I haven’t been to all that many places in Latin America, but I think I may have found the most un-latin place of them all. I’m not sure if I realized it right as we got into the brand new KIA cab or if it was a few minutes later flying down what appeared to be a brand new 6 lane highway – the only thing more out of place then the smoothness of the ride was the well-lit signage and complete lack of gridlocked traffic.

The following week’s worth of observations while shooting around the city by means of its spotless subway system, or walking from point A to B in pedestrian only open air malls or along a gravel tree-lined path though any one of a number of city parks, while watching youths flock to public skate parks or strolling through entire neighborhoods of bars and restaurants or just sitting in a street side cafe and watching the passers-by – I was left with the thought over and over again that Santiago is a city that seems to have got it right. It was almost as if someone took time to plan it out. It’s not just that it was out of place on this continent, I was beginning to think it would have trouble fitting in back home. By my last day there, aimlessly wandering the streets alone, I decided it was a remarkably livable place.

Santiago is South America’s fifth largest city. And surely its first most expensive. Currency conversion has never been my strong suit and I think more then a few transactions occurred with crisp 10 mil peso notes – that looked and felt as though they’d been printed inside the airport ATM from which they were spat – before I realized they were the equivalent of US twenties and not fives. God this seafood is cheap! Gets me every time.

Before I’d left, someone had told me how huge the city was. I believe New York was the comparison. Clearly they haven’t been to New York a while – like since 1890. The main drag in Santiago – Avenida Liberador Bernardo O’Higgins – a name as comical as it is difficult to fit on the street signs – is a 100 meter-wide boulevard. NYC sold out that kind of real estate a long time ago. Maybe it’s the wide streets or the cleanliness, or maybe it was the good food and cheap wine – or maybe just the fact that lately my usual urban encounters have been taking place in such marvels of bohemian planning as Asunción and Ciudad del Este and even Quito – but there seems to be a decidedly European feel to the place.

But the trappings of Europe – museums, cathedrals, the endless quest for something affordable to eat or drink – wasn’t the reason for this trip. Snow and mountains and preferably a combination of the two, was. Before such determinations about the capital had even been reached, we made our plans to get out of it. Five hours to the south lay the city of Chillan and another ninety minutes somewhere outside that Termas de Chillan – where supposedly it was possible to ski through a bamboo forest. Getting on the bus didn’t take much convincing.

Actually getting on the slopes was a little more of challenge. Apparently all the brain trust had been spent building the metro. Termas is a winter ski resort that by all accounts is doing its very best to keep anyone from being able to ski there. There’s no shuttle from any of the lodging along the road to the mountain. You have to hitchhike. In ski boots. At some point the access road turns to dirt and chains become mandatory. Only 2 lifts are actually running – a wooden quad that creeps along at a barely noticeable incline and a seemingly endless, diesel-powered double to the summit. The rest of the lifts won’t be running ‘til next year. Maintenance? Earthquake damage? No. Spite. The mountain changed hands last year and somewhere along the line the owner of the rest of lifts got miffed about something or other and is simply denying the right to the operators the use of the rest of the mountain’s chairs. Forgoing profits in the name of proving a point – ah, back in South America. And trying rent a pair of skis you could leave the bunny hill with – better give yourself and extra day.

The result of all this: incredible skiing. There’s no one there! And you’re in the highest mountain range outside of central Asia. By the time we got to the top of the mountain the last snow had fallen 24 hours previously and 2 days after that we were still finding untracked nooks. I don’t think I’ve ever occupied myself off of one lift for so long. Unfortunately, there’s either a feral panda problem or the bamboo harvest must have been huge last fall because that forest I read about seems to have been misplaced.

There’s a reason though the American West and Switzerland get all the good press. They’ve been working toward the top of their game for 50 years, with a cliental willing to pay prices that suck the fun right out of the day before it even starts. South America doesn’t have that yet and – arguably, one might say, hopefully – never will. Which means it’ll probably still be hitchhiking to a lone diesel-powered double for quite some time.

A few days later we set our sites on Portillo – the Andean mecca of the world’s über-rich who wish to ski in the months  Tahoe is concentrating on it’s wake boarding. But like most places with room prices outstripping airline ticket prices their management seems to be operating outside the norms of reality we’re all accustomed to. The result being they had decided the mountain was not yet open to “non-guests”. Once again, it would seem: deliberately trying not to make money. It was a set back, but these things happen in a world of wealth-discrimination. So we got in our rental, with the aim of adding to the already accumulated 200,000+ km it had logged – or at least making it back with axle still intact – and headed for Valle Nevado, a supposed ninety minutes from Santiago.

Three hours and 43 hair pin turns up a mountain-side later (yes, they were each numbered) we found ourselves sitting, stopped, twenty-five minutes past the sign for “Ten minutes to the best skiing in South America”, watching the shuttle bus in front of us spin its tires nearly bald in some sort of hope that exposing the re-tread might summon some traction. Ten minutes later they decided to get out and put on some chains. While the Nevado folks had figured out what the Termas crew had missed – in that you should have a real road going to your parking lot – they forgot to plow the last half mile of it. This delay though, was probably for the best. The great conditions hadn’t followed us from the south. If I had to settle on two hyphenated descriptors, I go with, bitterly-cold and wind-blown. That – combined with an overall and apparently quite rare, lack of snow – left conditions at a subpar level. But maybe we’re just snobs.

With a new appreciation for lip-balm we decided to forgo any more high-altitude adventures and began to focus mainly on eating as much seafood as possible. Which – among the fact that we had nothing else to do – brought us to the coast and city of Valparaiso.

Turn off the tele; Live your life

Valpo, as it’s know, had mixed reviews before I arrived. Every guide book I’d looked at (all 3 of them) said it was THE spot to see in Chile. Friends who’d been all said, eh. The first impression was of a cleaner, nicer version of what we had unanimously decided as the least favorite city visited while backpacking Europe: Naples. That judgement turned out to be a little harsh. Fifty some photographs later I decided I kinda liked the place. If nothing else, the visual assault that is Valpo showed me I need to know how to work my camera better. I’ll still never understand what propels mankind to build cities on hillsides stepper then can be walked up carrying anything more then a box of matches, but at least they’d given this one a proper coat of paint. Places as quirky and colorful as Valparaiso make taking good photos as easy as it is fun.

By the end of it all, it wasn’t nearly the vacation I’d expected. Then again, I’m not quite sure what I expected – other then to get in some good skiing. Chile is the longest country in the world and surely the strangest in South America – that’s something I wasn’t expecting. Wedged between the south Pacific and the Andes it seems to really be its own little world – even their Spanish is more Chilean then it is Spanish. I left having seen but a slice within the slice and with a feeling that given the time, open-ended, without anywhere to be, just exploring, wandering its incredible extremes, some truly unique places could be stumbled upon. Maybe someday I’ll have that kind of time, but for now it seems reserved for those who call it home, in what ever nonsense that is they’re speaking.

paz

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