This Southern Cali City Slicker is off to Chile: 2011

May 9, 2011

Bugs, beer and sunsets

I AM NOT YELLING….WELL, MAYBE I AM…A NEW WAITER AT AN INTERNET CAFÉ IN CHILE SPILLED COFFEE ON MY MAC AND NOW THE KEYBORAD IS LOCKED ON CAPS!

MY VIGOROUS SPRINT HAS GAINED SPEED TOWARD THE END AND IS ABOUT TO FINISH AT A GREAT PACE WITH A GOLD MEDAL!

THE NIGHT WASN’T PARTICULARLY DARK….I WOULDN’T CALL IT DARK CHOCOLATE. IT WAS MORE OF A MILKY WAY NIGHT. THE NIGHT’S HUMIDITY FORCED ITSELF ON OUR BROWS AND UPPER LIPS. WE WERE ABOUT 3 FEET AWAY FROM A CROCODILE ON THE AMAZON RIVER; EVIDENCE OF ITS LAST FEAST WAS A SPINE OF A PORCUPINE BULGING OUT OF ITS HEAD. THE CAPTAIN OF THE MOTORIZED BOAT TRIED TO FIRE THE ENGINE WHEN HE DECIDED HE HAD, HAD ENOUGH OF OUR SILENT ASTONISHED STARES. THERE WAS NO RESPONSE…..THOUGHTS OF BECOMING A MEAL CROSSED MY MIND. AND SURPRISINGLY ENOUGH I THOUGHT ABOUT HOW I COULD GET THE BEST STEVE IRWIN ACCENT TO NARRATE THE SITUATION WE FOUND OURSELVES IN.

THE BOAT FINALLY ROSE FROM ITS SILENCE WITH A KIND OF ARROGANT CONFIDENCE THAT SAID, “HA, AND YOU THOUGHT I WASN’T GOING TO START!” THIS WAS THE SECOND PART OF THE TRIP AND LAURA AND I WERE IN PERU’S AMAZON. IT WAS 7:30PM AND AS WE WALKED THROUGH THE VARIETY OF AMAZONIAN COCKROACHES AND ANTS OUR SECRET THOUGHTS WHISPERED AT OUR SUBCONSCIOUS… “WE HATE BUGS! WHY WOULD WE CHOOSE TO COME HERE, WHERE THERE ARE MORE KINDS OF BUGS THAN YOU COULD HAVE EVER IMAGINED?” WE WERE IN THEIR HOME AND IF THEY WANTED TO SQUISH US THEY COULD HAVE! BUT, AS GOOD TOURISTS WE SLEPT WITH OUR MOSQUITO NETS AND SCANNED THE FLOOR FOR ANY CREEPY CRAWLIES….THERE WERE NO TERMINAL SITUATIONS…JUST THE COMMON COCKROACH JACKET CRAWL WHICH CAUSED A SYMPHONY OF SCREAMS THAT WOULD HAVE SENT AN ALARMING ALERT IF HEARD ON A CITY STREET. BUT EVENTUALLY WE GAVE INTO THE FACT THAT WE WOULD ALWAYS BE SWEATY AND THAT WE WOULD HAVE TO DEAL WITH AN OCCASIONAL SPIDER ON OUR JACKET, FRESH PIECES OF RAT POO IN OUR SHOWER AND PAPARAZZI OF MOSQUITOES FOLLOWING OUR EVERY STEP MAKING SURE WE HAD PLENTY OF ITCHY SOUVENIRS TO TAKE HOME WITH US!

YOU LET YOUR GUARD DOWN FOR ONE MINUTE AND YOU FIND YOURSELF SHARING A BEER ON A CLIFF WATCHING THE SUN SET SLOWLY WITH A PERUVIAN DREAD HEAD VAGABOND.
I FIRST SAW HIM WHEN I WAS WALKING THE BOARDWALK IN MIRAFLOERES, A DISTRICT IN LIMA. HE ASKED ME IF I KNEW THE TIME AND SINCE I HAVE NO WATCH, I SAID, “NO.” THEN HE ASKED WHERE I WAS FROM. I GAVE HIM ONE LOOK OVER, MUMBLED, “ESTADOS UNIDOS” AND HURRIED PAST. HE DIDN’T LOOK LIKE ALL THE OTHER PEOPLE IN THEIR PRESSED WORK SLACKS, RUNNING BY WITH THEIR PURE BRED DOGS. HE HAD A MESS OF DREDS, BARE AND STREET DIRTY FEET AND A CURIOUS DEMEANOR. SO, I THREW HIM IN THE TROUBLE BUCKET AND KEPT WALKING. A FEW MINUTES LATER THE SPOT I WAS LOOKING FOR ON THE GRASS APPEARED AND I LAYED DOWN AND STARTED TO READ MY BOOK. THE SUN WAS OUT AND THE BEACH BELOW WAS SMILING. I EVENTUALLY FELL ASLEEP DUE TO ALL THE CONTRIBUTING FACTORS: A SLIGHT HANGOVER, A COMPLETED LUNCH 20 MINUTES PRIOR, AND THE SUN BLANKET THAT KEPT ME AT JUST THE RIGHT TEMPERATURE.

(I wrote the second part after my computer was fixed, hence the normal typing)

I awoke and squinted my eyes open to see “what time is it?” guy playing on the jungle gym right in front of me. I thought, “oh great, he followed me!” So, I pretended to be sleeping, but kept my eyes slightly open so I could watch what he was doing. He made his way closer and closer and I began to get nervous, so I thought the best thing to do would be to let him know I was awake in case he was thinking he would initiate an unsuspecting attack. I shuffled around just in time for him to walk up to me and once again ask me what time it was. “Hello, you already asked me this,” I thought, and “I don’t know!” I now thought either he was delirious or really didn’t recognize me. At this point my innate danger receptors where starting to beep a little louder. I had two options, one, get up and excuse myself or two, calm down and talk to him. In a rare attempt to live life on the edge I decided to play it out for a while and talk to him. Well, he did most of the talking.
It turns out he was of Peruvian descent, but since he was about 22 years old he has been fulfilling his dream to make it to every country in South America, almost a decade later he has one more country to visit, Brazil. He had finished his university with an underwhelming feeling that drove him to realize that humans are not made to work in cubicles for 8 hours a day; they weren’t even made to live in the same place for more than a few months. Humans, in his view are innately nomadic and if you are not practicing this, you are basically killing the human spirit. He tried to talk me into getting one dread and while I excitedly pondered the idea of doing something a bit wild for me, I declined.

There I was sitting on a cliff watching the sunset in the next town after walking along the beach listening to his strange yet refreshing outlook on life. And my mind was walking away on the water we were starring at. It was my last day of my 3.5 month travels and I thought about why I was going back and for what? Why couldn’t I be like him, a street juggler, he made just enough money for food, hostel and an occasional beer? He would catch rides with cars willing to pick him up. He spent weeks laying on the beaches of South America without a care in the world. But as my thoughts came crashing back to my physical body I realized that he is an odd pin in a haystack of society that has passed his simplistic hope for how humans interact and live. And although, his life did seem wonderfully blissful and stress free, he was lonely as I would be. I do want to lay on the beach for weeks, but I would trade the weeks in for a week if it meant I would have my friends by my side. I would trade in not going to work every day if it meant I would get to come home to a family that I loved and loved me back. Why do I and most of society feel this way? Has our culture changed so much that in order to move forward our human nature is changing? What would happen if you told us we couldn’t go into work anymore? Would we really know what to do with ourselves? Would we turn straight to the beach and lay there in an effortless calm or would we bite our nails with anxiety because our innate nature has changed?

Anyway, I ended up back home and now the southern hemisphere seems like a distant dream from a week ago. Leave it to travel and new people to make us question what and who and why we are? Pondering these questions gives you a little breath in this fast paced life, so take one every once in awhile!

Cusco

Lima at Love Park

On the Inca Trail hike to Machu Pichu

Do I need to tell you where this is?

Since this post, I have fixed my Mac and I am back to working 5 days a week! haha.

Hasta otro tiempo,

Yenny

February 22, 2011

The Chilean Strike

My first run in Punta Arenas provided a microscopic view into what a strike looks like here. A little background first: The governmental powers that be had decided to raise the gas prices in the Magellan’s region by 20%. This clearly did not go over well with the citizens of this region. All the taxi’s, collectivos (a service like a taxi, but you share the ride with others that are going in the same direction as you are…much cheaper than a taxi), businesses etc. decided to go on a strike indefinitely. This meant that they closed the entrance/exit to the city so that supplies couldn’t get in and people here couldn’t get out to catch their flights. For us this meant the grocery stores were closed along with any hope of traveling outside of the city on the weekends.

So, as I struggled to keep up with Lee and Emily, my attention was caught from either one of two things: the smog I just inhaled or the sounds of horns held down by heavy hands of resistance from the men and women who decided to challenge the decisions made by the leaders they elected to represent their interests. Black trash bags flew by tied on the antennas of cars marking their participation in the strike. As we continued on our route we came across the reminiscence of last night’s protest. An ashy black line of burned tires was part of the collection of images we passed. Toward the final lap of our journey we were greeted by a group of protesters by the ship yard. They encouraged us with arms raised in the air and shouts hoisted from their diaphragm to run through the gap they parted for us and cheered as if we were the first to understand their cause!

Chilean Propaganda

After all the work the Chileans put in, the gas raise was significantly decreased. A successful strike is like winning an argument with someone who you dislike. You put in so much force behind your fuel not only because you know you are right, but also because you can´t stand to see the other person win. And when you win, it´s such a prideful and eventful win with no mixed emotions as to the validity of your fight. But it seems like it will be a continuous struggle as we all know too well gas prices never stay the same for too long.

Pinera, as you are an entrepreneur, sell us to Argentina and do us a favor.

Check out this news story
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/01/18/punta-arenas-chile-strike_n_810277.html

Hasta otro tiempo

Yenny

January 10, 2011

We were ready for bed

But when Sofia arrived at the train station to pick us up at midnight she had other things in mind! It was 2 days after Christmas and 3 of us girls decided to take the week we had off of work to explore another part of Chile. We flew into Santiago and took a 1.5 hour bus ride from there to Vina Del Mar. Sofia was a friend of Chelsea, one of the girls I went with, and had invited us to stay in her apartment.

She popped out of the car with a cigarette in her right hand and a smile that turned our tired expressions into an energy that we were saving for another day. She proceeded to say, in Spanish of course, “tell me you want to go out! “ We momentarily looked at each other stunned and then all looked at her and shook our heads yes eagerly.

Let’s not forget that it was midnight on a Monday night. But here in Chile the bars stay open until 5am, so what else do you do when you are in a foreign country but live like the people who live there! We returned to her house around 4:30 am and I finally went to sleep. Every night after that pretty much went the same.

My eyes opened with difficulty and my head slowly pounded the next morning, but once I had some toast and a lot of water I was ready to discover the city. Vina del Mar means winery by the sea. Because it’s only about 30 minutes away from one of Chile’s wine regions. The day was overcast but warm enough to slip on some shorts and pull over a Tshirt. The bathing suits and sunscreen were naively left behind like orphans. We headed to the beach and found a nice spot on the sand to sit. Sitting turned into deep hangover sleep. We awoke to a pack of stray dogs laying in front of us and the burning sun laughing at our carelessness. He was right to laugh for we had committed a crime of negligent sleeping.

As the fog cleared from our sleepy heads we made for the boardwalk that was lined with a ribbon of arts and craft merchants selling everything from jewelry that stains your fingers black to wallets made in god know where? But one of the best things I did that whole trip was walk over to the food stand and buy a churro. It wasn’t just any kind of Churro, it was the most devilishly delicious piece of warm dough stuffed with dulce de lechce and drenched in so much chocolate that when the lady took it out of the display case it dripped all over the glass. I was in chocolate churro heaven.

One of the days we visited the neighboring city called Valapario. It was less affluent than Vina, but what it lacked in wealth it made up for with its rich culture. Valapariso was the home to Pablo Neruda the famous poet and is the home to many Chileans. The multi-colored homes are coarsely painted on a steep hill that overlooks the sea. Valapariso was like reading a Dr, Suisse book. Like every page of the book, every street would have a new predicament. If not visible at the moment, suspicion whispered it once there. On each corner there was another art or music school or a cozy café to stop and have a reflective cup of coffee. The viewpoints casted views of immaculately polished houses alongside tarnished neighborhoods The blemished neighborhoods seemed to have survived a catastrophic earthquake the year earlier, but had not been rebuilt. I was able to see into the backside of a house. It provided me with a peephole to imagine how the family lived, how they gathered for meals, and how they cried when they suffered. It was a special place with so many stories to uncover and to create. Unfortunately we only had one day and all we read was the introduction.

If you told me that I would be trying to keep pace with a grandma running to catch a glimpse of the fireworks at 11:50 pm on New Years Eve, I would not have believed you. But it is true. Sofia had invited her family over for New Years Eve. We had decorated with balloons and streamers earlier that day. Sofia had gone out many times throughout the day, each time returning with another party favor for the evening. We were instructed to make an appetizer for the event and we chose to make good old fashion garlic bread. It was a hit by the way! It is common that during this holiday everyone who is able to spends New Years Eve with his or her family all the way until midnight and then if you are up for it you go out. But going out is by no means saved for the young. At 1am there were many older adults standing in line to get into bars. A stroke of guilt overcame me on this day because from the time I was able to I went to hangout with my friends and left my parental to fend for herself on New Years Eve. I mean it’s not just me; many Americans would rather hang out with their friends then celebrate it with immediate family. It is very strange and somewhat sad how family in the U.S. is so much more separated than in other cultures.

Anyways, as I ran behind Sofia’s grandma there was such an excitement in the air. It could have been all the people running in the same direction in the streets, it could have been that it was about to be a fresh new year of possibilities, or it could have just been the tequila sunrise I was holding in my left hand! Whatever it was, I made time pause for a quick second so I could take a mental note of the energy.

Happy New Year!

Why does staying up until the next morning feel like such an accomplishment? It’s a battle you fight with your mind and body I guess. We had 8am bragging rights and where quite proud of it. But would pay for our lack of sleep later. We rose at noon on New Years day to a fog of gloomy goodbyes. Our flight out of Santiago was at 6:20pm. So, we decided to have a quick lunch and then catch a taxi to the bus station to get on our 1.5 hour bus ride to Santiago. In a rush to find a taxi we ran out of Sofia’s apartment to the main street. Many cars passed, but no taxi’s! We started walking in the direction of the bus station hoping that one would pass. When none passed we surrendered to our fate of walking the rest of the way. Of course when we arrived all the buses that we needed where sold out. We were able to get tickets for the 4pm bus. That was really cutting it close, but what else could we do but hope that we would make it. We ran into the Santiago airport at 6pm sweating and distressed. Emily had bitten off all the nails on one hand. I went up to the LAN airlines lady handed her my flight number and she gave a look to another guy and he looked up and said, “Esta cerado” which means, it’s closed. NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO.

We were put on standby for the next flight at 1:10am. That meant we had to entertain ourselves in the airport for 6 hours and we couldn’t go through security check since we were on standby. Somehow we found an all you can eat buffet. We decided to occupy a booth for as long as possible and that way whenever we got hungry we would have something to eat from the buffet! It was a great idea until 3 hours in they closed the buffet. Functioning on our reserve energy we decided to find a nice quiet place to sleep. It was quiet, it was dark, but it was on the ceramic floor. But that didn’t matter to 3 sleep deprived girls. We all collapsed onto our out stretched beach towels, now serving an imperative cause, and fell soundly asleep!