And in other news...

FIRE HYDRANT STOPS RUNAWAY PRAM

Local resident, Señor Hydrant, has been praised as a hero for stopping a runaway pram.  When questioned about his actions he replied humbly, “I only did what any hydrant would have done."

TELEVISIONS PROTEST

“It’s an invasion of privacy,” claims one TV.  Televisions across the nation are calling for a halt on the constant staring at televisions.  TVs holding placards marched on Parliament today.  One angry TV shouted, “We’re more than just a screen.”

STREET TAX CONSIDERED UNFAIR

Residents feel that the new Street Tax is leaving them with less area to drive on.  One family is confused where they are supposed to park their car now that the government has taxed half of their street.

PROPERTY VALUES DROP IN VINA DEL MAR

Local property developers are confused why there has been a sudden slump in house prices.  Local hotels have noticed a drop in visitors while there has been a definite increase in the sale of life jackets.

And that’s the news in Valpariso.

Isn’t it supposed to be summer?

There was an original plan to rent any apartment for a month while getting to know Valpo and search for suitable digs during that month.  We’ve kept up our end of the bargain – the suitable digs part isn’t pulling its weight.

Our current apartment is in a perfect location with new, modern furshinings but it has only been offered to us at this price for a month.  We can’t afford to stay in this particular apartment for the rest of the year.  Karen, the real estate agent, keeps telling us to calm down, mas tranquilo.  She always takes the time to talk to us and help us learn a new phrase when ever we see her.  Perhaps our broken Spanish is why we sound fretful to her.  As we speak can only speak in the present tense everything sounds very urgent.

Part of the problem is that Valpo is not a transient population.  Certainly many people come here for the summer holidays but the majority of people don’t have the extra cash or the prospect of a better job to just uproot and move on.  We’ve been seeing the same apartments advertised for the past month now.  Another aspect is that with children we have set criteria for where we want to live in Valpo.  Which narrows down the field considerably.

The internet.  Yes it does exist here and wifi is everywhere.  Websites that function?  They haven’t quiet made it here yet.  Every day I look out at the harbor in the hope that one of the shipping containers will be filled with web designers who understand a few dogmas of web design.

In order of annoyance and need:

1. Tabs and links have to lead to somewhere

2. Just because your camera can take 16MB photos doesn’t mean you should use them.

3. Search criteria should not include vineyards, diary farms, abandoned rail way stations, glaciers or asbestos mines.  I just want to look at apartments in Valparaiso.

4. It’s not illegal to answer emails from potential customers.

Having said that the lady who runs the ice cream shop down the road said that we should come to her if we need any information.  Tomorrow it’s ice creams and dodgy Spanish.  Her son lives on the same street as we do. Maybe he wants to adopt us… 

Oh I do like to be beside the seaside.

Heads we stay home and watch the fifteen inch TV screen with rabbit ears and two fuzzy channels or tails we go to Viña del Mar. 

Three heads in a row.

So off to Viña del Mar we went.  Viña is considered to be more touristy than Valpo and it certainly has a lot more high rise than Valpo and very little character.

On the way to catch a bus we happened upon some sort of down hill bike carnival.  We’re yet to find where we’re supposed to put our ear to the ground to find out about these sorts of things.  Perhaps there’s an opening for some sort of grassroots magazine that promotes all culture.  If only we spoke Spanish.

Every so often someone would race down a hill and come out through this little building in the plaza and land gracefully on the ramp.  The hills of Valpo are a goldmine for a dozen different action movies.  Think BMX Bandits meets Notting Hill.  With all the roof tops holding hands its easy to imagine James Bond leaping to safety.

There are so many buses here that we walked to a street where the traffic was flowing north – towards Viña.  It’s a case of waiting till you see the destination you want and putting your hand out.   The drivers get paid per passenger they pick up so they’ll stop for you no matter what.  The downside of this system is they toot at every person in the hope that they too want a ride. 

There was a sign on the bus (in Spanish) which read, Ride now, pay later. I had no idea what this meant.  I handed over the extremely measly sum of CH$700 for all of us to go about 10km to Viña.  Once on the open road I realized what the pay later part of the sign meant.  The bus rattled several fillings out of my teeth and at one point the kids managed to swap seats without meaning to.  I believe the bus was only three years overdue for a service.

Our first sight was a private beach where a set of steps complete with red carpet allowed paying tourists to climb over the ornate handrail.  I don’t know what the cost of this was but there was no comparison to the free beaches of Noosa.  We witnessed Viña style surfing which is the first time I’ve seen surfers surf towards a wave to catch it.

Castillo Wulff has the quirkiness of a glass floored walkway allowing people to see the waves crashing below them.  It’s a very small art gallery.

There is a large floral clock by the entrance of Viña and it could be the high light for many visitors.  Valpo lacks in greenery, as most cities do and it is very rare to see vibrant flowers here.  Perhaps that is one of the reasons people paint their houses so many different colours and artists proliferate like scattered seeds.

We rattled our way home on another rollercoaster bus ride and enjoyed pasta on the terrace.

YouTube - Surfing Viña style.

YouTube - Glass floor.

Why are we looking at old belly buttons?

It’s a different sort of Naval Museum.  With such a long coastline it’s almost expected that Chile would have a strong Naval presence.  In the harbor of Valparaiso there are about six Navy ships.  I’m not sure who they think is going to attack but it would appear they’re ready for them.

The displays are informative and in-depth and also in Spanish.  Some did include brief English information.  There’s a great amount of respect shown for those who died in historic battles and I assume that many Chilean students learn about various Naval Officers.  Many of the names were familiar to us as quite a few of the streets have been named after those who served in the Navy.

Many of Valpo’s houses are built without any form of Local Government consent.  Part of the charm here is how houses are like rock orchids and cling precariously to the sides of other structures or impossible inclines.   The downside to being so close to each other is the very real threat of fire spreading from one house to the next.  The fire fighters (bomberos) of Valparaiso are well equipped and as all of them are volunteers they are held in high esteem within the city.  However gravity and narrow streets are against them and it can be difficult for them to get to some houses quick enough to stop the spread of fire.  We saw one house devastated by fire today.  The bomberos managed to save the adjoining houses.

 Girls on trolley bus.

A well worn path.

It's Friday. Let's go shopping.

We decided to test yesterday’s “talk” and take the girls for an exploration of the city.  Another unusual fog hung over the Valpo making our planned outing to la playa (the beach) sound very unattractive.  Plan B.  It’s a quick jaunt for us over to Ascensor Reina Victoria, except today we used the poor man’s ascensor – the steps.

Valpo by night.

Everyone that we’ve met has been very welcoming and accommodating and we have not felt in danger at anytime (except in the odd taxi).  There is a very noticeable presence on home security with a mix of barbwire, bars, jagged iron work or the good old fashioned broken glass set into the top of a brick wall.  Some even go so far to paint the glass to match the fence.

As we walked down from Cerro Alegre into Cerro Panteon there was a different vibe in the air.  There was still no reason to feel unsafe but the increase in the amount of barbed wire and other devices do tend to drag a neighbourhood down.  There are two reasons why stairs are considered to be possible danger points in Valpo.
The first reason is that when the foreman said, “Make them as big as my shoe.”  The workmen heard, “Any size will do.”  The second reason has more to do with undesirables and dark corners after the sun goes down.

The steps to Cerro Panteon fell into the second category.  Someone had forgotten to tell the artists this though. The amount of artwork on the doors, walls and steps increased to a point that the camera stayed out while we made our way up towards the Crementerio de Disidentes, Valparaio’s cemetery. 

Shaken from an earthquake?

Seeing how others send the departed into the next life is always fascinating.  My interest in cemeteries is purely to find the oldest tombstone I can.  Instead of tombstones there are great monuments with iron gates, much like the gates of people’s homes in the city.  I was disappointed in my search as 1890 was the oldest date I could find.  Perhaps there is an older part of the cemetery that I didn’t see.

We trolley bused to Jumbo, the giant department store, to do some grocery shopping.  Some things that I want to share with you.  Jam, yoghurt, mayonnaise and tomato sauce all come in plastic bags.

We’re yet to find fresh milk.  Cream and milk are all long life.  They taste fine.

The last thing is you can buy just about anything at Jumbo.

Yes, they are tyres near the fruit and vege section.

YouTube - The Empanada Lady

YouTube - Indiana's Art Tour of Valpo

An empanada walks into a bar...

Dear QANTAS,

I wish to complain about my flight to Chile.  It would appear that after being on one of your aeroplanes my molecular structure and the magnetic field of my laptop has been tampered with.  It now appears that the smaller the space I’m in while using the laptop the greater the need for my children to be near me.

If I sit on the bed – they are magnetically drawn to the same bed.  If I move to the futon they too gravitate to the same place.  As an experiment I hid inside the wardrobe to write a blog.  Within twenty seconds I heard two dull thuds on the door as my children were stuck to the outside.  My wife had to use a spatula to peel them off the door.

Has this happened to any of your other customers and is there a way to reverse the polarity of my molecular structure so that they are repelled when I am using the laptop?

Sincerely

Mr and Mrs Harper

We’ve been house bound over the past four days with various aches and pains, sneezes and wheezes.  Truce’s limp has disappeared and we put it down to her favouring the same leg every time we went up stairs.  Sometimes we forget how tiny her legs are.  Medical problems are possibly our greatest concern while traveling.  There’s only so much self-diagnosing you can do with Dr Google.  Last night we noticed a strange welt on her back about the size of a 5 cent coin.  Was it a bite from the much feared Chilean Recluse Spider?  We asked her many questions and put it felt safe enough to wait and see what the morning brought.  A quick inspection this morning brought relief as the welt had disappeared.

Today was the day of ascensors.  We went down El Perel with an incline of 48^O.  We went up Concepcion, 45⁰.  Then down and up Reina Victoria, 52⁰.   The ascensors are surprisingly cheap for what they are.  They range between CH$100 – CH$300 depending on their location, height and if they are privately owned. There is a real beauty to riding in something that is 100 years old, has a flimsy metal latch to keep the door shut and gaps in the floor big enough to serve as a fire escape.  Perhaps it’s the financial situation of the country to not modernise and over safetyfy some of these contraption or maybe it’s just common sense – If you open this door you will fall out and die.

Once again we realised how dependent we were on our car as the kids loaded both whinge barrels today and fired them at us less than five hundred metres into our walk.  We tolerated it as best we could until the end of the day when we found a slide (complete with a huge weld in the middle to hold it together) I was the crash test dummy to inspect it for jagged edges, weak seams and general unseaworthiness.  As I slid down nearing the speed of sound I took the corner, realigned my hips and bounced at the bottom.  With both thumbs up I told Talluah to send the kids down but watch out for the corner.  Surprisingly the kids had the energy to go up and down the steps several times without complaining of sore legs.  This led to “the talk” and finished with there will be no more whinging or else some sort of punishment will be delivered.  Truce’s question: “Will the punishment be something like we have to go back to Australia?”  How do you keep a straight face after that?

We had our second Spanish lesson with Karen’s son.  By the end of todays lesson we had retained and understood the equivalent of I have, I had, I will have.  Small steps people.  To give you and idea of the difference:

I have (now) Yo tengo

I had (yesterday) Yo tuve

I will have (tomorrow) Yo tendre

… and this is just talking about the first person, I.   We know we will master it and other people have survived learning another language.

Every day around 7:00pm there is a lady selling empanadas on the street.  She drags a trolley around shouting, “Empanadas!”  Considering it is the end of the day and we don’t know how old the empanadas are we haven’t raced out with our spare pesos yet to partake in the bargin buying.  We did though go to an empanada shop and make a purchase at a sensible time with the hope that the ingredients are fresh.  Today was our first empanada.  I’ll let you know tomorrow if we survived.

Our first empanada.

A tip on how to make friends.  Because the money is different here you have to learn big numbers.  A litre of milk is around CH$500.  By the time you do some grocery shopping it can come to CH$12,539.  The shop keepers show you the amount as they don’t expect you to understand how much it is when they say it.  Supermarkets are a bit rushed but whenever I go to a corner store and it’s quiet, I ask the store keeper to help me pronounce the amount.  It changes the atmosphere dramatically.  Half the time they then ask me how to say it in English.  It’s a case of when in Rome…

YouTube - Truce on giant slide.

YouTube - Ascensor Concepcion.

Light at the end of the tunnel.

We have successfully moved to Cerro Alegre in the top apartment  of a three storey building.  The kids think its Christmas because it has a terrace.  This is home for the next four weeks while we learn the layout of the city, research schools, job hunt and de-gringo ourselves.

Sunday.

Monday.  Sea fog rolled in all day.

Karen, the real estate agent, helped us move our stuff over here last night in her own car.  During the move she said that her fifteen year old son has learnt some English from watching TV and would like to learn more.  We’ve organised some receipricol trading where he teaches us Spanish and we teach him English.  Nothing textbookey, just talking to each other.

Truce woke up with a limp this morning.  She said it’s from when she had a fall at day-care.  It’s been more than six weeks since she was last in day-care.  Oh to pass time like a three year old. We spent a lot of the day sitting around playing in various sitting positions.

In the afternoon we tried to charge the laptop with no luck.  Funny, I’d charged other things earlier.  It was then that we realised the fridge wasn’t running.  No electricity.  I went down to the front door and looked at the main metrebox.  All the switches were on.  The internal hall light worked.

Who do we call?  When you rent an apartment you normally pay  an amount for electricity and never even see a bill.  I don’t know how they come to this figure that you pay but it seems to be a standard practice.  It could be think of a number and double it.  Who am I to criticise the profiteering of a landlord?

Indy checks the lights.

We searched all over the apartment looking for another fuse box but couldn’t find it anywhere.  This sort of problem is too difficult to do over the phone so I walked down to see Karen.  Thankfully her office is only two streets away.  I want you to imagine a six foot two Australian with shocking Spanish doing a mix of opera and ballet.  I think the flyer will say ¡¿Donde mi electrico?!  It’ll be a sellout.

Karen walked back with me to the apartment and we realised why one of the paintings had so many scratches around it.  The fuse box is hidden behind it.  Power was restored and the laptop is happily charging away. 

So much to learn.