South America Part V

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(Note: I am writing this the night before I leave for my fourth trip to South America. The stories and pictures are from other trips to South America between June of 2000 and July of 2004. The pictures are from old old digital cameras and aren't my best, but they go along with the stories.)

A few days before I left for South America on my first trip, now almost six years ago, I visited my dentist. My teeth were fine, but he handed me a few extra toothbrushes. "Take these on your trip," he told me, "Maybe you can trade them for blankets or something."

The comment was tongue-and-cheek, but the truth was, I had no idea what to expect from South America. Like my dentist, South America was for me something imagined out of magazines, newspaper articles and Discovery channel documentaries. It was a place where small women with bad teeth pose for the pages of National Geographic, a historical sidenote about dictatorships in the Southern Cone, a place where women in coconut bras and reed skirts dance to the Samba. This "idea" of this South America appealed to me. I wanted to see South America as something different, something in contrast to life back at home. In short, I wanted an adventure.


Sometimes South America was as Crazy As I Hoped
I have experienced more of South America then I could have ever imagined. Sometimes, the South America I discovered was even more strange, more exotic, and more exciting then the one I had read about: My second night in Buenos Aires I went to a bar alone and watched the local team, Boca Juniors, win the South American championship. As I walked out of the bar I asked a store owner in broken Spanish "Donde esta la fiesta." I was directed about 10 blocks away to the Obelisco, a Washington-monument like structure in the center of Buenos Aires, where over 20,000 had turned a celebration into a full scale riot.

That night was a precursor for some other truly singular experiences - often combining North American pop culture with pure South American debauchery. I have been in a mosh pit in the front row to see Red Hot Chilli Peppers in the Estadio de Chile, celebrated my 21st birthday by playing Kings with Tequila in a hostel in Mendoza, was hired with my other American friends to pass out "Ring Tone" fliers at an A-Teens concert, been kicked out of a VIP room when my good friend threw up all over a table where some Chilean TV stars had been sitting, and arrived at a wedding at 2 AM (Yes, AM) to see a bunch of yuppie Chileans dancing to Olivia Newton-John and John Travolta's rendition of "Summer Nights."

I have traveled, and seen some of the craziest landscapes on earth - Titicaca, a lake the size of a sea in the middle of the Andes, the million stars of the night sky in the Atacama desert, trees grown sideways from the wind in the Patagonian South, and the ruins of Machu Pichu. I have lived in Buenos Aires, which is every bit as elegant and sophisticated as any European capital, and been to Rio de Janeiro, a violent and overcrowded city of 14 million, set against one of the most beautiful beaches in the world.

Princeton connections and a little luck have led to some amazing academic and professional opportunities - I worked for a pension company in Buenos Aires and was put in a posh hotel 8 weeks without knowing Spanish, spent six months at a law firm in Chile referred to as "la reunion de la oligarchia" (the boardroom of the oligarchy), had coffee at La Moneda with the Chilean President's chief political advisor, done a televised studio interview with the Chilean equivalent of Good Morning America, and interviewed the former Finance Minister for my senior thesis.


But it was Also a Place Where I Lived
These stories are fun to tell, but they are only half of my experience. A less exciting, but perhaps more meaningful side to my time was about making friends and actually living in another country. I'll never forget what so many people have done for me. In my first trip to Argentina, my boss Victor and his wife Andrea took me to soccer games, invited me to asados at their house and even took me on a weekend trip to Salta in northern Argentina, where we went on a sceneic train ride called "Tren de los Nubes" ("Train of the Clouds").

On my second trip I had a homestay. My "brother" Ricardo and "sister" Maria Jose showed me the city, mostly by night, and their 8 year old red head sister was the first Chilean girl who stole my heart. An American friend of mine joined ski patrol at a resort outside Santiago, and wound up making friends with a guy named Rodrigo, who would later let me stay at his house for a month on my next trip to Chile. I became close friends with many of the paralegals and young attorneys at the law firm I worked for, and consider some of them among my best friends anywhere.

These friendships led to my best moments in Chile: spending Christmas at the house of my friend Juan Ignacio with over 30 of his 84 cousins, Rodrigo inviting me to his sister's wedding, going to the beach with Francisco, or with Mayelli and Cat to Algaroba, or with Christina and Mike to Zappallar, Gavin and Pierre and I heading to La Serena for Easter, Pedro, who we called "El Loco" ("The Crazy One"), and Maria Ignacia, who would never think twice of telling me that my tie was ugly (but who was also the first to compliment if she liked my shirt), Oscar, who we nicknamed the Grinch because he made Juan Ignacio work after the office Christmas party, Ricardo, who frequently accused me of having Rick Astley as my favorite singer, and Carmen Maria, who is not only as blonde and German as any full-blooded Bavarian, but also one of the sweetest girls I know.

My trips to South America have been marked mostly by highs, but there were also some serious lows. My third and last trip to Chile, I had severe problems with asthma, and later wound up getting food poisoning and spending three days in the hospital. I have had breakups, fights with friends, and periods during study abroad where I had simply way too much work. I have lived with winters with no heating, and spent 3 hours a day on overcrowded, noisy buses.

Sometimes, South America was never like leaving home. On my second trip to Chile I lived with Mike, one of my roommates at Princeton. We had a furnished apartment in one of the nicest areas of town, had cable and cable internet, and even a maid to come clean, cook and do our laundry one day a week. The total bill was about $450 per person per month. Right around the corner was Bennigans, where the crew of locals would have been worthy of its own "Cheers" sitcom. On Sundays in the fall we would head over to our friend Rob's place to watch the NFL ticket on satellite. Usually we ordered Dominos Pizza and drank Budweiser.

In those days we could go to the best restaurant in Santiago, order appetizers, wine, an entree and desert, and come out with a $15 dollar a person tab. We met a Brazilian-German former investment banker who owned a nice sushi restaurant, and would bring us his test dishes or a free bottle of wine when we came. On Wednesdays we went to Casa en el Aire, where they had story-telling. At least once a week we went to happy hour at Liguria, a bar and Santiago institution.

At other times, my experience was decidedly South American. Jon Goldberg and I spent a week volunteering in the north with habitat for humanity, and learned what life was like for families in a small fishing villiage. Matt Rubach and I backpacked in La Paz and Lake Titicaca, where $1 could get you a bed and a meal, and were rowed across a bay in Isla del Sol by two young Bolivian boys whom we paid 50 cents. I had friends who took me to watch soccer at The Bombonera in Buenos Airea, home of Boca Juniors, which , true to the saying actually shakes when the fans jump up and down. I had the best steak in the world in Argentina, and even wolfed down some of the blood sausage that were part of the standard asado. I celebrated the Chilean and Argentine independence holidays, and visited the villiage of Vicuna, birthplace of Nobel Poet Gabriella Mistral. I was forced to learn the words to the "quintessential" Latin America song about leaving home, Nino Bravo's "Un Beso y una Flor" and I came to appreciate Pisco, a liquor somewhat similar to brandy that is sold with Coke in Chile was "Piscola."

The Fifth Trip
Four trips and eighteen months later, South America is a very real place to me. As I head back for the fifth time, South America is no longer I place that I see as a contrast to my life back in the States. South America is part of my life here in the States. I check up on Latin American news, I talk online with my friends, and in many ways, South America completely changed the way I see the world. For sure, there are some things down there that you won't see up North, but its also a place where I lived for a year and a half, where I had a job, made some life-long friends, and had some memorable experiences that would have been similar to the experiences of someone living in Chicago or in Ann Arbor.

My trip is about both of these aspects of my time in Latin America. I will be returning to Santiago and Buenos Aires for 10 days to meet up with old friends. Then for eight weeks its on to new adventures in Brazil. I decided to do this journal so I can share with you all some of the places I have been in the past, and keep a good record of my new adventure in Brazil.

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Photos

El Golf
Our Neighborhood!

Comments

[Peggy]

Loved this

[anonymous]

This is so much more than a travel blog, it is a window to a place most of us will never see- and a window into the heart of the person who wrote it. a colorful slice of life- I want to read more!

[VJ]

Wonderful
I learned more about your trips in one evening than I did talking to you. I throughly enjoyed this. Since I will no longer be taking any large travel trips--well, Thanks.