Remembering

As I gradually disengage myself from Chile and return to the strangely familiar environment of Toronto, I’m left with a sense that I haven’t been able to get inside Chile’s head, so to speak.  Part of this is due to the fact that I can’t speak Spanish, and part of it is due to the fact that Chileans are part of a very reserved culture.  But even though I’m on the outside looking in, it seems quite obvious that Chile hasn’t quite come to terms with the legacy of Pinochet and his regime.  There are constant reminders of both the junta and the opposition to it.  It is as if there is still a battle being waged for the memories of Chileans.

In Ancud I noticed that the main street that runs along the waterfront is named after Salvador Allende, the democratically elected President that Pinochet deposed.  The naming obviously happened after Pinochet’s ouster. 

And on the waterfront there is a simple, yet prominent, memorial to four young Ancud citizens who were killed as a result of the coup.  The sad thing is that this memorial has been vandalized and sits forlorn and apparently ignored.  Has it been defaced by Pinochet supporters or by bored smalltown youths who just have no sense of history or memory?  Either way, it’s a sad state.

In Santiago, as well, I noticed this split personality with regards to remembering or memorializing the dictatorship.  There is still a main avenue that is named in memoriam of September 11 – not the terrorist attack of 2001, but the date of Pinochet’s coup in 1973.  When Pinochet took power left wing supporters were rounded up and imprisoned, tortured and murdered.  Much of this happened in the national stadium.  This stadium is still being used for large concerts and sporting events today.

I don’t know if there is some informal, popular reclaiming/memorializing that is happening around the stadium.  I do know that there is a process by some to not let another torture centre slip into the past silently and be forgotten. When I first landed in Santiago I stayed in an interesting little barrio of old, ornate buildings, right downtown.  Just down the street, a half block from where I was staying was an attractive old building that stood abandoned and had graffiti and flyers pasted all over it.  Upon closer inspection I was surprised to learn that the building was a torture house and the flyers were photos of the 119 people who had been murdered there.  To further this act of witnessing, here are some photos of the building.

 

Cars, Pt. 2

While Villa La Angostura seemed to be teeming with classic sports cars, Mendoza seemed to be teeming with everyday cars from the 60s, 70s, and 80s.  I used to hate the automobile stylings from the 80s, but, and I don´t know if this is nostalgia or a more refined design sense, I really enjoyed looking at the clean lines of the cars I saw in Mendoza.  Some examples below (sorry so many of the photos are in shadow – too many damn trees in Mendoza).

I also dug the more curvy lines of this van.

And this classic little Fiat.

And this Renault 4.

It´s hard to see in the above photo, but Renault 4´s remind me of a képi, the hat Charles de Gaulle wore.

Puerto Varas

Well, I´m back in Puerto Varas, the town where I aborted my bike travels and stored my trusty steed for a few weeks.  Made the dash down here from Santiago last night, and am heading back tonight with the bike (ahh, nothing says good times like 14 hours on an overnight bus, followed by…another 14 hours the next night!).  Being in the south it´s a bit colder.  The air was thick with chimney smoke this morning.  I had forgotten that in Chile and Argentina, central heating is a rarity and practically everyone heats their homes with woodburning stoves.  Most houses also have woodburning ranges in their kitchens.  Below is the one that is in the kitchen of the hostal that I stayed in.

They use that stove everyday.  I even saw new ones being sold in a department store in Valdivia!  Who knew they were still being made?

Another thing that I forgot about Puerto Varas was that there seems to be an inordinate number of hot women for a town this size.  It´s quite unbelievable.  Must be something in the water or something.

Gender roles

A couple of things I observed recently showed me how men´s and women´s roles are seen differently down here than back home.

The hostel I was staying in at Iguazu Falls was huge and it sort of operated like a resort or cruise.  There were organized sports during the day, sometimes shows were put on in the evening after dinner.  I was hanging out one afternoon and the guy who was in charge of the afternoon soccer game was going through the common areas trying to drum up support.  At least half of the people there were female, but I noticed he didn´t ask one of them if they wanted to play.  When he met a mixed group of people he would only ask the guys if they wanted to play, not the women.  I´m sure if one of the girls piped up that they wanted to join in he would have said ok, but I don´t think it occurred to him that women would play soccer.

And then today, I passed a graduation ceremony for the Carabinieros (the national police – like the RCMP I guess).  There was a parade down the street and the graduates were marching in formation.  The men looked like military, carrying rifles.  The women, while being in uniform, did not carry guns.  Instead they all carried purses.  It was surreal.

Addendum to yesterday´s post

I forgot to mention something about the city of Valdivia, Chile, in yesterday´s post.  The city sits a little bit inland from the Pacific coast on a river.  In the river swim seals.  On the bank of the river sits an open air fish market.  This has created the perfect storm for tourist appeal – seals that just hang out all day waiting to have fish scraps tossed to them.  Must be a nice life.  The city has even set up a pontoon platform for the seals to chillout on.

Here´s a photo.  The market is on the left underneath the multicoloured awning.  You can see the pontoon in the water, surrounded by some orange, spherical buoys.

And here´s a closer look at the pontoon.

And here´s a close up of one of the handsome fellows.  He was a little shy.

And here are some birds who were hanging out, watching the festivities, and probably looking for a scrap or two themselves.

Up to date

Ok.  I am VERY behind schedule with this blog.  Actually, I´ve been behind schedule from the beginning.  Trying to keep things chronological meant that I´ve been posting about stuff anywhere from one to five weeks after the fact.  Well, I´m sort of tired of that.  So today we are going to go on a whirlwind trip from Chiloe (my most recent posts) all the way to Buenos Aires, where I´m writing this now.  I know you´re excited.

From Chiloe I made my way a little north to the Lakes District.  Here you will find many…umm, lakes.  And volcanoes.  And mountains.  And Germans.  What?  Yeah, Germans.  And I´m not talking about tourists (although there are a lot of those too, from all over).  I´m talking about people named Schultz who have blonde hair, speak Spanish, and were born in Chile, as were their parents, and their parents´ parents.  You see, in the late nineteenth century Chile needed this area settled, but didn´t seem to have the population to do it.  Enter the Germans.  So that´s why when I was in Puerto Varas – a small resort town – I not only ate some excellent empanadas, but I also had the best apple strudel I´ve ever had.

Puerto Varas sits on Lake Llanquihue, and I set off along it´s southern shore towards the base of Volcan Osorno.  It´s a beautiful ride along the lake shore with the volcano looming in the distance.

But as the pedals cranked away it became increasingly clear that my body was suffering and had not fully recovered from being sick in Santiago.  Once I started getting the heart rate up and breathing a bit heavier I would cough incessantly, spitting up phlegm.  Energy was hard to come by as well.  And after pedalling for only 20 kms and not being able to go any further for the day, I came to the conclusion that the bike trip was just not working out.  This wasn´t supposed to be an extreme sport.  I didn´t have anything to prove to anyone.  I decided that I would pedal back to Puerto Varas, store my bike at the hostel, and continue on by bus.  The decision made me feel incredibly free.

After spending a couple of days in the college town of Valdivia I decided to cross the mountains and head into Argentina.  I spent a few days in the Argentinian Lakes District.  First in the small resort town of Villa La Angostura, a small town popular with Argentines, and then in Bariloche, a more famous resort city known for it´s scenery and chocolate (the chocolate wasn´t that great, but I had some amazing ice cream there).

Here´s a photo of Lake Nahuel Huapi, near Villa La Angostura (that´s a sailboat in the water).

After the lakes I headed north for about 1200 kms and ended up in Mendoza, in the heart of wine country.  It was a nice picturesque city with lots of trees.  The whole place would be a desert if not for the use of an ancient irrigation system that lines the streets with little canals.

After the wine I moved another 1000kms, east this time, to Buenos Aires, a vast metropolis that feels part European and part South American.

In the middle of my BA stay I zipped up to Iguazu Falls (well, zipped as much as you can when you travel 1300 kms).  The falls are huge, covering an area greater than Victoria Falls in South Africa (although Victoria Falls has more water flowing over it).  They span the border between Argentina and Brazil.  The Brazil side is ok, but the Argentine side is spectacular, with access to many points of the falls, both at the base and at the top.  Pictures don´t really do it justice, but here are a couple.

This is a shot of the Devil´s Throat section of the falls.  It was taken from the Brazilian side.  The weather wasn´t too great that day.

And this is of another section of the falls, taken from the Argentine side.

To put the size of the falls into perspective, the surface area of Niagara falls is 600, 000 square feet.  When Iguazu is at peak flow it´s surface area is 1.3 million square feet.

Lesson Learned #1342

Do not try to ride a bicycle (or anything mildly strenuous, for that matter) when you feel a migraine coming on.  Unless you want to puke and feel like shit.

I’ve got a backload of posts waiting, so there’ll be more activity on the blog in the coming days.

Cheers.

Where did the last month go?

So, a month into the journey and I’m finally getting around to setting up this blog.  Let me sum up my experiences of the past few weeks and get you all up to date: got sick; arrived in Santiago; got sicker; coughed a lot; slept a lot; got some antibiotics; slept some more; sweat a lot – it’s damn hot here!; and after three weeks finally got out of Santiago and onto the road.  Things have started rather slowly.

Here are some random initial thoughts about Chile.  Instead of cans of pop they still have glass bottles.  Very cool.  I’ve seen a couple of Ladas!  I didn’t think those were still on the road (Put it in H!, as Crazy Vlaclav would say).  My Spanish absolutely sucks.  And the Chilean accent is damn thick.  As a result I have no idea what people are saying to me and I’ve been doing a lot of smiling and nodding.  Luckily that hasn’t gotten me into any trouble so far.  We’ll see how long that lasts.

This is just the beginning.  There will be more to come.