Authentic Storybook

Upon our evening arrival to Valpariaso, we shuttled in taxis to our hostels. Our group of 19 divided into a large and smaller group, each of which stayed at a different hostel. Ours was called Millennium House or Milhouse for short (there were many Simpsons window paintings throughout the house).

In Chile, lunch is typically around 2PM and dinner is later as well. My homestay family usually eats at about 7:30 but I know of several people who eat at 8:30. Thus, when dinner is actually late, it is quite late indeed. On two separate occasions, I have not eaten until 10 or 11 (not my homestay fam’s doing—these were independent ventures). Let’s just say I’m substantially more pleasant to be around when I am not hungry. Following our 11PM dinner of empendadas de camarones (basically a shrimp calzone), my disposition had lightened significantly.

We then went back to the hostel for drinks. Pisco is a liquor made from distilled grapes and I discussed pisco sours in my first blog post. This night, we shared piscolas (pisco y coca-cola) and played a game that engaged most everyone in our group, which is often hard to do. Post piscolas, we left in search for a club. We found one, but when the bouncer tells the 6’7’’ boy in the group that we don’t actually want to go there, we thought it better to seek another. We settled upon a place called Huevos, which is better known and more reputable, and danced—primarily to reggaetone—until the wee hours of the morning.

I woke up fairly early on Saturday morning and enjoyed the breakfast of toast, yogurt, and tea that the hostel hostess provided. Since few people were awake, we were able to chat and I learned about her passion for painting the ocean and arranging flowers, about how she came to own a hostel, and about where she lived previously. In a large group, it’s often difficult to have these conversations, so I am ultimately quite happy that I woke up early.

Once the majority of our crew had risen, showered, and breakfasted, we herded out of the hostel to explore Valpariaso. The city, which is on a hill that is adjacent to the ocean, is known for its brightly colored houses and elaborate graffiti. Since it is on a hill, navigating can be a bit confusing a times. In some areas, there are steep sidewalk-esque staircases that you can climb to pass to higher streets. Residential Berkeley has these as well and I’ve always been a fan. There are also several trams/elevators that you can pay to use to achieve the same effect. The trams look similar to the one at Shadowbrook in Capitola, California. Shadowbrook if a foofy restaurant on the hill that borders the Soquel River that runs into the Pacific Ocean. To reach the dining area, one might walk down the aesthetic garden path or take the tram that is reminiscent of an AP physics problem: a box slides down a frictionless ramp that has a 35-degree angle. I digress. The point is that we did take the tram up once, but only once. The tram was so rickety that the only thing I could think about as we scaled the hillside was “dear God, I hope there’s not an aftershock because if there is, I’m going to die and I can’t remember if I bought insurance that will cover the repatriation of my remains or not.”

Having survived the treacherous tram (yay alliteration), we had a fantastic view of Valparaiso’s mosaic of different colored houses and the coastline. In fact, we enjoyed that view while we dined in a slightly more upscale restaurant—certainly not street vendor empenadas. For lunch, I had garlic shrimp. They were very garlicy, like garlic fries from bottom of the bin. I personally do not mind strong garlic, but I’m more dubious about how those around me felt.

Unlike US restaurants, water is not complimentary. In addition to swearing and making biting remarks, it also costs money (stupid joke, I know). This is problematic for two reasons. The first is that I will often forego a drink and end up being thirsty. The second is that water costs the same as a soft drink or juice so I am more apt to choose among the latter than to order my usual free/healthier water. However, one loophole we’ve discovered is that pretty much all restaurants give free ice. So, especially at our fancy-schmancy lunch spot, I opted to order one water and added more and more ice to it.

After lunch, five other people and I broke off from the larger group. Traveling in a large pack is stressful and not nearly as enjoyable. I find I count and re-count people more than take in the sites when I am in crowd. Also, we were anxious to get to the beach and it was unclear when the masses would actually make it to the ocean. Whilst broken off, I ran into a young woman I recognized from our hostel and I said “hello.” This girl, also an American, fiercely chastised me and the rest of my group for being too loud too late and for being generally inconsiderate of the others in the hostel. Whether she was rude or not is a moot point; she was completely right. We had been loud and we had been inconsiderate, both of which were inexcusable forms of behaviour. My fellow group mates and I had gotten sucked into our game. It was not that we forgot that there were other people and that it was late. No. Rather, we (or at least I) did not even think about that element. (My mom’s favorite Stanford joke: How many Stanford students does it take to screw in a light bulb? One! She just holds it up and expects the world to revolve around her) I made an apology that I believe landed on deaf ears. However, I also took with me that reprimand and passed along the message. It was a good, though somewhat pathetic, lesson to learn early on in our experience here. Fortunately, the owner of the hostel did not seem peeved at us. I apologized later that afternoon and she commented on our being young and that youth need to be a bit wild. Necessary or not, I’d prefer to do it without being rude and aim to be more thoughtful in the future.

Viña del Mar is slightly north of Valparaiso and is known for beautiful beaches. However, I had another mission in mind with respect to Viña del Mar. A couple years ago, my grandma and grandpa were on a South American cruise and my grandma became very sick and had to disembark and stay in a Chilean hospital for close to two weeks before she was sufficiently stable to transfer to one in the states. During that time, my grandpa stayed in a hotel in Viña del Mar and apparently became good friends with the concierge—a Canadian expat named Andrea. Some of my cousins had visited Viña del Mar and Andrea specifically and she remembered my grandpa. My mission was to find the hotel and Andrea. While I fulfilled the first half of this mission, I failed to make manifest the second, missing Andrea by half an hour. I left a note and contact information and, one week later, have yet to receive a response.

The rest of the afternoon consisted of people watching and playing word games on the beach. We saw one group of boys who were practicing flips and other tricks. Two boys were trying to teach another how to do a back flip. We waited for several minutes but the gymnastic student kept hesitating so we ultimately left. I would bet that he never did the flip. I believe he is fully capable of it, but he kept reaching the brink and backing down. He had thoroughly psyched himself out.

Later that evening, our group met up with the larger group for drinks at a place called Pub Matriz. Pub Matriz is a four-storey house that has been converted into a pub. Each level has its own bar and the walls have been modified such that only the structural wood is in place and you can clearly see from one room into another. We pushed together several of the trapezoidal tables and enjoyed another evening of getting to know one another.

At one point in the evening, we started to play ten fingers. I actually hate this game and chose not to partake. The way the game works is everybody starts with ten fingers and each person shares “never have I ever done X” If you have done X, then you clap and put a finger down. The first person to put all ten fingers down wins(loses? I don’t even know. Hehe). ANYway, I detest this game not because I am afraid of being called out or judging, but because I think it confuses what it means to get to know people. With a fixed form answer, you lose people’s communication styles and personal stories. You substitute away from nuance, depth, and character. I am fine playing ten fingers with my nearer and dearer friends; however, I simply refuse with groups of new people.

What I prefer is to either ask more probing questions or play non-get-to-know-you games. My two favorite questions for right now are: 1. What makes you tick and what ticks you off and 2. (Harry Potter inspired) If a sea of dementors surrounded you and they were about to suck out your soul, what form would your patronus take and what memory would you use to conjure it. Hehe.

The following morning we all gained an extra hour of sleep as it was fall daylight savings (remember, I’m in the southern hemisphere). Daylight savings was scheduled to occur a few weeks prior, but due to the earthquake and repairs, it had been postponed. That Sunday was also Easter Sunday and there was a small group that wanted to find an Easter service. I woke up earlier than everyone else, showered, put on my Easter best (a pastel purple dress of which I am quite fond), and set out to find a service to attend later that day. My friend Spencer accompanied me. We climbed the Berkeley-esque stairs/pathway and passed a family who was watching their three-year-old daughter hunt for Easter eggs. As we curved around the quiet morning streets, we found magnificent views of the ocean and what turned out to be my favorite graffiti in the city: against a brick wall, there were several shadow characters playing various games, which reminded me of my favorite children’s poem “My Shadow” by Robert Louis Stevenson. We ultimately found a church and, several hours later, I led a group of five other people to the service. It was a short service and forty-five minutes later we were out. I was surprised by the fact that there were not many people in the service and that people were dressed rather casually. I have found that people tend to dress rather sharply in Chile and I expected that to influence Easter dress as well.

After church, we headed back to the hostel, hung out for a bit, packed, and left for the bus station. A few others and I decided to grab lunch closer to the bus station because sometimes food can be slow and we figured it would be better to risk slow food closer to our destination. We ordered empenadas to go and some people asked for sodas, which came in glass bottles. After paying and receiving the empenadas we left the restaurant. My friend Zach had yet to finish his ginger ale (can’t blame him as I personally find ginger ale to be rather horrid) and thus he also took his drink to go. After we left the restaurant, the waiter ran out, chased Zach down, and demanded he give back the bottle. I guess they reuse the glass bottles and so it was nor the taking, which is strange to me because he paid for the bottled beverage rather than a fountain drink.

Two of my favorite things to do are to 1. Find perfect words to describe things/situations/people and 2. Determine whose love child someone/something is (for example I had an econ teacher who was the exact mix of my friend Sanna and Bernard the Elf from the Santa Claus). Throughout the entire trip, I had been toying with different words and mixes for Valparaiso. I’d tried Europe-esque and “a cross between Monterrey and Berkeley”; however, none of the words and mixes fit properly. I brought this up at Pub Matriz’s on Saturday night and we discussed various categorizations for the city. My friend Kintu suggested “authentic,” which I liked better than any I had come up with on my own. Nonetheless, “authentic” did not settle completely right. As we drove away on the bus, I decided Valparaiso is a mix of authentic and storybook. I ran it by Kintu and he agreed.