Epilogue

The flights home were thankfully uneventful and all three were actually a little early, which is a nice change.  The last day in Santiago was really a strange feeling.  While we were more than ready to get home, a piece wanted to stay.  Chile is a special place and as the hours waned the reality that Chile would soon be a memory made for a strange feeling.  The last goodbyes and the last 'last' things in some cases felt like going through the motions as mentally I had already said goodbye.

We had a few things like some ham in the refrigerator that we fed to one of the many stray dogs that Erin more or less adopted.  One dog in particular seemed to be the focus. Initially we called him 'tiny', because he was bigger than most of the dogs and pretty buff.  He always seemed to spend time at one of the little markets just down the street, where they'd give him an occasional hot dog.  One day when we had some scraps from a restaurant meal, we walked past there looking for him   They referred to him as sombra, so his name became pequeña sombra (tiny shadow).  I guess we also could have called him orejas pequeñas because he had such small ears.

We also fed a half loaf of bread to the pigeons and then went back to the apartment to check out. Following that we went to Coasta Verde, our favorite Peruvian restaurant for one final meal in Chile and one final Peruvian Pisco Sour.  The taxi ride from the airport to the apartment in July seemed to take forever, so we factored in double the time in case there were issues.  Rather than taking well over an hour, it took 15 minutes.  We were too early to check in and had to wait a couple hours.  Didn't know you can actually get to the airport too soon.

Three flights and 22 hours of travel time gives you ample opportunity to reflect.  In many ways, the whole Fulbright was almost a story book experience. We had only positives occur with only mild irritants such as the chaos of trying to register with the Civil Registry. The people of Chile are generally reserved, and when you tell them you loved Chile it brings a smile to their face almost like they weren't sure you would like it. The Universidad de Chile and the students there, as well as my time with the Policía de Investigaciones were definite highlights. The people at Fulbright were fantastic!  The only thing that could have made the trip better would have been to be able to bring my whole family.  That would have changed it from a story book experience to a fairy tail experience.  But at the same time, absence makes the heart grow fonder, and as you can see by our greeting at the airport, there is an extreme amount of fondness.

Even the lady in the background started crying, and we have no idea who she is!

Now comes the challenge of assuming my former life and routines.  There are a lot of subtle things that have already struck me.  Remembering which light switch turns on the right light.  The strange way familiar places appear to you after not seeing them for a number of months.  The toilet seat is about 3 inches higher at home than at the apartment in Chile.  I didn't use a cell phone in three months and didn't miss it a bit - I'm going to ditch the smart phone.  I lost 12 pounds with all the running up Cerro San Cristobal, and I wasn't on a diet. Of course, part of the weight loss was also due to a lack of good cooking skills on my part.  You can only eat salmon, spaghetti, and tacos so many times.  And the snack foods that I have an affinity for were not available in Santiago (chocolate milkshake every night...Hudsonville chocolate ice cream, milk, and a banana).

Of course, the weather change was something I knew was going to happen, but it still was a bit surprising. (view out my living room window)

I hope you enjoyed my adventures in Chile as much as I did sharing them with you.  In my best Pablo Neruda impression,  yo podría escribir los versos más felices esta noche!  (I could write the happiest lines tonight!)

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Wheels Up!

The time has come to say goodbye to Chile and return to my family, who I've missed a great deal.  The Fulbright has been an adventure and I'm glad I received the opportunity to spend time in this great country and meet many new friends.  Thank you Fulbright! While culture and language may distinguish us, in the end we're all the same in that everyone is just trying to get by.  The purpose of the Fulbright is to build bridges, and I'd encourage everyone to build as they are able.  There are a lot of forces to the contrary, and together we can overcome them.

What to do on our last day in Chile?  Erin made a list a few days ago of everything we needed to do or see before we left, whether it was a visit to a place we haven't seen yet, such as the shops in Los Condes, to a place we've been many times such as Plaza de Armas.  We hadn't managed to go there when the cathedral was open, and as luck would have it, it was open on our final visit. (I'm happy to report that we hit everything on Erin's list)

 The inside is very ornate, and rivals cathedrals I've visited in Europe.

We also stopped by Parque Forestal, which kind of became our unofficial "go to" place to relax and go for a walk when we didn't really have any plans on where to walk to.  We managed to run into some friends to say goodbye to on our last stop.

Erin wanted to ride up the Funicular one last time and view Santiago from atop Cero San Cristobal. We were fortunate to have a day with good visibility and a beautiful panorama of the city. The forested area in the center right of the picture is Parque Forestal. Goodbye Chile, Santiago, and friends! LG, Ike, and Blueberry - we're coming home!! Wheels Up!!

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Riding through Parque Forestal, a visit to Los Condes, and some unfinished business

     I went through the rest of the video from yesterday's bike ride and decided one more file is worth uploading.  It is a bike ride through Parque Forestal that starts from Plaza Italia and goes toward Museo de Bellas Artes.  (Click here to see the YouTube video).

     Today we rode the red line to the end of the line in Los Condes.  Erin heard of a neat market there from some of her Spanish student friends.  The market was called Centro Artesanal Los Dominicos, and we scored a few last minute items.  There are many little interconnected shops - perhaps 100 of them.  It is a nice setting with the trees and just the neat way it is set up.

     One of the shops was full of stringed instruments that a guy was busy making.  One was a 20 stringer kind of like a guitar.

     One piece of unfinished business is the whole running thing.  October has pretty much been a wash as I pulled both hamstrings.  The past two weeks I've been busy doing stretching, ice, and compression with things sort of like ACE bandages.  I went for a 2 mile run on Wednesday, running only about 8 or 9 minute miles.  It felt pretty good, so I ran 3 miles on Thursday - also feeling pretty good.  Friday was the bike ride, so I thought I'd give it a shot to do my 5 miler up Cerro San Cristobal on Saturday.  It was really quite good for about 2 miles, nearly all of which is uphill (the "bottom half" video from yesterday's blog post).  Just as I was getting ready to crest the hill my left hamstring started twitching and I knew was it meant.  I stopped and did a little bit of easy stretching and then ran down the other side of the hill at about a 9 minute pace.  At the bottom I did some more easy stretching and then ran on home.  The run up felt great - down was more of a trying not to hurt myself again type of scenario, which is a bit hard mentally, but at least I got the run in.  Since it is 48 hours until departure, I decided to throw the running shoes in the wash so 1) they are fresh for packing for the trip home, and 2) so that I don't try to run again before leaving.  I don't want my last run in Santiago to be a walk home. Speaking of departure, the word from home today was that it snowed for a bit.

     That leaves one other piece of unfinished business.  It is a follow up from one of my earliest posts regarding an Ass Gigante.  I mentioned in that post that I didn't know what one tasted like, and JKL found that to be quite amusing.  Therefore, today I set out on a quest to find out what an Ass Gigante tastes like.  First of all, an Ass comes in two sizes - Gigante and Normal.  The sign even says so, so it must be true. Furthermore, a Normal involves cheese.

So I laid down my 2,200 pesos and waited for the truth, which a guy that hadn't washed his hands since the 2010 earthquake brought to me.

     Now as you can see, the Gigante is a pretty big Ass.  The green stuff is avocado and the topping is mayonnaise, two things that are put on pretty much everything in Chile in prodigious quantities - and it definitely contributes to the Gigante appearance.  Okay, the moment of truth.  The first bite was pretty much just avocado and mayonnaise, so I had to be a trouper and go for bite number two.  The taste is hard to describe, so let's just say that the Ass Gigante is appropriately named for the way it tastes.  There you have it JKL, but feel free to order your own and compare notes.

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Ciclismo Alrededor de Santiago

Today was the day we decided to rent some bicicletas from Bicicleta Verde and cruise Santiago. One of the guys there was from Kansas.  We mentioned that there isn't a lot of people from the United States in Santiago.  He has lived here 10 years and said he likely has either met all of the people from the US that have been there at least a year or he at least recognizes them.

First on the list was making it up Cero San Cristobal on an old touring bike with a basket in the front. Hey, that is part of the adventure...especially when the brakes are a bit squishy.  We decided to do something different this time and film the adventure with a GoPro rather than take pictures.  I've uploaded the video to YouTube and broke it into 2 different videos that are about 7 or 8 minutes a piece.

The first video (click here for YouTube video - includes music from local band Antu kai Mawen) is riding from the top of Cero San Cristóbal to the midway point.  I broke the ride down into two videos (click here for YouTube video 2 - no music on this one, just the sound of wind) in order to keep them somewhat short and manageable on YouTube.  It took about 15 minutes to get down the hill, but it could be done considerably faster with a decent bike and a death wish.  It is about 3.5 miles from the top down to the zoo entrance.

The videos don't really show the steepness of the various areas of the hill, but it is nearly a 1,000 vertical foot difference from top to bottom - enough that you really don't have to pedal the bike at all on the way down.

We decided that renting bicycles is something we should have done a long time ago as cruising Santiago was a blast.  Biking down Cero San Cristóbal is a popular thing to do on the weekends - pretty much a traffic jam - and it is stressful even to run then.  We rode mid-day on a Friday.  I have a few more videos of cycling downtown that I may put up in YouTube later.

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Cementerios y Poemas

A lot of recent Chilean history has a link to the Cementerios in the Independencia area of Santiago.  One of the outings for the Spanish classes that Erin attended is to these Cementerios.  Today we decided to walk there an take a look around.  We entered the first one from Av. Peru.  It is primarily an inside cementerio and most of the graves were above ground - often stacked several high and/or distinct family vaults.

Across the street was a very large cementerio that included the final resting place of former President Allende.  He is on a pathway named O'Higgins, which is a name quite prevalent for streets and parks in Santiago and other places in Chile.  O'Higgins was one of Chile's independence founders who helped Chile free itself from Spain in the early 1800's. He was of Spanish and Irish ancestry.

Allende was of course the President of Chile from 1970 to 1973.  He died on September 11, 1973, during the Pinochet led coup.  Interestingly, Chilean poet Pablo Neruda (Naftali Ricardo Reyes Basoalto - Pablo Neruda is his pen name), was also a candidate for the Presidency of Chile in 1970, but he gave his support to Allende.  Neruda had prostate cancer in 1973 and died of heart failure on September 23, 1973, at the Clínica Santa María - which is just down the street from my apartment. Neruda had homes in Valparaíso and in the Bellavista neighborhood in Santiago - which is also just down the street from my apartment.  The presence of both Allende and Neruda is easily felt throughout Chile.  Both were communists.  Neruda won a Nobel Prize for his poetry and is frequently cited as one of the top 10 poets of all time - and usually in the top three if you do a little research on rankings.

This above painting is on one of the market booth walls in Barrio Bellavista.  It is the start of one of his poems titled Poema 20.  Click here if you want to read it in its entirety in Spanish.  At the end of the poem is an audio link with him reading it.  Below is a translation of the entire poem:

I can write the saddest lines tonight.

Write, for example, 'The night is starry
and shiver, blue, those stars, in the distance."

The night wind revolves in the sky and sings.

I can write the saddest lines tonight.
I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.

On nights like this I held my arms.
I kissed her so many times under the infinite sky.

She loved me, sometimes I loved her too.
How to not have loved her great still eyes.

I can write the saddest lines tonight.
To think that I have not. Feel that I have lost.

To hear the immense night, more immense without her.
And the verse falls to the soul like dew to the pasture.

Does it matter that my love could not keep.
The night is shattered and she is not me.

That's it. In the distance someone is singing. In the distance.
My soul is lost without her.

As if to bring my eyes search for her.
My heart looks for her, and she is not with me.

The same night whitening the same trees.
We, of that time, are no longer the same.

I no longer love her, true, but how I loved her.
My voice searched the wind to touch her hearing.

Another. She will be another. As before my kisses.
Her voice, her bright body. Her infinite eyes.

I no longer love her, true, but perhaps I love her.
Love is so short, and forgetting is so long.

Because on nights like this I held her in my arms,
My soul is lost without her.

Though this be the last pain she causes me,
and these the last verses that I write.

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¡Viva Chile!

Last night was the final qualifying game for the World Cub in fútbol (soccer).  Chile could have qualified a few days ago if they beat Columbia.  They led at the half 3-0, but ended up in a tie at 3-3. So tonight was one last shot to qualify without potentially having to go into a playoff to qualify.  Chile ended up beating Ecuador 2-1 in a home match, and let's just say everyone in Chile knew who won. One of the main roads through Santiago is Providencia, and all 5 or 6 eastbound lanes were closed down while people walked down to Plaza Italia in the center of town for a rally.

Now this is closing in on 11pm, and even the babies were brought to town.

There is this chant that people in Chile say.  Che-Che-Che, Lay-Lay-Lay, Viva CheLay! (this is a video)

We made it down to Plaza Italia pretty early, but you could see that that Carabineros were ready.  The one buy looked like he had on Star Wars Trooper gear from head to toe.

We took a few pictures to "experience" a Latin American soccer celebration.

The cars in a parallel street were making a parade of their own.

The crowd was building fast, so we left before things got out of hand.  Half way back to the casa some M-80's started going off - one very hear us - so it was good to get out of the chaos.  We could hear the celebration through the walls in the appartment even though Plaza Italia is about a mile away.  I've been in Europe during the World Cup and during the Euro Cup, but this celebration, eh, riot, topped them all.

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Greetings From The Coast

This past weekend we traveled to Valparaíso and Viña Del Mar on the Pacific Coast as it was time to get out of Santiago, as well as visit another Fulbrighter in Viña (thank you for your hospitality!!).  Much of this post will be pictures as that is probably the best way to convey the difference between Santiago, Valparaíso, and VDM.  VDM is very much like a typical city in the US.  Streets are on a grid on flat ground and it has an organized feel to it.  Valparaíso is just the opposite.  There is little rhyme or reason to the streets in part because much of the city is built into the hills.  It also has a very strong art culture as well as sea lions, so it is closest to San Francisco in terms of US cities.

We took the subway in Santiago to the Pajaritos stop and bought a ticket for the 90 minute ride.  It cost about $8 USD total for two of us ($5 USD total for the return).  The buses are very nice - ours had reclining seats with leg rests not unlike business class seats on an airplane.

The landscape to the coast has plains and mountains the whole way.  A few huge wineries as well that took about 5 minutes to drive past.

We were met at the bus stop by our Fulbright friend and his son.  The text we sent had the time wrong by 50 minutes (oops!).  The view from his apartment was a bit better than ours...

Viña Del Mar has a neat part downtown and there is a famous reloj de flores (clock of flowers) that is a working clock.

We went to Valpo and had some lunch.  I even bought a painting that hopefully makes it back to the States intact.  They take them off the stretcher and frame and roll them up.  Kind of like the criminals that steal the paintings in the movies I guess. To get to Valpo we rode a micro bus (pronounce meekro bus).  This is an experience as the road is quite curvy in the few miles between the two cities and the goal is to beat all the other bus drivers.  The bus had a stereo speaker blasting out tunes somewhat distorted and a kid sitting up front in the window riding shot gun talking to the bus driver - who seemed to drive using only peripheral vision as he barely looked at the road.

This is a general map of what the streets of Valpo look like.

Apparently Valpo was quite the port prior to the Panama Canal, and it is still the main port for Chile.  There were a few ships in port as well as the Chilean Navy and some sea lions.

I went diving with Sea Lions once back in my crazier days.  Erin couldn't believe it (no creo que) because they were so big.  I placed it as a bigger rush than swimming with sharks as they come out of nowhere and turn in an agile fashion just before bumping into you.

Many of the houses are built with this corrugated siding that we were told is from the shipping containers from things arriving in Chile.

The streets have an interesting pattern of switchbacks and curves, and the city is very colorful.

The yellow building below is the  central market.  The neighborhood didn't feel particularly safe and we had the feeling we were being marked.  It is a little bit of being in a new place, but I felt safer in Santiago than Valpo, and VDM feels very safe.

Art in Valparaíso often has a particular feel, and much of it uses colors similar to the paintings below.

 This is the view from one of the many cerros (hills). There are a number of funiculars to ride up the hills similar to the one at Cerro San Cristobal in Santiago.

Stairs are also a common thing in Valpo.

And this set of stairs also had a ramp that kids were using as a slide.  Not sure there is anything called liability in Chile.

Back in VDM Erin and I went for a walk on the boardwalk.  There are nice beaches, but there is quite a drop off creating various hazards such as rip currents.  The coastal areas we saw in Valpo were rock and industrial.  The three or four mile space between the cities could be 300 or 400 miles for the distinct differences that you encounter.

A few other things we saw in VDM included this restaurant shaped like a boat.   We also saw a group of eight old men at a table outside a restaurant.  I could have sworn that one of the guys gave the Hitler salute when he joined the group (they were old enough).  One did a hand gesture where fingers two and three were extended and pretty much together and the other fingers fingers were bent at the first knuckle.  There are a lot of Germans in Chile - and German restaurants in VDM.  Maybe I was mistaken, but you never know.

This dog we named Cracker.  For all of the dogs we've seen in Chile, this is the first one that followed us (for a couple miles maybe).  We finally came upon a stand selling food.  I was hoping for a completo (hot dog), but the best I could find were crackers to feed him.

You know, we all often have our own personal struggles and challenges, and at times wonder why someone else tends to be getting a bit more sunshine than us.  What we fail to realize is how much more sunshine we are getting than the vast majority of people.  This last picture is something we need to always remember.

¡Te Amo Mi Vida!

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