Getting out of Cusco was dead easy.

I had a coffee at the place I’d been to before, where they greeted me and remembered again that I didn’t have sugar with the coffee.

I had passed a very old woman who was sitting on the steps selling lollies and nuts lots of times, and had eventually, bought some.

Thereafter, whenever I passed she would give me a smile. On the way to the square below, where I was going to be Ubered up, I bought some more, giving her the change, and asked if I could take her pic. I was in several minds about the morality of doing it, but I did anyway.

Life must be so hard when you get old, and widowed (I assume from the wedding ring), having to sit on the step from 8 am until dark, living on the kindness of strangers.

I called up the Uber, and got the message

Jesus is Coming…

Crikey I thought, what is this? Friday 13th…the Rapture will strike as we are up in the air…this…is…it boys and girls…

but realised that that was the driver’s name..and he really…was…coming.

It’s a bit curious that we don’t use that as a given name in the Anglo-Saxon world. There are lots of Jesús-Marias around here, as there are Mohameds, Siddharthas and Krishnas elsewhere.

We, Jesús (pronounced Haysoos) and I, had a good chat on the way, (they really do speak more slowly), and reached the little airport in double quick time. Apparently the space for an airport is limited so it can’t get any bigger. There was noone in front of me at the security, so I was warming a seat for two hours before takeoff. I bet that if I was running late the queues would stretch to infinity and I would have to run to squeeze in just before the doors were slammed shut.

The flight was painless, just 1 hour, and soon I was back in Lima, the skies were cloudy, the temp around 20 and the traffic hideous.

I was pleased to find that exertion, in this sea-level moist environment, was no longer prone to bringing on a gasping attack.

On Saturday I went to the Plaza Mayor (I discovered that the Plaza de Armas title had been changed a a few years ago…it now means The Main Square). There I witnessed the aftermath of a high society, I guess, wedding in the cathedral, or at least a smaller holy space next to it. There was a band all limbered up, and a heap of rubber-neckers outside the door, and when the happy couple emerged, with all the guests, the band started up,

and the whole entourage danced on the forecourt…

It was quite joyous. I suspect that the handkerchiefs they are waving are somehow connected with the cueca dance from Chile…that courting dance based on the behaviour of chooks.

Then the principals got into the longest car I’ve ever seen…

and the whole show hit the road.

On Saturday evening I went down to Miraflores, the pleasure hub by the sea. In the big park there crowds of people everywhere, stalls selling jewellery, paintings, stuff, lots of music. It certainly left Atkinson park in the shade!

There is a sunken space with amphitheaterlike steps surrounding it, and there was a big crowd. Here’s what was happening…

How splendid to see the old codger bopping away.

You might remember the story of the cats in this park…how the shire workers feed them. It would seem from this pic that the poor little gatitos were still on the hunt…

We have seagulls and pigeons…they have cats.

Flew back to Santiago, back to Nestor’s place for a night. Went up to the La Terraza, to visit Jose Pepe one last time, but it was locked up as were lots of other places in that area, because of fears of demos. Quite a lot of water cannon cop equipment around…

Later called in to visit the friendly guy, Claudio, at the sourdough bread shop and spent a couple of hours chatting, in English with him.

It was great watching him dealing with customers. Every one of them greeted me, sitting as I was in the armchairs, and he greeted lots by name. When they left all gave me a smile and a Ciao.

He had been a designer, eventually teaching at a uni, but got massively browned off by unengaged texting pop tart students, and when a friend asked him to manage the shop he jumped at it, 6 years ago.

Flight home long…12 hours, leaving at 1am, to Auckland, wait a bit, 3 hours to Sydney, wait a bit, an hour to Melbourne, wait 4 hours, 4 hours to Kerang on the train. Arrived at 10.30 pm. Slept well.

Well folks that’s it for a while. I enjoyed the two months greatly. I hope you enjoyed some of it too.

Take care

Adiós

T

The superstitious among us might feel that doing the 13th edition while dealing with a nail biting landing at a perilous, mountain-ringed airport, is tempting fate. As it turned out there were no problems landing in Cusco, just a bumpy one hour ride and vaguely unstable contact with the runway. But later on…

But earlier…my Uber ride to get to the Lima airport was a good one. The driver, whose features were very much like the ceramic head from last letter, was excellent to talk with. He spoke slowly (well, slower than Chileans anyway) and patiently rephrased questions when I gave the rabbit in the headlights look, which wasn’t all that often. I asked him if his forebears were Spanish, and he proudly said no! Peruvian! That explained his strong features, brown skin and black hair. Later when we were exchanging ages, as you do, it turned out that he was 64. I was amazed…I would have said 40. So I made my astonishment known by saying ‘La sangre de Atahualpa te mantiene joven!’ = ‘the blood of Atahualpa keeps you young’. He laughed uproariously.

Atahualpa was the king of the Incas who ruled Peru and surrounding areas until the Spaniards arrived and changed everything. Pizarro, the head of the conquistadores kidnapped the king, promising to set him free if he produced heaps of silver and gold, which he did, but then he, Pizarro, was convinced by others in his ‘team’ that they couldn’t let him go because he would rouse the thousands of warriors against them. So they had a sham trial, the priest in the group condemning the king to death on trumped up charges, but allowing him to be garrotted rather than burnt if he would become a Christian. He did and they did.

The Airbnb place here in Cusco is simple, but very clean, and looks out over one part of the city…

The flash is fireworks.

The main part of the city is flattish, but where I am is on the surrounding hills and requires a seriously steep climb getting up.

You may have noticed that I have started spelling the name of the town with an s, rather than a z. It seems that in the Peruvian language of the district, there is no z sound, so the mayor a few years back decreed that the spelling should be changed. The z was there because the Spaniards were the ones who did the naming, using local names, but writing them in Latin letters. I am a bit confused though because z and s in Spanish in South America have the same sound (why have both is a question for another time…maybe they were different in the past…) the point seems a bit pedantic.

The spelling of the name does have a bearing on the clothes that I brought for my short stay here. It seems that there is another town, further up in the Andes, also called Cuzco, but with a z. The weather app that I use recognises this, and so has been telling me that the max temps were going to be 10 this week, whereas in Cusco low 20s.

Cusco is 3.5 km above sea level, and one would expect it to be freezing, but no. The days are warm and the sun pretty intense.

Now for the disaster…

When I arrived it was mid afternoon on Tuesday, so I walked for a long time around the place, exploring the squares, the winding narrow lanes, but strangely got massively wearier as time went on. After a couple of hours my legs became leaden, I was gasping for breath, and I had developed a brain shattering headache. Yep…the dreaded altitude sickness had struck, even though my aerobic capacity must have been reasonable after the 7 flights of stairs that I strode up several times a day for 5 weeks in Santiago. So, a tour of the big archaeological sites that I had booked into for the next day, Wednesday, was not for me. The bright sun was murder.

Later that day, fed up with feeling sorry for myself, I took a walk down the steep streets to the Plaza de Armas. It was quite warm, the air cool, no breeze, and no real throngs of tourists that clog the linear pathways. I stopped for a coffee in a little place, run by a charming woman who sold me a latte (called a cafe con leche here) for around $2.50, which seems to be the going rate in run of the mill joints. It was splendid.

Once at the Plaza I watched for a while, as my head pounded out a rhythm on a drum, took a pic of the cathedral…

and started the trek back, passing some Inca period foundation stones…

The fit is amazing. There are YouTube videos that analyse them.

I got halfway up the slope, remembering how I used to stride up similarly precipitous paths in Valparaiso, but here had to stop to have a breather, gasping for oxygen, swaying as though drunk, and thoroughly shamed by a century old biddy with a load on her back, skipping over the cobbles with nary a wheeze. I spent the rest of the day on a bed of pain.

Later, after researching on the internet, I discovered that there was a medication which would ease the pain and aid the recovery. It’s called Soroche Pills. Soroche is the Peruvian word for altitude sickness. So I headed for the nearest pharmacy, explained my situation as best I could, and got the pills, here shown using Bolivian local word for the condition.

Checking the ingredients we see

1) aspirin,

2) Acetaminosalol (Wikipedia tells me that it is a combination of aspirin and paracetamol) and

3) caffeine.

It reminds me of the analgesic from 50 years ago…the Vincent’s APC or even BEX. So I paid $28 for something that promised really to lessen the headache.

The next day, Thursday, the pain was much less (see, BEX does make it better) but still the fatigue was there at least in the morning. Apparently there are coca leaves are on sale in markets, chewed for their stamina enrichment, and for dealing with Soroche, but I didn’t go there, preferring decades old products from laboratories to centuries old remedies from the wisdom of the locals. Hmm

The streets in the historical centre are narrow, and just one car wide…

…with lots of handicrafty shops, mostly selling the same thing…jewellery, ponchos, shawls, hats, stuff.

It’s all very tidy and well maintained, and according to one shop guy I spoke to, there is always good business happening. Tourism is the major industry here.

I did venture out at lunch time on Thursday, not so much worrying about the trip down as the return, to the Plaza de Armas. It was 10 minute downhill stroll, and I found a hip sort of restaurant, and had this…

a beautiful slice of trout with creamy caper sauce and Peruvian (this is where potatoes were first cultivated by the Incas) potatoes. Despite the fairly loud music and a waitress who hadn’t got onto the smiling unit of How to be a Waiter 101 yet, I really did enjoy the food. It was a pretty cool place, so maybe smiles were extra.

And the walk back, fortified by the first food I’d eaten for a day and a half, was ok: I was still doing a passable imitation of a steam train when I got there, but I didn’t even feel like stopping on the way. I suspect that my body has acclimatised. Hooray.

Next time I come to South America the plan has fantasised that I’ll give Chile the flick, find a school to extend the Spanish learning in Lima, and come to Cusco for a week or maybe just find a school in Cusco. There’s tons to see, excursions to excurse and food to enjoy.

Later in the afternoon I went to a barbershop to get the unruly locks shorn so as to look a little less like a bush pig in a fit. The chatty chica did a fine job, trimmed any errant hairs and shortened the beard all for $12.

The food, the accommodation, the haircuts are all affordable here. What’s there not to like, apart from the lack of oxygen!

So…Friday morning, the 13th, I get the flight back to Lima, stay a few days, fly back to Santiago de Chile and on to Australia, arriving home on the late train on Friday 20th.

I might rejoin the human race by Sunday…

Hasta luego a todos

T

On the second day here I walked to Miraflores, the coastal area that has masses of high rise apartments, restaurants, parks, Indian (that is Peruvian indigenous) art and jewellery stores and markets, and the usual pimples on the face of authenticity such as KFC and McDonalds. It’s a bit like a supersized Glenelg Beach or St Kilda. The walk took a bit over an hour from where I’m staying.

The beach is far below the road…

The Airbnb guy told me that the water is always cold, because of the current from the south, so swimming without a wetsuit is for the hardy or determined. There are a lot of people surfing in places.

There were some nice Gaudiesque touches along the top…

In one of the parks there is this sign…

It says ‘authorised zone for the feeding of cats’, but I guess you could of worked that out by yourself. Actually gato means cat, and gatito means something like pussy cat, or even kitten

The rest of the notice tells you to report any mistreatment or abandonment to the authorities.

The cats are street cats, and the shire workers have decided to take care of them in the park. There were a dozen or more there as I strode past.

For lunch I decided to be adventurous and try the famous Peruvian dish ceviche (pronounced se-beach-eh). It is raw fish, marinaded in lime juice, chilli, basil and served on sliced red onion with corn and sweet potato. The cafe was an open-at-the-sides, very basic place, and, without looking at the menu, I asked the spruiker chica, who also turned out to be the waiter, did they serve fish? She gave me the strangest look, and pointed to the name of the place, which had del mar in it…from the sea! Dur…what a dope.

So, out came the ceviche…

The marinading has the same effect as cooking, but leaves the fish beautifully tender. It was delicious, such a variety of flavours in the marinade, that leave the mouth tingling and fresh for hours. This cost about $8. There are apparently countless recipes for the dish, so I’ll be trying it again.

There is a great museum here, specialising in pre-Columbian, that is before 15th century, ceramics and gold and silver. It’s called the Larco museum, and lives in a viceroy’s residence from the colonial period. Outside there are cascades of bougainvillea tumbling down the white walls, and heaps of cliveas and potted crucifix orchids.

Inside it is cool and quiet and beautifully set out …

Ceramics are stunning

Walking in the street, quite often, you see faces such as these, strong, brown and with straight black hair.

There was quite a bit about human sacrifice (most religions seem to have the requirement of spilling blood in order to appease the vengeful god)…

There were jars for the collection of the blood, depicting the act…

The silver and gold things were stunning…here are nose…rings

and ear ornaments…

that leave the average pierced Goth of today at the starting gate!

The other big site in Lima is the Huaca Pucllana pronounced as Wukka Pookyana. It’s an ancient mud brick pyramid built and developed over 200 to 700 of the Common Era (formerly known as A.D.) by a couple of cultures that inhabited the area. They used irrigation from the river for agriculture and the sea for fish. The pyramid was used for assembly, administration, religious practices and burial.

The structure is made from sun dried mud bricks, millions of them laid in a bookshelf style…

Each brick is about 15 cm high. They are laid like this so as to be flexible when there are earthquakes. A triangular structure also assures the integrity of the structure…

Seen from above…

It was covered over and appeared as a hill in the middle of creeping suburban spread until the 1980s when archaeologists started digging, and there is still lots to do. The suburbs have been built over a considerable proportion of the original site.

It’s about 27m high.

Today, Tuesday 10 October, I fly to Cuzco, high in the mountains, for 3 nights. It’s about 3.4 km higher than coastal Lima, so the chances of getting altitude sickness are higher too.

Here’s the weather forecast…

…so I won’t be packing the shorts.

Apparently the airport is a bit hairy to land at and to take off from. Hmmm …should be interesting.

I notice on the administrator’s page of the blog, in the statistics section that there are visitors to the site from South Korea, China, Taiwan, Ireland. I would be very interested in knowing who you are, so feel free to leave a comment, or post something on the Messenger page ‘Texinturkey…or Chile’.

Next blog….Cuzco

Hasta luego

On the last morning in Santiago I had a few hours to fill in, so I trolled the CBD for a while, calling into the cathedral for a rest.

There was a rite of some sort going on, a few priestly types in full regalia sitting around that altar on which there was a monstrance. There was a small group of nuns doing the prayers and singing.

Their singing, amplified throughout the place, was unearthly…so pure and beautiful. I was going to video a bit, but a stern sign, and an even sterner invigilator suggested that that was not the best plan.

I then went to the favourite salmon place, La Terraza, for lunch. Usually I had been there around 2 when the place was crowded, but at the earlier time there weren’t many there. My favourite waiter greeted me with a big smile, and commented that I was earlier than usual, so I told him the whole enchilada on the school, going to Peru, etc. and we had a good conversation, all in Spanish, and most of the time I could, or thought I could, understand. Here he is…his name is José, he said….or Pepe. Which, I wondered?

I checked up to see what the deal was…how is José related to Pepe?

Well, José is Joseph, the putative father of JC. Now this, in Latin, is pater putativus, which is abbreviated to pp whenever that José is talked about. Now p in Spanish is pronounced pe as in petrol, so José is called Pepe as a nickname.

It’s waiters like he is who make you want to return to a place. The others did their job, but this guy shows a real joy in interacting with people. Once again, these experiences only happen after a while.

The flight to Lima on Thursday was largely effortless on my part: three and a half hours of slightly bumpy ride. My confidence in the airline was tested a little when the ‘your journey’ map on the screen showed this, for the whole trip…

Maybe reality had split into two, and there is another blog called ‘texintimbuktu’ being written as well. Which are you in? Which am I in? What is reality?

Being slightly fed up with the deal of having to go to a shop to get a new SIM card in every new country, I decided to get an esim, online. My phone is a 2020 model, and is compatible, so they’ve been around for a while. Maybe I’m just catching up with what everyone knows about already, but there’s nothing new there!

So…I downloaded the deal while still in Santiago, got everything set up, imagining that, when I landed in Lima, the phone would search the airwaves for the network I had chosen and Pepe would be your uncle.

Once I hit the tarmac I switched out of airline mode on the phone…it searched…and …searched…but

no signal was the outcome.

Bugger!

All my plans came to nought. No easy swanning through the airport, connected to the whole of Peru in an instant. The spectre of another trip to a shop, vaguely understanding the language but not the plethora of plans and options available, haunted me like the Sword of Damocockles. (mixed metaphors…so what!)

I went over the procedure for the setup once again later…tick this box, turn that on, select option A, press button B…and found that the data roaming box was still unticked.

With trembling finger I ticked it.

Searching, searching, came up, and…

suddenly…

the cosmic wheels of destiny clicked into place, and all was connected; in a flash the esim was working.

There is probably an alternate universe in which it still isn’t working, possibly in Timbuktu, but let’s not go there just now.

I don’t know if it would be cheaper to get a physical SIM here, but frankly I don’t care.

The Airbnb place is on the 35th floor of a modern apartment building. The bloke, Marc, is very welcoming and there is a large dog which is gradually starting to trust me.

Its misty mostly, but it rains only a few mm a year! A cold current in the ocean sweeps up from Antarctica and meets warmer air from the desert and mist forms. The city’s water comes from the Andes, but the glaciers are disappearing, and the nearly 12 million people here, some of them denying the reality of climate change I have no doubt, have something unpalatable on the horizon sometime in the future. The temperature is pretty constant,

but the humidity is high. An interesting situation. Lima is classed as a desert city, the Atacama desert is only a stone’s throw to the south.

The public transport system is a mess. There are several different bus companies and a limited metro…but no coordination of fares, separate cards for each. There are shared minibuses and taxis, but that’s a bit hard for me. Such a contrast to the situation in Santiago. There is Uber here and it is cheap enough if the feet are too sore to continue.

Food is definitely cheaper here. On Friday I had a splendid sanger and huge, excellent coffee for about $6.

In Santiago de Chile the pedestrian crossing is a sacred place, where even the rabid bus jockeys won’t cross while someone’s on it. No such niceties here. The white lines of the crossing seem to be there so that the vehicle will be able to be more accurate in taking you out.

There are main arterials are very crowded,

(The tall building on the left is where I’m staying)

but the smaller streets are serener.

There are lots of grand buildings in the historical centre, the cathedral being one of them in the Plaza de Armas.

It’s the third manifestation after the previous two, the first of which was built in the 16th century, were flattened by earthquakes. Pizarro, the guy who led the tiny band of conquistadors who conquered the Inca empire, is buried there.

Inside is pretty swish as you might imagine…

In front of a palace, on another side of the square, there was a band playing pretty wild music. I suppose that’s the reason they are behind bars…

I like this place.

That’s too much for today.

I’ll be going to Cuzco, high in the mountains, on Tuesday next week. It was the capital of the Inca empire until it, the empire, was crushed by Pizarro and the Conquistadors (there’s a name for a band) in the 16th century.

All the best,

Ciao Ciao as they say here too

T

Hi again.

One big activity for my last week in Santiago was to have a meal at a restaurant called Ocean Pacific’s Buque Madre. The third and fourth words translate as Mother Ship.

It is a nautically inspired place, considerably upmarket from my usual nosh joints…

The staff were very welcoming, and I plumbed for the Tuna. Strange that the Spanish word for tuna is an anagram of tuna, namely atún.

Soon enough it came, delivered by a robot that talked, and looked a bit like an office water cooler. A bit twee I thought, but why not?

The food looked challenging…

The outside was seared to a crisp layer…the inside was vaguely warm. I felt a bit like Gollum, but didn’t think of saying ‘my precious’.

Holding my preconceptions at bay I launched into it, or more correctly launched it into me. (It’s a bit like taking the train to Melbourne, even though it is the other way around!) it was delicious, so tender and tasty. The fish was languishing on a bed of stewed figs, and there was an Uluru of some yellow food-like substance whose name I ought to know. It was quite an experience.

I’ve been to a couple of concerts.

One was of a couple of Cantatas of Bach, done with period instruments (recorders, a theobo, viols, oboes, harpsichord, strings) and a ripper choir of twelve, four of whom were the soloists when their turn came. The music was excellent…so rarified and intellectual.

The second was a classical guitar recital by one of the staff members of the music department of the University of Chile. Lots of Latin American and Spanish pieces…tangos and other exciting genres…and some classical European works. It really is a different experience, being in the presence of the player, compared with listening to a cd. I’d forgotten a bit. The sensuality of the music, the phrases that lift you then resolve, the violence of the strummed chords, the virtuosity of the melody and accompaniment that would make you believe there were two instruments…all seem so much more potent when you see it being produced. I loved it.

The sourdough bread that I showed a pic of way back…here it is again.

has continued to be a favourite, and the guys in the shop have been fine with having a chat. One, called Claudio, has some English, so we alternated between languages for a while. They make all the bread themselves, it costs an arm and a leg, but wow…such an experience to eat. On my last day here I got some bread, and chatted lots with him. And he gave me a cake called Pan de Pascua, and is traditionally eaten at Christmas. I did ask him why a cake called bread of Easter is traditionally eaten at Christmas, and there was a reason. But the cake is available all year round.

So I shared the cake…that’s my half…

…with Nestor…

The cake is a spicy number with nuts ‘n’ that on top. Delicious. Nestor said that at closing time they give unsold bread to whoever wants it. ..for free.

It’s only after you’ve been in a place for a few weeks that such interactions happen. If you whip around for a hectic day or three of sight seeing, then leave, you miss out completely.

The trees are greening up a lot, so the look of the place is becoming much more appealing. The graffiti don’t seem as prominent, the traffic seems less maniacal, although the buses seem as kamikaze as ever, and random people in the street do share a grin or a buen día. It’s all about perception.

I voted in the referendum on Tuesday at the embassy here in Santiago. It was quite painless really. The staff were all on for a chat (I was the second voter and they had been open for over an hour, so I guess the boredom had begun early). There were two Australians and an Argentinian woman on duty. When I told them about my difficulty in understand Chileans they asked the Argentine how she got on with the Chilean mode of speaking. She replied that even she had problems. I felt a lot better then.

As an example of their characteristics…he hablado means I have spoken, but they swallow the ending, so it comes out, at warp speed and through largely immobile lips as heablao. The chica in the embassy did suggest that it would be much easier in Perú.

To get to the embassy I used the metro. It is amazing. In the morning rush hour there are trains every 2 minutes, and they are chockers. It took two trains before I reached the front of the throng on the platform, and could shuffle in and become part of the solid chunk of humanity. Later the trains softened off to every 4 minutes. It’s a great system, and the ticketing is fully integrated with the bus companies as well. All coordinated with the Bip! card.

The RED written at the bottom of the card means network. For a long time when I saw it at the stations I thought it referred to the red metro line (they each have a number and a colour). It wasn’t the greatest problem I have encountered. I should have realised that red isn’t Spanish…that’s royo, pronounced roho. and strangely red wine isn’t vino royo, but vino tinto, which means something like stained wine, or maybe tinted wine. These linguistic labyrinths are easy to get sidetracked into…proceed at your own peril.

The last lesson at the school happened on Wednesday. There were lots of hugs and kisses with the staff that I’d interacted with. Here’s Catalina the teacher…

It was a happy place to be; the staff were very friendly, and the atmosphere was really alive.

On Wednesday afternoon I bussed to a Sculpture Park a half an hour upstream from where I live. It was a restful place with lots of shade and grass, and sculptures.

And a good view of the Costanera Centre, a 300m tall structure with a mall attached. It’s the second highest building in South America.

The nice thing about the gardens was that there was no graffiti on anything. They lock the place up at night, which might help. But even in the suburbia around there wasn’t much tagging. So the impression that I may have given that all of Santiago was covered in it, doesn’t really correspond with reality.

Well…more than enough for today. I head off to Peru tomorrow, Thursday, for two weeks.

Take care everyone

T

Hi everyone,

I’ve fallen into a routine here…breakfast, go to the school (where the lessons are going well), lunch on the way back, do the homework, have a sleep, go downtown and people watch, crawl back up the stairs, have some bread and cheese and wine for dinner, fall into bed.

They are really keen on processions here, and there seems to at least one every weekend.

Last weekend was the festival for…

This particular manifestation of the Virgin seems to be the patron saint of Chile.

The show started in the Plaza de Armas, and I arrived early, so as not to repeat the fizzer of the previous Tuesday when I was queued out of the parade.

I felt a bit conspicuous as a gringo, taller than most Chileans, and being propped up in the front of the action, obscuring the view for the hordes of littler people behind…but I crushed the empathy.

There was a huge bank of of loudspeakers within spitting distance, or do I mean ear splitting distance, so I heard every word. The clerical guy who was revving the crowd up spoke relatively slowly (for a Chilean), so I had a fighting chance of knowing what was afoot. It was a mostly presenting Mary as the mother of Chile…with shouts of Viva Maria, Madre de Dios!, and Viva Maria, Madre de Chile! with the assembled ranks shouting it back as a reply.

I had gone to the church where the image usually lives, the day before, but her niche was empty…

But the next day she processed out of the cathedral on a float, surrounded by flowers.

There were lots of groups marching in the procession, and lots of dancing, but she was the pièce de résistance . There was heaps of music, bands and drums, and heaps of people. I couldn’t hear a lot for the next few hours because of my proximity to the speakers.

This weekend there was another procession along the Bernardo O’Higgins avenue (which I now refer to, as do all locals as Alamera), rejoicing in the different folkloric groups. There were po faced cueca groups…

Others more animated…these appear to be more from pacific islands…maybe Easter Island…

Some quite crazy…

The clips don’t really convey the energy and noise and punch of the thing. It really was a hoot.

Sebastian, one of the teachers I had for a lesson last week, put me on to a series of free concerts that the music department of the huge Catholic University were putting on. Last Tuesday I went to one, a university choral group of 12, then later 25, singing music of Beethoven, Schumann, Debussy, and other European masters, as well as Chilean composers. It was a terrific concert in a splendid modern theatre. Really stimulating music. I have no video of it. Even though my behavioural standards are pretty low, I still couldn’t bring myself to making one, even though there were plenty of others who did.

On Sunday there is a performance of some Bach Cantatas in the same series. It should be good.

I walk to the school, it takes 20 minutes, mainly along a city park which runs along that sad river that was in a pic a few blogs ago. It’s called El Parque Forestal, and has mature trees, manicured lawns and gravel paths, and is a welcome refuge from the smog laden, multi lane racetracks on either side…

There are nice views of the mountains…

…and the odd heroic sculpture: this one, as with almost every available space in the town, covered with it…

Meanwhile back at the Plaza de Armas

there are groups of people that stand out among the throng.

There are groups of youngish women, heavily made up, their busty substances barely covered, but still trying to escape what little shirt there is, and their ample gluteals straining against the very tight …er…tights.

There are drug sellers.

There are the street theatre blokes and the golden Buddha…and carabineros standing right by!

There are religious fire-and-brimstone orators who shout their imprecations into overstretched sound systems…while their lackeys pace around punctuating the tirade with ‘amen’ and ‘allelujah’

I was game to take video of her, but not of the chicas or the drug peddlers, because I feared their minders much more than I did hers!

There are also families, couples, old codgers waiting for the strong to get up and get on with life, and other assorted riffraff…I feel quite at home.

Once the night comes, however, the demographic narrows, and the people I have asked about the advisability of a white haired gringo going there have said…don’t!

At one of the restaurants I go to every second day,

and have the same meal…making the most of salmon that is way cheaper here than in Oz…

..there is an entertaining waiter of late middle age (as are all the men, the women waiters are much younger, highly pneumatic and very charming) who serves the area where I seem to sit most often. He has a pencil thin black moustache, a furrowed face and ready smile, and greets me when I visit. I thought to test the recognition of my regularity at the place, so after the ‘hola, cómo estás’ ritual, I said ‘lo mismo, por favor’ =‘the same please’. He gave a hearty chuckle and repeated my usual order…I assume…because I did not catch one word; such is the unintelligibility of the Chilean speech to the ears of a partly formed hispanohablante=Spanish speaker. Fortunately I didn’t end up with a large slab of dead cow and a flotsam of chips either!

I have tried another variety of fish, but it was soft, textureless, tasteless and profoundly disappointing, so I’ve stuck with the salmon. I suppose my concentration of pesticides, antibiotics and other sundry poisons is well above the level that statistics have laid down for our guidance, but think of the omega 3!

(That’s omega 3 exclamation, not omega 3 factorial, as that would be omega 6, the very thing one is trying to avoid.)

Well…three more lessons next week, and my three weeks will be up. On Thursday I fly to Peru and spend two weeks in Lima (temps in mid 20s) and Cuzco (temps around 10). Then back to Santiago for one night, and that’s it.

So, I hope everything is going well wherever you are,

Hasta luego

T

Well, the Fondas was a bit of a hoot. Fondas? What’s that? Or as Manuel would say ‘qué’?

A Fonda is a cheap eating place or a stall selling food or drinks or whatever. (No relation to Jane Fonda!)

So the Fondas (ie plural of the word) is the title chosen for the September 18th Independence Day festival, and the fondas were there in vast numbers selling typical Chilean fare such as perros calientes, kebabs, papas fritas, empanadas…. hmmmmmm

Now, one of those is a Spanish thing, but the others aren’t. The first is a hot dog (a banger, ie a food-like substance, enclosed in awful bread with coloured sauce on it), a kebab is a kebab, (and some of them had giant chunks of dead cow or pig threaded 5 or 6 abreast on a stick!), papas fritas is hot chips (papa is the local abbreviation of patates, but it also means ‘the pope’, and fritas means, yep, you guessed it.). That just leaves the only Spanish thing, empanadas, a pastie like thing with meat or cheese or whatever inside. I had eaten them in Seville in Spain when I was there, and they were delicious, with flaky pastry and succulent innards. The ones here, or should I say the one that I tried at the party at the school last Friday, are nothing like that. Thick cardboardial pastry and not very appealing filling.

There were lots of fondas selling beer, wine, terremotos and piscas (a lemony booze, but too sweet for me). And icecream places (helados), and trinkets and other assorted stuff. So much for the food.

Then there were some big spaces for bands, which seemed to do a gig for an hour at a time, going on until the early hours of the morning. I watched one, which had dancers as well…it didn’t seem Chilean though, more Charleston. Good moves and music.

It was all a bit like the Agricultural Show, but without the dodgem cars, the octopus, chacha or Ferris wheel, or animals and best lemon sponge, but with better music and more booze. At least I can say I’ve been there.

When I left, after a few hours into the afternoon, the people were streaming in by the thousands, going through the frisking-for-weapons, the hand-held metal detectors and past the very stern eyes of the carabineros.

On the same day, Monday, the Plaza de Armas was almost completely sealed off, as was anything that looked like a street surrounding it. The carabineros (gun carrying police in khaki uniforms and grim faces, and the female ones sporting false eyelashes, a ton of makeup and a look that would make you stand up straight and pull your shoulders back) standing at every corner and only letting the Suits, recently decanted from legions of shiny official cars, enter the area. What was going on? I surmised that there was a big Mass at the cathedral (they were cleaning it madly when I dropped in on Sunday afternoon) where the powers that be were to be giving thanks for the Republic. I suspect that the President and other heavies were there, hence the plethora of securities.

I strolled down to the Plaza later on when the brass had left, and watched a group of young blokes doing street theatre things, a lot of what seemed to be highly sexualised banter with the huge crowd, and some impressive physical things…

These guys have been doing shows every day that I have been in the plaza. Always very physical and high camp as well. I haven’t seen the golden guy for a few days.

The big celebration for the Glorious Army, which took place on Tuesday was a of a fizzer for me. I got to the Parque O’Higgins a half an hour before the start time, but had not reckoned on the thousands who were there before me, and the extremely slow entry because of the security checks on everyone passing through. So the queue was over 2 km I guessed, bent in the middle and folded back on itself, so the start and the end were at roughly the same place. The half that was heading toward the gate moved glacially, the other half, going away from the gate moved more quickly, so I guess the position of the bend was moving away at a medium pace. Each queue was 4 or so people wide.

As I shuffled along I realised that I would have to continue to the halfway point, because the barricades that lined the street side were impassable. So I shuffled on, and on, and on.

Finally I reached the point of inflection. What to do?

Spend another half hour or more shuffling in the other direction, getting to the arena where the soldiers were going to strut, and be behind countless others craning for a look at more than just the military heads, prey to every known and unknown virus or infection that was in the air, and being the unwilling casualty or a terrorist’s bomb. No…I can rationalise anything!

So I escaped the line, and just as I did the 21 cannon blast announced the start of the show…small dogs cowered, children screamed and the alarms of several nearby cars got activated.

And that was that. I walked the one hour trek to get home and collapsed on the bed for a nap.

The lessons have been going well. The double sessions to make up for the lessons missed on Monday and Tuesday have been intense, once with Fernando, the founder of the school, once with Sebastian, very energetic and not letting any grammatical slip ups go through to the keeper, and the rest with the lovely Catalina, (not named after the flying boat, but I’m sure is equally at home on the water as in the air).

I seem to be doing well talking, which leads them to turn up the pace, vocabulary and grammatical complexity a bit. But I do think I’m understanding more, so it’s worth it.

I’ve found a couple of restaurants where I can lunch and enjoy it, and whose salads are more than acidified iceberg lettuce and sliced tomato. Here’s one such meal…

And the vegan hummus salad at the other, which was not as pofacedly austere as I had expected…

It’s Thursday 21st as I prepare to publish this. Tomorrow there’s just one 90 minute lesson which will be a relief for the information oppressed mind.

The weather continues to be sub 20 degrees, but fine.

I trust you are all enjoying life wherever you are.

Hasta La proxima,

T

I’m writing this on a freezing Sunday afternoon, the 17th. The weather had been excellent since I returned to Santiago de Chile from Valparaiso on Wednesday, the deciduous trees in the parks had put on a light green sheen and the sun’s penetration through the jacket was hinting that Spring is in the air.

But not today.

It’s cloudy and as cold as a well digger’s bum.

My friend Sertaç made the joke ‘Santiago de Chilly’ which sums it up well. But we catch up with Spring tomorrow, so all is not lost.

Two big things are on the go. Firstly I’ve had two 90 minute classes with a teacher whose name I have yet to commit to memory, or even to hear clearly. She is good value, and I have found that I can speak relatively fluently with her, whereas with a waiter I come over all tongue tied and keep running into vocabularial or grammatical culs de sac. I do have trouble understanding her, and the waiters and everyone else for that matter. It could be partly due to my slowly degenerating hearing, which the hearing aids can paper over to an extent, but still leave me hearing as though my ears were indeed papered over. Another reason could be that Chilenos are notorious for speaking Spanish at warp speed, while barely moving their lips…maybe they all train as ventriloquists…who knows?

Or it could be that my brain is unable to process the whole enchilada quickly enough, sad commentary on the rusting effect of time.

If I’m sounding a bit prolix (look it up if it’s a new word for you), it’s because I have been reading A Christmas Carol, in translation, with the Spanish on the left hand page, and the original English on the other…

It’s a great system which saves one from having to consult dictionaries. So I’ve been infected with the Dickensian verbal virus, which I love.

The teacher, Señora X, (formerly known as the teacher) does speak slower than most, but when she realises that she is presenting a nebulous flow of syllables to a half deaf old fart, it only takes a few ‘qué’s (shades of Manuel there) to get her to put on the brakes.

There are two public holidays, on Monday 18th and Tuesday 19th, one for Independence Day where the whole place shuts down (more on that later) and the other, where the shut down continues, as the ‘glorious Army’ is feted (and more of that when it happens). So the school is shut on those days. What to do with the missed lessons? I hear you ask, and Christina, the director of the school heard me ask as well. Quite easily done…have them on Wednesday and Thursday as well as the scheduled ones i.e. 90 minutes of intensity from 10 until 11.30, then another from 12 to 1.30. I can only guess as I write, but will experience later in the week, at my state of mental mushedness at the end of that!

I’ll backtrack a little here to relate some things that I came across in Valparaiso.

I mentioned the dogs in the last letter, and there are a few of them, that live in the street sans owner. They have been given names by the residents (Eduardo reeled off a few as we walked around the streets, and here is the selfie taken soon after we were doing it…)

they leave out food and water for them, and even provide shelters…

These dogs don’t bark or bite the passers by, it’s only the territorial monsters from the houses that do.

On the 11th September the country remembered the 50th anniversary of the coup that brought Pinochet to power. There were warnings that there could be demonstrations by right wing devotees of that dictator’s philosophies, and Eduardo’s job finished at lunchtime so that they could get home before any trouble started…but nothing serious came to pass it, seems.

I visited a culture park in Valparaiso which is where a prison used to be, and where Pinochet’s goons did some of the torturing. It had been abandoned until a group of artists and creatives started to use the space for studios, then quite recently the municipality took over, repurposed the old building…

and built a swish new place as well. They have workshops, exhibitions and studios there. It’s a very peaceful place. These wind activated sculptures help…

On the walk down I came upon this muriel…

The sign that the guy is holding says ‘dondé están? which means ‘where are they?’ referring to the thousands who were disappeared during the dictatorship. The memory of that episode and the achievement of independence from Spain, 200 odd years ago, are really important in the Chilean psyche.

So what of the second big event?

We celebrated Independence Day at the school with Chilean food, a red wine and strawberries melange and a ground shaking (hence the name, terremoto=earthquake) cocktail. That started the run up to the big party. Everywhere, almost, has Chilean flags flying, and red white and blue bunting saying ‘Viva Chile’ festoons restaurants and apartment blocks.

What will happen at the big bash in the appropriately named Parque O’Higgins tomorrow ? What will the day for the glorious army bring the next day?

Stay tuned for the next blog because this one is too long already.

Enjoy the start of Spring

Hasta luego

T

The trip from Santiago to Valparaíso was splendid. The seats in the bus were massively comfortable and being, as I was, on the top deck, I should have been able to see the countryside very well. As it was, the pelting rain outside and the condensation inside made the scenery seem somewhat impressionistic.

Here’s Eduardo, the Airbnb guy…

who met me at the bus station, and together we got a ‘colectivo’ up the hills to where he lives. A colectivo is a shared taxi which plies a particular route (artfully named on the windscreen) and costs around 60 cents each for the trip. It was much quicker and easier than walking…but more of that later.

The area is pretty downtrodden and random…

And there are lots of dogs, some enclosed, others not, so the chance of being barked at is rather great, and the chance of walking in droppings is even greater. The paths and steps are pretty uneven, so keeping your eyes on the ground is doubly important.

Eduardo’s apartment has splendid views over the harbour…

…over the container terminal. At night it is excellent.

His place is modern and new, created inside a shell designed to fit in with the prevailing look of desuetude. It’s quite a contrast to the Star Waredness of Nestor’s.

He works in hospital administration, and is very attentive. We have had a lot of good conversations in English and Spanish.

I went the the Maritime Museum, which is housed in a stately building which used to be the naval training place. The exhibits were interesting, some in translation, but the highlight was a non-naval performance put on by a dance school, I suspect. I had had a long chat with one of the blokes of the museum, and he alerted me to the impending show. I had met up with this guy when he was acting as a greeter at the front door, and after a few minutes of chat, he suggested that even though foreigners (he could have said ‘gringos’, but was too polite) normally paid twice as much as locals, I could go in as a local; which I did.

The performance was based around the national Chilean dance, the cueca, pronounced like quaker, which imitates the courting behaviour of a rooster and a hen. I suppose you could call it the South American equivalent of the Chicken Dance! The most skilled performers may have been the teachers…

The students did a dazzle and splash number as a finale.

Hmm…they seemed to be having fun.

The walk down into the city doesn’t take all that long, maybe 20 minutes…in contrast to the way back. The roads are very steep getting down to the coastal plain where the centre of town and the port are. The roads are also quite narrow, a car-and-a-bit wide in places, so when the taxis come hurtling down it’s advisable to flatten against the wall and hold your gut in.

There’s a quaint juxtaposition in one section…where

meaning ‘suggested speed’, cheerfully ignored it seems, followed 5m later by…

No wonder they are confused. Maybe they are doing 30kph…it just seems faster when you are pinned onto the wall, facing death by taxi.

On the first day, walking back from downtown, and so pleased that I had done so much training on the seven flights of stairs at Nestor’s, I found myself lost in the labyrinth of little streets and stairs around the apartment. I circled around (and it didn’t help that the official address of the block of units isn’t the street where Eduardo’s front door is, and I had forgotten his real street, and Google maps was a bit equivocal about the whole area), but couldn’t find the door.

While I was standing on a street corner, orienting the phone, looking desperate, a buxom woman of a certain age stopped and asked, in Spanish, if I was ok. She helped away, suggesting possibilities, rang an English speaking friend, to whom I spoke, and he suggested…and then, seemingly by accident, there was the door! (shades of the Magic Faraway Tree). So there was much laughing and congratulating, and then hugs and kisses! In some restaurants there are similar women waitressing, who are brimming with confidence and personality, and where the paucity of a common language is no barrier to communication. Not a lot of kissing in the restaurants, but some affectionate shoulder stroking is common.

On Saturday I went by metro to the nearby resort town of Viña del Mar. It is on the coast, there is a beach of sorts…

and they have a whopper music festival in the summer.

The highlight of my time on he beach was a group of dancers doing some typical north Chilean dances. There was so much energy and in-your-facedness, and the costumes…well, what can I say?

The band playing in the next clip is a bit approximate in the brass section, but the young guy playing the side drum is excellent.

There are frequent earthquakes here, and Eduardo’s apartment has heavy steel beams and posts to deal with them. Much of the city was flattened in the quakes of 1986 and 2010 and regularly before that, which were over 9 on the Richter scale, and generated huge tsunamis that went right across the pacific. There are many big buildings in the city that had their innards destroyed, but the facades remain. I guess there were plans to create new innards, but they haven’t gone anywhere, so all that survives is are sad, graffiti ridden blots…

Much of the town looks sad like this. The Plaza Sotomayor, in the centre could be a splendid square with fountains and trees and lawns, but instead is a cobbled car park, with a nice view to the sea and the container terminal.

A couple more days here, today is Sunday, then back to Santiago on Wednesday.

That’s it for now,

Hasta pronto,

T

Hola a todos,

Today is my last day in Santiago for a week. Soon I’m heading off to Valparaiso, 2 hrs away by bus, on the coast. As seems to be a pattern when I’m arriving or leaving, it has started to rain, bigly. The apps say 30mm,

with about the same where I’m going. Fortunately the host,Eduardo, at the destination has offered to pick me up from the bus station which is a big relief.

I went to another concert at the church of San Augustin: this time with an orchestra and some soloists. It was excellent, but I realised how peeving it is to have a pair of blokes sitting in front, unable to sit still, whispering sweet nothings in each others ears, taking videos with the phone held high. It was a treat when they left.

I went back to the Fine Arts museum, home of Odysseus and Calypso, and enjoyed a couple more of the sculptures: one, a descent from the cross, has the usual characters supporting the dead Jesus…

But from another angle…

Who is this nude chick who is ministering to the feet of Jesus with her hair? Could it be Calypso muscling in on the story? No, but it could be any one of a number of Marys: the gospels are a bit hazy on who did the weeping, the anointing or the wiping, but the sculptor clearly enjoys a good nude, and as Mary of Magdala has been given a bad rap in the last couple of millennia, here’s a chance to depict another. Rebeca Matte, the sculptor, died in the 1920s and was the preeminent Chilean woman sculptor of the century.

Another of hers in the exhibition is of Horace, the BCE Roman post, critic and author.

Here he is shown answering a young man who asked him for some advice during wartime.

‘What does a lone man have to do when confronted by three?‘

Horace’s answer was…you die!

The words of this interchange are written on the base of the statue…at the back.

One of his other bon mots was ‘carpe diem’.

At the front of the museum is a another statue of hers, this time of Daedalus and his son Icarus. They both were imprisoned by King Minos on the island of Crete. Daedalus, creator of the famous Labyrinth wherein lived the Minotaur, hatched a plan for them to escape…he made them wings from feathers and beeswax and anything else he could find, but cautioned his son not to fly too high (wherein the sun would melt the wax) or too low (wherein the moisture would clog the pinions). Icarus, overcome with youthful excitement and bravado, flew higher and higher, and you can guess the result. The moral is clear…listen to your dad.

Last letter I spoke of the trial of getting the phone registered. I did constantly check to see if it had been approved, all through the weekend, until I realised that they probably didn’t work on those days. On Monday morning however they were working, and the email arrived. Whew. I had thought of going back to the guy who had sought to take advantage of me, and vent, but venting in a half learned foreign language can’t be all that effective, and I’m sure he knew that what he was saying was deceitful, so my response would have been no news to him.

Last Friday there was a wine festival going on in one of the trendy side streets. Different wineries were present in an array of booths, and small samples were being doled out in small plastic cups. One bloke had a better idea…

On Monday I went to the General Cemetery. Quite a few of the political and social heavies are buried here, including Salvador Allende, the leader who was displaced by the military coup that brought Pinochet to power, and who committed suicide as the junta closed in…

The chicas on the school excursion seemed more interested in their phones, but a couple arose and gave a smile.

Other mausolea were more classical…

Another grave was of the guy who began the scouting movement in Chile …

And next to it the touching tribute…

The place was very peaceful with lots of big trees and birds everywhere.

Today is Wednesday 6th September. In one week I’ll be back here in Santiago ready to start the 3 week Spanish course. Hooley Dooley.

See you on the other side of the weekend,

Hasta la proxima

T