Curious and typo-ridden signs from the south of Chile and Argentina

And no trip would be complete without a selection of the most curious and typo-riddled signs I could find.

So without further ado, I present you with "the most curious and typo-riddled signs" of the south of Chile and Argentina. Now, with snarky commentary!

Starting at the beginning of the trip, in Puerto Varas, we found that a guy named Taylor makes tours. As you can see, there are Taylor made tours. I wonder what he likes, that Taylor, and what kind of tours he makes. Or made. The sign isn't clear on whether this activity continues into the present, or if it's something he used to do, but doesn't anymore.



Then we have handmade crafts for Chilean hands. Now I have not done a complete study on how Chilean hands might differ from other hands, but perhaps these are politically-themed rings (maybe with a Chilean flag?), or gloves with the Fenix miner capsule on them? (pssst, it's by. por can mean for or by. In this case, it's by, not for.



Here on a boat in Lago Todos Los Santos, I am beseeched not to traspass. There is a word traspasar in Spanish, and it means to transfer, as in data. I don't have a USB port, so I figured I was ok.



On another boat, on you'll forgive me if I don't remember what lake, because all this boat bus boat bus boat bus got awfully repetitive, it is requested that I not throw trash to the lake. Here lakey lakey, are you ready? I'm going to throw you some trash! As it happens, I couldn't even get the lake's attention, it didn't seem to be in the mood for playing catch, so we didn't get to try out not heeding the sign. (pssst, its into the lake, not to the lake).



Now we're in on dry land in Argentina, where there aren't so much typos as uh-ohs, as in that means something else where I'm from.

And so I present to you the following, an organization called S.C.U.M., which I don't care what they do and how many free t-shirts I get, I'm not playing.



And another one which will will be a good time to point out the Spanish SMS speak for "no comment" which is 5mentario. (sin comentario)



And then, coming back to Chile, this time in Castro, we have the mysteriously spelled ajente. The word for agent is agente, and I thought it always had been, but what do I know about Spanish orthography? What I really enjoy about this word is that it sounds like a person who works for you (agente) but who you really don't have any contact with (ajeno, alien to you). Or an agente who really likes his absinthe (ajenjo). And it's forged metal, so there's probably another ajente out there, too. We could number them. Ajente 005, 005, 007. Oh wait, that's already been done.

Strange happenings and great hilarity in the south of Chile and Argentina

MamaJ is a good sport. In addition to volcano sightings and foofy teahouses and tasty food (but way too much fish) and general pleasantness, we experienced a few things on our trip to the south of Chile that might make you either scratch your head or think twice about traveling with me (if you were considering it to begin with).

Protest: In Bariloche there was a big protest on the street with shouting and banners and signs (for which I love the word in Spanish, it is pancarta this seems to be the word only for protest signs, not posters, which in Chile is afiche). They were talking about taking away impunity from someone who should have been brought to justice but wasn't.

Shouting: Some of the spinoff protesters parked in front of the La Turista chocolate shop and screamed "asesinos, asesinos" (killers, killers) for some time in front of the store while I guided my mother away.

Theft: Several set-jawed over-windblown young teens came pouring out of a chocolate shop with dozens of boxes of chocolates under their arms, while the guard stood by almost nonplussed, and my mother and I flattened ourselves against a building so as not to attract attention or get in the way.

Bad bus drivers: We took a four hour bus trip on a bus company called Queilén from Puerto Montt to Castro and I don't know what was up with Mutt and Jeff or the driver and his ayudante (helper, the guy who puts the luggage on the bus, takes tickets, moves the curtains, etc), but they were acting like fourth graders. The ayudante would stick his finger in the driver's ear, they were slapping at each other, and they finally starting spraying each other with the deodorizing spray that they have on board. All this while driving a Greyhound-type bus full of actual living humans that hoped to arrive to their destination in that same state. Beware seats 3 and 4, which give you a very clear view of bus shenanigans.

More bad bus drivers, or the same bad bus drivers strike again: I forgot to mention when I originally wrote this that in pulling into the ferry to Chiloé, the bus driver actually hit another vehicle and popped his side/rear view mirror out of its fiberglass frame, and broke the frame. That's right. We hit another vehicle. And this was before the spraying and ear noodling.

Trafficking: We were on the bus from Bariloche to Osorno, which is a stunning trip with lakes and changing foliage, and in our case, lots of snow, and when we got to the border crossing, they made us line up alphabetically. Which we did, except for Mamaj, who was mysteriously not on the list, so she had to go last. As such, we had a chance to see everyone who got on and off the bus, including a very shifty character with his extremely small-eyed daughter. They looked a little out of place, neither lugareños (people from there), nor tourists, but whatever, it's a free border, anyone who wants to can cross it. But they cannot bring duffel bags full of pirated DVDs across the border. This led to a 30 or 40-minute delay, including a very unwashed grandmother ranting and raving, and in addition to being a bit odiferous, she had quite the potty mouth. My mother reports that when we got to Osorno, the dejected man and his small-eyed daughter recovered their bags from under the bus, light-as-a-feather luggage that fell in on itself with the bulk of nothing to keep it open.

Clown: Sometimes riding a bus in rural Chile, a person will get on the bus to tell jokes and do a little pattery thing they do. In this case, it was a man with a yellow wig, clown pants, suspenders and oversized glasses. His jokes were not funny, and his screeching voice most unpleasant to anyone's ears, including my mother's. She suggested paying him to get off the bus, which we did not, but I'm glad to know I come by it honestly, since that often occurs to me to do when the on-board entertainment is less than entertaining.

Water outage: When we first got to Castro after the Mutt and Jeff show, there was no water in the city. It was solved quickly, but looked like a doozy at the time.

But in spite of myriad combinations of things that could have truly gone wrong, Mamaj and I had a great time, with great hilarity walking down ginormous hills with someone's cranky knee and just about as many photos as you'd expect, none of which appear here. But you'll see them soon. Now I just have to go back and clone myself so I can do about 18 days worth of work in about six. If you see me faffing around on the internet, you have my permission to tell me to get back to it. And if I don't like it, I'll send Mutt and Jeff, the protesters, the unwashed grandmother, the clown, the chocolate-stealing children and the traffickers to keep you company.

In Bariloche, a tale of too much talking

We're finally out of the wormhole and back on solid ground, alone, unfettered, and dag gummit, untalked to. What am I talking about? Mamaj and I took a trip from Puerto Varas through to Bariloche via the Lakes Crossing (it's capital-letter worthy, look it up), and the weather was mostly good, or at least not torrential, which is a near miracle for this time of year. There will be pictures, really! The lakes district is just as pretty as I knew it would be, just as pretty as it was the last time I was here. But untalked to. What's going on?

It's great to be on a tour, when all you have to remember to do is wake up and get on a bus. Someone makes sure your luggage goes where you're going, they point you to where to eat, hold your arm when you get off the bus (what is that about, anyway? you're just going to wrench my arm out if its socket if I go down).

But, what I just remembered that I despise about anything group-oriented is that there is so. much. talking. Everything we had to be told over the course of two days (where to be, when to be there, why the lakes are blue, the name of every animal ever sighted nearby, the delightful optional excursions offered (including visiting a working! farm! (what am I, six?)) had to be communicated to us. In Spanish. And Portuguese. And English. If it had been just one language, it would have taken up maybe 30% of the time we were in the bus/boat/bus/boat/bus/boat/bus, which is about 20% more than I might have liked. And then it had to then be translated into the other two languages. At many points which I wished I could no longer understand the other two languages, so I would not have to hear the same. talking. again. What with the 30% and 30% and 30% the talking seemed to occupy (at times), 90% of all available listening (or hearing) space. I'm probably exaggerating. It's a lot of talking, that's all I'm saying. And I'm of the set of people that like to see stuff. While we sit. And say nothing.

And now, we are in Bariloche, blissfully tour-free. We don't know where we're going or what we're doing, and we'll have to schlep our own luggage around, but with any luck, the only people talking will be us.

I don't know how people take multi-day guided tours (especially if more than one language is involved). Hats off to you patient non-oversaturatable people. Seriously, hats off, even those ridiculous matching Peruvian hats with the braids or that black ski cap with the little sparkly flower, or even your hat, man with the gym bag who didn't seem to have a single long-sleeved shirt with him but miraculously produced (and then never took off) a military-style blue fleece-lined ski cap with earflaps.
,
Thank you for listening quietly without saying anything. It's really what I needed today.

On leaving Coyhaique, a tale from Puerto Varas

One of many things I hadn't considered in recent times, what with the miners on the brain, and also, hey MamaJ is in town, which means we're both out of town, is how the earthquake affected populations other than the affected populations. By which I mean other than people whose homes or livelyhoods were damaged or destroyed.

Tonight we were eating dinner in a lackluster pizza restaurant in Puerto Varas, like you do. We just wanted something small and simple, nothing over the top, garlic drizzled or particularly hearty, and micro-thin pizza seemed just the ticket. We were talking to our server, a woman in her late 20s about some misbehaving children running amok in the restaurant, which is pretty unusual in Chile. Chalk it up to there being inattentive parents all over the world, or people with bigger fish to fry than whether their children fall down off a wall they were climbing up (really).

So we got to talking to the woman, and everyone started asking where everyone was from. It turns out that she's from Coyhaique, a town on the Carretera Austral in a singularly gorgeous part of Chile that anyone would be lucky to live in, except for the cold in the winter (she said).


and here's a picture of a giant mate I took in Coyhaique when I was there a while ago, but there are no pics of Puerto Varas because my card reader is in my upper right hand desk drawer and I am nowhere nearby.

In fact, it was the cold (plus the earthquake) that drove her out, she said. By the time two months had passed from the date of the earthquake, a cubic meter of wood was up to 28,000 CLP. I don't know how long a cubic meter of wood lasts for cooking and heating, but 28,000 CLP is around sixty dollars, and it's a pretty big chunk of change. Wood prices rose as southern Chile was being rebuilt, and all the wood was slated towards construction, rather than heating. And heating costs rose. And so one day she took a bus to Puerto Varas and took a job at a pizza place where there's microthin pizza and children climbing the walls.

"So you came to the north," I said, which is funny because Puerto Varas is in the south of Chile, but Coyhaique is further south. Yes, she said. In Coyhaique you don't make any more money than in Puerto Varas, but in Puerto Varas you can live well on 250,000 CLP (around five hundred dollars, 172,000 is the minimum wage), she said. I didn't know how well she meant by well, but I'm certainly not going to argue with someone who left her home because of heating costs. I don't know how often she gets home, but I hope she gets to go when it's not too cold. And I hope she gets to eat all the pizza she wants.

Mine Rescue, a Capsule here a Capsule there

Everyone and their brother has something to say about the mine rescue, and I'd hate to lose out on the fanfare, so let me say this. Yes, it was incredible.

It was incredible because a country could (and many do) forget very easily about 33 souls heavily entrenched in the bowels of the earth (and yes, the media here called it entrañas de la tierra, which sounds a little more like innards than bowels to me, but I suppose there's really not much difference). Chile has certainly shown its mettle both in human solidarity and in government and private effort to fix what was wrong.

But I would be remiss in not mentioning what was wrong. What was wrong is that a) poor, undereducated people have to work under terrible conditions. If it were not for these miners and many like them, the Chilean economy would be much less productive. They deserve more than a statue to commemorate their work. It's terrible work. And b) the mine had been closed due to safety issues. The company that reopened it should be ashamed. And since companies aren't capable of feeling emotions, the people behind it should be absoultley repentant. One of the most terrible things about law school was learning about US tort law and how it basically pits society's expectations and human value against dolla billz (all the cool kids say it like that, I have it on authority). And so it is with capitalism. I don't know how to fix it, but I'd like to go on record saying I think it takes the focus away from humans, and that's wrong.

My experience here in Santiago re: rescue was much like yours in whereever you are, except maybe I wasn't waiting on a time delay for the translations. It was emotional, exciting, exhausting. When the rescues started speeding up I felt like I could hardly keep up with the excitement. And yes, I cried. I'm like that.

When the final miner was pulled from the mine, Santiago erupted into honking and excitement, like it always does. Today's newspapers are splashed with good news, and the gossipy ones are already talking about dear Yonni Barrios, (whose first name practically spells the female genitalia in Sanskrit) who has both a wife and lover waiting for him outside. Except not, because the wife is singing Beyonce's "Irreplacable" to him (to the left, to the left), except who knows what kind of music she likes, so maybe she's singing something else.

I know three people that are up there right now, Kate, of horseracing fame, who is running herself ragged for Matador and whipping up photo essays at an alarming pace, a guy who used to work for one media outlet and then another, is now up there for Bloomberg, and a very unlikely journalist-musician-arts manager who is working as a fixer for Fox. Don't hate him for working for Fox, think about how much a starving artist could really use the cash, and how smart he is. And also how very tired he must be right now.

But me? I'm just here in Santiago. I've taken a bus past Copiapó, and that's about all I can say about it. The north of Chile is alien and strange to me. I don't hate it, but I'm just not sure I'd invite it over for dinner. And I don't think I could get 33 people in my apartment. And those guys are busy with media stuff and whatnot, so I doubt they'd come anyway.

And if you were wondering what all the chanting and singing was saying at the mines, check out this #NG post on chanting and singing, Chile style.

A day at the races, Sporting Club in Viña

When Kate invited me to go to the races in Viña, I thought many things. I thought, no, work! and then I thought no work! And in the end, I decided to go because who else is going to make me get up and out of the city and go see horses run around a track and people lose their hard-earned money on them.

Kate was staying in Valparaíso somewhere, but I convinced her to come and meet me at the bus station, and after a wholly delicious and crispy fresh vegetarian lunch at the restaurant called Tropical which seems to have no website (silly rabbits, I'd give you free publicity!), and then a coffee at Samoeido where I snuck this pic of Kate while she was snapping me.




We (she, I am sense-of-direction-free) then navigated over the Club Sporting, which is on the other side of the Marga Marga, which at least one tourbook calls "a stagnant, stinking lagoon" that runs through Viña. I take umbrage with this, since in parts, it does not even run anywhere, and also, is completely dry, so dry so that there's a giant fería in it, and hey, that's not fair, the ferias in Viña run until nighttime! In Santiago you snooze and you lose with the veggies.

And then we went in through what is not the official entrance of the place, but where employees and the like wander through, and thank goodness we did, because got to see the spraying tanker truck filling up with its characteristic bra and undies flag above. Didn't know? Me neither.



And we wandered around and placed a bet or two with the kid with braces who didn't seem even old enough to bet himself.



And we were a giant spectacle, the gringas (women, even!) with their English, and their skirts and their mega cams. But then the horses started running and everyone forgot all about us, as they should.



And the flags flapped.



And we studied the racing forms carefully.



And made merciless fun of the strange English-esque names, but not of the horses, nor the jockeys, because look (and horsehats with earsleeves, who knew?):



and someone who was as lucky as I was did a little origami with his losing chit.



And then we ambled back, and I got back on the bus, having worked not a whit, (which I am paying for today) and Kate went on her way, up to La Serena, and later to Copiapó, where she will hopefully join the media circus re: miners, about which I am simultaneously a little jealous and not at all jealous.

But hey, horses. uyyyy, bad joke.

I'd like to teach the world to spell. Adventures in English orthography.

First of all, sorry if you now have that song stuck in your head. Also, it is thoroughly my sister's fault that I am writing this today. I was all set to tell you about my day at the races, but then this came in, and well, who am I to mess with serendipity.

First, behold: Jhec of all Trades! One can assume that this photo was taken in San Francisco, unless my sister has up and left her 3 and 10-year old children to fend for themselves. I sense a lot of cereal and cucumbers being eaten in her absence, for what it's worth. (I'm sure she took this photo with her phone, as I've never seen her with a camera in her hands, strangely, as she is my sister).



Jhec of all trades. Could be a misspelling, could be the owner's name. Hard to say, but in any case, Jhec. Something's awry here. I bet they have an awesome deal on tshirts with words in English on them though, which are very popular here. Maybe I should pop in sometime.

Next, we revisit our old friend madafaca. (Remember that?) Here we have another take on the spelling of this expletive: mutafoker. While it is true that the madafaca spelling ignores the presence of the letter u, the mutafoker spelling uses that u, but puts it in the wrong place. Which really just gets to the point that Spanish doesn't really have that "uh" sound, much to many Spanish-speakers-learning-English' chagrin. It makes swearing at someone on the street that much more difficult. And also rayando muros (tagging walls).



Then, though I told you I wouldn't be taking you to the races today, I do have one quick pic for you. It's the area where they check on the dopping. Yes, the dopping. As English speakers, you know that in general, when there's a single consonant following a vowel, you get the "letter says its name" phenomenon, and when there are two, you get the "short sound."



Which is why doping is pronounced "DOH-ping" and dopping is pronounced "DAH-ping." However, as I look closely, I see it's anti dah-ping, and I'm wondering if they're anti people using dopplers on horses. But maybe that would be anti doppling. I'll put it on my list of things to research.

Have a well-spelled day.

___________________

And thanks to everyone who commented, stumbled and otherwise disseminated the piece on the would-be attack in Santiago. I feel supported, cared for, worried about, justified and otherwise past-participled. I also now know the answer to the age old-question "how do I improve my blog traffic?" The answer is almost kick the expletive out of the mutafoker who grabs you on the street and then write about it. Seriously? The blogosphere is rife with rubberneckers (hi rubberneckers!).

(Attempted) Street Crime in Santiago. How I almost became an attacker.

I have seldom been so angry, felt so violent, came so close to running home to get my bike and find the ingrate who decided to ruin my night and go ruin his night. Or week. Or life. Or whatever.

I was walking home after a tough conversation with a friend, and it was early, around midnight. I wanted to clear my head, and did not want to deal with talking to a taxi driver about where I was from or who I lived with here in Santiago. It certainly wasn't the three dollars I was going to save that made me not take a taxi, and instead walk from near San Diego over to Barrio Brasil, where I live.

Barrio Brasil is not particularly unsafe. I know the routes I can take into and out of my neighborhood with relative certainty. I live between two major conduits (one more major than the other), and I always say I'll never walk in from the Alameda (the more major one) to where I live because it's too easy for someone to observe you and follow you in. And once you're in, there's no one unless you're near a bar, and even then, you can't really rely on those people for backup.

I found myself walking along a street I always say never to walk along at night, Manuel Rodriguez. It's a wide street, with traffic, but it has people coming off a highway (the PanAmerican highway), and they're not looking at the sidewalks, and you can't see from one side of the street to the other because of the highway exits. It is lined by a bunch of hourly motels, and not much else. There's not a lot of activity on the street, and it curves, so there's also not a good visual on the whole trajectory. I was walking along, headed north when I noticed I was closing in fast on the guy ahead of me, who was certainly dragging his feet. I didn't want to get in front of him, becasue I didn't want him behind me. So I slowed. And slowed.

He could tell that I'd slowed down, and slowed more, finally leaning against a sapling to cough. The cough was fake, like a child who was trying to stay home from school. Cof, cof. And I knew it. I could tell he was going to mess with me. But if I turned around, he'd catch me. And if I went straight ahead, he'd catch me. But straight ahead was home, so I went for it.

I broke out into a run, and hadn't gone more than twenty paces when I felt his hand. His hand. His hand on a part of my US-brand rose-colored courdoroy pants that was not his to touch. And I screamed, and flew into a rage.

I think I elbowed him, I may have also punched him. I know I grabbed his headphones, spun him around, tore them off his head and also ended up with his MP3 player. I must have kept running. Or he ran away, because when I turned back, his MP3 player and headphones in my hand, he was far from me. Far enough that I shouted, spat a stream of invectives at him to make sure he and anyone nearby heard. I yelled about what he had in his pants in the area that corresponded to where he'd grabbed me. I told him he was useless, feeble, a loser. I insulted his mother. And then I said, "Y te tengo el MP3" (and I have your MP3 player), which I dangled in front of him (from a distance). And he looked at me, and said nothing.

(I imagined him thinking) How could it be? A woman, a foreigner. So strong, so reactive, so over-reactive, so clearly nutso. And I threw his MP3 to the ground and smashed it. And I ran.

And I ran, and cried, and sobbed and cried. Because I hated that I knew I shouldn't have been where I was and I hate the fact that a misguided, misanthropic, misogynistic loser could muck up my night and my week. And then I cried because of how angry I felt, and thought better of grabbing my bike, and pedaling slowly through the streets, finding him and menacing him with my heavy kryptonite lock, and maybe listening to it make contact with his skull.

It would have been premeditated and cruel, violent and uncontrolled. None of which I think applies to me. But if you grab my ass in the street, I'm just saying. "Me buscaste, y me encontraste." (You asked for it.)


_______________________

And in the time that's followed, I've thought about all of it.

What if he had had a knife? What if he had had a gun? I assume he'd have threatened me with those things. I hope I would have had a more reasoned reaction, but I can't say I would have. Was he after money, or is he a mauler? I think neither. I think he was a person who saw a possible victim, and he wanted to make me mad. It worked. I wasn't even carrying a purse, or my camera, which surely I'd have used as a very pricey weapon.

And now I spend a lot of time looking over my shoulder and making sure I don't go anywhere I "shouldn't" at night. I've been one nervous nellie since this happened (10 days ago). I like to think wherever this lump of a human is, he's giving his ways a second thought as well.

And I also kind of wish I'd kept his MP3 player. On the one hand, what kind of music does a pretend-coughing groper listen to? On the other hand, maybe he had a file or two on there that could have helped me to find him. I couldn't identify him in a line-up, but I bet he could identify me. And I hope he starts to see me everywhere.

What Tallahassee do you need? (tales of autocorrect and Spanish vocab)

The other day I was joking around with a friend via SMS about what size shirt he wanted me to buy. It was a joke, as I had no intention of buying him any clothes at all, as this is better suited to mothers and girlfriends, but haha, what size should I get you?

Or, what Tallahassee do you take? Tallahassee? Is there a very large contingent of people who have to text message about Tallahassee all the time? And wouldn't they, by now have created a shorter abbreviation? I (and maybe I alone, but I think everyone gets it) routinely refer to Santiago as Stgo. in text. Maybe Tallahassee could be t'hassee. or Tassy. I'm not really sure how the regional accent would respond to either of those. Any thoughts?

I'm sure there's a way to turn off my phone's autocorrect, and it might even behoove me to do so, or at least to pay attention to the words it tries to insert in my words' stead. Like Tallahassee, which btw, was a stand in for size (talla), which is not the word for all sizes, because tamaño is another word and is a bit more universal, referring to other things besides clothes, Tallahassee is more like the size of a garment (but not a shoe) that you wear (shoes are measured in número, as in "que número" or calzar, which means either "to square" "no me calza" means it just doesn't square, or just doesn't make sense to me, or in this case to wear a size of shoe "qué calzas" means "what size shoe do you wear?" (answer in my case, 38 or 39, depending on the shoe, which makes that Prince line "act your age, not your shoe size" a little less witty than in the United States, and near to nonsensical in my case).

Anyway, Tallahassee. I'm sure it's a lovely city. It's just not what I was trying to say. And everyone who got googled over here looking for info on that city, um? disculpa (sorry!).