Chilly in Chile - Valpo

---

10,000 Feet Up

We boarded a bus in Mendoza, Argentina to Santiago, Chile early in the morning on Sunday. We took the higher end Cato bus, but I did not feel like it was high end. We were in the kids’ section in the rear, a group of English backpackers behind us and a young South American couple who insisted on playing songs from their cell phone for everyone to hear. I had to ask him to turn it down. Also, the bus steward (think a bus version of a flight attendant) was totally rude. But, the noise and disruptions were offset by some of the most beautiful scenery we have seen on a bus ride. The bus curved through the dry desert mountains of western Argentina as we made our way closer to the Andes. I have never seen greenery like I did as we came closer to the border. The mountains turned from a rust color to a harsh grey color, like a shale or slate. As a result, the green bushes and grasses turned to a blue green color, like they had soaked in the color of the mountains. As we wound through the desert the Andes started to loom in the distance and they became larger and more snow covered as we approached. Then, the bus stopped.

We pulled into a parking lot of the Argentinean National Guard not far from the border. No announcement was made, although even if it did I would not be able to understand it. My Spanish comprehension was useless because the speaker system did not work too well and everything the driver said came out like he was one of Charlie Brown’s parents in Peanuts. After a few minutes, the guy sitting in front of us left his seat and went downstairs. On one side of the bus it seemed they were unloading a few bags and on the other side it seemed like we were having mechanical problems. I have learned on this trip that some things are universal. One of them involves men and mechanical problems. As one of the bus employees scooted under the bus to do some work, some other employees “helped” by standing around watching him. The guy sitting in front of us also stood down there, in the wicked wind, just watching the work being done. We have seen this everywhere. If one man is working on a car, a crowd of men always gathers to watch, I guess to make themselves feel more manly. We were stopped there for one hour before continuing on our route.

As we inched even closer to the border it started to seem real cold outside. The snow that was once in the distance on the peaks of the mountains now reached almost to the road. It was the closest Eric and I have been to snow since leaving Chicago in January, and I was not liking it one bit. I wore some Capri pants and sandals with a fleece and a light scarf. I realized quickly that was insufficient for the border crossing in the Andes. When we reached the border, we stayed in the bus for a bit and then we all filed out to check out of the Argentine side of immigration. It was cold outside, but at least immigration was inside. Our entire bus load of people waited on one line for Argentina, and then another line to get into Chile. I read that Chile charged an entrance fee of $100 for US citizens but nothing for residents of the European Union. Eric was trying to do a quick swap, checking out of Argentina on his US passport and checking into Chile on his Irish passport so that we could avoid paying the extra $100. He was a little anxious to see if they would notice his pristine Irish passport without a stamp in it. It was even more important for us because we wanted Eric to use his Irish passport for Brazil since he did not get a visa (again saving $125 and additional hassle). After we made it through immigration, we still had one piece of paper to get rid of but we were told to head back to the bus. We re-boarded the bus for all of about 5 minutes and then we were asked to get off the bus with all of our carryon baggage. We still needed to get through customs.

Now, we have walked across the border between Cambodia and Vietnam, and we took a bus from Malaysia to Singapore and back again. We have driven from the US to both Canada and Mexico. Those experiences were relatively easy, even getting into Vietnam. This was the most disorganized customs experience. I thought that waiting in multiple lines to get through the two countries’ immigration counters was disorganized, with one line mixing into another with no significant signage in English or Spanish, but customs was another story. Because so many buses go through, each bus waits its turn to enter the large customs room. While the bus before us was going through their proceedings, we waited outside, in the Andes, at 10,000 feet, with snow at the edge of the road, and I was wearing sandals. I probably would have paid $10 for a single pair of socks at that point. I am surprised some enterprising kid has not started selling socks and gloves there. I wished my socks were not in the bottom of my bag in the bottom of the bus. What made the wait even worse was that it did not seem like anything was going on inside of the customs room. Then, suddenly there was movement inside.

Finally it was our turn. We were all asked to stand in rows, holding our white customs forms in hand while one guy gave us instructions to ensure the forms were filled out right. He then went to each person to ask them questions and take their form. They randomly chose carry-on bags and luggage to search. One guy had a carving of a horse head mounted on a piece of wood. It is apparently forbidden to carry wood carvings across the border. Chile is very protective of its borders and ensures no one brings in food, fruit, animal matter, etc. I have seen similar restrictions on islands, but with Chile I was surprised. I think they are so protective because they have a strong produce export industry. I guess the Andes form enough of a border to keep out all sorts of bugs and insects from Argentina that can destroy their produce. I understand their concerns but I wanted to volunteer as an efficiency expert to help this process along. After several random checks, they ran all the luggage down a conveyor belt and through an xray machine, and finally, we were able to walk past the conveyor belt with our carry-on bags, so we could run them through the machine, before finally getting back on the bus. The total process at the border took over two hours. I was a Popsicle with a headache probably induced by altitude. When we boarded the bus the air conditioning was needlessly on. I sat on my feet the next hours to warm them up.

One the other side of the border the scenery was even more remarkable, with greener land than in Argentina. The road was steep and it took a while to curve our way down from the Andes, but we were finally on our way. We arrived in Santiago a little more than 3 hours later than planned. The bus company estimated a six hour journey between Mendoza and Santiago. Even without the bus break down, there is no way that a bus can ever make that journey in six hours. They should know better. Our goal was to continue to Valparaiso, another 1 ½ hours west, but it was almost 8pm, we were exhausted, and the thought of getting on another bus stresses us both out. So, we stayed in Santiago for a night at an old “residencia.”

The Residencia Londres was in the center of Santiago at the intersection of Londres and Paris in a neighborhood we referred to as Wee Britain. Just off the main road and the hustle and bustle of Santiago was a winding street that could have been in London or Paris. It was quaint and charming, as was our residencia, a conglomeration of old residences, with creaky floors, high ceilings, and ancient furniture. I told Eric I was convinced it was haunted. We walked through long hallways and salons to reach our room. Everything was decorated with furniture at least seventy years old. Everything creaked and I felt like I could feel the history of the place. We grabbed hotdogs for dinner, and I slept pretty well considering my fears of the otherworld. In the morning, I saw out of the corner of my eye an old lady with bright red hair and a cape sipping tea in the salon. I was heading into the bathroom and when I exited the bathroom she was gone. I asked Eric if he saw her too, or was it just my imagination, or a ghost. He confirmed she existed, but I was still happy to leave the creaky old Chilean mansion in Wee Britain.

The City on the Hill

It was a short and sweet bus ride to Valparaiso. When we arrived, we boarded a city bus for a ten minute ride to the more historical part of town. We exited at a Shell station, as per the instructions of the hostel, and we walked up the hill. Oh boy was it a hill. I would have been out of breath by the time I reached the top even if I wasn’t lugging my back pack up there. The hike up the hill was not enough to distract me from the scenery of the historic neighborhood we were staying in. Our initial thought of Valpo was how dirty it was. Not only was there litter strewn along every street, but garbage bins on the streets were overflowing with garbage. We read that Valpo’s neighboring city, Vina del Mar, provided a clean break from dirty Valpo, but this was ridiculous. Once again, I wondered why we ever left Mendoza in the first place.

Valpo reminded us in some respects of San Francisco, a port city built on the hills, with gorgeous old architecture. Many of the buildings have fallen into disrepair, but there is a conscious effort underway to restore much of it, with many owners continuing to paint the houses gorgeous bright colors of orange, green, and pink. Apparently, historically, Valpo and San Francisco had similarities, not only as port cities with large immigrant populations, but also cities devastated by earthquake and fire in 1906. All I saw firsthand were the hills. My legs certainly got a workout while in Valpo, constantly going up and down the hills. The city has a series of escalators or funiculars to get up the hills, but we only came across one in our walks and it was indefinitely closed for repairs.

We learned that Chile was in an election season. We saw posters and banners all over the city. And, these were not just small lawn signs like in the US, these were giant posters with pictures of the candidates, some of them with the president of Chile showing her support. Because of the election, there were rallies and protests on a regular basis both in Santiago and in Valpo. In Valpo, the protest took the form of a garbage strike. At least that explained the over flowing garbage cans. A few days later, just before dusk, we heard the garbage trucks coming by. I guessed that the strike was over. I won’t say that after that the city was clean, there were just no piles of garbage bags on the street. They really needed to hire some street cleaners like we saw in Hanoi at dawn to really clean the city.

After being to several South American cities at this point, I began to really believe in the “broken windows” theory that I read about years ago, I don’t know where. It may have been in one of Rudy Guiliani’s books talking about cleaning up crime ridden New York. Basically, as soon as a neighborhood, or a city, starts to look dirty, with trash on the street, graffiti springs up, and next thing you know some punk believes it is okay to break some windows on the street. When no one stops them from doing that, then petty crimes turn into theft, drugs, and murder. It is a slippery slope they say. Rudy started with banning the window washers that assaulted cars on their way out of the tunnels and off the bridges. Visitors to the city were immediately bombarded by people begging for money in a not so un-violent New Yorker kind of way. I bring this up because of the differences in the cities we were in during our visit to Argentina and Chile. In Buenos Aires, the first thing I saw on the ride from the airport were window washers on the streets trying to make money during the change of lights. Buenos Aires was generally filthy, and not just because we were comparing it to Japan. It did not make me feel safe. We never brought out our good, expensive camera, only our point and shoot. Cordoba was cleaner than Buenos Aires and I therefore realized I felt somewhat safer. Mendoza was pristine, I felt safe at all times, and I loved it. Our stay in Santiago was brief, but long enough to ride the subway a few times, which was clean, well maintained, and reminded me of the Paris subway, with each station having its own unique character and some with beautiful paintings, murals, and art work. I definitely felt safer there than in Buenos Aires. Showing up in Valpo with garbage piled up, graffiti on the buildings, and having a general dirty and rough and tumble feel that comes from a historic port city, complete with abandoned buildings, I did not feel as safe. We did not venture far from our neighborhood at night. I can only anticipate what I will feel when we arrive in the future host of the Olympics - Rio - at the end of the month.

Pisco Sours and the Soundtrack to My Life

I posted on Facebook after we arrived Valpo a request for suggestions on what to do in Chile. The only response I got from people was drink pisco sours. Pisco is a Chilean brandy that is most popularly served with sour mix. It tastes like a sweet margarita. We tried our first as a baby size pisco sour with a set lunch. Then, I wanted to go to a bar called Cinzano, which Lonely Planet described as “drinkers, sailors, crooners, and lovers having been coming to this famous Valpo nightspot since 1896. Its walls are covered in photos of sinking ships.” Considering that Valpo is a historical seaport, in my mind I expected the bar from the Airplane! movie complete with the girl scout fight and the stabbed sailor. In reality, it was an old bar, with much brighter lighting that the bar in the movie. There was a person playing guitar just after lunch when we arrived (there was not a jukebox playing “Staying Alive”) but he was playing cheesy 70s classic rock including Dust in the Wind, which seemed to be as popular in Chile as Hotel California in Southeast Asia. I ordered my pisco sour. I noticed immediately that there was no way to drink a pisco sour without getting your hands sticky, unless you held the glass with a napkin. It was fine, sweet, but I will not be running out to my local liquor store for pisco upon my return to the States.

Speaking of cheesy music, one of the things I loved the most about Valpo, and Chile in general, was the music. There appeared to be only one radio station, which played at our hostel and almost every bar and restaurant we went to. It became a soundtrack played in the background of the city because when we left a restaurant listening to a song, inevitably a car would drive by with its windows rolled down, and they would be listening to the same song. I would move to Valpo solely for the music - it was all 80s all the time. I heard every kind of cheesy 80s song from Chicago to Til Tuesday to Journey to Air Supply. I loved it. I just wanted to sit at the kitchen table at the hostel and sing along to my favorite songs. It reminded me a little bit of karaoke in Osaka. It was like they were playing every 80s song I want for my iPod. Loved it.

One other note: In Asia, it was blatantly obvious that we did not speak the language and few people tried expecting us to understand. It felt nice in both Argentina and Chile for people to greet me assuming I spoke Spanish. I think with my dark hair I could have passed for someone with Spanish ancestors. Eric, on the other hand, still stuck out like a sore thumb. His blond hair meant that several people in Chile took his picture and at least a few times people called him a gringo as he walked by. I think he will only fit in when we visit countries like Ireland, Germany, and the Netherlands. I am convinced.

Wine, the Coast, and Pablo Neruda

We booked a day tour from the hostel to get out into the country a bit, and out of the garbage filled city. Our first stop was our first Chilean winery, William Cole. First, the weather that day was gorgeous. I wanted to do nothing more than sit in the middle of the vineyards and soak in the sun. Instead, we did the tour. This was the first tour we went on that actually took us out into the vineyards to see the vines first hand and to receive an explanation of why they grow certain vines specific ways and how they irrigate. It was a nice private tour - just Eric and I and an older Canadian couple. We had a lovely tasting of three wines, with some crackers and cheese. We tried a carmenere, which is a red wine produced from a grape grown in the south of Chile, and a chardonnay. The last was our favorite; a Sauvignon Blanc marketed under the name Alto Vuelo - crisp, cool, and delicious. It was a lovely start to the day.

After our wine tour we went to Isla Negra, which despite its name is neither an island nor black. Instead it was once a sleepy little coast town where not much happened until a poet built a house there in the 1950s. Pablo Neruda was Chile’s most celebrated and provocative poet. He was also a fairly radical leftist and at one point he left the country in exile, returned to run for president, and earned a Nobel prize. He died of cancer around the time of the coup placing Pinochet into power. His will left all of his belongings to the people of Chile, including his three houses. One of his three, and apparently, the most eccentric, was in Isla Negra. It’s the only reason that Isla Negra is a larger town now - it all turns around the Neruda business (including a vacant lot titled “Neruda Parking”). Our tour included a stop at the house, at an extra charge. We skipped it. We don’t really do museums. It was a beautiful day and we chose to view the house from the outside, to take a walk on the beach, and enjoy the day. I think we may have offended our tour guide, though, who warned us that if we ever became fans of Neruda’s poetry we would regret not seeing his house. I did not want to get into the specifics with our guide, but neither Eric nor I have ever been fans of any poetry, let alone provocative political Spanish poetry. Those chances were slim.

We then drove north to Quintay, a tiny fishing village. It is definitely off the tourist track, enough that when we wanted to return for a few days stay we could not find a hostel or anyone to rent us a room. The tour included a stop in Quintay because it is one of the favorite places of the guide. He is against further development of the village, whereas his business partner and the owner of the hostel we were staying at was trying to get us, a French couple, and probably anyone else who would listen to open a hostel there. It has a handful of seafood restaurants and some tiny homes set into the hills (and one large home, apparently owned by a politician). It was lovely. Quintay was, historically, a whaling village. A large whaling factory was placed on its shores and remains there today as a museum to the whaling industry. I have always been a huge fan of whales, back from my days of whale watching trips to Cape Cod in high school. I am glad I went to see the building because it was educational, but I felt like I was walking through a whale graveyard. There were plenty of pictures showing how they would pull them up to the coast, inflate balloons inside them to keep them afloat, drag them by a crane up the ramp, plop them on the platform at the top. and slice them open. Sad times for the giant whales.

After the village, we walked through a privately owned forest. The owner has been making money by logging, and the forest was littered with tree stumps. I felt that after visiting a whale cemetery I was continuing my tour to a tree cemetery. It appeared that the owner was trying to plant new trees, at least. We continued our walk through the forest to get to the coast. We ended up on a cliff overlooking a deserted rocky beach. We climbed down the dunes and out onto the rocks. It was stunning. I considered myself lucky in that we have seen similar scenery in Bali, Ireland, and Hawaii. Regardless, I never get used to the sight of the waves crashing on the rocks, and the feel of the mist as it blows off the water. It was a perfect end to the day.

---

Photos

The View of the Andes
On the Chilean side, once we were back on the bus.

Boehemian Valpo
Everything was painted with a mural, unless it was graffiti.

Bungy From a Crane
Over the water in nearby Vina Del Mar - Not enough money in the world to get me up on that platform.

Pisco Sour at Cinzano
I am surprised I could pry my sticky fingers from the glass.

Baby Grapes
See the little guys, still a few years away from producing drinkable grapes.

Beach at Isla Negra
Almost completely gorgeous - someone needs to get rid of those two nasty high rises in the background.

Isla Negra
The wildflowers were brilliantly beautiful.

Whale Cemetry
One of the photo displays. Poor thing.

On the Deserted Beach
Near Quintay - not really a swim-able beach