2010-03-15 – 2010-03-17
Sunday was the last official day of my time off, for the next two weeks I’d be working from Chile. We planned to wind our way north in our quest for L’s father, a rolling stone with no fixed address about whom we only had vague indications of Iquique and Taltal as last known locations and a cell number that had yet to pick up.
Since Internet access was presenting such an issue, with ‘net cafes everywhere but hardly any wi-fi to be found, and because I’d be spending time on intercity buses, I needed a suitable means of communication.
One thing that’s immensely popular around here, even if relatively expensive, is the cell phone. I’d learned the day before, in Providencia, that a few companies would sell you a PCS connector (basically a cell phone and a modem combined into a USB key) “sin plan” (without a contract) for about 40 lucas (40,000 pesos, about 80 bucks) for which you can purchase blocks of access time.
Instead of going back to squaresville, I went to one of the many “Paris” locations in el centro. Paris is a chain of mega stores that look like Eaton’s exploded into 20 smaller stores, all themed alike. In most cases, each department is in its own independent little shop, scattered throughout over a block or two or in one of the semi-open air shopping malls.
Turns out, these little devices are popular. I scoured the downtown area, hitting all the Paris locations within walking distance, looking for this little machine to no avail. I finally had to take the subway back to Los Leones and the Paris in Providencia to get satisfaction.
The device was immediately recognized under Linux, and I had no problem connecting to the network. I had a working connection and a cell number that could be used for SMS messaging. However, the blasted contraption would just let me annonymously cruise the ‘nets… no, I had to activate it, namely by entering my name, contact info, RUT and color of my underwear.
The real problem was the RUT, basically the Chilean version of a social security number. I, obviously, didn’t have one and the system wasn’t designed for anything but local clients. I fought for a while with the system, actually hacking the javascript checks to get by that first step, but no go: the final confirmation step failed when posting the data to the server.
I finally went back to the Entel salesgirl, explaining my issue as best I could. Whether she gave me her own, or provided some valid default, I ended up with a usable RUT and hence a usable device. Success! But at the cost of a days work.
The connection worked, but was far from being a shining example of the new wireless world and felt a lot like being stuck on dial-up, but in a universe that expected broadband connections. Hitting servers in North America was sometimes downright painful. Since L needed to do a little prepatory shopping, and I could get some work done using the wi-fi at the Star*ucks, we headed to a nice mall at Mirador metro station, in the east end.
The next day, we were off. We went to Estacion Centrale, the airy and grandiose train and bus terminal. The bus terminal is a confusing place. Unlike Montreal, there isn’t a single operator offering services. Like almost everything here, capitalism can be seen in action with innumerable companies offering different destinations, schedules and levels of comfort so there are fifty different little counters selling tickets. It’s like a mall, one company is devoted to constructing the building and renting out spaces to vendors and the system kinda works but it’s bewildering. It’s also why even the restrooms require payment: it’s just another service to provide, rent the space and let someone else take care of it… very laissez-faire.
Anyhow, it turns out it was the wrong place. We needed another terminal, with Pullman and Tur-bus (two of the better companies) selling tickets for the northern passage. A few block away, we found what we needed.
We purchase tickets to Valparaiso and started our journey. All the buses we took were decently comfortable, provided “entertainment” (if you can call a Steven Segal movie entertainment, that is… oh, the cheese!), and had speedometers, annoyingly flashing and beeping whenever the driver passed the 100 kph limit.
I setup my ghetto road warrior mobile workstation and got crackin’. Not easy, with beeps and Steven’s “I don’t wanna kill ya” and two bit comebacks, but workable.
As we neared Valpo, I got my first view of cloud cover since our arrival. Can’t say I’d missed it. We crossed through rickety shacks built on the hills bordering the highway for a while and entered Valparaiso proper. It looked grey, worn down, dirty. Maybe it was just the cloudy day…
Nope. Bus terminals are often in the crappy part of town, but this was special. We seemed to have been teleported to the land of pet food and dead fish fragrance. For the first time, the number of cats rivaled the dog count, and L purchased some cat food as offering to the feline gods of this city.
As we walked through the cool streets with our Santiago summer-wear and backpacks, uncertain of our heading and with no actual plan in place for accommodations, we were greeted with stares that were almost openly hostile. Broken down, smelly, aggressive. L’s first purchase in the town was a nice set of brass knuckles… tells you something about how we were feeling. For a while, we wondered if we’d made a mistake in choosing to stop in Valparaiso…
One of the things the city is best know for is it’s Cerros. I figured the happy people probably lived atop the hills of this port city, removed from the noise of trams and scent of fish and a decent view of the sea. With selected a hostel semi-randomly from the Lonely planet, and set out for Cerro Alegre.
No one knew where it was. Everyone we asked pointed us in a different direction. Somehow, we got the notion that if we took a certain micro (common name for inner city buses) on Av. Errazuriz we’d get closer, so we hopped on. The driver launched the vehicle at maniacal speeds as we got on and L was still asking if it was the right bus and where we should get off. I was still standing in the stairs, my hair flying in the wind as we swerved down the road. It was only when, after about a minute, the driver finally stopped the turbulent air by closing the door that I realized that I’d been a foot away from a close encounter with pavement the whole time.
I took the brusque nod in the rearview mirror from the tattooed escaped convict that was our driver to mean it was time to get off. We were unsure of where we’d landed, but the imperative was clear. Go up.
Stairs and cats. More stairs, more cats. And graffiti. Loads of it, noisy, beautiful, aggressive, colorful. It is everywhere there are stairs, which is… everywhere. We climbed to an observatory of what turned out to be cerro Concepcion and found a sweet little coffee shop called Cafe de Iris. They had jugos naturales, espresso and wi-fi: everything we needed to settle down and choose a place to try for accommodations in the area.
We visited a few hostels on Templeman from the book, uphill, uphill some more. They were occupied or crappy and expensive little boxes. L stopped randomly at one, Pata Pata and it was an inspired move. Though all they had were dorm rooms, housing eight, one of those was unoccupied and could be ours and was very affordable.
Not only was the hostel nice, the staff were awesome. Alejandro, the burly owner, was extremely inviting and his staff, Serge and John—two travellers, one an Austrian and the other a Brit, who’d both only stopped to rent a room and ended up staying—were cool and a wealth of information and tales.
We volunteered, along with a nice couple from England, to head back down into the trenches in a quest for chorizos and palta for the 10 guests present. The walk down was an aggreable conversation, though we stuck out like sore thumbs even more with our new friends. The walk up, loaded with provisions, was a bit harder. It’s obvious why there are less smokers here than in Santiago!
We had a good meal with our fellow shoppers and a gaggle of germans who’d been touring South America and another who was setting up to move to valparaiso for studies and retired to our king sized room, exhausted.
I spent most of the following day working from the hostel, while L visited nearby Vina del Mar, playground of Santiago. Vina is the polished and artificial resort beach to Valpo’s commercial port and borderline anarchy. Between the two, Valparaiso is my choice hands down and I was satisfied with L’s photos and sample of beach sand.
We closed the night off the mountain at Pimenton, where Serge also worked as a cook and John like to have a drink. It’s the kind of place that incites you to get really wasted having an esoteric conversation or planning a revolution and was loads of fun.
