Hello from Santiago Chile, 

I see it has been two weeks since I last recorded progress on my odyssey. Somewhere along the way in rewriting this postcard the code got corrupted and sentences garbled. Several rewrites later this version seems O.K. Frequent readers of my journals know these records often arrive long after the exciting dramas have ended. So too is this one a bit tardy and with my cheery apologies. After all, 'tis the season to be jolly, right? 

8 December 2005: La Paz - At the last minute I did decide to shift over to the more convenient cheap $18.75 Hotel Latino across the street from the bus terminal in La Paz. Catching the 07:00 bus for Arica Chile made more sense from the closer location. The eight hour ride through surreal desert landscapes made the trip memorable. Long stretches of highway presented natural sculpture gardens of red sandstone. The weird formations must have been created by powerful blasts of sand whipped into a frenzy by furious winds... with the guiding hands of an extraordinarily gifted artist. Some of the creations could have been inspirations for Pablo Picasso's work and might easily qualify for inclusion in the collections of most modern art museums.  

Interspersed with the stone carvings were large expanses of strange bright green moss-like plants that covered the rounded surfaces of large flat stones. Here and there small clumps of naturally charcoal black plants gave the appearance of usually green growths having been put to the torch. Mile upon mile of open range with no signs of civilization hosted numerous mixed herds of wild Vicuna, Llamas, and Alpacas. I especially liked the Vicunas with their long delicate necks and fluffy chest fur. 

Arica Chile

8-9 December 2005: Arica Chile - Plunging once again into blissfully thick sea level air we arrived at the Arica bus terminal just before noon. The air is thick with more than just healthy oxygen. Everyone past the age of puberty is a chain smoker and oblivious to the health hazards to which they expose others in this part of the world.  Off the bus the spirits moved me to immediately commence my usual walking exploration of the city. Three times I failed to get correct directions to the center of town from locals and walked myself in circles until a guy in a suit and I managed to put our smatterings of each others languages together well enough to make communication possible.  

The center of town is totally underwhelming. The six block long pedestrian mall contained many closed stores, too many gaudy banks and enough bars to satisfy the most restless imbiber. The unattractive hotels that do exist are hidden along back streets and allies. None really looked truly inviting. The best of the poor lot turned out to be the "three star" Hotel Concorde, $32 including a jailhouse breakfast of bread and water (plus Nescafe powder, a little jam and butter). Located a block off the "trying hard" pedestrian mall, the best restaurant in town marked by a pair of those famous golden arches is not far away!  

Drivers here are unusually polite, always stopping for pedestrians waiting to enter a marked crosswalk. Bus drivers and their riders go out of their way to express gratitude to one another for small considerations. Young lovers kiss passionately in every public place. Parents show extravagant, even desperate affection for their young children, making me wonder if the legacy of the "disappeared" might have had lasting effects on people in this country. A few derelict ships sit  in the harbor and the dry docks are full of rusty old vessels waiting to become salvage. Though in no hurry, not even the friendly inhabitants could motivate me to spend more than one night here.  

Iquique Chile

9-15 December 2005: Iquique Chile - A four hour bus ride out of Arica through more coastal desert terrain got me to Iquique (pronounced ee-key-kay), a small holiday resort town a couple hundred miles south of the northern border of Chile. So much like Santa Barbara, my $70 Holiday Inn Express room right across the street from the beach feels like accommodations in the Santa Barbara Inn. The place even has free Internet terminals in the lobby business center. However, being such a friendly weekend get-away hotel for families, mobs of Chilean kids ran wild around the hotel last night making an awful racket... and how do I know they were Chilean? Immediately after entering Chile I could not help but notice the kids, undisciplined and uninhibited with parents who never try to limit their unruly behavior in public. So, the kids behave like children! Never mind they drive strangers crazy. Supermarkets are particularly vulnerable to their antics with isles becoming perfect places to practice soccer ball moves or just as often, basketball dribbling skills. The small fry get into the act with their imitations of the referee's whistle performed at the tops of their lungs. All in all, grocery shopping in Chile is a noisy, hazardous affair. 

Iquique is an oasis in this obscure part of Chile. Mountainous sand dunes bordering the vast Atacama Desert plunge steeply down to within walking distance of the beach squeezing the city between sand and sea. A wild real-estate boom is in progress with dozens of modern high-rise condo developments being promoted around the periphery of the city. Billboards advertise two and three bedroom units for as little as $30,000 and a government brochure promoting foreign investment touts the favorable treatment given investors from outside the country. 

Presidential elections occurred last Sunday with a lot of noisy electioneering leading up to it. "Beating the drums" for your candidate is popular in South America and every day drum rolls could be heard somewhere in the business districts of Iquique. As puffy blisters on both feet have been protesting way too much walking during the past two days, I will give the feet a rest and ride buses today. That is something I enjoy doing anyway. In a few days I'll be leaving for Santiago where it is possible I might pause to enjoy the Christmas celebrations... or I might jump ahead and be in the Easter Islands on Christmas day. If the opportunity doesn't present itself later, let me wish everyone a happy holiday season wherever you are. 

Photos taken on the way to and while in Iquique are here. 

 

Antofagasta Chile

15-19 December 2005: Antofagasta Chile is a little over 400 kilometers south of Iquique through more sand dunes that end at the Pacific Ocean waters edge. During the seven hour, otherwise uneventful trip a strange looking chubby tower appeared along the road in the distance. Accustomed to every manner of archaeological remnant from ancient civilizations, few surprise me anymore. This one however, seemed oddly proportioned to be a watch tower. The haze obscured the color and surface details, but as we got closer it became clear the smooth surface and red colors were unlikely to have been created by an ancient civilization. Invisible for the past ten kilometers, finally visible lighter bands around the top and bottom of the tower suggested a squat cylinder of modern origin. Mystified, we passed the strange artifact sitting a hundred meters off the highway and only then on the side invisible to traffic coming from our direction did the script in bold white letters come into view: "Coca Cola!" 

Arriving in Antofagasta, the bus dropped us near the Plaza de Armas a couple blocks from the harbor. Antofagasta failed to excite me much. The city has a single shopping mall full of uninspiring retail outlets offering a poor selection of goods. The $50 Del Sur Apart Hotel is located on the waterfront near the docks used by the fishing fleet and became my first nighter. The odor of fish being processed makes it easy to find the place in the dark. The second night a small party insisted their disc jockey turn the volume up high enough so everyone in adjacent rooms could appreciate the full force of the fierce vibrations coming through the walls. At two AM I requested a change in venue away from the fiesta and after much  protesting the night clerk moved me into an unoccupied suite. The next day I learned the five star Panamericana had a special $58 weekend rate and I gleefully moved. The timing worked out fine with my flight to Santiago the following Monday morning.  

Photos taken on the way to and in Antofagasta Chile are here. 

19- December 2005: Santiago Chile. The two hour flight arrived about noon and a waiting airbus rushed us to within a few blocks of the Plaza de Armas. As soon as I found the underrated three star $48 Panamericana Hotel I stopped my search for a first nighter. I had hoped to be in Easter Island for Christmas, but the LAN Chile Airline could only confirm a flight out to the islands on 31 December, though I am wait-listed on a flight the 24th. So, don't be surprised if you receive a "Merry Christmas from Easter Island" greeting in a few days.  

Santiago is not a bad place to kill time and to spend Christmas day, if it comes to that. Santiago has the most highly developed shopping districts of any country in the world. The city is wall to wall pedestrian malls lined with extravagant shopping galleries. The ground floors of most commercial buildings for several blocks around the central Plaza de Armas are shopping malls themselves and the street exit of one mall meets the entrance to a mall across the street. So it seems like an endless complex of shopping centers interconnected by the extensive grid of pedestrian walks, themselves lined with stores. Most of the stores seem to be selling what is available in other similar stores, so it is hard to see why there are so many of them... except that there are an awful lot of people here. Of course, this is the week before Christmas and things should calm down a bit next week. People in this part of the world take Christmas shopping very seriously. The crowds are enormous, filling every nook and cranny. People anxious to find those remaining few gifts at the last minute push their way through other groups of shoppers equally anxious to reach some special destination. When I return from the islands after the first of the year I wonder if I'll find January sales like we have in America.  

Unlike other major South American cities, I don't see any new construction in progress; every inch of the existing central business district has already been developed to its fullest. Fifteen years ago on a previous visit to this same section of the city I remember enjoying the impromptu bundle vendors who lined the single four block long pedestrian mall. Like a linear swap meet, the vendors all had their own special technique for "disappearing" the minute anyone sounded the alarm that a police/military sweep had started. No one ever got caught; the uniforms formed a line the full width of the mall and slowly marched from one end to another. The vendors gathered their bundles and faded into the side streets barely ahead of the oncoming tide of law enforcers. Seconds after the law had passed the vendors returned to instantly redisplay their goods. Every evening the same performance repeated itself several times without variation. No one appeared the least perturbed by the perfunctory show of lackadaisical enforcement. Today so many shops offer so many products, the sprinkling of sidewalk vendors is easy to overlook, especially with so many rushing shoppers bumping into one another. 

Christmas day in Chile, where ever I am will be much like any other for me, except quieter and less hectic... after all everyone else will have finished their shopping and retired to enjoy family and food. Holiday food here includes the traditional Pan de Pascua, a kind of local fruit cake and Cola de Mono, meaning monkey's tail. It is a unique 14% alcoholic beverage a bit like our eggnog. My little hotel refrigerator still contains portions of both. If I don't make it to the islands for Christmas, I'll finish off the bottle of Cola de Mono the night before Christmas.  

Photos taken in Santiago Chile are here. 

As I don't know when I'll next have a chance to write... or from where, I'll close this with a seasonal wish from Chile: Feliz Navidad y un Prospero Ano Nuevo (a Happy Christmas and a Prosperous New Year).  

More in a future postcard from the Easter Islands.

Peace,
Fred Bellomy 

29-31 December 2005:

I returned to Santiago to make final arrangements to fly out to Easter Island. Returning to Santiago I chose the excellent $49 Tur Express Hotel conveniently located on the third floor of the Tur Bus terminal itself. Any other hotel presented the problem of arranging a transfer out to the airport. Tur Bus offers a choice of airport transfer options, one of which leaves from the main terminal. So, spending the night here means it is only a few steps to the place where a bus leaves every fifteen minutes for the airport. The hotel has two Internet terminals in the lobby with few guests tying them up like I do. On 31 December I caught the flight for Rapa Nui where the story started at the beginning of this postcard. As a reminder, photos taken during my previous stay in Santiago are still here. 

But, I get ahead of my story. You will recall in the last postcard I waited in Santiago hoping to make the day before Christmas flight to the island. 

24-26 December Santiago Chile. 

Twas the day before Christmas and all through the skies, airplanes to Easter Island were all just big lies. To be honest, the chances of getting a stand-by seat on the Christmas Eve Saturday flight were slim, but I continued to hope right up to the last minute. Once the reality became clear, I determined to make the best of the situation and searched for someplace great to spend Christmas day. The $210 five star boutique hotel, Park Plaza had a stuffy receptionist who quickly softened as I went through my tale of abandonment. A brochure on her desk advertised a special day before Christmas seafood buffet at $15 and an exquisite Christmas night banquet for $20. Quietly she suggested I check the hotel's website where special deals sometimes were offered. I did and found a "secret" weekend rate of $75. That did it. If I must be marooned on the mainland, silk sheets and fancy food should help dull the boredom. When I returned Friday morning the three day reservation I had made at their website got me VIP treatment for the next three nights surrounding Christmas day.  

Valparaiso Chile

26-29 December: Valparaiso and Vina del Mar Chile. 

Monday the Park Plaza hotel rates went back up the the regular $210 and I decided to head over to the beaches and historical Valparaiso a couple hours to the west. With its array of funky funiculars and busy shipping harbor, it deserves its reputation as an old colonial city bypassed by modern times. The day I sampled one of the Funiculars also provided a reason to visit the Valparaiso home of Chile's most famous poet, Pablo Neruda. Every school child here knows the name. The days I spent there were bombarded with rock music and street dance performances, to mention only a few of the dozens of events being presented by the city in its annual Arts Festival. As hotel possibilities didn't look too promising in the city itself, I took the Merval (the metro train) over to nearby Vina del Mar where the pickings were better. My first hotel turned out by luck to be the $120 Cap Ducal, down to $80 with bargaining. Designed like a ship with mahogany paneled hallways and brass fittings, it hangs over the surf adding to the nautical effect. It appears to be a favorite with couples looking for a romantic interlude. 

People come to this beach town to get away from the city. There is a large Las Vegas style casino and numerous very expensive five star hotels for those willing to splurge. Two I checked offered rooms in the $250 to $350 range. I did what I usually do in a new place: walk and look. Enterprising guys will wash your car when parallel parked along the streets near the pedestrian mall. In California style supermarkets people steal and eat food with impunity. I saw a mother with four kids all eating cups of yogurt and later saw two of them surreptitiously set the empty cups on a display shelf. The numerous uniformed security personnel spying among the isles had no effect what so ever as far as I could tell. I thought I must be back in western China when on several occasions young men gave me their seats on buses; no fanfare, they just stood up and motioned for me to sit down. Buses and metro cars are among the few places where smokers refrain from polluting the air.  

In one of the large modern shopping malls the hostess who seated me in a better restaurant delighted in showing off her very good English. "How much does a waitress make here?" I asked. "...about 3,000 pesos for an eleven hour shift." she replied. A quick calculation prompted me to confirm her numbers. Yes, these kids are paid about $6 for working 11 hours or about fifty cents and hour... plus tips. "Do they receive many tips?" I asked. "Some of the foreign tourists tip pretty well... the Americans and Europeans are best... the Argentineans and Brazilians the worst." she noted. "How about someone with a better job like yours?" I inquired. "Well; I make more than the average... I've been working here for three years... Let's see, I make about $15 for each 5 hour shift... other hostesses make about $10." she added. Given the high prices for everything and all the eager buyers roaming the shopping malls, some people must make a lot more than that. Then I remembered that in this part of the world there is a shameful disparity between the richest and poorest segments of society. People, including small children openly demonstrate physical affection in public; young lovers kiss passionately, older kids hug their younger siblings, many of both sexes walk the sidewalks hand in hand. During one exploration I discovered the $75 Hotel Marina del Rey, a Best Western hotel and moved there to be closer to the central bus terminal for my return trip to Santiago the next day. 

Photos taken while in Valparaiso and Vina del Mar are here.