Valparaíso

We're all here for ten weeks total. Peter and I used our first two weeks settling in, meaning we only have eight weekends left to explore the entire country. Therefore it's imperative that we pack as many things into every weekend as possible. We had our fill of action-packed action last Thursday, so decided to take it slow this weekend. Instead of hiking across the desert or running up a volcano, we went to Valparaíso. For those of you who want a sixty-second summary, Valparaíso used to be a major shipping port. Then the Panama Canal opened and ruined the city. Now it's awesome again. We could get some amazing views and history, but more importantly could get there and back for about 10 bucks. We could also tour it and its sister city Viña del Mar in about nine hours. These proved to be the deciding factors.

Chile has a rather excellent country transportation system called Tur Bus. If you're willing to pay the nominal fee and spent several hours sitting still then it can get you to pretty much all of the tourism spots. Our trip took two hours, most of which I spent fiddling with my camera. I took a couple of countryside shots, but they didn't turn out that great.

One of the few good ones.

At Valparaíso we were given a map of the city by a pushy tour guide. Being a stingy crowd, we opted out in favor of walking everywhere. This made the first leg of our trip slightly tricky.

Valparaíso is a city built from hills. Everything from the houses and trees to fruit markets on the sidewalks tilts on the edge of collapse. Walking one way feels like climbing a million sets of stairs and walking the other way feels like running down a slide. We started up the first hill and half an hour later were still walking. We go up, and go up, and go up. Along the way we see houses balanced on pins and walls giving way to rock faces. The sidewalk thins out and eventually disappears altogether, and we are left walking on a single car road. When one comes by we balance ourselves on the low cliff guards. We will not reach the very top until afternoon. Even so, we still reach a point where the houses aren't blocking the steep fall and trees aren't concealing our view. There is still miles of hills ahead of us. But there is also miles of city below us.

Pictures of the city take up a quarter of my memory card. I spent a long time and dozens of shots experimenting with settings, angles, locations. Never thought I'd become a photography buff. Everybody else shoots scores of pictures too, and the ones who didn't bring their cameras are cursing their mistake. The city is staggering, and we still aren't in the best places to capture it.

Valparaiso is also an artist's city. Even the graffiti is beautiful.

Eventually we reach Pablo Neruda's house. One of them, anyway. If we managed to walk to any of the Nobel Laureate's other two places we'd have broken several marathon records. I'd love to talk enthusiastically about all of the things we saw and revelations we had, but that's not not happened. We saw the price of touring and left. Tito managed to change my position on being photographed while we were there, though. Guy's that good.

Alex, Arthur, and Tito.

On the way down we stop for pastries. Tito and Alex are kind of obsessed with them. They're becoming the focal point of their stay. In their defense, they are good pastries. The path provides us with some more great landscaping chances, chances we gleeful take.

I wasn't kidding about the graffiti.

Headquarters of the Chilean Navy

Statue to Aturo Prat, navy war hero and face on the 10k bill

There's an everburning flame and inscription at the base of the statue. It translates roughly as "this symbolizes the spirit of Prat and of the heroes who offered their lives for the glory of Chile."

We ate lunch, probably one of the more frustrating lunches I've had here. People in Santiago are pretty welcoming of foreigners. If you have say a word wrong, they'll correct your pronunciation. If you have trouble understanding them, they'll try slow down or try different synonyms or whatever. One restaurant owner even found an English speaker to translate some slang and explain restaurant etiquette. The waitress here, on the other hand, found my incompetence almost enraging. It generally made the overall eating experience very unpleasant. At the same time, it emphasized how friendly I've found Santiago.

After lunch we take a bus to Viña del Mar. Why we do care about Viña del Mar? This is why:

Yes, that is a working clock.

Oh, and we would get to see a Moai. The only other way would be to spend one grand on a boat to Easter Island, so... In order to get there, we pick a path that takes us past the beach. I think people wanted to go swimming. Unfortunately none of us packed swimsuits or towels... in any case, I've started looking for a more proper beach. Even so, the view is incredible.

I feel like this is almost a crossroads moment. A little bit of threshold, a bit of triumph, and most of all a realization just how far I've gone. This is the first time I've ever stood on the shores of the Pacific Ocean. Twenty years of East Coast and Midwest and finally, finally, I'm in a new place. A place on the other side of the world. I'm not free, because being free implies that in Chicago I was trapped. But in this moment I feel I'm on the verge of another phase of my life. Not now, not soon, but it's in sight. And just as quickly the feeling passes, and I'm staring at a vast and empty ocean.

Half an hour of walking and we finally reach the Maoi!

Huh. Smaller than I expected. We look at it for all of ten seconds then get bored and find gelato. It's way more popular here than ice cream. On the way we pass a massive three story McDonalds. It was pretty upscale.

With that, we head home. Get back by 11:30, after the Metra had shut down. We end up taking a bus back. I'd love to end this with a pithy saying or deep reflection, but I blew that on the "seeing the Pacific" thing. So day over day up and all that jazz.

The Protest Part Two: The Breath of Hell

This is the second post of a two parter. Part one can be found here.

So... protest. I'm at the head of it. In front of us is a line of armored squad cars and a small legion of riot guards. People are bunched up in front of it, looking lost and confused. A faint stench of tear gas permeates the air. The protest is over. People are going home.

Unfortunately, for most people 'home' is west of the barrier. The police are encouraging people to take the side streets out, move away from O'Higgins and get back on track later. Some people do this. The much stupider people just walk around them, heading along the main road. The police don't stop them. They're riot police, not babysitters. If people want to go into the riot zone, they deserve whatever they get.

The sensible thing to do would be to walk away. Call my labmates, tell them I'm done, then meet up and get lunch. At the very least I could walk down the sidestreet and go back to work. There's nothing worthwhile past that line. If I'm not careful, collected, and competent I could get badly hurt in the riot. Most people who know me know that I'm none of those. Unfortunately, they also know I'm not sensible either.

I can't really explain what made me go in there. 'Stupidity' doesn't describe, because it implies I didn't know what I was getting into. Neither does 'Overconfidence', because it implies that I thought I wouldn't get hurt. Maybe 'Insanity'. Or perhaps 'Fatalism'. I knew exactly what I was getting into, knew what the consequences could be, but didn't care. For a moment my temporary well-being was less important than the chance to experience something awful and overwhelming. Something I literally couldn't comprehend until I was in the middle of it.

I cross the line.

I cross it with nothing but a camera and a death wish.

Everything was empty. No cars, no rioters. The only men and women were the people like me who were crossing to look or head home. It seemed like everything was under control and I was wasting my what the hell?

Water cannon. The government uses massive tanks to knock down people and scatter groups. It offers finer control than riot gas and more temporary damage. There were over two dozen patrolling the streets. An unlucky or incautious rioter could lose a bone to one. They were the least scary things around.

The scarier thing is on the other side. I turn and see a swarm of people running from a cloud. I get a fast picture off and then I'm running, too.

They safe from the cloud, but that doesn't change things. Terror keeps them moving. I run simply to escape them. I angle myself towards a side street, but everybody else has a different plan. They see a large candy stand and think it'll protect them. I'm swept along with the crush, forcing us all to pack behind the thin walls. At some point I lose my shoe. I forget when. The squeezing starts to get a little painful. I didn't come this far only to get hurt in the first three minutes. I wedge my elbows into the people around me and force them to stop crowding. I have space.

Nothing happens. We were safe the whole time. People scatter in relief. I find my shoe and head off of the sidewalk, angling towards the bike path. It's both more open there with better visibility and has more cover. Plus it's further from the streets, giving me some extra warning time against attacks. This ends up being incredibly helpful. Everybody on the streets is either a rioter, a police vehicle, or a poor bystander caught in the crossfire. And, I guess, a few idiots like me who are trying to capture it all.

A much more dedicated journalist who brought a better camera.
Oh, and a gas mask. We high-fived.

If you want to stay safe there are certain things worth knowing. Tear gas is active long after it turns transparent. Memorize the cloud locations and avoid them even if you can't see anything. Keep away from the sidewalks and streets; those are preferred by the rioters and are more likely to get attacked. Know what everything looks like. Trucks are APCs, tanks are water cannons, cars are gassers. If you see a fast moving vehicle in the distance move to the other side of the path. Pay attention to the obstructions, barriers, and escape routes all around you. At any point you can run down a sidestreet and be out of danger, and you should be careful to never let something restrict your mobility. Tanks and cars work in tandem. If you see a sprayer, the area around it is probably gassed. If somebody starts screaming and running, follow them. Most importantly, try not to look like a rioter. Keep these things in mind and you can move about freely. I saw quite a few people forget one of these rules and pay the consequences.

Some people running from danger. Some running to it.

The last rule is important. At one point I am along the sidewalk again, not quite sure if I was ready to leave. Then I come to a police line. Eleven of them, all mounted on horses. No chance of escaping on foot unless I leave the area. I decide I'm not quite ready for that. Do not run. I stop when I see them and slowly walk forward. Do not threaten. I hold my camera up to my neck, not pointing it at them. I am not armed. I do not have riot gear. I'm just a guy risking his health to take pictures. They look at me briefly, then stop caring. Do not anger. I hold up my camera, keeping my fingers far away from the button. They look again but make no aggressive movements or gestures. I slowly move my finger in place and press the trigger.

Police Line

Then I walk past them. In a charged and tense warzone I was able to convey I was harmless. The last rule, indeed.

I continue moving forward. A couple of times I have to sprint. These times they're less blind and more controlled. A few times I get pictures over my shoulder as I try to escape. For the most part they turn out terrible. I can't do everything.

When people start running, you do too.

Rioters are getting much more violent. At this point everybody has either a gas mask, a bandanna, or a lemon. I'm one of the few without anything. I'm still doing better than a lot of people, possibly because I'm not running up to squad cars and throwing paint cans. I just hang back and take pictures of other people doing it. Paint bombs splatter against riot cars and now every single army piece is marked with a Brassau of colors. Either the rioters are a lot braver than before or the lemons really help; I see a couple run into gas clouds to get better shots.

The street is in ruins. People are ripping out signposts to use as battering rams. Storefronts are shattered and the air is thick with ambient gas. There has not been a point for half an hour where my eyes weren't watery and my breath wasn't sharp. But I continue to move. There are almost constant gas and water attacks now. I keep aware and avoid everything.

Moments later somebody would pick it up and wave it like a flag.

Some people set a fire in the street to keep the police away.
It didn't work. Guess why.

My camera is almost dead. I get brief windows of picture taking before it shuts down again. I have a bare handful of moments before it goes out all together. Time to take the money shots. A car is heading towards us. I'm the first to run, getting to the minimum safe distance before stopping. Then I turn to take a video.

At the same time a water cannon opens fire. Both streams throw rainbows onto the avenue. I can't help it. I laugh. Fire, tear gas, screaming people, and rainbows. I get as close as I can to the spray and take my last picture:

My battery dies. The tank sees me. The turret swivels.

I break into a dead run. Across the street in less than two seconds. The geyster is following me and I can hear it roaring in my ear. I remember a small alcove in the next street. I dash the gap, jump over the ledge, and drop into a crouch. Chest to knees, hands over head. The blast hits the alcove and skips over me. I'm drenched. I remember quickly taking the memory card out of my camera to protect it. I wait. The tank moves on. I'm safe for now. I stand up. And that's when the tear gas hits me.

There's only one way I can sum it up: Tear gas hurts. My mouth catches fire. It feels like somebody rubbed a habanero paste all over my tongue and palate. I'm lucky as hell it does get in my lungs. I can still walk. But my eyes... my eyes are melting out of their sockets. They're screwed tight but still leaking out of the cracks, dribbling over my nose and lips... by sheer force of will I blink them open. The escape route is in the same place I left it. Within seconds I'm off O'Higgins and my stay in the battlefield is over.

I wrote this post while walking away from the riot. It gave me something to do until for the gas to wear off. It was mostly gone within ten minutes. My eyes still felt hot for the rest of the day and everything tasted like pepper. I swept a wide arc around the place, called my labmates, and came back to work within half an hour. By that time I had no more tells and nobody saw anything wrong with me. They believed me when I said that nothing happened. If any of you guys are reading this now, I'm sorry for lying. But I was safe, and I had no lasting injury.

Later during work my professor came by. We talked a little about my project, and how it was coming along faster than expected. I've already gotten the error bounds to under three percent, and should be able to get it even lower. But the research wasn't the main reason he came by. He wanted to talk about the protest. He was there; I saw him and waved, but he didn't notice me. He asked me what I knew about the background, and I told him. Then he helped me fill in some blanks I had, as well as give a more personal view on things. Apparently the average Chilean ends college a debt equal to the value of the house. I think he was overall impressed with my familiarity with the situation; last week's (minor) riot encouraged me to research it.

After work my friends and I compared war stories. They were apartment hunting when they stumbled into the riot and had to escape. They were all tear gassed multiple times and two were chased by riot cops. That made me wonder how I got off so easily. Luck had a lot to do with it. But I'm starting to wonder if a large part of it was my own doing. Doing my half hour in the zone I managed to work around a hell of a lot of chaos. I didn't feel much panic and kept rational even during the gassing. I used to think that I'd be completely useless in a crisis situation. Now I'm not so sure.

Was it worth it? Oh yes. If I knew what would happen, would I have done it the first time? Definitely. Would I do it again? I don't know. I really don't know. There was a protest this week, last week, and the week before. Most likely there will be another one next week. I'm not sure if I will attend. Most likely I'll just stay home. If I do go, I'll almost certainly stay in the civil part and far away from the riot part.

But maybe, just maybe, I'll go to the next protest with a water bottle, a pair of goggles, and a sack of chopped up lemons.

The Protest Part One: One Hundred Thousand Heads Held High

Yesterday was the protest. I was going to update it all then, but other life intervened. This is the part one of two. The second post can be found here.


The day is unusually clear. Normally Santiago is choked with winter smog, the two mountains keeping all of the gas and dust in. But it rained the night before, clearing up the city. People can see far off into the distance. It is a good day for a protest.


I get there at 10:30, having missed the lab group heading out. We meet up on one of the Green line stops and head over. At first the protest seems tattered. We stay in one place for a while, and I see maybe thirty people pass. My friends aren't worried, though. According to them, this protest will make the last look like a crazy drunk with a microphone. I'm both optimistic and worried. The government cracked down hard on the last one. Would this time be any different?

I take a few photos, not particularly interested at this point. Everybody from the Engineering School is wearing green. Some riot police pass by, preparing for things to get ugly. A grad student jokes that they look like Ninja Turtles. The resemblance is there. I continue to take some photos, all too boring to talk about. My excitement is wearing thin.

And then we turn the corner.

I don't think this picture really conveys the scale on the ground. Nobody else thought so, either, so we pushed deeper into the crowd. Somebody helped me up onto a ledge, where I had a better view of things. This is what I got.

This is three campuses of Universidad de Chile. UChile has 13 campuses. There are 34 colleges in Santiago. We weren't a crowd. We were an army.

My group beckons me. We fall behind one banner. Everybody starts chanting the university anthem. And we start marching. I am now a protester.

It's pretty hard to describe what it's like. I am just a drop in the ocean, a single voice among a hundred thousand. I do not understand the language, can not translate a thing anybody was saying, don't even have a complete idea of what the entire thing was about. I know the overview but not any of the details. Yet I am marching with them, so I am protesting. My feet and legs added to the rest of them. And we are in the center. If the gas came in or the crowd starting crushing, I'd be the first one down. Desperately trying to remember the survival tactics, I start mapping out the escape routes. Pay careful attention to the shops and alleys, trying to figure out where best to run. I know deep down that if something does happen I won't have the freedom to choose where I go, but planning this makes me feel a little safer.

Our group is moving slowly. I find out it's not too hard to move around. You have to either use one of the street islands if you want to remain in the thick of things, or along the sidewalks if you want to cover long distances. The streets are packed, but the sidewalks are still clear for now. I tell my friends that I'm ranging ahead and they should worry about me. I will call them when I'm headed home.

I'm able to get a better sense of the crowd now. It's perhaps three long metra stops across, estimated at 1.5-2.5 miles. I have no trouble believing the estimates of 100,000+ people. The people range from banner wavers and chanters to choreographed dancers and marching bands. I tried to capture a good sense of it with my camera. I've provided translations where I could:

This still doesn't quite capture the scale of things. I'm starting to grow frustrated at my impotence. I can share details but not the big picture. I'm consigned to only show a grounds eye view of things. It's impossible to convey the energy and the sum total of the experience.

And then I come across this:

It's a bus shelter. I grab on to the advert and hoist my body up. A short scramble later and I'm on the roof. I finally have a birds eye view of the protest.

Getting down is a lot harder, mostly because I'm still shaking from the sight. I continue following the crowd. The sidewalks are getting packed and it seems to be slowing down. My eyes and throat start to water. There's something in the air, something that frames the place with a terrible sense of chaos. I finally reach the head of the crowd. We've stopped moving. We're done moving. The show is over and we don't get an encore.

The police won't let us.

Part two can be found here.

Intermission

The protest posts were supposed to go up today, but I didn't get a chance to work on it. Personal issues intervened. I'll start and finish them tomorrow. There's a lot of ground I have to cover, so it will be a two parter. Goodnight everybody.

Just a Day

Wasn't planning on blogging this because nothing overly interesting happened, but I figured I was due for a post and that the sum total of everything is worth talking about.

Woke up sick today. Professor told me to come in the afternoon and only if I was feeling better. I got over it pretty quickly, so decided to bike to Mercado Central and pick up some food.

Biking has been a bit of a problem here. Every helmet I've found as been either too small for me or broken, so I've been going without one for now. I can't begin to describe how scary this is for me. Actually I can: it's pretty scary. Apparently I'm the only one in the city who thinks so, that or everybody else has the same problems with finding a helmet. It's definitely changed my biking habits. Most people who've biked with me know that I'm not exactly an aggressive biker but a proactive one. Biking isn't just about getting from point A to point B; it's about experiencing the act of biking. Bad roads, horrible weather, pedestrians... they aren't obstacles, they're challenges. Not so much here. If I get within thirty feet of another person I slam the brakes and walk the bike past them. I'm not taking any risks. Paradoxically, I think the lack of a helmet makes me safer. The few times I do try tricks I quickly regret it. Then again, the bike has two speeds: slow and jammed. I can't expect miracles from it.

A friend suggested that I only lock my bike when absolutely necessary. If I can I should walk it with me. This changes how I can shop. Instead of going on weekends, I need to hit up Mercado Central off peak times to avoid crowds. I can only get as much food as can fit in a backpack (not that I need much more). I avoid the inside shops, which has impacted my shopping experience by approximately nothing. My main worry about walking my bike was that I looked like a rude American. Then I saw three other people do it. I am no longer worried.

This is the first time I've shopped without Peter, and it's been pretty liberating. For one, I have a lot more agility. We don't have to mutually agree to purchase something, which saves a lot of time and energy. It also means I can impulse buy, which I've found helps my cooking a bunch. More importantly, I've been using Peter as a crutch. His Spanish is much better than mine. Shopping without him means I have to work much harder at it. Anything that improves my Spanish is A Good Thing.

I went to a vegetable stand that we shopped at before. The people recognized me and showed it. Before they spoke fast, getting frustrated when we didn't understand, the transaction just barely squeaking through. This time they spoke slower and were much more tolerant of my fumblings. It went well and I bought a thousand pesos worth of vegetables from them. Before now Peter and I would jump from store to store, always trying to find the best deal. After twenty minutes of looking we saved 4 cents on a pound of bananas. Now I'm thinking that's the wrong way to do things. Instead we should pick a few stores we like and stick with them. Always buy fruits from the same guys. Always buy veggies from teh same girls. Establish rapport with the shopkeepers. This might be the best way to learn Santiago "from the ground up" and seriously improve my Spanish. That's worth the four cents.

Mercado Central has a thriving fish market. Everything is caught the day of, if not sooner. I picked out a primary store and bought a kilo of salmon for just under three dollars. Stuff here is about as expensive as chicken. I imagine that by the end of the summer I'll be pretty good with seafood!

I biked into work at one o'clock. It was pretty nondescript; not gonna bore anybody with the details. After I got home I started work on dinner. This is the first time I had enough food to make two dishes, so I made salmon with onions and paprika-roasted potatoes. Neither is gonna win any awards, but this is only my first time making fish and second time making potatoes. I think they turned out well for novice attempts. Fish might have been a little undercooked, though; I'll let you guys know if I get Hep A.

Whenever I move into an apartment I try to get the food engine running. If you make three meals of food then you have dinner, lunch, and another dinner. During that second dinner you cook more food, and you have lunch dinner lunch. Then you make more food... rather quickly you're making more food than you can possibly eat and you can afford to relax and/or experiment. This time it hasn't been easy. I've tried to kickstart it on a couple different occasions but it putters out way too quickly. I think it's because I'm feeding two people right now; three meals is only dinner dinner lunch. Then we're back to square one. What I might do is get a kilo of lentils and make the biggest damn pot of lentil stew anybody's ever seen, creating enough food to keep us fed for a week. Soon we're going to have four people in the apartment, hopefully one of them will cook. That'll make things a bunch easier. If not I'm going to try to wrangle grocery stipends from everybody. I cook, you pay.

My labmates told me about a protest tomorrow, possibly the largest of the year. We're going to be heading out as a group. Will hopefully have pics up of that tomorrow night. I now know what I'm getting into and will be much more cautious.

Second Batch

Short post tonight because there's not too much to talk about. Finally got in contact with Tito and Alex and Malus and Arthur. Arthur and I went to get him at Tito some prepaid phones, while Alex already has an international one. Forget what Malus has planned. Then we all had lunch and swung by our place to chat and catch up. Both AlexMalus and TitoArthur have expressed interest in the apartment, so I think we won't have trouble filling it up.

On the way back to Don Santiago we ran across some more protesters. When they saw I had a camera they stopped and posed for me.

"Education of your child is a right, not a debt of millions of pesos."

Later we romped around and made snarky jokes about each other. Tomorrow's a vacation day, so the entire city is going to shut down. We were looking for something to do outside of it but found that those, too, are gonna be shut down. Looks like it's either going to be a "go out and explore" day or "sit inside and trawl Youtube" day. I'm hoping for the former.

Jonathan Katz provided the translation. He requests that people contact him if it's inaccurate. 

Mercado Central

This post was supposed to go up later tonight, but Peter and I are waiting for Alex and Tito to contact us. We've been waiting three hours now and have nothing better to do, so I killed time by writing this.

Due to the move and other fun complications we really haven't been making that much food. Either we eat out or nosh on bananas (30 cents a pound!) or cereal or something. Faced with two more mouths and a lot more time on our hands getting groceries has increasingly become a priority. There are a grocery stores in the region, but they're small, crowded, and expensive. If you want good food you go to Mercado Central.

Mercado Central is not a supermarket but a super market, a bazaar spanning five city blocks. If you can't find it here, it either doesn't exist or is banned by the government. Note that the inverse is not true. I think I found a stand selling unicorn blood. It's not just food and restaurants. Two vendors were selling kitchenware, one shop carried bikes, and at least three casinos stood in plain sight.

But we didn't come here for the tea kettles. The big attraction is the food. These shops are just two in a legion of produce stores built in formation. Everywhere you go baskets of fruit and crates of vegetables line the walls. We didn't bother to count the number of places, but it was probably more than fifty. If somebody counted a hundred I wouldn't be surprised. And they're all incredibly cheap. We bought ten pounds of potatoes for two bucks. Combined with another five pounds of onions, carrots, and bananas getting home quite the challenge!

Spices are a little hard to track down. They're either sold in dry good stores like this one or in small unlabeled packets in the stands. Mostly you differentiated them by sight and smell. Easy for spices, not so much for herbs. I avoided doing it because I was worried about getting in trouble. I don't think people appreciate it when you jam a pack of powder up to your nose.

   

Tito and Alex never ended up showing. We ended up staying home and making lentil soup. I think that was the first real dish I ever learned to cook. It reminds me of warmth and home. Tomorrow we'll definitely be meeting up with the two, plus hopefully Malus and Arthur. I'm looking forward to it. It'll be nice to meet other people from the States.

Oh, and before I forget:

LLAMA LLAMA LLAMA