Llama Llama

Rant about Chile

2006-06-14T08:02:00.000-07:00

This is a rant that I wrote on June 7th, near the end of the massive student demonstrations that paralyzed Chilean education - and the centre of Santiago - for several weeks.

I actually tried sending it to a couple of places, but either the computers at my usual zero-star hotel in Santiago didn't work too well (they often don't) or the places I sent it to just ignored me. The later is fairly likely - it's overwritten, it's not impartial and it's full of unattributed quotes. It's a bit of a rant. In fact it's really quite bad.

However, I'm posting it anyway - I still think it has interesting stuff in it. It's my only effort at synthesizing my experience of Chile. I guess I should title it, but I can't seem to think of anything right now. Suggestions are welcome. Criticism too. Here it is:

Things sure have changed since I got to Chile in mid-January of this year. Back then Michelle Bachelet had just won the elections, and we toasted her along with thousands of Chileans. The whole country basked in the glow of international media attention, captivated by Bachelet´s classic tale of victory over adversity. Not only was she the first woman president in the Americas and a socialist in a market-driven world, she was the daughter of a high-ranking military official assassinated by the Pinochet dictatorship. She had to flee persecution in the 1970s and 80s, but returned to make her way right up to the pinnacle of political power.

Having just arrived, my vision of Chile was based on this kaleidoscope of media coverage. I imagined a nation finally breaking decisively with its dark past, a government dedicated to social justice. Having known many refugees from Chile´s years of dictatorship, and having once a long time ago written letters for Amnesty International that began with ¨Dear Mr. Pinochet,¨ I was delighted to witness this new period in Chilean history.

Bachelet´s inauguration ceremonies sustained my vision. I watched in awe as more than two hundred thousand people crowded the grand plaza of La Moneda, musicians from across the Americas played their hearts out in celebration, and Bachelet give a rousing speech promising better education, health, and social security for all.

So imagine my dismay when, a mere three months later, I got out of the subway at La Moneda to a scene of complete pandemonium. The city´s major artery was blocked by police barriers and ¨carabineros¨ in full riot gear nervously eyed thousands of youth milling in all directions. When people started running, fast, in my direction, one thing was clear: it was time to get out of there. For the next week I, like many residents of Santiago, made my way down streets overhung by not only the usual smog but also the peppery smell of tear gas.

As the massive secondary student demonstrations continued and strengthened – several unions and an increasing number of universities joined the protests - I looked for signs of international press coverage of these events. I didn´t find any, and until now I have heard of only a trickle of coverage outside of Chile.

Where is that crush of media that was so eager to cover Bachelet´s fairytale victory? They should be here to witness the not-so-pretty realities of Chilean society, the playing-out of deep conflicts between its entrenched structures and its desired future.

Now, students are making Bachelet rhyme with Pinochet in their street-protest chants. The equation is so extreme that some students giggle while they chant it, but it cuts straight to the point: these demonstrations are pushing for reform of secondary school laws passed under the Pinochet dictatorship – and still in force. The laws leave funding largely in the hands of the municipalities, thereby creating shortfalls and massive inequalities between the schools of rich and poor neighborhoods. And University is a highly privatized system: students have to pay simply to take the entry tests. Students are asking the central government to commit to fundamental reforms and put some of the country´s vast new copper wealth at the service the education system.

These student demonstration are the largest social protest in Chile since the country´s return to democracy in 1990. As such, they have engendered economic disruptions and extensive property damage, all of which are graphically documented and priced on the evening news. But the rest of the population is not responding with anger, but rather with a kind of euphoria. A recent poll published in the country´s biggest daily, El Mercurio, found that more than 80% of the population sympathizes with the students.

Incongruously, a manager who I tutor in business English, up in the tall glass tower of a foreign multinational, said to me excitedly, after a week of student protests: “Remember what I told you about Chile´s social problems? About the need to change things? ”

The strong base of support for the protests makes sense because these students are screaming out loud a truth that I have heard endlessly whispered since I got here: that Bachelet may be the mistress of this house, but that it is the house that Pinochet built.

A recent study found that Chile has the greatest socio-economic inequality of any country in South America, despite more than fifteen years of ostensibly left-wing rule. The student protests are the first hint of something that many people clearly want, but almost nobody expected: real change. They are a strong counterforce to something I hadn´t been expecting to find, here in 21st Century Chile: a persistent core of support for the “good old days” of the Pinochet dictatorship.

It didn´t take long for me to meet such supporters. I met one coming North on the bus from the Lake District to Santiago, in my second week in the country. But most notable was the CEO of a Chilean based multinational, who was one of my first English students. “We are watching Bachelet VERY closely,” he told me archly. “You know that one of the members of our board of directors is the Finance Minister from the Pinochet government?”

Yikes, no, I sure didn´t, and the way he said that sent shivers up my spine. It made me think that the minute I left the room this man might reach for his phone, call up a few buddies in the military, and it would be 1973 all over again.

However - Bachelet, like other leaders of the Concertation, has known how to keep that sector of society calm. At the time of that conversation, back in March, she had just picked an American- educated, pro-free-market Finance Minister. The CEO had opined that this was a shrewd move and that both he and his board of directors were greatly reassured.

When the CEO asked me about Canadian politics it occured to me that the Concertation strategy of following strong free-market economics overlaid with a cushioning of social policies was pretty similar, actually, to the formula that kept the Liberal party in power for so many years. I told him so – it seemed to further kindle his interest in Canada – but in truth I think our underlying realities are a little less brutal. We just don´t have that history of an economic model being imposed at the point of a gun.

I and other North Americans here have noted that people in Chile often don´t like to answer political questions directly – but once they trust you, they will go on a real tear about the state of the nation. Such was the case with one university student and budding entrepreneur that I struck up a conversation with on the bus from Valparaiso to Santiago. Like me, he couldn´t tolerate the smog in the capital, so only went in periodically to do business.

“ We are the lab rats of the Chicago boys!” he said disgustedly, reiterating the well-known fact that practically everything in Chile has been run by the private sector, ever since the dictatorship started following the advice of radical free market economists – the ¨Chicago Boys” – in the 1970s.

His examples of lingering effects were vivid: first, the profusion of private universities, and the high cost of a university education. Second, the crazy crush of buses in Santiago, spewing dense black smoke which makes Santiago one of the most polluted cities in the world. “There were no controls on the number or quality of busses, no regulations whatsoever,” he told me. “They are trying to regulate them now, but it´s very difficult because there are so many different companies operating.”

“Don´t you think the Bachelet government will make some progress with all these issues?” I asked him. “No,” he said simply, “not really.” Indeed the government´s losing battle to create a more environmentally friendly transport system became a major news item over the following months. And I continued to hear repeatedly that this government would not make sufficient changes to addressing pressing social concerns.

I heard it from my business English student at the multinational corporation and I heard it from my friends working in embassies and international organizations. “They keep asking me ´what´s going to happen under Bachelet?´” said one jaded analyst from a European embassy. “I tell them nothing, nothing, for God´s sake!”. He added, as an aside: “Chile is a star student of neo-liberal economics. Things will continue to change at exactly the pace they have always changed – that is, hardly at all.”

Most vividly, I heard it from a small group of people protesting every Thursday night outside a building just down the street from my hotel in historic Londres Street. They would light candles, play music, and invoke the memory of those who disappeared after detention in this innocuous-looking nineteenth century building, which they covered with stencils saying “people were tortured in this house!”. The police would stand by without interfering, then once they were gone, whitewash everything. By morning, no one would know that this house was different from any other.

“Chile is just like this façade,” said one of the protest organizers. “It looks all nice, like everything is going fine. But inside, it´s rotten; we are still living under a constitution written by a dictator.”

The Bachelet government has not responded to the Thursday night protesters´ demand that the building on Londres Street be made into a memorial to victims of the dictatorship. Her government has, however, responded to the massive student mobilization. Last week Bachelet personally announced a package of reforms and a commitment to completely review the laws governing education. This week, faced with continuing student unrest, government officials have continued negotiating with student leaders and are offering them a more important role in the reform of the system.

It seems fitting that secondary students – or, as they are affectionately referred to here, because of their black and white uniforms, “penguins,”– finally cracked the surface calm of this seemingly prosperous and progressive country. Unlike many of their elders, these teenagers have never experienced dictatorship. They don´t drop their voices when they talk about politics, they don´t mince either words or actions. Because of this, they may actually bring about some of the great social changes that were hailed by the international press when Bachelet came to power.

I'm back

2006-06-14T07:07:00.000-07:00

So, I spent a week both studying (Spanish) and working amidst both tear gas and smog in Santiago, got so sick I slept for the better part of three days, and decided that it was time to take my big sister's advice and just come home, immediately.

Mercifully, Air Canada did not make me pay twice for changing my return date, and I was able to get a ticket for Friday, June 9, arriving in Toronto at about six a.m. the next morning.

It was kind of a hellish flight - first of all, I practically missed it, because I was busy trying to unload about 15 extra kg of stuff in my suitcases. (I later ran back and grabbed this big blanket, which was a large part of the weight, and just carried it onto the plane with me). When I mentioned what time my flight was leaving, some nice people in the line-up for customs said "goodness - I think you'd better jump the queu" and lifted up the barrier - after which someone in every subsequent fold of the queu did the same, and I was magically at the front. Lucky that, because most people had already boarded by the time I arrived, out of breath, at my gate.

Then, to recover from all that, I drank a whole bunch of Coca-Cola offered to me by the nice stewardess, because I forgot that a) that would keep me up all night and b) all that caffeine would dehydrate me horribly. Desperate for distraction in the wee hours of the morning, I actually watched a substantial part of Sleepless in Seattle, which made me much more ill than the quite frequent "turbulence." All night, the message kept coming over the speakers, "please fasten your seatbelts, we are experiencing turbulence." I don't think anyone would actually have noticed anything, if it weren't for these endless announcements. What do they think, that we are going to fall out of our seats because there is an almost imperceptible jiggle? That we are going to hit a very, very tall tree?

Someone, however, apparently did get quite ill. At about 1 a.m. that classic question, which I don't think I have ever heard in real life before, came over the speaker system: "Is there a doctor on board? If there is a doctor on board, could they please identify themselves immediately to a flight attendant?" I've never aspired, even slightly, to be a doctor, but it made me wish I were at that moment, just to be able to spring up and come to the rescue. I was really quite worried that someone would be in life-threatening danger and away from medical aid for the more than five hours remaining. I'm not sure if a doctor actually appeared, but there was a certain amount of rushing around with a first aid kit, and then everything seemed to be fine - probably, aspirin was dispensed.

Ok, enough exciting travel tales. I am now in Toronto, hanging out. I was feeling like a slob, but then my sister pointed out to me that I went and bought about 500 pounds of groceries, babysat the kids the first night I was here, cooked last night, and have been taking care of the kids almost continuously. That made me feel a bit better. Thing is, child-care has involved a very large amount of World Cup Soccer watching, and a certain amount of buying soccer-related accessories, neither of which feels very constructive. Both of my nephews have been sick, so I have been trying to get them to drink herbs and carrot-based preparations, with no success whatsoever. Kiwis, pears, and apples, that's as far as they're willing to go.

To make up for this highly banal post, I am now going to post this rather polemic rant that I wrote about the political situation in Chile. I don't know how accurate it is - much of my analysis is based on conversations with a fairly random bunch of people. I like to think that they are an interesting cross-section of the population, but I will leave it to readers to judge. Anyone who thinks it's really really stupid, and should be removed immediately from this otherwise highly reputable site, can write comments - or tell me so in person, now that I'm here! I was going to fly back to Ottawa on June 18th, but my sister could use my help that week so am going to rebook and return a few days later.

Enough of smog and fog

2006-05-19T11:36:00.000-07:00

So, I have just confirmed my flight back to Canada. I will return to Toronto on June 22nd and then continue on to Ottawa on June 28th.

Why? Well, because I really don´t want to live in either Valparaiso or Santiago, and I don´t particularly feel like adventuring on further either.

Valparaiso is foggy and very cold (you can see your breath most of the time), and it will only get worse (colder, and with torrential rain) in the coming months. Santiago had something like four days in a row of environmental "pre-emergency" last week, in which it really did not feel like you were breathing anything like air. What would it take them to call it an actual emergency? It finally rained, so thankfully the air is tolerable right now. But clearly there is a serious problem, and it gets much worse in July and August, when the air here also gets bitterly cold and dry (so they say - I´m happy to take their word for it).

It´s definitely been interesting but it has also been difficult. I had various hassles trying to get a work visa, and because of that had to stop working at the university in Valparaiso, which I loved. That really broke my heart - first of all because I had just quit another job to concentrate on that one, and second of all because it was just a really good job. I had six or seven very nice students who I taught English to twice a week in this great huge Gothic building up on the cliffs above the ocean. It got a little tiring climbing up the long winding stairs from the street but the view at the top was breath-taking (even on the frequent foggy days, when the boats hung like silvery ghosts against the sea).

The other really difficult thing was the amount of trouble that the dampness and general state of decay in the Valparaiso area has cost me. I developed bronchitis every time I stayed more than a day at both of two different shared places where tried to live. Finally I retreated to the splendid isolation - and relatively hypoallergenic character - of the apartment in the building that my friend Luise owns.

Now I´m trying to decide if I will just stay in Valparaiso for the remainder of the time, or perhaps go up North (where it´s sunny and warm) for a while. My main aim in the remaining weeks is to work on my Spanish, which is still lamentably basic. So I´ve given notice at my Santiago job and will probably only work one more week there. I say probably because last week, when I told the director I was leaving, he literally said "No!" and put his head in his hands. That´s not because I am a brilliant, irreplaceable teacher - let´s be real, gringos are a dime a dozen here - it´s because they are deluged with work right now. They have been kind to me so I don´t want to leave them any more in the lurch than Ï have to. In any case, I will definitely be done with that by early June.

Such as the state of affairs for now. I know I am seriously in arrears with a few emails and hope that people will accept my apologies - it´s been a really hectic period, I hope to have more time in the near future.

Meanwhile, if anyone has any ideas for contract or other vaguely interesting, easily obtained work in Ottawa, please let me know.....I´m not entirely sure what I´ll do next, but finding something temporary would probably be the best thing for the moment. I started browsing online last night to see what was out there - I am starting to think about life in Ottawa again, and looking forward to coming home.

Meandering in Mendoza

2006-04-15T23:30:00.000-07:00

So, it´s about 3:30 a.m. in Mendoza, Argentina, and I wonder if it´s really worth going to bed. My bus goes at 8:30 a.m., and my wake-up call is 6:30. So, fortified by a little Matte tea from the friendly Argentinians, I thought I would make a long-delayed entry.

This trip to Mendoza marks three-months since my entry into Chile. In fact, that´s why I had to come: my tourist visa turns into a pumpkin after three months, so I had to cross the border not to become illegal. Next week, I am going to the Intendencia (whatever that is) in Valparaiso, to try and get them to at least start the process for me to get a RUT, the Chilean equivalent of a SIN. It´s supposed to be relatively easy, but I don´t know. They seem to favour Kafkaesque bureaucracy, in Chile. But then again, I´m a Canadian, I´m used to Kafkaesque bureaucracy, it should be okay.

I am going back to some serious decisions. It´s obvious that I can´t keep living the way that I have been: teaching in Cachagua, a beach town one and a half hours North of Valparaiso, two days a week, teaching at a University in Valparaiso on evening and one morning, then going in to Santiago to teach managers of multinationals. Fascinating though the variety is - I´m teaching grade 8/9, grade 11, the final year of University, and working executives - there is no way that any human could sustain this. It´s particularly hard on me because Santiago is just a massive health risk, I get sick every time I go, it seems. But it´s just generally unsustainable because all of these classes (except for the executives) require massive amounts of preparation. I need a stable place where I can relax and work.

So, I will see. I have spoken to the school in Cachagua about increasing my hours so that I could cut out Santiago, just go in to Valparaiso one day a week to teach at the University. It´s hard, for me to do that, because I´m pretty attached to some of my students in Santiago. So I keep coming up with schemes to maybe go in for just one day....I´ll see. The reasonable thing to do, really, is to cut out Santiago.

Anyways - the work is completely wacky and strange and interesting. In Cachagua, I teach at this little alternative school that has about 40 students in all, all the way from kindergarten to grade 11. It´s run by a Buddhist Californian/Chilean (she was brought up here going to American schools, did University in California and is married to a Californian). It´s a Montessori school, which sure makes me wish I knew more about Montessori. They just tell me to, you know, relate to the kids. And every morning, in one of the geodesic domes, we have a little encounter session where the whole school sits around and thinks about running their lives according to correct motivation and good discrimination (as opposed to the bad discrimination of prejudice). On the first day that I taught, one of the particularly keen grade 8 students had brought in an article about the brutal killing of seals in Canada, so I had to answer for our sins a little.

Anyways - it´s challenging, physically as well as mentally. Cachagua is very cold, and as you might imagine geodesic domes don´t provide a great deal of shelter. Kristina, the director, claims that we are going to be able to heat them - I hope so. I thought that I would drop the Cachagua work and just do the easier work in Santiago and the University teaching in Valparaiso, but I found that I just could not bring myself to do that. The school there is such a lovely little community, and the work is very satisfying, even though it´s kind of hard. Last week I started the grade 11s reading The Alchemist by Paolo Coelho (which of course was written in Spanish, so I just have to hope they actually read it in English) and Catcher in the Rye. I´ve been wandering around since looking for other books for the grade 8s and the one grade 11 who aren´t at the right level for either of those books. Meanwhile, I get to speak Spanish with the other teachers, who mostly don´t speak much English, and that´s great. They are all very friendly and welcoming.

So, here I am taking a pause in Mendoza. I have done a lot of sleeping during the day, given the exhaustion of all this work, and that has worked well because Argentinians certainly don´t believe in sleeping at night. Last night I went to a great classical concert, violins and piano, offered free as part of the city´s Semana Santa (Easter) programming. Then we came back and made a delicious dinner, which I shared with a guy from Buenos Aires and a Japanese woman who has travelled extensively in Spain and Latin America. The woman from Japan was explaining how much harder Spanish is than Japanese, so now I want to learn Japanese......Tonight I have just lounged around down here and let various people get completely discouraged trying to teach me tango. I told them, before, that Canadians cannot dance tango, but they didn´t believe me. Ha! They are so funny. It´s now 4 a.m. and I can hear them, in the living room, saying "vamos a bailar?" (Shall we go out dancing?)

Well, what I really must do is go and sleep now. Or nap, anyways, for a few hours. Now that I have update everyone, I hope everyone updates me! Let me know what´s up, on that other side of the world where days are getting longer and warmer......

Valparaiso, mi amor

2006-02-25T10:14:00.000-08:00

So, in case anyone out there is feeling old, consider this: the star of the tango show at Cinzano, one of the popular night spots in Valparaiso, is Carmencita, seen at left: her exact age is hard to tell, but I'd venture....78?

The other musicians are not much younger. They sing these crazy tangos, including one called "Valparaiso, my amor," and crazy people like us get up and dance. Below, that's me at 3 a.m.

after way too much rum and coke and wine, dancing "tango" with Carlos, Luise's architect-friend who guided us through the labyrinthine walkways of Valparaiso in the middle of the night.

I have a picture of Luise and Carlos where you can actually see Carlos (to say nothing of Luise), but sadly this computer has refused to upload any more pictures, so this will have to suffice. Carlos is quite the character. He has this amazing job right now, renovating a huge old house at the top of one of the hills here, which is being turned into a gazillion star hotel: marble and blue-tile bathrooms as large as some apartments, and stunning views down over the port.

This city has become an architect's dream since being named a UNESCO World Heritage site a couple of years ago - everything is being transformed before our eyes....mind you, just across the hill from the gazillion star-hotel-to-be, there are houses, where people actually live, which are little more than shacks, apparently ready to slide at any moment down the crumbling slopes.

Anyways, there is no question but that there would be lots to write about here, which is another reason that it's an attractive place for me to live.

So, that being said, I had better get going. Luise is only here for a few more days, and as someone who has lived here for a total of four years on and off, her expertise is invaluable! We will head off to the market today, to find some more of the fantastic goat cheese that she has ben feeding me - and that, wonder of wonders, I can actually eat without problem!

Trying to find a city I can live in

2006-02-25T09:35:00.000-08:00

Here is the view that I am looking out at right now, from Luise's absolutely lovely apartment in Valparaiso. Sadly, she has just rented this apartment. If she hadn't been able to rent it long term I might well have taken it - it costs all of $400 Canadian a month.

The problem is, I have not as yet entirely figured out what city I will live in or where I will work. For the last three weeks, I have zigzagged madly between here and Santiago, applying for jobs in both places. After a particularly hellish week in Santiago, whenI collapsed from smog inhalation and did a job interview while in something aproaching toxic shock, I decided that Santiago was really not for me, and it was time to concentrate on the crazy but fascinating place, Valparaiso.

Valparaiso is the most amazing labyrinth of houses, with elevators, stairs and walkways to take you up down and around the five or so downtown hills - if you are lucky enought to find your way....It's been designated a UNESCO world heritage site because of the extraordinary variety of architecture and murals, and the sheer originality of the streetscapes. Apparently, according to Luise's architect friend Carlos, there are more architects per square foot in Valparaiso than anywhere else in Chile.

It's a bit hectic getting around - especially since stray dogs are more or less in charge here, and leave their lovely offerings everywhere....but despite that it is worth it. I was originally scared to live here because I was told horror stories about violent muggings here, but since then everyone has told me that there is not particularly much more crime here than anywhere else, it's just important to take the same precautions you would anywhere. And there was in any case a horrible crime recently in ("safe, clean") Santiago, where a man had two fingers cut off by thieves who were disappointed that he had no money and couldn't get his rings off....

So. Here I am. Looking around. On the next page, a little more about the quite fascinating nightlife in Valparaiso, that Luise and Carlos introduced me to last night.

some cool lava pictures

2006-02-05T19:06:00.000-08:00

These are from Pucon, but couldn´t get them to go properly into my earlier email...

On the left are some people walking along the lip of the volcano, where the old lava has accumulated, on the right is the lava jumping up from inside the hole it lives in....

That first bulletin, for the record

2006-02-05T07:49:00.000-08:00

Wed, Jan 26, 2005

Hi all! It's quarter to ten in the eco-touristy town of Pucon, Southern Chile, and the last light is just fading from the sky. I climbed the volcano here today, watched the lava spouting out of the top, and looked down over misty miles of lakes, valleys, and more volcanos....

Far though I am from Canada, I nonetheless stayed up till 3 a.m. reading election results the night before last (and thus failed to climb the volcano yesterday, when I was supposed to). I am now spending a certain amount of time wondering what the hell is going to happen next. Seems like we have elected a Rubik's cube of a government....I think I may have picked a decent year to run away! Still, an interesting period ahead and great that Dewar and Chow are in (it's so much easier to be philosophical from afar).

I've spent so much time here in Pucon that I'm starting to call this lovely hostel where I'm staying "The Hotel California" (you know, where you can check in any time you want, but you can never leave....). It's funny, because it's actually partly run by Californians - "far out" can sometimes be heard along the corridors....it has an ecological mission, and is run by a group which includes Chileans, Americans (Californians) and Canadians. I met one of the California owners the other day over late breakfast, the day after the Canadian election, and he told me about this new hostel in Santiago that they have just bought and will be working on.....might be something I could get involved with.

All in all, the "pure holiday" portion of this trip has been great. Buenos Aires you have heard about from my blog. Punta del Este was a fantastic, beautiful beach resort with excellent Italian food (including some opera singing after one meal). Bariloche was.....well, there were SOME troubles in Bariloche, including getting there.

First, I took this 25 hour bus there, which was really quite comfortable - except for the absolutely awful American films they played, with the sound piped out into the whole bus, so there was no way of escaping them. Then, in the morning, they played this really heavy British film about an amateur abortionist (Vera Drake). What were they trying to do to us? I spoke with this Swiss couple today, who said that on their long bus trip in Argentina they played a horror movie featuring Paris Hilton being attacked by the living dead....

However - the truth is that cheap, comfortable bus travel is the key to this whole continent. You can get anywhere on a bus, and all you have to do is bring ear plugs or put up with the bad cultural taste of the conductors.

Then in Bariloche....well, being in the mountains in the South (their North), it was COLD, and our shower flooded into our bedroom, and one night the electricity didn't work at all.....kind of rough going.

But nonetheless we had fun, went for beautiful mountain hikes, bought Patagonian fleeces and chocolates to keep away the cold. I was finally forced to speak Spanish by my travelling companions Oriana (from Chile) and Denis (from the Spanish speakers group in Ottawa), which was good. I also escaped from Spanish (which is hard) by going hiking in the rain, with what turned out to be a Commonwealth gang: South Africa, Australia, Canada.......I started feeling sorry for myself for not being 22 like most of them, but then stayed up until 2 in the morning drinking beer and playing this hilarious card game called Asshole, and felt like a 22 year old, so it was alright.

From there, we went to the even colder town of San Martin.....but in the daytime sun it was gorgeous. I took a bicycle with me on a boat ride across the lake, then took this "easy, 12 km" cycle back into town: it was 18 km, 8 of them straight uphill, under a burning sun. I felt very heroic when I got back, and we had a lovely dinner of locally-caught trout, and toasted our trip and the recent election of Michelle Bachelet in Chile....

Having failed to book early enough to get tickets on the standard bus across the border to Chile, we took this really crazy six hour trip along gravel roads, then on a boat across a lake, then on gravel roads again....I've heard since that this is a highly recommended back-packer trip, a real deal (it certainly was cheap) - but at the time the bus was empty, and it seemed a little bit crazy to spend 6 hours going about 150 km...

We ended up in this tiny town called Panguipulli (who knows what that might mean, in what language) where Denis and Oriana "abandoned" me at the bus station. I was On My Own, and Panguipuilli turned out to be a really lousy place to start out on my own. It was poor, run-down, and for some reason the cab ride to my hostel was going to cost nearly twice as much as the stay itself....so I settled for a closer hostel, where my door turned out not to have anything that I could lock at night....so I went next door to a place called Genesis, which I suspect was run by fundamentalists, but at least the door locked.

I had a nicer time in Valdivia, historic port town with Spanish fortifications, where guides in period uniforms fill you with imperial Spanish propaganda....I may be wrong, but I believe one of the most interesting things about Valdivia, and this whole Southern lakes region that I'm in, is that the native Mapuches successfully fought off the Spanish for three centuries. They may have founded that fort in the 1600s, but from what I understand they more or less had to shut themselves in there until about 1880....

Anyways, Valdivia was also a little run-down and weird. A woman started chatting to me on the street, and it soon turned out that she was very strange. She told me that she didn't like Chileans at all, in fact she didn't like South Americans at all, and she spoke a secret language that no one else understood....I encouraged her to travel, and perhaps meet other people who speak her secret language.

Finally, I came here, to Pucon, about three hours from Valdivia. It's so nice. "It's really touristy," people say. Yah! That means I've met all sorts of great people from all over the world, and because it's eco-touristy as opposed to just plain couch-potato touristy, they tend to be nice people. On the very first day I met this very nice German woman, Katja, who has hiked through deserts in Namibia and such....thanks to her expertise we were able to avoid high-priced excursions and just head out to a very lovely national park an hour or so from here. A tough hike, mostly uphill, but absolutely lovely. They have these crazy and fascinating trees here, called Monkey-puzzle trees (Auraucanias, I believe, is their more scientific name). They are huge, many of them are thousands of years old, and they look a bit like they are made up of green monkey tails, which is perhaps where their name comes from.

Then after some assorted loafing I finally climbed the volcano - it's pretty well compulsory here. Oh yes and I spent quite a bit of time on the black sand beach, with turquoise waters facing the ancient wrinkled faces of the old volcanos....It's been really something, all in all.

So, tomorrow I finally leave for Santa Cruz, in wine country about two hours South of Santiago, where I will stay with Oriana for a few days. I might take some private Spanish classes there. As I've mentioned to some of you already, Spanish is driving me crazy! Well, for one thing, in places like Pucon, you are just as likely to encounter Hebrew, German, or English as Spanish (there are a lot of Israeli tourists here, and this is a German-founded area with a strong German clientele). For another thing, there is a kind of plateau that I feel stuck on. I can deal with hotels, restaurants, etc, but when I try to actually converse in Spanish it's awful. Truly, I typically feel mortified for an entire day after I attempt to participate in a Spanish conversation. I just inevitably end up saying incredibly stupid, banal things in a last ditch attempt to say something, anything. Hence, desire to get a few private lessons under my belt.

I'm going to be out of electronic contact for a few days now, since Oriana's place does not have email, and it's pretty far from anywhere that does. So apologies for any unanswered emails in the next little while.

My itinerary after Santa Cruz, i.e. towards the end of the month, will be maybe up to Santiago, definitely up to Valparaiso. At that point, I will be starting to look for work. I am shifting gears into that mode.

One very exciting thing is that Donna Smiley has decided, in a bold and brilliant move, to cancel her ticket to Central American and come down here instead, so I will see her soon after the end of the month, I think!

I hope everyone is well!!! Please write and let me know how you are doing! I love hearing from you! And please forgive me if you have written and I didn't manage to write back! I am trying.....

Also - I had to cull this list hugely to get it to work, so if you happen to run into someone who complains they haven't heard from me, please pass this on! And, Spy, I believe you may be my only colleague who will receive this, can you please pass it on??

Take care, xo from faraway Chile,

Janet

Here in Santiago

2006-02-05T06:59:00.000-08:00

Here in Santiago, I am having a really fine time. And, because of the encouraging comments (and helpful factual additions!) from blog-watchers, I´m going to tell you about it! In any case, I now live in terror of spiders, so perhaps it´s better not to go outside.....it is, by the way, the Rincon (which means corner, like as in lurking there) spider which I´d been warned about, though that brown one doesn´t sound so nice either...

Anyways, Santiago has surprised me. I set off walking across the downtown at about 8:30 the evening I arrived, to find my friend Donna´s hotel. Of course, it got dark while I was finding my way there, and I got a little nervous. But the plazas and the main street were all very well lit and full of happily wandering people - and extremely helpful policement - so I really wasn´t worried at all, in the end.

I rounded one corner and suddenly I was in front of a huge white palace, fronted by fountains, and guarded by white-clad policemen....pretty impressive. That´s La Moneda, which was both the seat of government and the home of the president untill it was bombed in the 1973 coup. The street it lets onto, the almighty Alameda, is reminiscent of the Champs Elysee - very wide, well-lit, lined with some lovely architecture - and a gazillion shops.

There is in fact a great deal of French architecture in this city, because that was considered very fashionable at the time the city really boomed, in the late 1800s.

My friend Donna turned out to be staying in this lovely if somewhat run-down hotel on Londres street, in an old district right downtown that has cobblestone streets and gorgeous 19th century architecture. When I realized that she was paying the same for a single room there as I was for my rotten dorm bed at the Hostelling International, I defected! I pleaded severe allergies, I still don´t know if they are going to refund me.

On Friday I took the two-hour bus to Valparaiso and had an interview with a language school. It was a pretty interesting interview. First, I talked with the American director, Allan, who I had been corresponding with from Canada. He was very friendly, and said that despite my lack of teaching experience maybe I could handle one of the courses they teach at the Congress Library, which has very well-defined curriculum and materials. (Valparaiso, rather than Santiago, is where the Congress sits, since Pinochet times). But then I spoke with Ingrid, who is in charge of the program, and she rejected that possibility out of hand because of my lack of experience. In fact, she seemed prepared to reject my entire application out of hand, so I started babbling about being from Ottawa, which is the seat of government, and working in social policy, therefore being very familiar with the sort of vocabulary which could be useful for government workers.....and she decided that well, maybe it would be possible for me to tutor some of the new Congress members! So, I´m excited about that possibility, remote though it is. It wouldn´t be until mid- late March, because the Congress comes in March 11.

So, what I´m going to do when I finish this post is start researching and contacting other schools in both Valparaiso and Santiago. From my brief time in Valparaiso on Friday, I was less excited about it than I expected to be - and, conversely, I´m much more excited about Santiago than I expected. I met people here at a great Brazilian music show the other day, they all gave me their emails and told me to get in touch....I met this guy in Pucon who will be creating a hostel here....I met this very nice guy on the bus, who lives here and in fact invited me to stay there if I like.....

I´m off to see a documentary about Salvado Allende this evening at the Casa en el Aire, where I went last night with Donna to hear some more music, this time Chilean folk music, very nice (though there was other fold music down the street that was kinda whinny). Plan to go up to Valparaiso with Donna, and all my stuff this time, to stay for a few days, find some more schools, see if I like it better this time....

Over and out for now.

Santa Cruz, por verdad

2006-01-31T07:29:00.000-08:00

So, here I am in Santa Cruz. I am attempting to get ready to find work. I bought a pair of nice sandals today, and later in the day I am going to get my hair cut by a hairdresser recommended by Oriana.

I have also proven to myself that I do, actually, have a work ethic. Yesterday I helped Oriana sand and varnish the outside windows of her house. It took about five hours, from four until nightfall some time after nine. Her friend Francisco was accusing her of being a slave driver, but I actually enjoyed doing something productive, it´s been a while!

Oriana´s house is just like something out of an Isabelle Allende novel. It´s a big house on a huge gated terrain, fronted by exuberantly growing flowers. In the back there is a clothesline always hung with clothes, and a beautiful big pool with a little waterfall, full of floating toys. There are also bees in one corner of the pool, because Oriana´s uncle is temporarily keeping his five large boxes of bees in the back yard. This uncle enthusiastically told me all about organic bee-keeping the other day, but it was in Spanish so all I know is that most honey in Chile is not organic, and organic honey is more expensive, which is not surprising.

Oriana and her mother are constantly inviting people to either stay or live at the house (both accuse one another of being the one who does this), with the result that it is full to bursting. Right now Oriana´s brother, her friend Francisco, and her uncle (not the one who keeps bees - another one) also live there. Francisco´s young daughter, and a young cousin, are visiting. Oriana´s brother´s toddler son Simon is also visiting, and his mother was as well but I believe she has left now. Last night Oriana´s aunt and her three children were staying there. There is also a large dog. And the other day, Simon came back happily from a family excursion with a new puppy....Oh and there are the ants. They are small, and harmless, but within hours they had gotten inside the plastic covering on these little chocolate volcanos that I brought from Pucon, and transformed them into anthills...

Extending up behind the back yard are golden coloured hills speckled with dark, low-lying bushes. I foolishly allowed Francisco´s kids to convince me to go for a walk up this hill, and of course there was no stopping Simon from coming along. This walk ended up involving climbing over a number of small barbed-wire fences. Obviously, it occured to me to refuse, but these kids were so bored of sitting inside watching tv, so eager to explore....so there I was, lifting little Simon over the barbed wire into the arms of the older boy, wondering if I was going to get sued by his parents, far from home and legal help....I was also worried that at least one of us was going to get bitten by a small Chilean spider which is apparently deadly if you happen to be sensitive to it.

Luckily no one was bitten and no one said a thing when we returned all tired out a few hours later. In fact they were very proud to hear that little Simon had bravely and effortlessly climbed the whole hill with his older friends. I´ve noted that parents have a slightly different attitude here, in Chile as well as Argentina. They don´t seem to be quite so protective of their children, they let them explore a little more. One side-effect of that is that children seem less afraid of strangers, and they often run around doing things that alarm the foreign tourists.

Anyways, today I came into Santa Cruz on my own. I am entirely failing to do the touristy wine-tour thing here, and that´s ok with me. Actually, wine seems to be having a little bit of a tough time here lately. I have so far tried to buy two bottles of wine from this region for Oriana and her family, but both have been judged to be overly strong and acidic....even one that had been recommended by them! I figure I will take the suggestion of Israeli tourists I met in Pucon, and take the cheaper sportier wine tour option offered up in Mendoza, Argentina: you can rent a mountain bike, get a map, and go around the vineyards just paying a nominal fee to get into each of them. And I hate to say this, but so far the Argentinian wine has been way better than the Chilean, so good that I, who often react badly to wine, found myself obliged to drink it almost every day for a while....

Well, enough of this for now.

A slack day in Santa Cruz

2006-01-31T07:09:00.000-08:00

Well, it´s been put to me that I should just continue this blog as text-only until I find that magical blend of time and technology necessary to actually ad pictures. I tend to agree, because there is so much stashed in my head right now, that if I don´t clear some of it out, there will be no more space. And that´s a drag, because I´m heading for Santiago tomorrow, and it sounds like quite a place.

Inside Santiago there is apparently a whole "eco-area" which was originally donated to peasants as part of an early, lame "land reform" effort. The soil is pretty bad, apparently, but nonetheless a bunch of nature enthusiasts have cultivated large gardens and built houses here, and live in a sort of rural enclave within the city, without sidewalks and other usual city amenities....

The weirdest thing about Santiago, from my reading of the newspapers in Santa Cruz, is the presence of General Pinochet. There were pictures on the front page of the papers yesterday, showing the ex-dictator emerging from a church where he just celebrated his 63rd wedding anniversay. And I think - how can this be possible? How many marriages did this man destroy by killing, or permanently maiming, one of the partners? How can it be that he gets to celebrate his anniversay, but is not considered fit to stand trial?

The Pinochet family in fact takes up a great deal of space in the papers daily, because so many of them are involved in some form of scandal (generally to do with appropriating large sums of money), and they also like to blame and otherwise badmouthe one another publicly.....what a bunch! At least some of them are, apparently, being brought to justice.

The city also has a whole bunch of Allende-tribute things, including bookstores and an art gallery....but enough pamphleteering about a city I haven´t even seen yet! I´m going to have to start a whole new page for Santa Cruz, because this entry turned out not to be about Santa Cruz at all.

La Boca, Buenos Aires

2006-01-02T13:20:00.000-08:00

Well, I´m actually in Uruguay now, at Punta del Este, where the beaches are lovely. I´ve fortified myself with a "tuna" sandwich (which turned out to be ham), from a place that offers "pan Canadiense" (Canadian bread), which turned out to be hamburger buns.

So, I am going to take time to continue with my little Buenos Aires travelogue. It was pretty overwhelming while I was there, so now that I do nothing but hang around on the beach all day I´m happy to be able to reflect on it.

Thanks, by the way, to Susan and Dave for posting commments! I love comments.

So, above is a couple demonstrating a classic tango dance for us in La Boca, one of the oldest districts of BA. It´s a very strange place, actually. Since it´s down by the ports, the air is kind of stinky. Outside of a very limited area, it's considered dangerous, especially after dark. So we just stayed in the "La Caminata", which is really a theme park dedicated to tango. There are four or five streets full of murals and papier-mache figures (see below), people playing violin and accordion, people demonstrating tango, people hawking tango-related wares.

The story of tango, from what we gathered, is that it was invented in Buenos Aires by lonely sailors/settlers from Europe some time late in the 19th century, and was at first considered very vulgar and lower class. Then someone somehow brought it to Paris, and it caught on as a huge international trend. The "golden years" of tango in the early 20th century featured stunningly dressed couples dancing ever more complicated ballroom tangos....

If any ballroom dancers (Dave Taylor?) know better, please comment!

Sadly, I was too exhausted to go out to the evening of real live legitimate tango the next night. It´s still very much alive in the city, there are lots of places where people just go out to dance. Tango music keeps developing in all sorts of different directions. Trying to buy ¨some tango music¨is not a simple task. In fact, according to Federico, a friendly BAer who showed us around a few days later, a nasty conflict errupted a few years ago between followers of two different kinds of tango. He says people would walk out of the room/cab/store etc of people who they discovered to be followers of the OTHER tango.

Day 3 - dead people

2006-01-02T12:24:00.000-08:00

This was day three in Buenos Aires: turista destination, Recolleta cemetary. It was kind of funny, because we came in on the commuter train from the suburbs to do our tourism, just like as if we were going to work.

The heat was still feeling very, well, hot to me. We wandered around this amazing cemetary for some time, gazing at the elaborate monuments to the cream of BA society.

The first photo on the left is of Kate communing with her brother in law's ancestor, Father Fahy. The second is of Kate helping a young British couple find their way to Evita's monument - which really isn't anything to write home about, I don't have a picture of it for that reason. The final one is a really lovely monument for a poet - we didn't see a lot of poets in there, mostly professional and military leaders, presidents of the nation, and, with sometimes even bigger monuments, presidents of the Jockey club. Horses and horse riding are big here, as you might imagine. It's interesting that practically all the monuments outside the cemetary feature people on horseback, whereas I don't think any inside do. Maybe there is a rule about that.

Jean and Laura commented that neither of them had ever been to the Recolleta cemetary, even though they live in Buenos Aires. "There are a lot of dead people in Buenos Aires," said Jean, cryptically.

Christmas Day by the poolside

2006-01-02T11:26:00.000-08:00

And here is the international development intelligentsia, by the poolside on Christmas day.

The couple on the left are Laura and Jean, who hosted us in their nearby apartment for the next several days. Both originally from BA, they worked with Kate in Honduras. Margarita, seen lounging in the red swimsuit, and her husband Kike, seen in Tutunkamun-like towel wrap, were also visiting from Honduras.

Pleasant though it looks, this was actually a bit of a culture shock for me.

We had just celebrated Christmas eve in Magdelena, a lovely, unpretentious place about two hours outside of Buenos Aires and way off any tourist map. We stayed in a small house bursting with carved creations and family momentos. Our hosts, Kate's friends Juanjo, and Anna, and Juanjo's sister and parents, welcomed us warmly, tolerated my terrible Spanish, and plied us with food and wine. At midnight we toasted the new year with champagne and went outside to watch the kids setting off firecrackers in the streets (Christmas eve is more like New Year's eve here, really). Juanjo's parents came in and danced a little impromptu tango, and the festivities continued with more sweets and wine. Then they all started feeling very sorry for me, fighting this awful cold, so Juanjo's sister Julia, who is a nurse, went to get her stethoscope to listen to my chest. She concluded that my lungs were a mess and so proceeded to teach me a bunch of breathing exercises, which everyone then encouraged me to practice at the dinner table....

I don't have any pictures of that evening but Kate does, so I will hopefully ad some in later.

That setting was pretty different from this palacial home with its manicured lawn and pool. After a brief Spanglish conversation with Laura's brother, who runs the family beef ranch and demonstrated on his bare chest the places where the different cuts of meat are from, I gave up trying to understand the speedy Spanish banter and fell asleep in the sun.

Pampering from the portenos

2006-01-02T11:15:00.000-08:00

Here is Kate (on the right, for those who don't know Kate), lounging in the very mod waiting room of a trendy hair salon we went to on our first fill day in BA. They gave her a good haircut, but I'm not so happy with mine. Because I was in fashionable Buenos Aires, I decided to let the guy thin my hair, which he thought would be fabulous, but personally I think it just looks and feels scrawny. I can't wait for all those poor little stubs of hair in there to grow back properly.

A pointy monument

2006-01-02T10:55:00.000-08:00

This is the Obelisko, which was right across from the cafe where I had breakfast, also at about 7:30 a.m.

I'm not sure why exactly I was compelled to take this picture, and I'm also not sure why the city felt compelled to put up this monument. Two people from here that I asked said they also had no idea, except that other big cities, like Washington, had obelisks, so probably BA felt that it had to keep up.

Apparently, on World Aids Day, activists covered the obelisk with a giant condom. Kate asked if the condom broke - apparently it didn't, which is quite a feat, because that's a pointy monument.

Early morning in Buenos Aires

2006-01-02T10:35:00.000-08:00

Ave Carlos Pelligrini, a few blocks from our hotel, at 7:30 in the morning. An hour earlier, when I went out for tea, small groups of young Argentinians were weaving their way home from clubs and bars, cheerfully exchanging insults with the street people. There are lots of those, collapsed in the cool shadow of the Banco Ciudad.

By this time, the city has taken on a more businesslike air, with people striding to work and others out washing the streets. And I'm feeling a little better, having had a pineapple juice spiked with a herbal mixture I got from a naturopath in Toronto, and a very pure lemonade (when I ordered jugo de limon, they brought me a small glass of pure fresh squeezed juice).

Here in Buenos Aires

2005-12-28T14:42:00.000-08:00

Well, I made it to Buenos Aires. This was my very first view of the South American continent: the foothills of the Andes, approaching Santiago, from my wing-side window. Pretty haunting.

At that point, the only exchange I had had the Japanese-Argentinian man sitting beside me was:

"frio?"
"si, mucho!"

We both froze to death all night on Air Canada. In the morning, the stewardess saw me huddled miserably by the window, so she gave me another blanket. By the time I took this picture I was starting to come back to life.

The driver who took me in to the Gran Hotel in Buenos Aires suggested turning on the air conditioner in the car, but I said "no, no!." It was so wonderful to feel the warm humid air as we zoomed down wide avenues lined with tall cypresses.

I met up with Kate at the Gran Hotel, a small art deco place a few blocks from the Obelisko, which is the central monument of their grand Avenue 9 de Julio. We wandered around buying cheap Latin music and stopping for coffee, which in BA always comes with some little treat - in this case, a chocolate. Then we went to a locutorio, an incredibly cheap internet and phone place (about 1 cent a minute), and when I got up from emailing my parents I nearly passed out. So we headed back to the hotel, for the beginning of a long struggle with a very nasty cold . Of course, I passed it on to Kate within the day, and the only consolation was that I had an entire pharmacy with me to deal with it.

I won't write anymore now because my next photos need to be rotated, and because we are getting ready to go out to dinner (very unfashionably early for BA, at 9 pm).

Not quite there yet

2005-12-09T12:48:00.000-08:00

I haven't actually left yet, but I have managed, finally, to upload all my pictures from my summer vacation! Here are some of my travelling companions, on a very windy cliff in Cape Breton.