and other wine news. Also the website is pretty, and hey, did you see a new Chilean products store opened in New York?

If you want to read the (as is generally the case, a somewhat tongue-in-cheek) description of a well-attended brush-your-shoulders-with-oenophiles event held in a tent outside a hotel in downtown Santiago, you should read here.

The event costs non "club de lectores" from El Mercurio 13,900 CLP, which is about 25 dollars (members of this club get a 25% discount). For that sum, you're given a tasting glass which may be filled and refilled, and poured out, and rinsed with Puyehue spring water again and again. With around 50 local and foreign vineyards to choose from, and each vineyard tasting a number of wines (as many as eight or ten), it's not a bad way to learn your way around the wine varieties, picking out notes you like, and learning which ones to avoid.

In the middle of the first salon, they had this handy table set up to explain the various notes you might find in each wine, with samples of each smell. I found this incredibly clever, and was happy to see that they used the actual item in question (peaches, for example), and not something synthetic to represent the smell. People were actually sniffing the carafes at some point, though not when I snapped this shot.



The sommeliers and enologists and other assorted wine experts were endlessly patient, explaining note after note, wine after wine and telling me which wines I would like. I admit to spending extra time at Cono Sur because a) they have a bicycle on some of their wine labels and do bike tours of the vineyards and b) their wines run a broad range of prices, including ones for less than US $5 that you can find at the supermarket.



When this gent started asking me what temperature I like to drink my pinot noir at, I admitted ignorance (and had never feigned otherwise) I later ran into a wine expert friend of mine, and she explained that in Chile it's drunk cool, whereas in the U.S. it tends to be drunk at room temperature. Here I was assured that this would be one of the best pinot noirs I would try all night.



And do you know? He was right.

I had a very elaborate system of frownie faces and words like bitter, astringent, sour and ashy in a little book which I would whip out on occasion to record the (in my opinion) sinkers, and the corresponding smiley faces with words like strong, true, clear and fruity next to the (in my opinion) winners.

The point for a rank amateur like myself to going to an event like this was several fold. First, I wanted to find out about enoturismo, or wine tourism in Chile, because I know it's an incipient industry and I want to know about its more top, middle and lower echelons (if these exist). Second, I wanted to get a better feel for how a neophyte would be treated at such an event, before I recommend to others that they go. I have been to several vendimias (wine harvest festivals), but these are generally cheaper (5,000 pesos or so), and have a different, more accessible vibe. The sense that you got here was that people really know their wine, know what they like, which parts of the vineyard have more or less of this or that element in the soil and how this affects wine quality, could compare a variety of wine from one year to the next, and pronounce one more sweet or one more dry. But how would I be treated as a person who willingly admitted to being not a wine expert?

The answer was, fabulously well.

However, wine notwithstanding (and I managed to taste a really wide variety, and could even taste the pepperyness of a sauvingon blanc from Santa Ema, but that may have just been the power of suggestion), there were several recurring complaints that wooshed through the crowd. The food came late, there were not enough waiters. They carried their food up high over their heads so only the very tall could access it, as they tried to get into other parts of the room. The champagne was corked at a specific time, and then there were no flutes to be had. The food itself was odd. Tiny sandwiches, plates of creamy risotto served with small forks, then spoons. Raw oysters with what appeared to be lemon sorbet on top. Ceviche in small cups (this was our group's favorite), and gyozas, or maybe they were empanadas. Later, pasta was plated, one with tomato and meat sauce, one with shrimp and avocado, and the overcooked gnocchi that I hungrily downed was drowning in a creamy cheesy sauce. After everyone's hunger was sated, solidifying plates of risotto appeared at every turn.

The moral of the story is, if you've got the cash to lay down, and a free night between Thurs and Fri, arrive early, but not hungry. Pace yourself and you will get a chance to try tons of your favorites, but not many very elite wines. Oh, and wear comfortable shoes. Even carpeted sidewalk is just sidewalk afterall. Though I suppose you could always sit down on the side of the fountain and take a rest.



Brought to you by Nikon (camera), Rockford (boots), more than two dozen sips of wine and the nice people at the feria who opened a velvet rope for me like I was at an old fashioned movie theater on the way in. And now ends the first installation of Bearshapedsphere pretends she's posh for a second and then remembers she's not.

Fashion and the Fisherman, Santiago style. With bonus mention of obscure animals!

And now, a little fluff! Everyone likes fluff, right?

I can't wait to wear my fishing pants. You see, in my miniscule closet, next to the dress pants I never wear, the courdoroys I'm trying to retire into the far reaches and the jeans I wear most days are a set of pants called fishing pants. Oh sure, you may know them as capris, those I'm not pants and I'm not shorts pants that come somewhere to the mid shin. I promise, mine are not white, nor do they have kittens on them, as some of you may think these pants are for the truly fashion impaired. In fact, I have a number of pairs, in all kinds of colors, ranging from khaki to brown.

Pescadores (or capri pants, formerly known as clamdiggers in the United States) are one of those words that I love, because I intuitively knew what it meant, without having someone explain it to me. Simple, see? It's a garment of clothing that fishermen could wear, and it's plural. And like that, synapse A sent a small charge to synapse B and I figured it out. Clickety click went the little wheels inside my head.

Now, I don't love pescadores only because I was able to figure out what they were. I also intuited that jardineras, in addition to being corn, carrot and pea succotash (this I could not figure out on my own) were overalls, because of their relationship to the word for gardener, and you will not catch me wearing overalls any time this century, despite having figured that out. And if you do, you are welcome to look at me, cock your head to the side and say, "really? overalls?" in the language of your choice, and hopefully one that I speak, otherwise I will wonder and be confused and have to ask google and all my other friends to figure out what it was.

So my love for pescadores is not purely linguistic, although if you compare then to another word I really like, ornitorrinco, you'll see how good pescadores are. If you speak even just a tiny bit of Spanish, you can break the word down, figure out it means fishermen, and then think about what they could wear. Ornitorrinco? Whatcha got there? Friends, believe it or not, that is a duck-billed platypus, not to be confused with an otorrino, which is an ear-nose-and-throat doctor, try not to get these confused, though context would be a handy tool.

Pescadores are my beloved pants because they signal the arrival of spring, something that has been slow in coming in this hemisphere, despite the rapid-fire four-in-a-row sneezes of late. Two nights ago I had to cover my face (not my eyes, silly) with a scarf on my way home from Las Condes on my bike, and even wear wind-proof gloves. I'm getting ready to do my monthly cactus watering, and thinking about how this time last month, I thought that by this time this month I'd have to step up the watering because it would be so warm. (side note: see? I can take care of things! (provided they do not require much care)).

Not yet, says the universe, and so my pescadores hang in the closet, there is nary an ornitorrinco in sight and I pull on wool socks every morning before going out. It's still too cold to drink iced coffee, to cold to leave the windows open in the evening, and too cold to bare my shins to the world. Or maybe it's just mother nature's way of telling me I have not one iota of fashion sense.

Será (oh well).

Going to Synagogue in Chile, the Yom Kippur version, with several remembrances

I know I won't win any awards for Jewess of the year (offensive term meant playfully people, don't hate) by posting this on Yom Kippur, one of the two most important days on the Jewish calendar, the day that epitomizes Jewish atonement and judgement. However, since the self-denominated Hebrew Mamita Vanessa Hidary has already taken individualism meets Judaism to a new height, there was no chance I'd be awarded anything anyway, and so I write.

I have lived in Santiago for five years. And for five years, come September/October I think to myself, this is the time. This is the time that I will go to shul (the word I grew up calling synagogue, because among the fifty plus words I know in Yiddish this one figures strongly) for the High Holidays, Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur. It's not that these are long-standing family traditions, just that they're always kind of hanging there, taunting me with a will-you or won't-you. And most often, I don't. And since I've lived in Santiago, I haven't.

It's funny. I wouldn't hesitate to go (if invited) to a church, a mosque, a Hindu or Bahá'i temple. But something about going to synagogue, a place where I'm supposed to belong and feel I don't, just breaks my heart. I spent a very uncomfortable and wanna-flee evening many years ago, invited to the Sukkot (harvest festival) celebration of a friend who lived with several other Orthodox Jewish women. I was grilled on my last names, maternal and paternal, the precise street I grew up on in Brooklyn and my Hebrew name (in my case, Yiddish, brought to the shul by Uncle Lou, whose name I later learned was Leibisch, according to the ship manifest that marked his arrival from Poland to Ellis Island with his brother in tow, alone but for each other, neither of them even old enough to see a PG-13 movie).

At this house in Brookline, MA, where we'd been invited to spend the holiday, everyone was Shomer Shabbos, kept kosher, etc. I know intellectually what the rules are, but have never really observed them, and was afraid I would screw things up and ruin the meal, the evening, the pot, the stove. It was I, Catholic partner (now ex) beside me that felt like an outsider, last names and escaping the old country stories notwithstanding. I was allowed to stir the soup that simmered on the stove, and remembered admonitions against slotted spoons on Shabbat, reminded myself not to touch the range controls, as these, too represented work on this holiday, which coincided with the beginning of the Sabbath.

I know I am Jewish. In fact, I didn't know other people weren't until I was probably around six. I went to a Jewish preschool and kindergarten, colored in paper dreidels and made popsicle-stick Stars of David as a child while you were making jewelry boxes. But somewhere along the way, I failed to feel the connectedness, the welcome of a home synagogue, of people wishing me Chag Sameach (happy holiday) when appropriate (not today, it's not a happy holiday), or of the warmth of two white parrafin candles glowing at the end of the dinner table, a long sobremesa (aftermeal conversation, this one Spanish) until the wicks drown in their own wax.

Recently I was at a party at which I was asked if I was Jewish by "last name only" (por el puro apellido). I was offended. First of all, my last name is Smith, which gives not a hint of my ethnicity nor religion, and second of all, when did asking about someone's religious adherence become party conversation? And this is because I was Jewish. No one else was peppered with questions to see just how X-religion they were. Just me. Is there a right answer? Will you like me better if I tell you I like some of the traditions, but I don't eschew pork? (not true, as I don't eat meat, but not for kashrut reasons.) It was uncomfortable. But at least it got me thinking.

All of this is my way of telling you that yesterday I broke with my own tradition. J and I braved the freezing rain and went to a synagogue that's not far from where I live. It's the self-described non high-society synagogue, and we were eyed with a little curiousity, and had a few people come up and introduce themselves to us. The Kol Nidre service was beautifully said/sung, and while it makes my mind go all a-whirl (what if I had a Jewish life, Jewish friends, a Jewish partner?), it mainly just opened my eyes to the fact that in this country, in this world, in this life, and in this religion, there is so much to learn, and I have only scratched the surface.

Gmar jatima tova!

ps, Both J and I surprised ourselves by singing and chanting along at several points throughout the service. Linguistic or religious memory, it's hard to say.

pps, I happened to wear velvety pants last night and remembered part way through the service an outfit my mother bought me one Rosh Hashana when I was little that had a black velvet skirt. New clothes for a new year, she'd say. I wonder what else is hiding in my memory bank re: Judiasm.

Group Post, Travel Horror Stories. Me first, then you. An Ecuadorian Tale.

Bearshapedsphere and the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad, long-lasting voyage. With an invitation to group post at the end.

I was in Ecuador, which means it was 1996, and I was running away from the bar exam. I’d been living in Cuenca, studying Spanish and teaching English and eating a whole lot of llapingachos and quinoa soup and locro de papas, and quimbolitos and avoiding the dreaded mallocos (clearly the baby of a potato crossed with a bean, and a word I confused with the word for fraternal twins (mellizos) for some time) and the similiarly dreaded tomato de arbol (which I mentioned here) and drinking naranjilla juice and canelazo, when I found myself with a few free weeks to explore the country. I’d already seen parts of the coast and decided it would be a good idea to check out the jungle zone, which I did, and I may have fallen up and down over a few roots n things, and had mud suck in over my knee-high wellies that they insisted I hike in, and have my feet sweat right through my socks on a daily basis (see wellies) but for the most part, I was doing well.

And then began the next 48 hours, in which I traveled by private and public bus, boat, 4X4, tractor trailer and my feet, and experienced lies, trouble, poor nutrition, communication breakdown, transportation breakdown, heat, cold, torrential rain, two questionable sleepspots, a concussion and a partridge in a pear tree. Minus the partridge. And the pear tree.

I had been in a little jungle/tourism hamlet on the Rio Napo that involved a two hour 4X4 trip plus ferrying across the river in a dugout with a rope strung across, that the boat captain pulled us across hand over hand, and then an hour or so walk upriver to where the family stayed, with kids that were still amazed to see flashlights and the aforementioned bean/potato baby were served at every meal.

After my jungle whatsis where I saw phosphorescent fungus and felt the meeting of the tropical river with the snowmelt river as I floated down the Rio Napo on a tube and had one leg that was suspiciously warm and another that was freezing beyond recovery, a shamanic cleansing ritual that I probably won't talk about here and some Israeli girls that had really bad nightmares, it would seem, I got dropped off in some town or another, consumed animal protein (fish, tilapia if you were wondering) for the first time in a week, and weaved a plan. I wanted to see more of the river, the broad part, where it was used for transportation. I remember wanting to get to Misahuallí, and driving to a town up the wrong side of the highway, because the correct side had been blocked by fallen trees and other highway mishaps. When I got to the town, my two German travel buddies in tow, we were told that where we’d wanted to get to by boat was not possible because we needed either four tourists or eight Ecuadoreans (who paid half price) to get there. Ever discouraged, we looked at the map and asked if there were any busses from any of the wide spots in the river that claimed to be towns. Sure, sure, they said, and pointed to a spot that seemed wider than the rest.

We snuggled down into the dugout, spacily passing the hours and oranges back and forth, and watching as the driver pulled over to the side and delivered case after case of Fanta and other necessities to what appeared to be empty river banks, or picked up empty soda bottles from other river-dwelling communities. The trip droned on and on, and my legs grew a shiny pink, from sweat and sun, and finally, we’d reached our destination. No sooner were we off the boat than we realized that this wasn’t so much of a town as it was a future town. There were buildings, but no stores, no people. In short, we were screwed. And the boat motor slowly faded out of earshot, like in a movie. We figured out which way the road went, an easy task since it dead ended into the “town” and led away from the river. And away from the river we walked. Several hours later, we were picked up from the road by a road surveying team which allowed us to perch precariously in the back of their white pick-up truck as we shared more oranges, and the occasional improvised conversation in imagined and creative Spanish of the just-add-an-o variety.

When we finally arrived in Lago Agrio, the surveyors’ final spot, and which we knew nothing about, other than that it was a oil drilling boom town and that the name meant "bitter lake," we found out the truth. It was an oil town, true, and full of prostibularios. You do the math on what that one means. So we hunkered down until the next day, listening to ranchera music and trying not to slide off the slick polyester sheets on the strangely twisty beds as the rusty fan blade struggled to make its journey around and around. It was dank and hot, but openng the windows invited stares from the people in the next building. So we sat in our own sweat and willed the fan to pick up speed. Which it never did.

The next day came, and we decided to try to get to Quito, deciding that we would first stop at San Rafael Falls, one of Ecuador's natural wonders, of which there are many. Lonely Planet assured us that it was beyond a bridge a whole bunch of km from anyplace useful. And so we went. And we left our big packs and hiked happily to the overlook, seeing the giant maw that was the waterfall and the stunning flow of water that poured endlessly from it. What seemed like a fine mist of spray or rain turned into a ferocious rainstorm that soaked us to our filthy, travel-worn skin. But at least we weren’t in Lago Agrio any more, and the falls? They are lovely. These are two actual photos that I took of the falls, all those years ago. And yes, I found them, just so I could show them to you. See? Pretty. Even on film and disjointed because who can be bothered to stitch stuff together? Trust me, they overlap.




When we’d had enough of the waterfalls, we decided to walk back out to the road and flag down a bus to take us to Quito. The park warden offered to let us stay, but he was looking at me, the itinerant single gal, with a bit too much interest, and we decided to get out. A bunch of his amigos were coming over that night to party, and I didn’t relish even more attention, so I was really urgida (in a hurry).

We sat and sat in the bus shelter, waving frantically at every bus that came by, and sucking down their exhaust fumes as they zoomed past us. Something was amiss, and we had no way of knowing what it was. In retrospect, it must have been a holiday weekend. Also in retrospect, I must have blacked out when I heaved myself up onto the window ledge and whomphed my head into the top of the window frame, crafted in cement. My head swelled and ached and my vision went blurry. As it got dark, and the snaky black wide-bore Amazonian oil pipeline was no longer visible and not just because of my newly-concussed head, we realized we had a problem. I was the only one with a sleeping bag, and we weren’t sure that the drunken amigos wouldn’t come out for a looksee later in the evening. We decided to get aggressive with the hitchhiking. Another hour or two passed, with me clutching my head and occasionally thrusting my thumb out into the darkness.

A truck that was very slowly hauling a heavy load finally stopped for us, taking pity on us and throwing two of us back in the extended cab, and me between the driver and his helper, moving my left thigh every time it was time for him to shift. We went over hill and dale, and six inches of mud, into which we spilled in a heap upon arriving to our destination for the evening, a town about 40 km away with a truck stop “hotel” behind a nonfunctioning restaurant and gas station, which cost us a cool $1.50 to stay. Dinner was a slop across the road in mid-calf-depth mud to the one snackbar that still had some food. I ate frenchfries and told myself that Sprite, by virtue of being lemon-lime flavored, was just like juice. I could have opted for potato chips, but the french fries seemed so much more nutritious, since they didn’t come with packets of ketchup and mayonnaise inside. To be fair, there was meat. To be honest, I don’t eat it, and I especially don’t eat it in the middle of a nowhere town on a wobbly chair at a formerly white formica counter that could use a good scraping with a putty knife.


mud town, possibly Salado, not sure of the name, and most of the rest of Ecuador is delightful, don't judge.

We awoke in the morning and got a tiny bus taking friends and families and boys with cowboy hats and white knuckles from gripping each other having seen three gringos in the muddy truckstop town. They were going to church. We were just getting to a bigger town, with more possibility of getting on a bus, that might get us to Quito, or so we hoped. It had been nearly 48 hours of transit, with many a mishap, aching head and poor nutrition included.

Busses came and went, and we finally grafted ourselves onto one, intermingling our very cells with the people that surrounded us. This was a problem of conservation of matter. We simply did not fit. But the driver took our money, and we squirmed and wormed our way on, with me announcing to everyone that would listen that we’d been trying to get to Quito for the last 21 hours and that we’d been having wicked bad luck for about the last 48. If they listened harder I told them the story of the bus traveling the wrong side of the highway, the boat to nowhere, the lies about transportation, the tippy boat, the sunburned legs, the tuna I ate with a fork right from the can, the abandoned town, the bouncy hitchhike, the creepy brothel town, the long bus ride to hiking in the driving rain, the unscrupulous park ranger and his amigos of dubious intent, my concussion and double vision, extreme cold, hitchhiking three hours to go less than 30 miles with a man who brushed my thigh with glee, and the sticky mud and the french fries and Sprite and the truck stop sleeping arrangements. And sometimes I complained a little bit about my German travel buddies who were really dour about the whole thing and spoke about four words of Spanish between them.

And then the people on the bus smiled and nodded, and explained to me that where we were right now was often attacked by armed bandits. And me? I just laughed. I laughed all the frustration and fear and annoyance and headache and Sprite and Germans until I almost peed my pants. Which would have been the only thing missing. Oh, and the armed robbers, who never came.

So, what’s your story?

Here’s the deal. You write your megaultrabad travel story, urban or rural, in your home country or beyond. Snowstorms count, as do improvised bathrooms, bad music, seat-kicking neighbors and all other layers of discomfort. Humor counts, and you get extra credit for inventing words, just because I say so. You tag me and I tag you and everyone gets linky love. Post this or rewrite it in your best words and let’s go viral babeeee. Don't blog? Leave it in the comments.

You game? Go!

Game Players so far:

Angry redhead tells her story of shame and woe here.

Sara shares her horror in Mérida with us here

Clare had written one way back in April (seems like I'm late to the party) here.

Emily had a bit of a close call that she talks about here.

Abby hooks us up with a good one here.

Lydia spins her tale of woe here.

Matt steps up to the plate with his heinous trip in Bolivia here

Reneé tells a few quick tales including a whole bunch of bad luck with language to match here.

Mein shvester, who taught me how to read and is killing me with the bearshapedspheredness of the post and created a blog just so she could participate in group blogs because she's good like that tells the famous smith-family hijacked taxi story here.

Kyle takes the time to tell how fast she can clear a tiny airport with a... I won't spoil the story! here.

Bystander tells a story that you should thank your lucky stars you're not the protaganist of here.

Margaret sneaks in a story that's more funny than scary, here.

Richard has no one to blame but himself for a teeny predicament he got a bunch of his friends (and family) into in Laos here.

Chile's Sept 18th/19th Parada Militar/Military Parade. In words and pictures

I believe that it is safe to say that the 18th of September and all of the associated brouhaha (with tip of the hat to the Beastie Boys and bonus points to you if you know what song I'm talking about) is finally over. Which makes sense given that it's the 21st of the month already. But when the fiestas patrias mega day of the 18th falls on a Friday, se alargan las fiestas (the party gets drawn out).

Traditionally, the 18th is the day you spend with family, playing games, and with the famous trompo (spinning top which you pull a string to make go), and drinking whatever it is you drink, and the 19th is more of a freeforall, with more family, friends, or ven a trot down to Parque O'Higgins for the Military Parade, or parada militar.

For those of you that don't know, and were thinking of makng fun of the last name O'Higgins, and wondering how it would be pronounced in Chile, don't because he's a national hero (General Libertador Bernardo O'Higgins), and o-jiyins, where j is that sound like in Chanukkah). Parque O'Higgins itself is not a lush, beautiful place filled with turtledoves and sweet smells. It's an urban park with a place to race-skate, a lagoon in which to go pedal boating, and giant parade grounds that's paved and turns into a flea market on the weekends, and lots of spots to have picnics in while you fight off the stray dogs and make sure to leave your trash behind. At least that's my experience of the park. Quinta Normal is another park that's slightly closer to me, somewhat smaller, and maybe a bit less trash-filled, but it didn't have the parada militar, so off we went to Parque O'Higgins, along with several tens of thousands of our closest friends. And by we, of course I also mean Margaret from Cachando Chile, because if I'm on a on a photo safari, there's a great chance that it's because we've made a plan to go somewhere. And so we had. And so we went.

There were pretty things:





and groundbreaking things:


this is, I believe, the largest group of women to march in the parade. Predictably, one of the comments I got on flickr was "nice legs." Which just goes to show you how far we've come.


Here's Michele Bachelet, the first female president of Chile, and she's saying hi to you right there.

symmetry:





odd things:



prohibited behaviors:


This one on flickr I have titled swimming prohibited, diving in headfirst apparently ok

things that terrify me:



things that terrify me even more:



and a sweet girl who couldn't decide if she should smile or not when she passed me by on this spiffy pink bike that would make my niece want to come to Chile if she saw it, just so she could ride it, too. But she'd wear a pink helmet as well, of course.



We saw tons more stuff, of course, and it's impossible to condense a day into just a few pictures, and I didn't even show you the kites, or the trees or the kite-eating trees or the mountains or the flags, or the families or the crowds. But don't worry, you can catch them all here in the flickr album I've created just for this occasion.

Bearshapedsphere goes skiing! Valle Nevado and fairy dust

Have you ever lived your whole life in a house only to find out that there's a fairy playground behind the tire swing that you could have been peeping at for years? That's how I feel today.

I have a very short history with skiing. When I was a child, my father (the other sporty person in the family, long deceased) piled the family into the full-sized green Ford Station wagon and up to golf courses and whatnot off season, so we could clip strangely-squared boot into preposterously long ski and swoosh swoosh off into the distance. It was hard work, and I'm pretty sure I'm the only one that really liked it, and even so, I'm not sure how much I liked it vs. wanted my father's appproval, which we can put on the list after dental phobia about things to work on in my personal life. Cross country skiing was the only skiing I'd ever done, save a quick stint or two on water skis as a kid.

Fast forward many years, and my ex offered to take me skiing for the first time. I think I was in my late 20s, and I formed my skis into a fast wedge and proceeded to skchkchkch down the mountain, feeling every bit a success. Time went on and I went a couple more times, even getting my skis parallel at times. Some friends rented a condo at Whistler, and I insisted I was a poor skiier. They insisted I was a sandbagger (which I had to look up, and misremembered, thinking they'd called me a carpetbagger). Somewhere along the way I'd become a solid beginner-intermediate. I later switched to snowboarding, and I was one of those people who goes down the mountain fakey, because I'm reasonably ambifoostrous (yes, I made that up), and could never remember if I was right or goofy (these are real terms, I'm not asking for a commentary on my quirk, I already know about that).


the obligatory skilift shot, notice poor quality photo, complete with vignetting. Brought to you by my point and shoot.

Then there was life, and time, and a bike accident that laid waste to my poor tender left shoulder, leaving me clickier than before and also very protective of that side. I decided to ski once in the south of Chile, just to get over my fear. To say that the conditions were bad is an insult to bad conditions and goretex makers the world over. By the end of the day, the snow covered my skis almost completely, leaving me skiing through conditions I previously would have called sleet, but now I will refer to as "frappuccino." Even after I returned my skis, I wore my goggles to the road to hitch a ride back down to my hostel. The only saving grace of this ski trip was that there were thermal baths at the top (in Chillán). Then I had to wring out my freezing wet clothes and put them back on, and ski to the bottom, where I'd rented my gear.


no injuries this time, though apparently this is where they'd have taken us. same disclaimer re: point and shoot

So, back to the fairies (remember the fairies?). J, a friend of mine who is soon to leave Chile for points east (or west, depends on which way you fly, I suppose), proposed to me that we get out of dodge for the first of three days of the Chilean Fiestas Patrias (national holiday, Sept. 18th, which this year will stretch out through Sunday). Our goal? The snow.

Here's an aside. In Chile when you say you're going skiing, you say, "Voy a la nieve" (I'm going to the snow), not "voy a esquiar. Or you can name the location, which around here is Farellones, El Colorado, Valle Nevado, or slightly further afield, Portillo. So to the snow we went.

And you know, remember the fairies? They were out in full-force yesterday, singing and flinging tiny fairy-sized pyrotechnics about. The sky was impossibly blue, the mountains heaps of frothed milk mixed with fairy dust. Valle Nevado was nearly empty, we took bonine on the way up to not puke from the very curvy drive, I bargained my way into a sandwich that didn't have any meat on it, we skiied and schushed and swished and scraped (but only occasionally) everything we could find on that mountain, and I even went down some reds, which are Chile's version of a pretty fierce intermediate run, though only because I accidentally ended up with them before me, and not exactly because they are my forté. But I made it.

I am not a person who likes to be bad at things. I know none of us are, but I have carefully crafted my life so nothing comes up that is not pleasant, easy or possible. So skiing takes me out of my comfort zone, plops me on a mountain with nothing but years of bicycling and spinning experience (go quadriceps!), and bunches of balance-related sports activities (cross country skiing, water skiing, kayaking, bicycling), straps painfully squeeezy boots on my feet, sticks onto those, and pushes me out of the nest saying "FLY!"

And I did. And it was great. And I can't believe this is all just a couple hours from my front door and I finally discovered it now. Of course, on the other hand, it costs a full-on Benjamin ($100) to have the pleasure, and that's not part of my monthly budget. But wow. Fairies abound. And birds singing, even. And a dozy, cozy ride down the mountain with an amazing driver, and a bus stop just three feet from Ski Total which took me right back down to my empty neighborhood because everyone was out and carousing, because fairies be darned, it was the 18th, and there is chicha to be drunk and empanadas to be scarfed.

part of the cozy, dozy ride, disclaimer, bla bla.

Now some advice: don't wait for the fairies to peep inside and remind you they're there. Plus the gardner could come and evict them at any time. I urge you: go out and do something spectacular. Today, tomorrow, next week, this month.

Deets: From Santiago, the easiest way to get to the snow is to metro or bus to Escuela Militar or beyond, getting to Ski Total at 4900 Apoquindo sometime after 8 (8-8:30 is probably a good time). Vans leave when they fill up (buy your ticket at the counter), per location. 11,000 round trip to Valle Nevado. You can rent your gear down below or up at the mountain, or bring your own. Probably cheaper down below, but you run the risk of mucked up gear up on the mountain with no chance for repair/replacement. We rented up top, which did cost us some ski time, but increased time for chatting aimlessly with oversunned ski techs who asked us how long we'd lived in Chile.

Another possibility is to take the micro (city bus) up to the ex-YPF gas station (now a Terpél), at the end of Avda. Apoquindo and rent gear at the store across the street, wait at the beginning of "camino a farellones" and hope someone stops to give you a lift. You risk bad driving and stranding, but this is definitely a cheaper possibility.

Tenacity, the ability to wake up early, the willingness to fork over a whole lotta money and a credit card to leave a deposit for the rental equipment is all you need. There's even tissues at the lifts. And for that chunk of change, there'd better be.

Edited: to add photos and prove that what I've always suspected is actually true, Margaret from CachandoChile is nearly always right. I did, indeed have a camera secreted on my person. But skiing is more of a do than a photograph experience, so I tried to oblige. I also have one broken lens already, and am trying not to make it two.

Herbal tea in Chile, including the formerly-dreaded boldo and a guest appearance by the language police

Seeing as how in the last post I talked about the great festivities that are nearly upon us here in Chile, and the excessive consumption of alchohol associated with said party, it seems worthwhile to give a small platform to that most watery and insipid after-dinner refreshment or afternoon cure-all, the aguita de hierbas. Tea in Chile is tea, from the plant that makes tea. Anything else is not "té de hierbas" (which would be a bad translation) but rather an aguita (or agua) de hierbas. Careful on those direct translations, they'll get you every time (details to follow, of course).

Bueno (well). So here in Chile, you will often be offered an herbal tea after dinner or in the afternoon. On many occasions I have been offered a snip of this or that in a cup, or perhaps even the urban version a selection of teabags containing herbs. For me, for years, the most dreaded of all of these snips or bags was boldo.

Boldo is a tree that's native to Chile, a slow-growing sclerophyllous (that means thick-leaved) tree that has a delicious green almost menthol-like smell (but nowhere near as strong as eucalyptus). It's native to Chile and wherever you are, you can guaranteee that one of the aguitas de hierbas that you will be offered is boldo. For years, I tried to be game, tried to like boldo "tea" because it seemed an offense to not like what seems to be Chileans' favorite.

I'll be honest here, I didn't like it because I detected a strong flavor reminiscent of the smell of unclean litterbox, and though I do miss having a cat, that is one feature of not having a cat that I do not miss.

F, a Chilean friend of mine who moved to the south of Chile to be a professor (and knows more about sea creatures than most living humans, and that's no lie) was telling me one day that he couldn't even fathom what it is people don't like about boldo, but that Americans always think it's unappealing. I didn't have the heart to tell him about the litterbox, but he might read here, in which case he probably knows by now. Hi, F!

And you know, I hate to be predictable, so I had tried and tried boldo "tea", and suffered through many a scrunched-up face as I gulped the tea down. So I was pretty surprised when I bought a variety pack of herbal tea the other day, with menta (mint) and manzanilla (chamomile) and boldo (yeah, boldo) and tried the boldo just one last time and found it to be litterbox free. It was fragrant, green, and not entirely vile. I'm still not singing the praises of boldo loudly and with vigor, but I guess it just goes to show you that tastes can change, that boldo isn't disgusting, and that sometimes it's better to hold your opinion than broadcast it. I must remind myself of that sometime.

And if you were wondering, South America has a long tradition of drinking tisanes, or herbal teas. The ones we see the most here are:

menta (mint)
manzanilla (chamomile)
boldo (boldo)
rosa mosqueta (rosehip)
llantén (plantain leaf?)
bailahuén
paico
melissa (lemon balm)
matico
cedrón (lemon verbena)
poleo pennyroyal
anise (fennel seed)

There may be some more, but these are the ones I've had thrust upon me or offered to me in recent years. I must admit that I had to do a little research to find out what some of those teas were, and I should probably write another post with their alleged medicinal qualities, but mainly I was shocked that poleo is pennyroyal, since that is an herb that is known to cause what we talked about in this post, which let's just say is frowned upon here in Chile.

But I like learning new things, and also exploring new websites like www.chileflora.com, which seems to be a good resource on Chilean plants, sells seeds and apparently they can also take you on tours. Where you will, wait, wait, you're going to like this:

Go plant-watching.

pause.

Plant-watching!

Okay class, let's review. The main difference between see and watch? Right, it's about the mobility of the item (going to go see a movie being a broad exception). So unless these rooted examples of national heritage and plant kingdom splendor uproot themselves and take a walk around the block, this is (you guessed it), another bad translation. Perhaps plant tours or plant sighting, even plant-peeping, if you want to get cute about it. But plant-watching? I don't care if you'd use the word avistar in Spanish and for whales that's watching. Plants? not the same as whales.

And now we can find out if Chileflora.com has the time and energy of the Chilean government, which, when brought face-to-face with the truth that shattered meat is, indeed hard to come by, actually changed their website, estoeschile.cl.

I feel so powerful. It must be all the boldo.

The dieciocho is almost upon us. Chilean Fiestas Patrias!

Ya viene el 18. The 18th is coming!

We're going to a wait a minute on the worst transit stories group blog (but get your creative juices flowing on that one), because the 18th of September (Chilean national holiday, or fiestas patrias) is practically upon us, half of Chile is already on vacation and the other half will be joining them soon. Since I mostly work for myself, I'm on the horns of a dilemma, continue all the zany workity stuff, or take a semi-deserved break? Probably a combination of the two.

So since September 18th is quickly hurtling towards us, all of the supermarkets and stores and pretty much any place you can think of are dressed to the nines in 18th-paraphernalia. It's pretty festive looking, and might remind you just a tiny bit of the fourth of July, notice the color scheme. (there are 550 CLP to the dollar, so a pair of shoes that costs 47,000 is about 80 bucks, no bargains there!)



And then in the supermarket, we have this woman dressed in the traditional urban 18th costume who is giving out sausage samples. It's all very patriotic, as you can see.



But the thing that I probably enjoy the most about September 18th is not the time off, nor even the kite flying, excessive alcohol consumption (article by me here on matadornetwork), nor even the various ways in which one can combine meat and bread or just meat and meat, nor even the traditional music nor the dance called the cueca which I was supposed to learn recently, but failed again to do so before the holiday.

What I love the best is the little girls dressed in the traditional rural costume, (called china, and I'm sure I don't know why) walking around like tiny little prairie-dwelling women from the 1800s. Or at least that's what it looks like to this American eye. Judge for yourself.



There are certain to be more photos. There always are.

On an "intrepid" traveler's fear of buses

In keeping with what Chris of the Art of Nonconformity was saying recently about fear and the role it plays in our lives, and how for so many people it's all about whether you let fear limit you, or become your challenge, I want to talk to you about a fear I'll bet you didn't know I had.

I'm afraid of getting lost in unknown places. Specifically, I'm afraid of getting on busses in cities I don't know, or even in parts of cities that I don't know. Subways are predictable, always following the indicated path, never veering off course, and seldom skipping stops. That's why I love them so much I wrote an article about them here.

So, back to the bus. The other night I was at a bar in La Reina, a very lovely semi suburban part of the city where I almost never go, and had a party to go to afterwards in Vitacura, an area I know because I have a couple of friends who live there, and also because the world's gentlest pediatric dentist works there and I am also terribly afraid of dentistry, which is a topic for a whole nother post or years of therapy.

But getting to La Reina (posh and suburban) to Vitacura (posh and somewhat more urban) required me to take a bus I didn't know, and truth be told, didn't have much faith in. I consulted the handy transantiagoinforma, crossed my fingers and went. Of course it all worked out, but not before I had time to clutch my new-to-me phone with GPS to look at the map of where we were as we moved (go blue dot, go!).

Which got me to thinking. Long ago, before transantiago (or as some still like to call it, transanfiasco) got underway, there used to be a bus that left from close to my house, whisked me up to a computer thingie store at Parque Arauco (very pleasant mall, as far as these things go, which also has a Boost, and their smoothies are truly delicious), and then bring me home again.

At some point, I had to go to the store, and it was a rainy, shiny, wet night, and I had some kind of a brain misfire, and forgot that in order to get home from the mall, I should not take the bus from the stop I got off at, but rather across the street. The sign on the bus on the same side of the street seemed to describe points downtown, so I muddled through the drippy evening onto one of the oldschool micros (buses). I submit the following:



So I was kind of dozy and not really paying attention and with the grime of the city and the drips of the rain, it was hard to tell where we were going anyway. I noticed the number of people on the bus was dwindling, and that the traffic lights were growing more sparse, rather than more plentiful.

Hmmm, I thought. And I got the creepy feeling of rising levels of cortisol, and felt my mouth go dry and my stomach go all flippity.

I stayed on the bus, hoping to see either a covered paradero (bus stop) or some other landmark to let me know what to do: turn around, cross the street, etc.

Lanmarks started growing sparser and sparser, and houses bigger and bigger, until I realized I was somewhere high in the precordillera in La Dehesa, where I was sure that if I got off the bus at some random spot, I'd wake to a police officer shining a light in my frost-covered face, demanding to know what I was doing there. It was freezing cold up at altitude, and a place I clearly didn't belong. What if I got off the bus on a one-way street and was never able to find a descending bus? It was miles and miles back to the Santiago I knew.

At this point I decided to stay on the bus until the turnaround point. The busdriver eyed me curiously, but said nothing, until I was the only one on the bus, and he asked me if I knew where I was going.

Um, no. (clearly not). We settled that he would take me to the end of the line, and I'd take another bus back to town. He'd love to take me, but he was going on break, so I'd have to wait for one of his busdriving friends.

Here's where I got dropped off in a clearing in the woods, sounds muffled by a softly falling snow, and directed to a makeshift dirt-floored cabin, inside of which three micreros (bus drivers) were pouring hefty glogs of fanta into plastic cups balanced between their knees while toasting slices of bologna over a small indoor bonfire made of wooden pallets that gave off a tendrily black smoke, likely because they were damp, as were we all.

And you know what happened next? These men, who at the time were making less than minimum wage driving the busses, and knew from the soles of my shivering feet to the tippy top of my curly head that I didn't belong, in this country, in this city, on this bus, at this garita (bus turnaround hut)? They offered me a toasted bologna sandwich and a cup of Fanta while I waited.

I politely declined and waited for my gallant busdriver, the chatty, sweet, patient-with-new-Spanish sandwich toaster to give me a lift back to my world. He kept me up front with him on an odd cushioned platform, like a strangely manicured pet, as we careened out of the mountains and into the city below, finally passing the mall at the point where I should have gotten on the bus, just an hour or so later.

Of course I eventually got home, and I eventually warmed up. I'd like to say that I also eventually conquered my fear of busses, and of taking busses in unknown places. But the truth is, this whole story came storming back through my head like a cyclone when I was on that bus (the C07) from la Reina to Vitacura the other night and my mouth went dry and my stomach went flippity.

But fear is like a clingy, nay-saying friend. Always with you, always trying to prevent you from doing stuff, and wrong, a whole lot of the time.

Sights to behold, downtown Santiago (and barrio brasil)

Today I saw several things that gave me pause, and while I failed to see many more, as I still have not perfected that 360 degree vision, what I saw brought me joy, in some strange way. Maybe it will you, too.

So now (and I'm allowed to do this, because I went to law school), I enter into evidence, the following:

Exhibit A. Chileans dressed in traditionalish Japanese garb, accompanied by a man in some sort of an exaggerated mortarboard or tophat. Perhaps this is related to a movie I know nothing about. I often know nothing about movies. Any thoughts?




Exhibit B. A poor soul whose job it is to dress up as the emblematic red circle of Santa Isabel (a supermarket) and wave at people on the street. I think it's bad enough to dress up as a mascot that actually is something, but to dress as a red circle must be particularly demoralizing. But wait! perhaps it's a disk, not a circle. That's better, right? Oh wait, I just noticed the boots. It's all bad.




Exhibit C. A beautiful street art mural behind a fence in an empty lot which has a tree in the middle. But it's not just any tree, it's an orange tree, which has dropped tons of fruit. How sad is that, all the wasted oranges and the tree trying to grow and the mural looks on, helpless to eat any of them. Also, the fence looks too hard to climb, which means I can get neither a better picture of the mural, nor the oranges. Got a ladder?



Exhibit D, which I did not take a picture of is an apartment in a dreamy neighborhood (Lastarria) which, and I am totally not kidding, is the EXACT SAME apartment that I already live in, except on a lower floor and with a slightly larger kitchen. Seriously. It's the same. Same windows, same floors, same detail on the building. I'm pretty sure it's the same architect. Which means that for 90,000 CLP (about $170) less a month, I guess I'll just stay where I am for now, which brings me some joy, or at least less outgo of cash.

What'd you see today? (oh, and by the way, loving your private vigilante commentary, keep it coming!)

Vigilante Privado for Hire. What would you make him do?

Today I went to the bank, a fairly infrequent occurrence, given that I do most of my banking online, it's all very Jetsons-like (that's Los Supersónicos to you)here in Santiago, banking and healthcare being automated to a degree that the United States can only dream about.

But today's tramite (bureaucracy) required my presence at the bank, and so off I went, dressed in my weekday worst to stand in the titulares (account holder) line and get the fisheye from everyone around me as they wondered just how bad my Spanish was that I didn't get that this line was for THEM, not for US. Except it is, and it was, and it can be a very grump-inducing experience indeed to establish a checking account in Chile, involving (in my case) not a small amount of explaining, ad nauseam, why I wanted one. In the end, I have a checkbook that I never use, Chilean credit cards that only occasionally see the light of day, and online billpaying which I can do in my jammies.

On my way out of the bank after finishing my transaction (which took just five mintutes because it is neither the end of the month, a Friday or (worst of all) a Friday at the end of the month before a holiday weekend) I happened to glance at the security guard's ID badge, and noticed that it didn't say "seguridad" like so many of them do. His said, "vigilante privado." Now, vigilar is a word, and it means to watch over, or keep an eye on. Vigilante would be a person who does those things. But since most of us gringos have a double soundtrack in our heads, of English and Spanish (and mine has a third language, of bearshapedsphere, a dialect in and of itself), I could not help but read it like I would in English: private vigilante.

And that got me to thinking. If I had a (peaceloving) army of vigilantes, or even just one, what would I have them do, there in the bank, or downtown?

Here's a list of the top 3 things my vigilante would enforce. I'm hoping you can help me round out the list.

1. No aimless dawdling on the way into and out of buildings. Doorways were meant for you to pass through on your way in or out, not stand there pondering if you should have rice, potatoes, or both as side dishes for your lunch.

2. No babytalk on the cellphone to your mate in public places. I'm sure she is your petit chou-chou or term of choice in Spanish, but a) I don't want to hear if and b) I just saw you coming out of a café con piernas (strip coffee house), so please do not make me grab your phone and tell your ladyfriend the truth.

3. No believing that because you're in a motorized vehicle (private car, taxi, bus), and I'm on a bike, that you can go faster than me on the city streets in traffic. I'm manouverable, and if you pass me, I will just pass you in another 30 seconds. Take it slow, buddy, we're all going to get caught up at the next light.

So readers, what would you ask your vigilante privado to keep an eye on?

Santiago: You can't always get what you want, even if it's on the menu

Here in Chile we like to play a little game. It goes like this: See this thing on the menu? Well, I'd like to order it. You can't order it. Hmmm, what about this other thing? Nope, that either.

Alternatively, you can order something that's on the menu, be told that you can have it, and then when it arrives, more than half of the ingredients are missing. You may order a sandwich with bean sprouts, goat cheese, arugula and avocado, and find that it comes with quesillo (like solid cottage cheese, no relation to goat cheese), no sprouts, lettuce and measly amounts of avocado, in a country where avocados actually do grow on trees.

This is confusing and annoying, but also humorous. So much so that when I was out with a friend the other day, the ex of an ex (which by the way, I heartily recommend to you that you become good friends with your exes exes, and not so that you can pelarlos (lit: peel them, but in Chile means to make fun of), but because if he/she had good enough taste to date you, then chances are that the other exes are equally shmabulous, and this one totally is), we could do nothing but laugh when I asked for something at a café and was told that they were out of said item.

Specifically, we were at the Crepe Cafe at Drugstore in Providencia (map here), which is a place to which I will happily never return, as their prices are self-importantly high ($3800 CLP for a crepe which is more of a tidbit than a meal), and the food is not even as good as Crepes and Waffles, that Colombian chain with locations around town and at Parque Arauco and which saved a certain six-year-old's dinner on a few occasions when I was in Cartagena (Colombia, not Chile, and those of us in Chile will know why I am quick to point this out, Cartagena being a beach town that everyone likes to pelar (see above!)). And the first crepe I tried to order at the Crepe Cafe was salmon, even though I try not to eat salmon in Chile because it is all farmed and OH NO, the poor fishies, and the lakes and the bacteria and the antibiotics and some green dye they put in it to make it look redder, and man is it toxic (says this article)

So. No salmon for me.

And my friend and I laughed, and talked about how menus in Chile are not really about what they have on offer now, so much as what was, at one point available. "Ya no trabajamos con eso" (we no longer have that) is a common response to a restaurant request. You'd think that with the popularity of corrector (white-out), they could fix the menu situation, since often it is an item that's been on the menu for years, and that they haven't had since the menu was printed. Like the "bagel" sanwich at Gatsby, which comes on a baguette, but still appears on the menu as a bagel, which reminds me very much of a time when someone I know was served a spinach salad that was comprised of lettuce. When she complained, she was told it was spinach lettuce. You know, like the famous bagel baguette. Or the invisible salmon crepe.

This conversation about menus offering things that are not available got us to thinking, and me to making analogies (surprise!). The next time I have an party in my cuchutríl (hovel), and you ask me who is coming over, I will tell you the name of every person who has ever been in my apartment, regardless of whether or not I am still in touch with this person, whether they were invited, and how likely I think it is that they will come. I will also name people that I'd like to come, but who I don't know, or live too far away. If we can imagine sandwich fillings, certainly we can imagine a tiny apartment stuffed to bursting with humanity.

Which is my way of telling you that, much like the delicious food I sought on Friday, and was later denied (though somewhat redeemed by a really good coffee at Sebastián, one of the best ice cream places in Santiago), my apartment search is turning up a lot of duds.

Is Bearshapedsphere snarky? Quirky? Squarky?

Is it snarky? Am I snarky? Do I care? Do I have a tendency to spin things just the way I like them and ignore the rest?

Probably, maybe, not really, of course. In that order.

Though I'm not sure it will help my "save the snarks" tshirt campaign, I will divulge that I wrote this possibly snark-containing piece on cringeworthy neologisms, or as the editors prefer to call them, Travel Neologisms, WTF on MatadorNetwork. In it I talk about travel-related frankenwords that give us pause. (momcation? staycation? gaycation? emesis basin, stat!)

It's a funny thing for me to do, police other people's language use. On a daily basis I transgress rules of speed and continuity, go off on wild tangents and violate basic rules of grammatical kindness, on the word level, inventing new ones, using obscure ones and carving them up how they suit me and on the sentential level, engaging in parenthetical hijinks heretofore unknown.

But people hate a poorly-created neologism, and I know know it's true, as I see this article retweeted here and there. They also love their own neologisms, or ones where they insult people, with particularly strenuous arguments supporting touron and also suggesting citiots (for idiots who come to to the city, presumably, and not people who give out undeserved citations, though I am not completely clear on this). I guess it just goes to show that people don't mind change, so long as it makes them look good.

Which vaguely sets me in the right direction to tell you something that I recently told a friend, and about which she was shocked. I used to write, um, professionally. About the law and stuff. "Can you write regular stuff?" she asked. By regular, I think she meant not snarky. I guess it's like making cookies. I can, it's just not something I often do.

And while this article is not melty or crispy, nor hot just out of the oven, or even off the Internet presses because I wrote it over a week ago, and does the internet really get hot?, it represents a side of me that I may not yet have shown here on bearshapedsphere, and in the interest of disclosure on my terms, and no one else's, I present this article on What's going on in Chile, or a little piece I wrote on the Chilean elections, also on Matador Network.

If I compare the relative immediate popularity of articles I've had published in the last week or so (judged by all the latest social networking methodology plus phone calls n emails n stuff), I learn that people really like snark, but not as much as they like food (that fruit article on bootsnall was widely smiled upon), but they like both of those more than they like politics, particularly foreign politics.

But I'm still not sure that snark is the right word. It seems so negative, so hatery (See? invented word!). I prefer quirk. But in the end, I'm not sure that I love quirk as much as I love food, though I do like it more than I like politics.

And in other unrelated news, when I mentioned to a friend that I came home last night at 2 AM to find my neighbors in the hallway dressing the upper 3/4 of a mannequin in women's clothes, she asked me if that was going to appear on the blog. And in thinking about it, that's really a better example of quirk than anything I do or say here. But perhaps if I mention it, it ups my quirk quotient, which can also be expressed as the square of Q.

So in the interest of word surgery and neologisms and (as is generally the case) apropos of nothing, I propose the word squarky as my new adjective. It's almost as hard to pronounce and explain as the bearshapedsphere story. Having hereby established said word, I wonder what it tastes like. And after that, who it would vote for.

Traditional Santiago, La Piojera, or a gringa finally gets out and about.

My friends have been taunting me with La Piojera since we first met. Oh sure, they say, let's go! La Piojera is great, it's traditional, it's messy, it's smoky, it's crazy, it's dangerous, it's fun. Let's go.

To which I say, great! I'm on it.

And then someone gets injured or gets a job outside of Santiago or they wait until I'm not here and then go and tell me about it, and I never, ever get to go to La Piojera. It's not a place one goes alone. It's also not a place I ever had any great desire to go to with a bunch of gringos, because while I like to be the center of attention for stuff like ooh! the spinny, I don't really relish fielding questions about my linguistic prowess or geographical origin all night.

So last night when Margaret of the fabulous Chile-centric through gringa-eyes blog, Cachando Chile mentioned a book launch that was happenening at this unvisited-by-me-mustn't-skip down home Santiaguino drinking establishment, I put the brakes on my apartment search, pedalled like a banshee through traffic home, and set out for the night.

One of the great things about La Piojera is that you can take the metro there, getting off at the metro station Cal y Canto, which has nothing to do with singing at all, rather for the building materials of this bridge (lime and eggwhite, presumably they'd made a giant flan with all the yolks), which is depicted in this diorama, one of a few scattered around the metro system (there's another in Baquedano).



Then there's La Piojera itself (and I apologize in advance because I used my point n shoot and we're not really on speaking terms right now, given the quality of the photos from last night).



On a normal night you'll find it on a urine-soaked street not far from the central market, with lots of people crowded outside on their way in or out or maybe because they were wondering if perhaps you'd like to part with some of your posessions on the way home. Last night the street was still urine-soaked, but there was a bouncer deciding who was coming to the book launch and who was not. He didn't say a word to me on my way in, but le ganaba por varios centimetros (I was a few inches taller than him), so maybe that's why. Or maybe because I hadn't washed my hair since the bikeride. Hard to say.

Inside there was the book launch (on Cueca, the national dance which has been reclaimed in a kind of leftist, urban ownership movement), raffia-seated chairs for about half of us, and liberal photography of the event at hand. Love catching photographers without their shields (I mean cameras) up.



Then nibbles and libations came out.

First the nibbles, the famous pichanga



and then the libations, the storied terremoto, "green" wine (pipeño) plus pineapple ice cream.

Close:



not so close:



And really, this doesn't tell you anything about the book launch, which Margaret has covered, as always, from a different perspective on Cachando Chile and my write-up doesn't get into the festiveness, the flour-sack full of aserrín (sawdust) they sprinkled on the ground and then swept around to absorb spilled drink and whatnot, the other refreshments available, the vinegary smell of the place or what it felt like to leap onto the metro at last call and be the last person out of the metro station where I live and have a giant gate swung closed behind me (at 11:30ish, I'd guess).

It's only the beginning of a story. And I'm willing to bet money that this woman, from the first picture I took inside La Piojera, and who in my mind and on flickr, I call "somebody's grandmother" could tell the story much, much better.



And in case you missed it, here's the website for La Piojera, complete with music, photos and an inviation to the Fonda Guachaca and the Semana de Chilenidad, all in celebration of Fiestas Patrias, the national holiday which is technically Sept. 18th, but red-white-and-blue streamers already abound. And you haven't heard the last of this from me, les aseguro (I can assure you).

Going to Canada? Why? What did you do wrong?

In which we talk about the prison that is Canada.

Every country has its stereotypes. Italians gesticulate in punctuated motions, the French crinkle their noses at unappealing food, Brazilians are down for a party at any time. Americans? Well, we all know what we're guilty of.

But what about the Canadians? They have that cute-as-a-button tag question, "eh?" They have a few culinary treats, like timbits (thought I understand these are coming to NY somewhere, if they're not already there), beaver tails instead of fried dough, nanaimo bars, poutine. These things we all know.

What you might not know is what Canada means in coa, or Chilean jail slang, Canada is slang for the bighouse. Voy pa' Canadá, is code for "a la cana" where cana is slang for jail. I've just consulted my very knowledgeable friend RAE, (who you can talk to, too, here), and have found out that it's not just Chile, it's also said in Argentina, Bolivia, Colombia, Peru and Uruguay.

That's a whole lot of people headed to Canada. Which is funny, because you'd think that if they were getting sent "down the river" they'd be heading to the south, not up north. Of course, cana as jail has nothing to to with Canada and its (yay) mostly liberal sentencing policies. Cana has morphed into its closest word, just missing canal and canary by a few letters. Whew.

Cana also means lots of other things, like the sparkly white hairs that sprout out of a previously dark head of hair, something we don't see much of here in Chile, where most people either don't go grey or put a weird reddish rinse in their hair that shimmers in the sunlight. Of which we still have precious little, as we're on the cusp of spring, but not quite there yet.

Which reminds me, we survived August! This is a big thing in Chile, to say that you've survived August. So maybe you could do a little dance or something, to celebrate. Of course, we also use the expression "mas seco que el mes de septiembre" (drier than the month of September), and it's looking like rain. So like everything I say, take that with a grain of salt. Which you should not put in your tea, no matter how much it looks like sugar. Not that I know anyone who's ever done that.