¿qué es Santiago? -- Beth's not too bright homestay mother

I know I am a bit behind schedule about this, apologize.

Disclaimer: Santiago was where I wanted to go in the first place but Tufts only accepts transferred credits from its program there so I opted for Buenos Aires. On paper (and I think in reality), Santiago is a better fit for me. It’s not all about partying. It has a killer straight edge hardcore scene. People don’t speak as much English. I am much more familiar with its political history. Etc. So just sayin' I was pretty predisposed to be into it.

Chile was incredible. Kara and I arrived Wednesday morning. We did have to pay an entrance fee (bummer) but the flight was worth it both in terms of time (25 hour bus ride vs. 2ish on the plane) and in terms of the incredible view of the Andes from the plane. In that moment I understood so much of Gabriela Mistral!

After sorting out how to get to the city from the airport and getting really ripped off changing AR pesos to CL pesos, we arrived at our beautiful hostel in the boho neighborhood of Bellavista. We walked around all morning, saw a huge produce market and drank some sweeeet agua fresca type juice and shopped a bit, then slept most of the afternoon (panicked preparations meant that I arrived at the airport on seven hours of slept in the proceeding two days) and got some decent Mexican food as an excuse to see more of the city.

On Thursday, after a sweet maxikiosko bfast, we headed out to Valparaiso. Again, there was some confusion upon arrival at the bus station but finally we figured out how to take a bus to the hostel. However we arrived only to discover that the hostel we were planning to stay in was full. Whoops. We quickly found a new one – a hostel owned by a French immigrant to Chile hahaha – and I spent much the rest of the day worrying about how our friends Jasmine and Beth would meet up with us after the changed plans. (I was already nervous because they were flying into Stgo and had to meet us in Valpo. I didn’t know if they knew how to do that, where do go in Valpo, etc. And our cell phones didn’t work in Chile. We couldn’t contact them about the changed hostel using another method until we had arrived at the new hostel and after their flight from BA had taken off… I was nervous!) To wrap up this story and leave my Jewish mother anxiety at the door, everything worked out fine with the girls who arrived in our room at about 9:30 that evening. Phew.

Valpo is so cool! It’s the hub of Chile’s most active port and a beach destination in the summer but neither of those things are why it’s so cool. Valpo is awesome because it’s a small city of brightly painted houses built into the mountains.

To get to said houses in the mountains, one rides in a giant box up the side of the mountain called an ascensor or an elevator. They were built in the beginning of the 20th century which renders them somewhere between frightening and totally amazing. For the ascensores, Valpo is a UNESCO World Heritage site.

Skipping some boring details, Kara and I went for lunch and ended up sitting next to a table with two Chilean dudes who looked about our age. Kara – being both pretty and outgoing – skillfully initiated conversation. We learned that they were engineering students our age and that they were absurdly nice. We waited out the end of the Colo-Colo game wit them (Colo-Colo won obviously) and they took us around the city, up and down the best ascensores, giving us an excellent tour. Best of all, even though I could tell they both spoke English, they continued to speak to us in Spanish the whole day. (This does not happen in BA where I have to fight to use Spanish some days.) Eduardo and Oscar were SO GREAT!

Our group was rounded out in full on Friday. The four of us went to Pablo Neruda’s beautiful house.

and to the National Congress which took up residence in Valpo after the dictatorship relegated it to Valpo to reduce its influence.

We had some lunch of seafood and chorrillana (aka French fry onion meat heart attack dish of death) at the Central Market, which was awesome.

On the bus back that night we met some Israeli travelers – yes, this is officially the South American stereotypical experience – who we later had dinner with. Fun night!

Saturday was a boom and bust day. Jasmine and I tried to go to the Salvador Allende Museum of Solidarity (socialism and 70’s pop art? yes please!) but we discovered that it had moved and didn’t have enough time to meet Beth and Kara for lunch if we went to its new location. It wasn’t a total bust – Jasmine is awesome and we had some great discussions through the streets of beautiful Barrio Brazil. After more chorrillana Jasmine and I headed over to Palacio de la Moneda, Chile’s executive office building and where Allende killed himself during Pinochet’s siege. You can’t take a tour but at 4:30 they let tourists enter the plaza within the building’s walls. All of government center Santiago was incredibly beautiful in a Washington kind of way, with lots of beautiful architecture. I was pretty much in love.

After our foray through downtown Stgo, Jamine came with me to a hardcore show back in Barrio Brazil. How lucky was I, really, that there would be a show the one day I decide to look in a safe/easy to find place?? Okay, first, I saw three Chilean bands and they were all good. My favorite, easily, was the opener REMISSION. I had listened to each of these three bands before but they were just as good / even better when I saw them. The Arg bands I’ve seen, on the other hand, haven’t generally provoked similar compliments… More than Remission being a great band, their singer Philippe was an amazingly nice dude and he ended up chatting with us the entire time Jasmine and I were at the show. (Philippe spoke perfect Americanized English, they only time I used it in abundance with an actual Chilean.) He asked what I was doing the next day (which, oh yeah, was Easter Sunday!) and met up with me to talk about hardcore and show me around Santiago. We were SUCH NERDS, in the best way. Our hangout commenced with the question (from him) “top five favorites, go!” He was an encyclopedia of hardcore knowledge (which I don’t say lightly) and isn't every day I get to have intense conversations about Turning Point and Dag Nasty, I was so grateful! Plus he showed me so many beautiful areas of Santiago, especially Cerro Santa Lucia which is the giant hill where the Conquistadores beat the natives and around which the rest of the city has been constructed since its birth.

Plus it's just crazy how small the world is. Philippe's band is on a label called Amendment Records that is doing a split between a Chilean band called Against All Fears (super 90’s) and Maintain who exist in my mind occupying a space somewhere between a real hardcore band and my being my friend Amanda Ferres’s housemates in Somerville…. Plus Philippe chats irregularly with my friend Keith from Springfield. Weird, right! I'll be really stoked if Remission makes it to the States to tour next year as is tentatively planned.

To wrap up some loose ends worthy of note: Saturday night we ate tradition Chilean food. Our waiter was hilariously condescending, oh man, but the pastel de choclo was fortunately worth it. Before Philippe hangout time Sunday was of the highest quality. After a trip up the ascensor (the furnicular) at San Cristobol, we visited Santiago’s insanely high statue of the Virgin Mary and saw an amazing vista of sprawling Stgo.

Afterwards we ate incredible sandwiches at TOP SANDWICH (mmmmm), all drowned Kara in now-permissible formerly Lent-forbidden sweets and saw Beth and Jasmine off. Fast forward a few hours: Kara too had a Chilean friend hangout and when I was wandering through Barrio Bellavista in search of a phone card with which say hi to the padres, I ran into the only two remaining Tufts-in-Chile students. Again, smallest world.

On Monday I wanted to show Kara Cerro Santa Lucia, then we enjoyed more Top Sandwich, and then (unfortunately) had to say goodbye to Chile, its vastly more understandable and patient Spanish speakers, the awesome tomato bruschetta they serve at every table that puts tasteless porteno food to shame, and to Chile’s awesome people. Big bummer. It was a great trip! Not the most traditional of Easters but worth it.

Also I bought postcards but after struggling to find a post office, then after it was closed twice, I still haven’t sent them. I suck.

ON THAT NOTE, if you want a postcard HOLLA. I am slowly but surely working on it.

All in all, after all of that panicking about finances and meeting up with the girls and about the lack of proper planning, trip was totally incredible. If you enjoyed this post, donating to the Shana Hurley Poverty Fund will ensure that similar travel diaries follow.

fuimos a Patagonia este fin de semana

Sorry for the long delay in writing. Things got busier just before I left for Patagonia for the weekend. Rather than write about academic stuff, which I will soon, I’ll instead talk about and show pictures from Bariloche, a small touristy city in the foothills of the Andes in the Río Negra province.

SATURDAY

AIGHT so I met up with my friend Alana on Saturday morning on Santa Fe. While I was waiting for her to pack up, I saw so many Orthodox Jews going to services. I never go to services, don’t have any particularly strong religious inclinations, and usually feel a fair amount of chagrin about Hassidim. However, the sight of brown members of la colectividad just made my morning. (More on this later, I think…) It then took us about half the time we budgeted to get to Aeroparque Jorge Newberry so we spent over an hour people watching. Some of the people we happened to see when we were bumming around were none other than the LANUS FUTBOL TEAM, the dudes that upset Boca last year for a remarkable win in the Apertura and then upset Boca again last Sunday, wandering around in their team sweats. (Of course, I didn’t realize this until we had been in Bariloche for a few days. I thought they were some junior level team or something.) That, in retrospect, was pretty awesome.

The flight was too short to nap really but they did serve bang-ass snacks. We then took a bus tour of the Circuito Chico, the shorter version of the path around Lake Nahuel Haupi, overlooking peninsula Llau Llau (pr chau-chau), on this awesome bus. Check out that little dude’s hat!

From Bariloche

We drove to an aerosilla (air chair aka chairlift) for some wonderful early views.

 

From Bariloche

Then we went to San Carlos de Bariloche, the huge tourist town in Argentina’s Patagonia. There I bought Silivia a b-day choco gift at Mumushka, which is just as good as the Rupprechts suggested it would be. YUMM.

From Bariloche

After Bariloche, our journey continued. We had a guide who explained things but she didn’t have a microphone so it was either look at her to try to hear better or stare at the gorgeous views outside. Take your guess which I chose. We stopped at some spots with good views and did a short hike for a beautiful view of Llau Llau. Here is one more of the beautiful vistas:

From Bariloche

It made me very happy to see how pretty everything was. 

From Bariloche

By the time we got back it was pretty late and we were exhausted. Dinner was late, then an earlyish ending hangout sesh and dinner in the city center. High points included death by narrow roads and insane bus driving (INSANE), the hilarious crew of Israeli backpackers, the extremely drunk Argentines who directed unpleasant piropos at us while we waited for the bus that didn’t come, then the nice taxi driver who made A$77 driving the five of us all the way back to Llau Llau where we were staying. Ask me sometime and I’ll tell you how he distinguishes good chocolate from bad chocolate or about how he thinks Obama is a socialist.

 

SUNDAY

The weather in Patagonia is pretty crazy and it was supposed to be cold and rainy so rather than do a boat excursion, a hike, or go rafting, Anna and I decided that we would go back to downtown Bariloche to hang. We met up with other folks and headed down together. We, of course, went back to Mamushka and followed that visit with a taste-test tour of the many touristy chocolaterias. Excellent decision.

The saga of DIEZ:

What followed was a hilarious adventure that will forever be known as DIEZ, Spanish for the number 10. The plan was to head to the Swiss Colony where there is a fería (flea market, I guess?), supposedly much cuteness, and where we were meeting with our guide for a short night hike (to miss the rain) that evening. We took the crazily driven by the same driver 20 bus out of the city to the 18^th KM mark. Our bus driver told us something in poor English about 5/10 and it wasn’t entirely apparent if he meant the 10 bus would come in 5-10 minutes or at 5:10 so we waited. And we waited. A pretty stray dog came to hang out and we waited with him, who we decided to call Diez after the absent bus, even more. Our 20 driver “friend” passed us in one direction, and then stopped when passing us in the other. Trying to explain but then just taking pity on us / thinking we were retarded, he wrote 17:20 on Christine’s hand so as to indicate when this nonexistent bus would arrive. Then we another forty minutes.

We waited in this totally random place on the side of the narrow road for over an hour and fifteen or. Then, around 5:10, it came. But the driver, despite seeing us waving for him to stop and actually making “no thanks” motions with his hands, passed us by. YEAH. I KNOW. We were a cross between furious and hysterically laughing, given how ridiculous the whole situation had been. We decided to walk up a bit and see if we could ask anyone why this bus decided not to stop for us. A very kind girl at a nearby restaurant told us that the next bus would not be coming for another two and a half hours, too late for us to make it to the Swiss Colony to meet up with our group for the night. She helped us call a remís (group taxi) and suggested, since it was close, that we wait outside for it. After literally two minutes, A NUMBER TEN CAME followed by none other than our taxi. This time the bus stopped for us but we had to take our taxi. (I still can’t really believe this.) We were basically splitting at the seams from laughter.

I want to complain about this but actually the trials and tribulations with the buses made the trip to Bariloche so great. BsAs is a city, a pretty westernized and modern city with full services and a European flavor. I had not felt more truly in Argentina than I did while my Linea 20 bus drove impossibly quickly down a rainy narrow cliff-side road in the dark. Definitely the most memorable part of our trip to Patagonia.

/ story of diez

At Colonia Suisa, all we wanted to do was sit inside. It was super busy because there had just been a big two-day trekking race that had commenced and terminated at Colonia Suisa. We had coffees and visited the fería. The most memorable moment was when I turned to a friend to ask if she was okay – I don’t remember what prompted the question – and, in response to my question, a random dude apparently replied quite loudly “Estoy bien.” Oh Argentine men… We then waited for our late guide, about whom many of us had our doubts she was going to take our prepaid money and run. But she came and it was awesome!

We took 4x4s up a mountain which was simultaneously amazing and unbelievably scary, as we definitely very easily (and at certain moments very nearly) drove off the side of the mountain. We stopped about 2/3 of the way up the mountain, then received a nature lesson about birds, tectonic plates and the formation of the Andes, etc. in the form of a hike up to the refugio (summit house?). The sun was setting as we walked up and, as is the theme, the views were just amazing. At the refugio we ate pizza and laughed SO MUCH before one of the guides played and sang Argentine folkloriko songs before passing his guitar to some of the IFSA students. It became a night of folklorico and Elliot Smith, then, with some gringo dancing in between. Then we went outside and I saw more stars than I think I’ve ever seen. Truly amazing.

 

MONDAY

Monday almost the entire IFSA group took a six hour hike up to the refugio at Cerro Lopez. The refugio, oddly enough, was pink and it was sooo incredibly beautiful. It was the best view of the weekend of the snow-covered Andes in the distance. Oh man. The weather in Patagonia is notoriously odd and yesterday was a perfect example: it was really chilly. Afterwards we went back to Bariloche and got ice cream at what was supposedly the best heladería in Argentina. Hopefully my eating habits this weekend were offset by all of the hiking….

 

 

TODAY

Today I had my first class which meets at 8 AM in Belgrano. I left my house around 7:05 and was still late, grrr. I don’t know if I am going to be able to stick with this for a whole semester, especially knowing that I have other options. Despite the earliness and that Patagonia was really beautiful, I’m pretty happy to be back in the city. Walking from Di Tella (UTDT) to the subte this morning, I walked through some of Belgrano’s Chinatown, and my subte ride was filled with more beautiful Argentine commuting men. 

My full photo album from Bariloche is linked to this photo below!

Bariloche