2010-03-14
After an awesome breakfast served up by our friends at la Casa Roja (include real, yes real, coffee!), it was time to hit the road. We decided to do a little exploring in the eastern part of the city, the Las Condes and Providencia barrios.
Both of these neighborhoods are a little more on the upscale side of what we’d seen so far. Las Condes is the economic powerhouse of the city, home to banks, insurance companies and a familiar place to anyone comfortable in a suit and tie.
Coming out of the Escuela Militar metro station, we quickly noticed that this was a bubble of corporate America. Familiar fast food chains greeted us as soon as we walked out and the metro itself was tied into a posh mini mall, including an MTV store and a high tech, polished, banos (still a paying bathroom, though). They take their Sundays seriously here, and pretty much everything was closed.
We walked west on Avenida Apoquindo, which morphs into Providencia Ave further towards the city. The sun was shining, as always, the air was still and the streets deserted. Monstrous sidewalks on either side, anticipating the rush of polished shoes and firm handshakes, were empty and silent.
It was something of an alien landscape, like walking through an archaeological dig for some civilization of giants who had banked themselves to death, everything shiny and big and lifeless. Most of the buildings seemed to be trying to impress, if not crush, their neighbors with their magnificence and the elegance of the tasteful art. One, an insurance company I believe, even had a mote. It was all very dry.
Providencia looked more human and habitable, but only barely. Mainly consisting of malls and residential buildings, it was also rather devoid of life due to the fact that most stores were closed. We headed north, across the rio which winds through the city, to the Parque de las Esculturas.
Appropriately, this is a large park which is home to big, shiny objects. It’s actually a very nice place, and it felt good to lie in the grass after all that time on cement. Though I played a bit in the sculptures, we were out of gas from our previous evening and long walk, so we headed back down into Providencia in search of calories.
We found them at Bravissimo, a restaurant chain with all the style of a Chucky Cheese but some good meals, ice cream and coffee at lowlow prices. It’s aggressively colourful and “family oriented” so don’t expect a candlelight dinner there to be much of a success, but it was tasty, satisfying and actually had some vegetables with the meat. If you’re in a mall, you’ll probably find one and it’s better than having Shopdog/Doggys/whateverDog hotdogs all the time.
We returned to Nunoa to get ready for our road trip, for real this time as the plan was to climb the country almost to its northern tip in search of L’s farther. We had a cell number and last known location (a small town called Taltal) to go on, but not much else. No answer on the cell as of yet, but we would keep trying as we moved up the coast.
That night, shortly after emptying our luggage, the power went out. Nunoa was completely dark. Cells were down for a bit but landlines were still operational, and calls were coming in from all parts of the city. “Do you have lights?” It turns out, about 90% of the country was without power.
People were anxious, was this another earthquake, a consequence of the last ones or yet another problem the country would have to face? Dogs were barking and howling, the only source of light being the occasional passing car.
We decided a stroll in the darkness would be appropriate. Nunoa is filled with back alleys and miniature pedestrian walkways between the tightly packed rows of houses. We stayed on familiar routes, as it would be too easy to get thoroughly confused in the darkness, and head towards the subway.
The stars! Stars everywhere, on a moonless night, we could see the milky way clearly. It was an awesome sight, a foretaste of what we hoped to see in our travels out of Santiago.
Those stars disappeared as we approached the subway entrance, since it was running on emergency generators and powering the street lights 400 meters out. Oddly reassuring, we loitered around the entrance for a bit, watching streams of people exiting the tunnel. They’d been rescued by the fire department, and had to walk the tracks to the exit.
We returned to the pitch black streets of Nunoa and found some candles to finish off the night. By the next morning, power had been restored. Apparently, an important transformer had blown and the system, possibly fragile because of the quakes, had dominoed into oblivion. We got some rest, we needed to prepare for our trip and my vacation was officially over: from here on out, I’d be working remotely on my trusty netbook, and needed to find a way to keep my lifeline to the internet open, which was turning out to be a lot more challenging than expected.