A Peso For My Thoughts

Recent weather: low 60s early in the week with light rain, mid 70s later in the week and sunny.
Recent reads: 1 Samuel, "The Prince and the Pauper" by Mark Twain, "Waking Up Married" by Mira Lyn Kelly, "Beyond Anger: How to Hold On to Your Heart and Your Humanity in the Midst of Injustice" a Shambhala Publication.

I started this week in La Serena, one of the big little towns of central Chile. The more time I spend in smaller towns, the more I notice what Chileans mean when they talk about the growing disparity in Chile. While on the surface Chile is one of the more advanced countries in South America, deep down, many Chileans feel like individually their lives aren't getting better. While big cities like Santiago can hide it, La Serena exemplified this contradiction. For every new BMW on the road (and there were many), there is a neighborhood built out of metal sheets. And in some cases the line of demarcation between the upper class and everyone else is actually a deliberate line, with skyscrapers, paved roads and green lawns on one side of the tracks and dilapidated shacks on dirt roads on the other.

My afternoon snack overlooking the fish market.

In this case, the grass really is actually greener on the other side.

After two days in La Serena, I tried to leave but couldn't. Seriously. I checked out of my hostel and waited at the bus stop for over an hour but my bus never came. Turns out it was a holiday of sorts and either my bus wasn't running or ran less frequently. So I retreated back to the hostel for another day. I continued my unofficial beer tasting of Chile by enjoying a delightful local pale ale made in the nearby Valle del Elqui.

An overcast day at the beach.

Anima Pale Ale made in Valle del Elqui

On Friday morning I left early on my 2 hour bus ride through Valle del Elqui to the sleepy town of Pisco Elqui.

Pisco fields

Pisco Elqui is, of course, famous for Pisco so I had to go on a pisco distillery tour. When in Rome!

I continued the pisco tour by indulging in a private tasting with me, myself and I at dinner. Perhaps it's the shorter list of sights to see in my Lonely Planet Guide for these towns and the more free time to just think, but I was slightly more bitter to say, "table for 1 please" than usual. At dinner, where I had a tasty pisco sour and a hearty bowl of bean ceviche, the cutesy couples and happy families dining around me seemed especially nauseating. Don't get me wrong, I have actually really enjoyed traveling alone but this was one of those inevitable moments, days, weeks that I felt like this all would have been a whole lot more fun to share with a PIC... Okay, let's be honest about the real issue here: I was undecided between the bean ceviche and a pizza and it is socially unacceptable to order both but if there were two of us, this wouldn't be a problem. There. I said it.

But if dinner wasn't enough time to wallow in self pity that I am "stuck" traveling South America alone (first world problem?), then the 22 hour bus ride Saturday and Sunday from La Serena all the way up north to Arica, Chile, should really put everything in check.

I don't know if it was epic or if part of my soul died from sheer laziness, but on that bus ride, I watched the sunset and sunrise from the exact same seat.

And now to spend some time in Arica, Chile!

A Holiday from My Holiday

Recent weather: low 60s, overcast and light rain on Thursday and Friday; low 60s, mostly cloudy Saturday; mid 70s, sunny on Sunday and Monday.
Recent reads: Joshua, Judges, Ruth. What I love about the book of Ruth is how little dating and women have changed. Naomi devising a plan for Ruth to uncover Boas's feet and then asking Ruth excitedly afterwards, "How did it go??" Reminds me of how my grandmother would love hearing about my dating stories:)

I left Santiago for Valparaiso on Thursday afternoon. I didn't do much in Valpo on Thursday since it was cool and damp. Fortunately, Valparaiso isn't a big town and doesn't have an endless list of must-see tourist sights and activities like Santiago or Buenos Aires. In fact, Valparaiso is quite the opposite. It is a sleepy town whose cultural experience is best absorbed by strolling along its streets and taking in the ubiquitous graffiti and its eclectic hillside neighborhoods.

Shortly after checking into my hostel, I met Marie. Marie is Danish and has been traveling for 17 months! She started in New York City and has worked her way down America with her flight home in about 6 weeks. Marie and I hung out for most of the time in Valparaiso. What I liked most about Marie was that she was even taller than me (apparently very common in Denmark), had no interest in discussing politics, and, most importantly, she laughed at my jokes.

On Friday we did the Tours for Tips walking tour with our lovable guide, Priscilla. Priscilla was a knowledgeable and endearing guide and I would like to believe all her jokes were 100% original and non-rehearsed. Valparaiso's golden era was in the late 1800s and early 1900s when Europeans needed to sail around the tip of South America in order to reach California and the Gold Rush. Valparaiso served as the perfect stopover for ships and sailors becoming a very important port city and attracting all kinds of European immigrants. Quickly Valparaiso grew to be a very rich city and the first city in Latin America to have a volunteer fire department and Latin America's oldest stock exchange. But the opening of the Panama Canal in 1914 hit Valpo hard with the sudden lack of traffic. Many immigrants had built elaborate mansions on hills or fancy new hotels which were never opened. Among other reasons, Valparaiso climaxed in the early 1900s and isn't even the major port of its region today.

Priscilla, our tour guide.

Valparaiso is a steep city with lots of epic staircases and ascensors (electric run cars that ascend and descend the hills for about 25 cents USD). But what better way to turn these abundant staircases into epic culitural pieces than by painting them! Graffiti and street art is everywhere and if you thought the La Boca neighborhood in Buenos Aires was colorful, Valpo is just as colorful. Supposedly, ships used things like sheet metal and paint cans as weight for navigating around Cape Horn and often ditched the heavy stuff in Valpo once they had passed the more difficult waters. So the people of Valparaiso made lemonade, building their homes out of the metal pieces and using the random paint colors to prevent rusting. More recently, people have hired graffiti artists to paint murals on their homes which also decreases the chances they'll get tagged (the typical black signature type graffiti that is associated with gangs or crimes).

Me and my new friend. He never disagrees with me.

We finished off our tour with a bit of pisco and I didn't complain.

That night I came down with a fever randomly and spent much of the evening and night shivering under 3 blankets. I seriously think it may be medically necessary for me to live in San Diego. I should consider getting a doctor's note. This was one of those moments when I wished I wasn't in Chile but rather in my childhood bed where my mom would do the hand to forehead fever test (does this even work?) and bring me Campbells soup. The fever broke and I was back on the cobblestone streets of Valparaiso on Saturday again.

I wasn't lying about the colors. 

Chorrillana, fries with meat, grilled onions and cheese. But it's on a piece of lettuce so I'd call it a salad.

At the harbor

Valparaiso, behind bars. 60 minutes edition.

Sunday I took a city bus to nearby Vina Del Mar where I spent the whole afternoon reading at the beach. Time well spent attempting to even out my sock tan line and naturally exfoliate my feet with a stroll on the beautiful wide sands of Playa Caleta Abarca. Monday I meandered through the downtown of Vina Del Mar, through its various fruit, veggie, clothes and handicraft markets.

Like sands through the hourglass, so are the days of our lives.

What time is it? Beach time!

Highlight: In Valparaiso we had a beer flight at Casa Cervecera Altimira. Now the beers were just okay. My favorite was the German Amber. The part I really enjoyed was chatting with the brew master. He came by our table and asked how our beers were tasting. And it wasn't that run of the mill, "How is everything?"  where they expect the answer to be "fine, thank you," but he genuinely wanted our opinions. He studied beermaking in Ireland and worked in Belgium and northern California. Recently, they hired a historian to dig up and certify the original beer recipes that were first made in Valparaiso. Valparaiso had the first brewery in Latin America, by the way. When I asked him about the chances I'll find an IPA anytime soon, he stated that at his brewery, they are just making the original recipes of the first brew master but that in general, Chileans have sweet tooths and a hoppy beer doesn't make for many happy Chileans.

Low point: I found a gray hair. Perhaps traveling is more stressful than you'd think. Or I'm getting too old for this. Oh yeah, and then at the bus station a drunk (I'm guessing) homeless (I'm guessing) man threw up. And then a stray (I'm guessing) dog licked it up.

Monday night was an overnight bus to La Serena. Heading north!