Valparaiso

Why do we have no family living here???
This place is beautiful.
The beat and the rhythm of life is different here.
There are colours and shapes and forms and beauty for the sake of beauty.
There´s the sea.
There´s no smog!
Why would you live in Santiago when you could live here?

I spent 5 days wandering around back alleys, playing with stray cats, chatting to artists.... I even got the shit scared out of me during a light earthquake that seemed to go on for ages, but would only have been abut 10 seconds. But when the houses look like they are bearly standing when the earth is still, when it shakes you think the whole thing will tumble into the sea.

The city creeps up the side of very steep hills, just meters from the waters edge. The hills are full of danger as well as beauty. Everyone kept reminding me to keep my camera well hiden and to be on my guard. There's clearly a lot of poverty in Valpo, and all the back alleys and random door ways make a footchase with your assailant vertually useless.

Seriously the dogs are a problem too. Apart from the poo EVERYWHERE, I stopped to take photos at a lookout on the hills and when I got back on the scoot, three dogs came running at me and wouldn´t let me move. Everytime I reved the engine to go, they would lunge. I was there for about 3min trying to get away without being attacked; finally a shop keeper took pity on me and chased the dogs with a broom as I rode off. Was rather scary.

Dispite the dangers, the colours and the rhythm of life gives the impression that Valpo doesn´t suffer as deeply from this underlying sorrow that seems to envelope Santiguiños. There is smudge of sorrow, distrust, fear that influences everything in Santiago. The more I talk to people, the more I believe it has a lot to do with the Dictatorship. A whole generation lived and raised their children in this oppression, and it's going to take more than one generation to move away from that. But Valparaisians don't seem to have this so much. Maybe it's living by the sea, or just not being physically oppressed by the smog and over crowding of Santiago, but they walk to a different beat. There are still signs of the oppresion under Pinoche but it's seen through the political graffiti, the paintings and attitudes against that ever happeing again.

I was going to come back to Santiago on the third day but woke to pouring rain. I thought about coming back anyway but decided against it in the end. SO glad I did, as it snowed in Santiago that night. It got down to about -6 and the rain I was in became snow as it reached Santiago. So instead, I found a groovy little cafe and spent the day talking to a crazy Brazilian with a wicked hangover and a broken heart. He was drinking himself stupid trying to forget that he loved his wife and family but they still might end up seperating. Valparaiso is a smart choice for that sort of activity. He'd gone out drinking, ended up running away from a cabaret when he realised sex was included in the entry ticket he'd bought, and was almost kicked out of his hostel the next morning when the owner, screaming, told him he'd come home the night before with a stray dog and had brought it into the bed with him, crying that they dog was cold and could not be left on the street. All very Valparaiso.

On the last day as I was leaving I got pulled over by two carabineros doing trafic control. As I pull over shitting myself as to what I could possibly be being done for, the younger of the two comes over and says, "so what kind of milage do you get on that thing?" The elder rolls his eyes and says, "you could at least ask to see her documents, you didn't just pull her over to ask about the scoot did you?". "What's wrong with that?" comes the response. I'm pulled over in the middle of an intersection with big transport trucks trying to turn around me, and this cop wants to talk scoot specs. And being Chilean, it only took a few minutes for the conversation to become a pick up line about, Soooo is your boyfriend waiting for you back in Sydney?, Have you had a chance to enjoy some real latino men yet?

When I eventually got away from these would be lovers, they send me of in THAT direction, telling me Santiago is THAT way. Now I don´t know if this was punishment for not stroking their egos enough or if I misunderstood the directions, but I found myself on a narrow, winding road full of cracks and pot holes heading steeply up the hills, straight to the areas I had been avoiding for fear of delinquints and dogs. This CANNOT be the road to Santiago I think, knowing all the transport trucks that go there every day. I don´t really want to pull over to ask because of the dogs - the ones in the sun would rather stay sleeping but everytime I went past one in the shade, they would chase me. Eventually I pulled over and was told just a little further. I´m so high up by now I can see well off to Viña del Mar in the distance through the houses. The road is so steep at this point, it feels like the 70Lt backpack on my back is going to flip me over at any second. I climb and climb and climb. I ask again, am told again, just a little further. I'm well and truely shitting myself at this point, thinking I am the butt of some citywide joke, sending me into the hills where a band of thugs are waiting to slit my throat and feed me to the dogs. I climb so high, there are not even houses around me anymore, just brush and rubbish and the odd person wondering on the road like there's not been a car up here in weeks. Then just when I really start to loose it, the road levels out and I'm in a flat splindly forrest, with rubbished piled up almost waist high all around me. It was like riding through the tip if there were trees in it. I'd climed so high, I now had to go down some to rejoin the main highway. Apparently I had taken the OLD road out. The one they used back probably before cars were invented. With hindsight, it was brilliant and I'd happily do it again. But in the moment, when you don't know if you ever will make it out in one peice, it was well and truely terrifying.