barrio brasil – Veuillez Decrocher

March 25, 2010March 27, 2010

A little time out of Nunoa

2010-03-13

Tonight, we planned to be living it up in Barrio Brasil’s home of the traveler, la Casa Roja. First, we wanted a good breakfast and some supplies so we headed out for a second attempt at locating the local Lider.

The Lider chain is one of the big players in the supermercado business, along with Jumbo (who’s logo incorporates a Dumbo-like elephant), Unimarc and the smaller (and somehow grimier) Santa Isabel.

Lider has locations scattered throughout, regular sized stores are “Lider express” and giant behemoths that rival and surpass IKEA are “Hiper Lider”. They are big.

I always find it interesting that it’s in the cases where things are almost the same as at home, but not quite, that I feel the most perturbing sense of culture shock. I think it’s that the familiarity lulls you into an impression of the known and you let your guard down, then suddenly something surprises you, or just doesn’t jive. Add up enough of these little events, and my brain seems to react by assuming it’s in a dream state and feeling like I’m in some pseudo-reality, a little disconnected and giggly.

Obviously, the selection and branding are different. Would you like some GROSSOs (Chicle Globo) with that? How about some Lays french fries (stacked alongside the other chips but microwaveable), or some comfort for your butt?

It’s impossible to find milk—I mean fresh milk, not in a box made to last forever—but yogourt and cheese abound. It’s impossible to find coffee—I mean coffee grains, used by many to make coffee—but Nescafe and 50 brands of instant 100% arabica are available everywhere (even coffee shops are few and far between).

The hand baskets are like small luggage, with retractable handles and wheels. They’re really cool. The cash registers never have scales, so there’s a fruit&veggie guy somewhere who’ll bag and tag everything you want to buy in the section, even if it’s just one lemon, before you head to the cash. Same thing for the bakery section, though it’s another guy.

We headed back to HQ and packed up for our road trip trial run, and set out for the red house.

La Casa Roja, situated in the heart of Barrio Brasil at Brasil and Augustinas, is a hostel in a huge restored casona. I have no idea how many rooms it has, but there are many, and it has loads of common spaces: TV rooms, internet center with workstations, living rooms for lounging around, tables in inner yards, a back yard with a swimming pool… all in a beautiful setting, a slight creak and breeze following you everywhere you go, with wood and ornamentation everywhere and windows and patio doors open on the beautiful weather at every turn. I’d say we liked the place.

We rented a double room (with bathroom) for about USD35 a night: a steal for the quality of this place. The room was clean, private and comfortable, but much of the fun happens in the halls and yards.

One thing Santiago is lacking is swimming pools and, though most locals consider the summer pretty much over, on 25 to 30 degree sunny days we were itching for some splashing. So the first thing we did was to take a dip in the back yard pool.

Not an Olympic swimming pool, but a nicely designed on with a smaller Jacuzzi-type basin feeding into the deep end, with a bar providing service in the water on the other end. Ah, enjoyable.

We spoke to a few travelers, students globe-trotting before getting tied down to another semester or real life and the like, and avoided a few others (namely, a group that were obviously from the same spot in the world as ourselves—we didn’t come all this way for more of the same, it seems).

By the time we had supper, Saturday night was upon us and it was time to dive into the action. Inquiring with the staff about suitable venues for our escapades was a bit of a disappointment. Having particular tastes, our choices seemed rather limited as a few of the bars we were relying on had disappeared or sold out to the 80s trend.

We were told that Oxido, a place we had both mentally bookmarked prior to arrival, might be of interest, and so we were off… to the other side of el centro, into Bellavista.

Oxido is a small club, with a smokey pub type tables-and-chairs section in front and a showroom in back. The ambiance is a noisy relaxed that is quite enjoyable with a good Russian beer ($1000 pesos for a litre!) and tar stick. A great spot was available, slightly elevated in the corner of the room, but only because it was a table with no seating. L asked two guys whether we could take two of their chairs and they promptly invited her to “take a seat, no problem, yeah!” Sorry, just want the chairs and we got a comfortable spot from which to observe the fauna.

We (really L, because with the noise I could hardly understand a word) struck up a conversation with the neighboring table. Turns out Ramon, a sixty year old with a good vibe and lots to say, was out having a beer with his youngest son and waiting impatiently to get a look at the show that was setting up in the other section. In the meantime, we all chatted about the state and future of Chile and the western world—Ramon seemed to have a worldview very much like our own, which is probably related to how we ended up in the same place on this Saturday night and was an all around cool guy.

After a good talk, and a few liters of Russian ale, we decided we weren’t going to close the bar on this night: turns out, on the weekends at least, the bars in the area close at 5 AM. W00t!! That’s a last call I can live with, just early enough to avoid the sun on your way back!

So we took walked back down across the rio, caught our first cab in the city(fast, so cheap and safe because tracked by GPS… uhm, hm… anyway, was cool) and headed back to our room in the red house. As we entered, we were invited to join the ongoing party at the bar in the back yard. Wow, I want to work in a hostel. A liter of Heineken later we’d had enough—the ambiance was cheerful and the people cool, but we were looking forward to some alone time followed by sleep uninterrupted by noise or light seeping in through paper-thin curtains and holes in the seems of the house.

March 19, 2010March 19, 2010

A big day for Santiago

2010-03-11

I awoke earlier than I should to find that this was the day that presidential power would be changing hands in Chile. Presidente Bachelet, who seems loved by most everyone, refused public cries for another term (after, I think, two and I’m not sure whether there is a legal limit here for such things) to hand it over to some guy who’s name I always forget.

I do know that he’s some kind of bigshot, owner of LAN Chile (airline) and numerous TV stations which he apparently sold off in order to become president. I still don’t know if this was a requirement or just a way of showing there would be no conflict of interest… either way, and I know this is total prejudice because I’m completely unaware of the current political situation or its players, I think he looks too much like the Pope—and therefore, like the Emperor from Star Wars. Let’s say his presence doesn’t inspire me.

The ceremony was shown live on television, broadcast from La Moneda. La Moneda is where all the action is in this city, the capitol, and it happens to be right in the middle of the center. The idea that the president and all the ministers do their jobs so close to all those they are appointed to work for appeals to me greatly. I like to imagine that having the president and minister of the interior and everyone else taking the subway to La Moneda station, or at least getting to work by traversing all the downtown traffic, keeps them aware of who they are working for and why. That may be overly optimistic.

I decided to head down to see a bit of it for myself. As always, I hopped onto the subway to get downtown.

I think I’m in love with Santiago’s public transit system. I’ve yet to try the micros (buses), but they are absolutely everywhere and half the pictures I take of a street have a bus or two wooshing by. But the metro, ah the metro.

Awesome murals in Universidad de Chile station

Santiago’s Metrored system is awesome. It’s fast. It’s cheap (about 50 cents). It goes everywhere. I’ve been in and out more times than I can count and have yet to wait more than 2 minutes. One of my instant favorites: many stations have free wifi. No strings, free wifi connections… thank you, metrored!

The stations are spacious, all different, and often decorated with grandiose murals. They can get pretty warm, but not overwhelmingly (especially considering that every day is a full blast of sunshine, oscillating between 24 and 30 degrees Celcius) and are cooled by and ingeniously cheap system of fans and mist.

The only thing that has irked me, and this is minor and has become something of a little game, is the turnstiles at the entrance often use different systems for accepting tickets. Sometimes you insert them here, sometimes there… It’s become a competition of who figures out how to get through in the least amount of time.

When disembarking, the important thing is to keep an eye on the signs as there are a lot of “No Pasar” and three kinds of paths: those used to switch lines, those for changing directions on the same line and actual exits. The exit gates are cool little double doors, which need to be opened in sequence to unlock… we presume, as neither of us has dared trying to reach over and pull the outer door open without touching the inner, to see if it’s really locked.

Not knowning what to expect, I left my usual bag-o-gear behind and got off one station east of La Moneda, Universidad de Chile, to get a feel for the vibe by walking west on O’Higgins for a few blocks.

Out and about earlier than usual, it was still cool in the shade in what is the beginning of fall on this side of the equator but the sun was already doing its job and the contrast was enjoyable. I’d missed the actual red carpet ceremory and, though I didn’t know it at the time, the party had moved to the coast at Vina del Mar. Still, I found a stricking gathering circling La Moneda on all sides.

The crowd awaits a glimpse of the president

People were lined along the streets, flags and signs in hand, chanting slogans and smiling. Confetti spilled out of the windows of adjacent buildings, and drifted onto the streets. I was surprised that even on this day, at a time when her mandate was officially over, people were yelling “Bachelet, Bachelet, Presidente una autra vece” (Bachelet, President another time) in unison.

All types of authority were out patrolling the streets, police, military, some I didn’t recognize. But even with such a large politically charged crowd, the situation was calm and the mood cheerful.

I headed back to Nunoa, to eat and ensure L was up to see this beautiful day. She was just getting up when I arrived, and we headed out to a nearby market to get a taste of fresh fruit. For some reason, a large chunk of the neighbourhood on the way was in garage sale mode. Not much of interest for us, but seeing the merchandise on display gives you a glimpse into the lives of the sellers. It doesn’t look all that easy, but most seem to have a friendly demeanor and pleasant outlook.

People and confetti for the new president

It’s very family/community oriented around here, and from what I gather a lot of folks spend almost all their time within a few blocks of home. One thing that makes that easy is that you need only take twenty steps in any direction to stumble upon a home that makes something or provides some kind of service.

Within five hundred meters, there are at least eight miniature corner store type businesses, five homes offering empanadas, humidas or some type of prepared foods, a fruit market, four houses devoted to entertainement (arcade machines, a trampoline, slot machines), and more.

We came back from the market with at least three pounds of strawberries and a large watermelon, for close to nothing. Even though we did our best to wash our berries with store bought water, con gas, things didn’t work out so well on that front.

I think I mentioned this but bottled water here is, for the most part, mineral water. I’m sweating salts out of every pore by now. You have a choice of aqua con gas (bubbly, or “with gas”) or sin gas, without. Anyhow, even after doing our best with the berries, we both ended up “con gas” ourselves. Ah well, the water’s impossible to avoid completely and I think we’d been building up some immunity gradually so it wasn’t so bad.

After doing a bit of dining and family socializing, we decided to head back out in search of reliable and comfortable internet access and a touch of action.

As we were getting ready, we had our first taste of tremblor! Chileans know their quakes, so I’ll trust them in that this was a “tremblor” (aftershock) rather than a full blown “terremoto” (earthquake), but at 7.2 it was something to be felt.

Lasting 15 or 20 seconds, the sizable waves had a period of close to a second and it felt like being on a boat. A huge, country-sized boat on a sea of molten rock. The weirdest part was the slight dizziness I felt. It was like there was a super low frequency sound, too low to hear but enough to seriously mess with you inner ear. After that, smaller aftershocks were felt throughout the day, sometimes so small that I’d only notice it because of the slightest hint of nausea it would enduce. An odd feeling.

Though L’s family had a strong reaction to the tremor, we agreed it must be due to the trauma of the recent large quakes and decided to go on with our day as planned. No, waves in the Earth’s crust won’t stop this train! Heh.

Back to our now familiar haunt of barrio Brasil, we mistakenly headed south into a beautiful area filled with private professional schools and universities of all sorts. This is where I finally caught onto the fact that, even when the sun is almost directly above, you can tell which direction you’re going because shadows always point south.

Heading back up passed O’Higgins and into the Brasil area, we tried our luck at the Blondie snack bar (zona wi-fi!) but no go as it was closed. We were directed back up towards Plaza Brasil, for a promising cafe: Universitas ciber-cafe.

It was our first taste of real coffee in a long time, and quite a relief. Chileans have a strange relationship with coffee, prefering instant preperations of Nescafe to anything else it seems. Not sure whether its a question of price or taste, the fact is that it’s bland, watered down and totally lacking oompf. Anyhow, Universitas had an espresso machine and I promptly ordered a double. It was a real treat.

Getting internets was another affair. I’m still surprised at how little wifi is available. The are signs everywhere with the promise of ‘net access, but the vast majority of these relate to renting time on a wired system. Setting up an access point is dirt cheap, compared to setting up and maintaining a work station, but it seems that wlan-enabled devices are still out of range for most here so it isn’t worth it yet.

L rented some time on one of their boxes and, with a little difficulty, I managed to get a cat-5 I could hook into. I have a touch of paranoia when it comes to protecting my passwords and keyloggers are just to easy to install… In any case, no funcciona. And my spanish is still a little too rough (a little! Yeah, right) to explain that my DHCP discovery packets are being ignored. Seems I should’ve tested my wired connection with this little netbook, as I’ve come to the preliminary conclusion that my troubles are originating in my ethernet card, driver module or the Ubuntu network manager.

The quest for usable wifi continued as we took in the sights and headed downtown. Back around La Moneda, we decided on a Starbucks. I usually avoid the chain (not in particular, really, but because I avoid most) but this was actually a welcome change. Perhaps I was feeling a bit homesick, but the coffee, the brownie, the decor… even the “normal” bathrooms, with soap and toilet paper and everything, were a welcome relief.

March 15, 2010

First day in the city

2010-03-09

Front yard in Nunoa, with view on the Andes through the smog

This was a day of firsts for me in Santiago. We took the Metrored from Nuble to Baquedano, which is a big station in el Centro (downtown) and the connection between the important green and red lines.

Feeling proud outside of Nuble metro, in Nunoa

We made our way to O’Higgins, which includes one of the nicer parks I’ve seen in the city so far right between the two directions of the boulevard. Once again, I was impressed by the sheer amount of life going on… maybe it’s just that I’ve been trapped by winter for too long, but this city seems to pulse with activity everywhere you look. Bustling business men, gaggles of penguins (as they call college students in uniform) and couples strewn throughout, being romantic like there’s no tomorrow.

At 30 degrees Celcius, I spent most of the day hydrating with my new favorite: aqua con gas—bubbly water. I did indulge in a little cafeine, though, in the form of a Coke Light. Seems that here, “diet” just wouldn’t fly and I must say it is less embarrassing to order a Light with your papas fritas (fries), than a diet.

Park on O'Higgins, near Baquedano station.

Without a single cloud in the sky, the sun was a force to be reckoned with. I’m definitely not complaining, but my melanin-poor skin was feeling the power. We stopped in una pharmacia, for some protection, and two things popped out.

The first was that all the sunscreen available was SPF 50 and up. A definite hint that I should’ve creamed up before heading out. The other was the fact that every single article was behind the counter. You pretty much have to know what your looking for as there isn’t much browsing to be done in most stores around here.

It seems Chileans have a reputation as thieves. I don’t know how warranted that is, but store owners seem to take it seriously because almost every store we visited thereafter was the same.

Now that's a metro station entrance. Salvador station, one east of Baquedano.

We then crossed the rio Mapocho, at this time of year a shriveled version of itself with turbulent brown waters rushing westward (I think), and headed to barrio Bellavista. This felt a lot like old Montreal, with handicrafts for sale behind expensive windows. The restaurants were inviting but the entire area felt like something of a tourist trap, so we skipped over most of it and head back to the center.

After a long journey through a busy but rather standard downtown area, we hit Plaza de Armas. It is a large plaza, with street performers and a fountain enjoyed by many as a source of quick cooling action. L and I partook in the joy of getting soaked, then headed down a pedestrian street packed with vendors, tourists and locals.

We had mote con huesillos, an odd mix of boiled peaches and oats served cold, that was tasty, refreshing and provided some much needed energy. We turned off, back towards el centro, in search of barrio Brasil which rumour indicated was a bit more bohemian and real.

After stopping off at one of the many internet shops, to buy a little time and let everyone know we’d actually made it down here, we proceeded haphazerdly towards Brasil.

After about 30 minutes of walking, we were melting in the afternoon sun, from which our only protection was a layer of smog that masked the Andes most of the day. Breaking down, we stopped to have a look at the Lonely Planet book for directions. The maps within, though helpful, aren’t all that detailed but, as we sat there scratching our heads, a man passing by groked our predicament and indicated that we were actually only a few streets away from our goal.

Chucrut, a sweet little pation on Brasil Ave.

On Brasil, we found what we were looking for: palm trees and patios. We took our first real break off the street, in a german-themed bar with tables on the sidewalk, Chucrut. With a litre of Escudo in hand, we absorbed the buena onda (good wave/vibe) of this popular little place and the area.

We’d read about the casa roja (red house), which is backpacker central and a combination hostel and restaurant. It looks like a cool place, and we’re considering staying there a few nights but instead headed to Las Vachas Gordas. It’s unclear whether the name, “The Fat Cows”, refers to the source of carne or the clientele, consider the insane size of the portions of protein.

Smoking in a packed restaurant: barbaric and so much fun, muahaha!

Though rather fancy, we walked in dressed as pattiperros (backpackers/hoboes) yet were treated as kings. I’m glad I ordered the ensalada with, what I thought was, a steak because the little roast that arrived in my plate was enough for four. Linda had hers “al pobre”, i.e. With fries… and two eggs dumped on top. One meal and you have enough protein for three days. Cooked to perfection, an impressive feat considering the thickness. Highly recommended, if your in barrio Brasil.

After that, we wandered back towards the metro slightly intoxicated and after another little tour of Santa Lucia, headed to our temporary home base in Nunoa.

As I type this in the front yard, behind the fence everyone has around there house, L and her cousin are having a convesation. I get a good portion of the spanish, but far from all of it. Since I wasn’t paying attention, I was startled when L, her cousin and her cousin’s son, jumped up and headed towards the house while L stood guard in front of me. “What’s going on?” “The police… they shoot people here, they do whatever they want.”. Hmm, ok. Maybe I’ll keep my nighttime wandering out of the ghetto for now.