First stop in the South of Chile

We recently took a trip that included several towns in the South of Chile, doing our best to see as much as we could in the amount of time we had for traveling.  It was something of an exploratory trip, as we had never been to any of these places before.  Chile is a uniquely shaped country, and its extended length means that thorough travel throughout its many regions requires a lot of time, and some careful planning.  Adding to the challenge is that Chile, like many of the countries in this part of the continent, isn't cheap, especially in the high Summer season of December through February.

Especially in the South, the high season lends itself to tourism because you've got the least chance of getting rained on.  The names of Chile's southern regions, such as Los Ríos and Los Lagos, highlight the abundance of water and its defining presence in the area.  Our first stop was Valdivia, the capital of the region of Los Ríos.  It has an extensive history of various waves of European colonization and indigenous resistance, but the biggest earthquake in the recorded history of the world, at a magnitude of 9.5, was responsible for the destruction of most of its historic buildings and economy.  That means that today Valdivia itself isn't much to look at compared to many of the other cities in the area.  But it's blessed with some gorgeous geography: three beautiful rivers, like the one you see above, as well as a varied coastline made up of multiple islands, and plenty to do.

We arrived in Valdivia at night, having taken the train from Santiago as far south as it goes and then busing it the rest of the way from Chillán.  Despite making a reservation at a hotel and confirming it the night before, the receptionist told us they had no rooms for us.  Some mild indignation, reenacted on your left, landed us in a private cabin at a discount for our first night until they made room for us in the hotel.

The masses of travelers that flood into Chile's southern destinations demand plenty of forward thinking, like the booking of hotels and buses several days in advance.  And even then, you should be prepared to behave assertively when necessary.  You're in direct competition for space, and even the national parks and monuments have no qualms about visibly raising the prices this time of year. 

One of our cost control methods was, whenever possible, to stay at accommodations with kitchen access, either in a modest apartment or carefully negotiated private cabin, or in a hostel where the kitchen is shared with the other guests.  That said, we still made a point to sample some of the signature dishes in the South, where dark beer and buttery potatoes are served as accompaniments to seafood and lamb that crumbles and melts upon contact with your watering mouth.

Like at the Kunstmann brewery, the home to Chile's famed German-style microbrew.  As I've written before, Chile is in the midst of a craft beer revolution, putting Kunstmann on the map today in the eyes of enthusiasts.  Their restaurant is something of a mix between Cracker Barrel and brewery, walls lined with memorabilia painting a clear picture of the historical German influence on the region.  The theme is rounded out by the impeccable stainless steel fermenters on display behind glass, and the countless T-shirts, commemorative steins and gift boxes of beer for sale.  Skipping the gift shop, we contented ourselves with a few pictures, a huge meal, and a pitcher of unfiltered lager.

The guidebook I relied on for this trip had a definite love-it-or-hate-it attitude about the South of Chile, placing each destination squarely in either the can't-miss or not-on-your-life category.  It sang the praises of Kunstmann beer, for example, while condemning the food as so German that only the nostalgic Hansel or Helmut among you would find it appealing.  I thought it was pretty damned tasty, though, and a few friends who have also been there have echoed my impression as well.  Can't please everyone, I guess.

The coastal areas of southern Chile, during much of the colonial age, lay at the edge of Spanish territory and the settlements consisted mostly of heavy fortifications which have weathered the centuries and earthquakes better than the buildings in the city of Valdivia.  Except for the cold and fog, some of these forts reminded me of the ones we saw in Cartagena de Indias.

This one was in a place called Niebla, aptly named for the prevailing weather conditions.  While the visibility was low and confounded our attempts at taking pictures, it was fascinating for us to be at the other extreme of Spanish influence in South America.  From the Caribbean forts in Colombia to these in South Pacific, one was struck as much by the similar architecture as by sheer distance between them.

The three forts we visited formed a triangle of defense with each point located on a different island or peninsula, separated by the estuary of the Valdivia River.  When you look at the system of forts on a map after seeing them for yourself from the water below, it becomes clear how formidable the fortifications would have been for pirates or other attackers.

Today, however, they stand as little more than a crumbling relic of the past, punctuating a profoundly beautiful landscape where the continent meets the sea.  This fort is located on the Isla Mancera, a picturesque island with a walking trail along its perimeter, ostensibly open to the real estate market as evidenced by the collection of rustic houses to be found on the path, but fortunately lacking any large scale development so far.  When you find yourself at the right vantage point here and look out over the sea, you can't help but hope that places like this will somehow manage to avoid the greedy eyes of developers forever.

The last, and the largest, of the forts we visited was in the small town of Corral, with a population larger and more concentrated than the haphazardly scattered homes on Isla Mancera.  Hopping from one destination to the next on a small ferryboat as we did that day, you begin to get the feeling that you could keep at it endlessly, exploring one town after another in infinite procession.

That's why I sometimes prefer to look at a map after the fact, or perhaps never, so as not to put limits and borders on that feeling of unlimited expanse.  But even then, when your eyes are filled with wooded hills and blue water as far as you can see, that's about as close to the infinite as you can hope to fathom.  Especially when you're on the first leg of a trip full of places you've never been.

Back in Valdivia, we walked the costanera, a boardwalk at the edge of town that comes to a point at the confluence of the two rivers that defined the historic borders of the city.  There, a colony of stocky sea lions have made themselves at home, a few of them seen basking on a raft, in front of the tour boat in the river.

These boats will provide you with an all day river cruise, stopping off at the same forts we visited.  We opted to make the same trip on our own terms, taking a city bus to Niebla and then hiring our own ferry from one stop to the next, but for those who prefer the convenience and comfort of a packaged trip, there are kiosks of tour agencies on the boardwalk ready to make you a deal.

And, while I mentioned before that Valdivia didn't have much historic architecture left after the 1960 earthquake, that's not to say it doesn't boast a few remnants of its former glory.  What has remained has been polished up and painted, rendering certain corners a miniature Valparaíso of sorts.

It was in one of these buildings where we had our second taste of southern cuisine on our way out of town.  With our backpacks piled up in the corner, we hunkered down to a full-on seafood feast of fried fish and a hearty stew loaded with all kinds of shellfish I don't know the name for in English or in Spanish.  Accompanied, of course, with deliciously buttered potatoes.  And washed down, naturally, with a nice, dark beer.  It was going to be another long bus ride, and we'd need our spirits high.


A fitting end to our first stop.  Stay tuned for another fun-filled installment.

Oktoberfest in Chile!

In the U.S., when we think of Oktoberfest, we think, naturally, of Germany.  German sausage, sauerkraut, maybe some German music, and everything written in a nice, German-looking font.  But let's face it, we mostly think of beer.  So when I heard of an Oktoberfest happening in the small community of Malloco, a short drive from Santiago, I was happy to find out that here, too, Oktoberfest means beer.

Apparently, la Fiesta de la Cerveza, in Malloco (read: Beerfest) started years ago with the restaurant pictured here, Der Münchner.  Indeed, the first thing we saw as we climbed off the bus from Santiago was the colorful front of this German restaurant, with the beer festival happening essentially in its back yard.

When I say "we," I mean a group of English teachers like myself and other friends, all understandably curious about the very promising, long list of Chilean breweries that would be present and serving many varieties of their hand-crafted beers.  Upon arriving at the bus terminal, we discovered many, many buses with the words "Malloco: Fiesta de la Cerveza" scribbled on the sides.  Presumably, these buses would be making round trips all day long, shuttling partygoers to and from the capital and the party.  Just how many people would be there?

Once we had paid the 5000 peso admission (about $10 US.  Chile, defying the long held reputation that Latin America is a cheap place to travel, can be pricey), we wandered past several rows of stands selling commemorative steins, hats, and various things to eat.  After a few minutes of this, we began to wonder, where was all the beer?

But then the path opened up into a wide, dusty field encircled completely by beer vendors.  Literally, dozens of breweries.  And at that hour, right around lunchtime, there weren't so many people at all.  So we went straight up to one of the first breweries that caught our attention and made a purchase.  Dark, delicious and cold beer.  Not your typical commercial pilsener; that day, there would be none of that.  No.  Nothing less than microbrew, at its flavorful finest.  We split up, some of us dedicated to enjoying our first pints in the shade, and the others striking out at once, intrepidly in search of the next cupful.

You see, we were not limited to one successful formula for enjoying an extended afternoon of sampling so many uncommon beers.  With the next several hours as full of promise as they were, the temptation was certainly there to enthusiastically take down a few pints in rapid succession.

Clearly, there were many festival goers who were doing just that.  But after an education at Ohio State University, my personal rate of consumption had been tempered by years of experience, and most of those in our party had clearly learned similarly.

Rather than make the mistake of indulging with wanton abandon, then, only to be met with a physiological compulsion to sleep in the later afternoon, we chose to make our second beer purchase only after a shrewd sampling of as many different beers as possible.  Because of the relaxed atmosphere brought on by the low turnout at this early stage in the day, most of the sellers were happy to talk at length about their beer, their philosophy, and to give out free samples of an ounce or two of each beer they had on offer.

We spent a good couple of hours in this regimen of socializing and sampling, staying out of the relentless midday sunshine as much as possible under the cool shade of the canopies hanging over each stand.  It was in this way that we learned that the overwhelming majority of the many breweries in participation that day hailed from central Chile.  I didn't hear of any coming from further north than La Serena, and not many came from much further south than Santa Cruz.  With the reputation of southern Chile as being the major beer producer that it is, that bodes well for future sampling as we begin to explore places like Valdivia and Puerto Varas.  Tasty!

Time passed, and a second pint was finally purchased, with the benefit of a well-informed knowledge of what was available.  Moving in reverse, having started with a stout, my second beer of the day was an amber ale from a brewery I had never heard of before, and may well not hear of again until Fiesta de la Cerveza 2012.  But it was the one that stood out in my mind as having the nicest hop profile so far, and that was what I was going for that afternoon.

Meanwhile, the festival was filling up, and the beer stands were heaving with spirited clientele.  Thankfully, that didn't mean that the vendors stopped giving out free samples, but the time for idle chit-chat was over.  Interactions with the bartenders became terse and to-the-point:

Bartender:¿Cuál?
Me: La negra. 
B: ¿Grande o pequeña?
M: Una muestra, nomás.
B: Vale. 

Deciding it was time to take a break from the crowds, we opted to have some food and some time to relax in the shade.  In the search for a place to sit down, we walked past the obligatory carnival section of the fairgrounds.

Incidentally, the little wheel behind the red tower is one of those contraptions that is designed to send you spinning along multiple axes at the same time.  The weekend before at the same event, a young man who had likely had too much to drink, decided he would stick his legs through the bars of the cage he was locked in for his safety while the ride was in motion, and his feet caught on the center axle, snapping his legs at the shin.  He died in the hospital a couple of days later.  Not surprisingly, that ride was not in operation the day we went.  Alcohol and carny rides are never a good combination.

After a nice break, we launched back into our methodical sampling of virtually every beer on offer at the beer festival.  More stands were visited.  More beers were tasted.  Another pint was purchased, by me.  This time, it was an IPA, the only one I had found the whole day.  It was from this brewery, if I remember correctly.  A well-crafted IPA is one of my favorite beers, but in the US amongst microbreweries today, there seems to be a tendency to load the beer up with a quantity of hops far in excess of what an IPA traditionally called for.  The one I tried that day was well hopped, but not to the extreme like some of the "double IPAs" you can find.  I wanted to bring a bottle home with me, but at the end of the day this brewery became somehow elusive, and I couldn't track it down.

When all was said and done, we had tried beer from just about every brewery available that day, over the course of five or six hours.  Drinking at a moderate pace for that much time doesn't get you drunk if you do it right, but it was like a shift at work, and left us physically exhausted at the end.  The bus ride home was a rowdy one, us standing in the aisle with crowds of Chileans chanting hymns that all of them knew and none of us did.  Were they singing about politics, or football?  Instead I focused on the number of beer stains noticeably visible on the white shirts of many of the people seated around me.  Perhaps the people were on this bus and not behind the wheel for their own safety, and for the safety of others.

My personal bill for the day was 5000 pesos for the entry fee, and about 1500 pesos for each pint, 3 in total.  Plus food, and another 700 pesos or so for the bus ride each way.  Let's put the grand total at around 15,000 pesos, that being about $30 US.  I'd do it again next year.  Who's with me?

On top (and inside) of a mountain

Way up a winding road heading into the cordillera de los Andes from the town of Rancagua, south of Santiago, lies the town of Sewell.  Its setting on a steep mountain valley, the sheer and snowy slopes flanking it, the colorfully painted buildings that comprise it, its rich history as a copper mining town, all of this make it an attractive destination for tourists. But if you come, don't plan on spending the night.  Sewell is a ghost town.  Today, no one lives in any of its buildings, and the road that leads you here is closed to all traffic, save that going to and from the nearby El Teniente, the world's largest subterranean copper mine.  Save also tour vehicles like the one parked in the bottom left of the photo, full of tourists like us, seeking a day trip different than your typical wine tour or run for the beach. 

The road to Sewell led directly through the facilities of the mining operation.  I, probably like most people in the world, had never been on a tour that featured a copper mine before, so I took a lot of pictures along the way.  Some areas, with the blue, yellow and red theme, and unusual architecture, imparted a whimsical sort of Willy Wonka's copper factory impression. 

Then you round the bend and see something like this.  Toxic pools, grey concrete buildings under ominous cloud cover, with barren land all around.  That's what you expect massive mineral extraction to look like.  Our guide delivered an endless set of statistics and explanations surrounding Chile's copper industry, and told us that it would be impossible for a mining operation on this scale to not have an impact on the surrounding environment.  At the same time, while Chile has worked hard in recent years to diversify its economy, the exportation of copper remains its single largest source of revenue, and without it, the country would not enjoy its current level of development and prosperity.  So don't expect El Teniente to close any time soon.

In addition to selling copper, Codelco - the government-run mining company responsible for El Teniente's operations - also runs tours.  In fact, not only did our tour lead us around the facilities.  After passing for several kilometers through this kind of industrial landscape, we donned the hardhats and orange reflective gear required by law, and drove straight into the mine itself.

As I mentioned before, this is the biggest copper mine in the world, barring open pit mining.  Chuquicamata, an open pit mine in the north of Chile, is the 2nd largest such mine in the world, matched only by Bingham Canyon Mine, located in Utah.  To give some perspective, since Chuquicamata was opened over a century ago it has cranked out some 29 million tons of copper ore.  In its own right, El Teniente produced more than 418,000 tons of copper ore in 2006 alone.

I've been within the man-made bowels of the earth once before, when I walked with my family a hundred meters or so into an old gold mine in Zaruma.  This particular winter's day in Chile, we drove more than 6 kilometers into one of this mine's many tunnels.  We were merely scratching the surface, so to speak, of the vastness carved out beneath the ground.  Not a tour for the claustrophobic.  This particular leg of the tour can be bypassed for those who'd rather not go into the belly of a mountain.

As this hand-drawn diagram indicates, there are some 7 horizontal levels of tunnels dug into this mountain, each at a different depth, each counting on gravity to bring materials down first from their respective mines.  From there they are carted to the white apparatus indicated on the right, where they are ground up and dropped down to the level where they can be loaded and driven out from the valley below. 

It turned out that the white apparatus in question, known as a chancado, was part of the tour.  In layman's English, we might call it a crushing machine.  The room that houses it reminded me of the place where they filmed the final scenes of Terminator 2.  The crushing device itself looked like a big electric orange juicer, with ground up rocks rather than orange juice pouring down from the spinning blades into a long vertical shaft leading below.  You'll have to be satisfied with my description to conjure up an image in your mind, but I will include a photo of the cavernous and seemingly endless hole in the ground, leading down to the lowest depths of the mine.

In addition to demonstrating the many levels of the underground complex, this photo also reveals the horrid air quality to be found beneath the surface.  It took me a couple of takes to realize that the odd interference in each photo in this room was the result of infinite particulate matter reflecting the light from the flash.

Otherwise unseen, but definitely noticeable from the chalky taste in your mouth, this is the stuff that ultimately ends up clogging the lungs of many career miners, leaving them with a case of silicosis after years and years underground.  That mining is hard on your respiratory system is well known, but seeing and smelling it for myself gave me a more visceral appreciation for the hardship that miners must go through to make their living.  Unlike them, I could go home, rinse off the dust from my body and breathe easy the next day.

Besides the chancado, there is also an underground casino.  But before you start thinking that these miners can gamble away all their hard-earned income before they even see the light of day, I should mention that this term has a far different sense in Chilean Spanish than it does in English.  Gambling casinos are known in Chile, but the majority of the places you'll find bearing this name fall under the category of what we'd call a cafeteria.

After this picture was taken we saw the casino for ourselves, and had lunch there.  Besides the lack of windows, it was your typical working class mess hall.  Soup, rice, meat, sauce, salad, drink.  At least, that's what we saw people eating.  The lunch for tourists ran about $10 more than the regular cost of the tour, which seemed a little steep for what you get.  We brown bagged it.

After lunch we took off our dusty helmets and orange jackets and made our way up to the highlight of the tour, which was the abandoned mining town of Sewell.  The first stop on the guided tour was a museum housed in one of the most well-maintained buildings in town.  The top floor was certainly the best - if most unlikely - exhibit, housing a collection of copper items from around the world.  Copper sextants, copper helmets, copper weights and measures, all beautifully preserved.  And, this copper Ganesh.  It's interesting to note that while Chile is one of the world's major exporters of copper ore, little of it is refined here into pure copper, or manufactured goods.

So it is that the copper used here in Chile may have come from Chile, but chances are it then got shipped as ore and then sent to Asia.  From there it was refined, shaped, included into any number of electronics or other such product, and then shipped out around the world, including back here, to Chile.

This irony is not lost on those in the copper industry of Chile, but when the established infrastructure and cost of labor is such in Asia that finished products can be churned out for far cheaper than here in Chile, there is no economic incentive to do otherwise.  In that light this exhibit, with its collection of artistically crafted copper sculptures, antiquities and other bemusing curios, stands as a microcosm for the curious situation that many countries like Chile find themselves in.

Rich in resources but lacking a tradition of manufacture, we find an economy chugging along nicely on the export of raw materials, but all of the added value that comes later from the finished product earns profits abroad.  I don't know if it was Codelco, with profits from its copper business, or some other entity which bought the fine pieces we pored over that day.  And for a fine price I'm sure, judging from the condition of the pieces.  But whoever the owner may be, they're making some added profit from the trickle of tourism coming to Sewell and this museum, so we've got some locally added value after all.

The rest of our tour took us around the snowy, wind-blown streets of Sewell.  Our guide mentioned one story after another to reveal the curious lives of miners and their families, stranded so far from civilization up here in the middle of nowhere.  Founded in 1904, everything was brought in on a train, including the miners, and once here they couldn't expect to see anything else for months on end.  That set up the typical situation of the company town, where the mining company owned and operated everything.  Once the road to the mine was built, the mining company began phasing out life in Sewell in 1977, which means that there are plenty of people with memories of life in Sewell.

Indeed, since the tour, I've happened to mention to a few Santiaguinos that I was there.  Santiago is not so far from Sewell and El Teniente, and the mining industry is such a big part of the economy that a couple of the people I've told have mentioned that they remember their early childhoods in Sewell.

As you can see from the photos, the weather conditions at this altitude are extreme, and in the few decades since its abandonment and substantial dismantling, the elements have taken a major toll on the remaining buildings.  Now an UNESCO World Heritage site, efforts have begun to restore what's left of the town.  However, many of the structures which have been at least partially restored have already suffered a new round of damage from the long winters and the subsequent effects of significant snow accumulation.

Apparently, plans are in the works to bring some full time employees to the town in order to run an on-site hotel in one of the finer buildings, allowing tourists to spend the night in the ghost town of an old mining encampment.  Does that sound like fun to you?  There's even an old bowling alley...

Built on such a steep hill, Sewell was composed of many levels, both geographically and socially.  Here, on the concrete plateau between flights of concrete stairs, we can see an abandoned schoolyard where dozens of children of miners must have once played.  Further up the hill, and now mostly dismantled, were the well-appointed homes of the English-speaking managers and executives of the mining operation back when it was a foreign holding.

While these wealthy expats would have enjoyed as many amenities and comforts of home as money and the limitations of the time would have allowed, the miners themselves were housed with their families in small rooms stacked up in big apartment buildings like the ones seen here.  The difference in the quality of life of these distinct socioeconomic strata would have been very clear, according to our guide.

Nonetheless, the local miners were afforded a quality of life far greater than at other mines, with enviable salaries and benefits.  Today, the miners can still apparently expect a fair salary for the hard work they do, and most of them live with the modern comfort and nicer weather of the city of Rancagua in the open valley far below.

That leaves Sewell behind as a nearly lost relic of Chile's past, rescued from ruin and now enjoying what could be the beginnings of a nostalgic renaissance.  Standing in the icy air of a ghost town like this one, a colorful oddity amidst the grim machinery of a huge industrial project, puts you in the middle of several levels of contrast.  If you ever go, you could even try and count them, like counting the stairs on the way up the hill.

In search of snow

This year was the first time I had experienced a real winter since 2007.  I gave winter a miss during my years in Ecuador, which has what is colloquially referred to as a winter, describing the part of the year you might call the rainy season.  I suppose people from different parts of the world have different concepts of what winter looks like.  For me, coming from Ohio, I could never think of it as being anything less than icily cold, cloudy, and often snowy.  But admittedly, after a few years in the eternally springlike climate of the Sierra in Ecuador, my personal tolerance level for cold weather had shifted.  A night in the 50s started to feel downright cold to me, and I had taken to the Ecuadorian custom of wearing a jacket when I left the house on many mornings that in Ohio, around April, would feel practically balmy.

So, once we came to Chile, and the days began getting shorter, I started to wonder just how cold the winter in Santiago would be.  Come July and August, winter had fully set in, and one morning in particular, we awoke to the above scene from our living room window.  Every Chilean I spoke to said that this was highly abnormal, and the TV news that day was full of people marveling over the novelty of snow on the ground.  The snow never made it to our neighborhood, but in the parts of town lying near the mountains, the snow accumulated, much as it had on the hills you can see from our apartment.

Soon after, we opted to take a walk in a neighborhood closer to the mountains, and while no snow remained on the ground beneath our feet that day, the Cordillera de los Andes loomed nearby, replete with a nice dose of white powder laid down by successive snowfalls.

Santiago is one of few cities its size to lie so close to a mountain range that receives such a quantity of snow, and we were fully charmed by them each time we saw them this winter.  Whenever some rain would come down in the city, we would remark that more snow had fallen on the mountains, and made a point to get a look at them to see just how far the snow had reached down the mountainsides.

Having bought a bike for commuting to the various places around town that I need to go for work, I started to wonder if there was a decent place to go riding, to get into the snow in the foothills beyond the city.  Fortunately I wasn't the only one thinking like that, and so I had the opportunity to go with my friends Ruth and Stuart into a conservation area known as El Santuario de la Naturaleza, or Nature Sanctuary, as we might say in English.

In order to get there, we rode through several of Santiago's comunas.  The metropolitan area of Chile's capital is divided politically into many such areas, each with its own mayor, and distinct look and feel.  Starting in Santiago Centro, and then riding along a contiguous corridor of green space and parks through neighboring Providencia, we soon made our way into Las Condes and rode among the many new skyscrapers of Santiago's modern economic heart.  Being Saturday, its wide sidewalks were nearly vacant, and we were able to cruise peacefully along streets that during the week are nearly unnavigable by bike for the number of people on foot and in cars or buses.

We then moved into Vitacura, an upscale residential area I hadn't spent more than a few minutes in until that day, and I was struck by the resemblance it bore to countless upper-class neighborhoods you might find in central California, with its mix of modern apartment buildings, two story homes with grassy lawns, and smattering of high-end stores and restaurants, local or international.

After nearly a full hour of gradual climb towards the mountains, we had reached Lo Barnechea, the most rural and perhaps most expensive neighborhood yet.  The picture above reveals a glimpse of it.  Its rolling hills dotted with bushes, the river valley below, and the occasional rustic estate transported me instantly to the Upper Canyon Rd. neighborhood of Santa Fe, where million dollar homes were not a rarity.  I don't know how much homes in Lo Barnechea will set you back exactly, but considering that the only students I've had who live there are both vice presidents in their respective companies, I have a general idea.

The nice thing about places like Canyon Road and Lo Barnechea is that while the real estate might be priced out of the reach of a lowly teacher like myself, there was nothing stopping us from enjoying it in passing from atop our modest means of personal transportation.  We wound along some dirt roads that took us ever higher into the hills, passing hobby ranches and wooden farmhouses wafting aromatic smoke from tin chimneys.

It was here too that we finally made it to our first sighting of nearby snow for the day, visible at the top of the hillside to the right.  The brisk air full of the pleasant smell of nearby fireplaces made the climb a lot easier, and I realized how necessary it is to get out of the city from time to time, into fresh air and natural surroundings.

I couldn't tell you now what roads we took to get there, but eventually we left the increasingly sparse scattering of rural mansions below us and reached the entrance to the nature preserve.  We had to sign in at a wooden gate with a river to one side and a stone guard station to the other.  Above us, the dirt road was muddier and the hills steeper than those we had already passed, and the snow lying atop them was lying thicker, too.

The climb never got too grueling, but a persistent pain above my knees started intensifying as we made the climb and eventually I grudgingly had to hop off my bike.  It took awhile for me to admit defeat, having ridden up hills far steeper with no problem in the past.  Was it the flu I was getting over?  The copious wine I had drunk the night before?  The lack of physical preparation in the weeks prior?  All those things and more, most likely.  Once I was down, it felt like my legs were going to buckle underneath me, and a few squats didn't seem to help.  But after a few minutes the pain subsided, and fortunately I was able to walk my bike without it coming back.

The same place I finally decided to dismount, a snowdrift.  I was like a kid at Christmas.  Albeit a 34-year-old one, with a pair of aching knees.  Not so bad that I couldn't bend down and scoop up a handful of it for the picture.

We had made it to the snow.  If I was going to have to walk my bike from here, at least I had made it this far on two wheels, into the snow.  Five years prior, I had ridden my bike through the pink-brown mix of snow and caliche in Santa Fe, when it had dumped a foot on the city in the course of a few hours.  I was forced to walk my bike then too, not for my own physical limitations, but for the simple fact that the snow was too deep to ride through.

That was the last snow I had been in, until now.  When things come around full circle like that, how can you help but reflect on who you are now compared to who you were then, and all the things that have happened in between?  That's what I did, as I shook my legs out and pushed my bike up the hill.

From our perspective, moving as we were along the snow-speckled foothills of the Andes, we were afforded ever more spectacular views of the Andes proper.  We were separated from them by a valley, and however high we went along our path, the mountains on the other side would always be higher still, and snowier, and further out of reach.  That is the how the mountains dare us, revealing with their sheer presence the next and greater challenge.  That day, we were happy enough to enjoy looking at them from where we were as we shared a lunch of sandwiches, tangerines and chocolate chip cookies.

That was not to say that we were done for the day.  That first snow drift gave way to more, until the road itself began to be overtaken by ice and slush.  We found this shack, ostensibly abandoned, and decided to take a break.  In the distance, the Andes unfolded above us in their snow-swept glory.  And from an overlook nearby, we were afforded a panoramic view of the city below.

It was truly impressive.  Partly because it revealed just how far we had come to be where we were.  In the foreground, the open hills and occasional homes of Lo Barnechea.  Beyond, the greater and greater density of both the city itself, and the thick layer of smog that obscured our view from the vantage point in the clean air we were enjoying at the moment.  None of the photos I took show much more than this murky, yellowish-gray cloud that appears thicker the further towards the horizon you look.

The naked eye could see lots of landmarks of the city in the distance, which we spent several minutes discovering.  We could also see how the smog spilled out past the limits of the city itself, laying like a blanket on the entire flat basin beneath the mountains, locked in by them.  Which reveals yet another reason why it's important to get out of the city on a regular basis.  Especially in the winter.

From there we continued our climb on foot, along a road now fully buried in snow.  Judging from the muddy tracks, we obviously were not the first to be up it since the most recent snowfall.  Later, we met a pair of Australians, each atop their own personal four-wheelers, taking a break and having a chat in the middle of the road.

Several minutes after we passed them by, the deep silence afforded by the insulating power of a thick layer of snow was broken by the high-pitched roar of their engines in the distance as they motored their way back down the mountain.  There are lots of ways to get up a mountain road, and from my personal bias, I have to say that the ones that you can do quietly are best.

At some point on any day trip, the decision must be made as to where to stop and turn back.  The road we had chosen kept going up, the snow kept getting deeper, and the wind kept blowing harder.  We played for awhile at saying that we would go just one more bend in the road.  I for one was waiting for some kind of other milestone, like the initial snowdrift, to mark the stopping point.  I didn't know what that might be, admittedly, and in the end, there wasn't one that day.  We finally found a place to stop, to sit for a few minutes, to eat and drink.  When we got up, it was back down and not up the road that we went.

Along the way we found this black dog, and he followed us on our walk back to the bikes.  Once we got on our bikes and began the high-speed, rattling downhill, he kept on following us, joyously matching our speed.  He would run ahead, get to a bend, slow down and look back, and then run aside, fall behind, and then back up front again.

Never did he run the risk of getting too close to our bikes and causing an unexpected turn and subsequent crash, and I felt comfortable letting go of the brakes and pushing at the limits of the downhill.  Only once did I find myself in the gravel of the shoulder as I underestimated the angle of a curve, forced to come to stop and reorient myself before starting up again.

Looking back, thinking of the various rides I've taken in the Andes of Chile and Ecuador, this one might have been my favorite downhill ride.  The visibility, the grade of the hill, the severity of the curves and the conditions of the road all added up to a nicely technical ride that could still be taken safely at high velocity.  Other roads might let you cruise with your hands off the brakes all the way, resulting in a fun downhill, but lacking in any great challenge.  Others are so steep and curvy that you're riding the brakes the whole time, or the dirt and gravel is so thick and loose that one wrong move can leave your wheels out from under you.  This one was a nice balance of all of the above, and thankfully my legs let me do it without any resurgence of my earlier cramping in the knees.

Once the thrill of the downhill tapered off into a gentler finish close to the guard station, our black dog stayed behind, and we all regrouped and recounted our respective experiences of the ride.  Then we continued the trip, down from the Santuario, down from Lo Barnechea, Vitacura, Las Condes.  The foregone conclusion of food and beer at a restaurant in Providencia, and then our goodbyes as we went our separate ways home for the day.  All in all, a fine day on a bike.

The end of a chapter

I'll be departing briefly from the usual themes presented here, in order to describe the end of an extended endeavor of mine.  While riding on Santiago's subway this week, I read the final page of the third and last volume of Eduardo Galeano's Memoria del fuego.  On the surface, this might not seem like such a big deal, but in many ways, this series of books has been very much a companion for me during my years traveling in Latin America. 

One of the three volumes - along with my even more dog-eared Spanish-English dictionary -  has been a virtually constant item in my backpack any time I've left the house, whether to go to work, for a weekend vacation, or simply for a walk outside.  In considering what to pack for our trip from Ecuador to Chile, there was no doubt that all three volumes would be making the journey with us, as indispensable as they had become for me.  I've learned countless words, phrases, and colloquial expressions from them.  Grammatical features that once puzzled me as I first began deciphering the first pages have slowly become familiar to me.  But more than that, the books for me have stood as an emotionally-moving teacher that has deepened my understanding of Latin America.

Memoria del fuego is laid out across a total of nearly 1000 pages in its three volumes, presented in the form of short and captivating vignettes.  Each short story reveals one moment in history, applying the very Latin American art of the cuento to the task of defining its history.  Volume I, Los nacimientos, begins with pre-columbian legends of creation and prophecy, before fixing on the three Spanish ships led by Columbus and his superstitious crew on their way towards the inevitable meeting of two worlds.  From that point in1492, the stories march through the long history and expansive geography of Latin America, until Volume 3, El siglo del viento, concludes the series in the 1980's.  As I read the stories, I have also moved my way around Latin America, with the books providing insight along the way.  Today I will trace this journey through Latin America, as defined by Memoria del Fuego.  All the translations in italics are my amateur's own.

As most journeys do, mine began with an idea.  As I described in a previous story from a year ago, the idea to experience Latin America started with the immersion Spanish course I took in Oaxaca, Mexico, at the Instituto Cultural Oaxaca.

Thanks to our teacher Luis and his impassioned reading of Galeano's rendition of the first landing of the Spanish expedition led by Hernán Cortés on the American mainland, I became fascinated by the story and decided I would find my own copy of the book.

Once back in Santa Fe, I soon discovered the Spanish language bookstore Allá, which had a single copy of the book on the shelf.  The owner, Jim, was a kindred spirit in his fascination for Latin America, and his store was a few blocks from where I worked in downtown Santa Fe.  As such, in the coming months I learned from Jim a great deal about Galeano, his occasional visits to Santa Fe, and other interesting and tantalizing pieces of wisdom, as I planned a return trip to Latin America.

In the coming months, any time I found myself alone in a cafe or park I was alternating between story and dictionary, struggling to grasp so many new words and phrases.  At the time I swore I would commit the 60 or so pre-columbian stories to memory, and so I read each one over and over until I had a rough English approximation that I could relate to whomever was willing to indulge me.  5 years later, I'm not convinced that I've maintained such a sharp recollection of those stories, but if you put me to the test, we could find out...

By the time I returned to Latin America, a year after my first time in Mexico, I had made it through the first section of Los nacimientos and was getting into the initial meeting of the Spanish and the Aztec empire.  In a personal milestone towards my goal of reading in Spanish, I revisited the story of Cortés and the founding of the city of Vera Cruz.  At the time I was also finding some new places to read, like these:

I had decided to return to Oaxaca, Mexico in order to complete a course to become a teacher of ESL, through an on-site program through the School for International Training based in Vermont.

I got there about a week before the program started, which gave me a lot of time on my own to explore the city and find my preferred places, like the cafes pictured above, or the upstairs patio of the house where I was staying, here on the left.

I also enrolled in another Spanish Immersion course, this time through the institute that worked in conjunction with the SIT program, called Ollin Tlahtoalli.  This program started a week after the ESL course finished, giving me more time to explore Oaxaca on my own before the course began.

For me it was perfect timing to return to Mexico while also returning to the same section in the book that I had discovered during my first visit there.  Walking around stone buildings and churches constructed during the same time period I was reading about added a dimension to the stories.  At the same time, the stories gave a poignance to my surroundings.  In the streets of Oaxaca, I read as Cortés marched from the coast towards the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlán and shrewdly maneuvered his way into victory over the city.  The coming together of two empires, both rising in power, resulted in the abrupt conclusion and supplanting of one for the other.  What resulted was there around me, hundreds of years later.

From Mexico I flew to Cuenca, Ecuador, where I began my experience as an ESL teacher.  I had found work there months earlier and knew I would be going there before deciding to return to Mexico.  In fact, it was a bit of an afterthought and a lucky coincidence to be able to go back to Mexico at all.  The director at the school I would be teaching at in Ecuador suggested that I get a certificate to teach ESL before coming.  Fortunately I was able to find the program in Oaxaca, which would conclude a few short weeks before I was slated to start work in Cuenca. 

As I settled into my more extended stay in Ecuador, and continued poring through my book on the patio of my new apartment, I read about the ongoing exploration and conquest of the territory beyond the Aztec Empire.  I read about the Incan Emperor, Huayna Capac, upon whom depend the fields, the water and the people... While he contemplates the sun, Huaina Cápac decides, "Soon I will die."

I learned that Huayna Capac was born here, in the Inca city of Tomebamba.  Cuenca was built upon its ruins, which have been partially restored.  I also learned that Huayna Capac had expanded the Incan Empire beyond Peru and into parts of modern day Ecuador, Colombia, Bolivia, Paraguay and Chile.  Most likely, he died of smallpox, brought to the Americas by the Spanish.  European diseases often moved through trade routes faster than the Spanish themselves, resulting in the Spanish finding a new group of people already decimated by disease.

After his death, Huayna Capac's empire was divided between two of his sons, and the Incan Empire descended into civil war.  Atahualpa, one of the sons, defeated his brother Huascar and was marching south through Cajamarca when Francisco Pizarro, the Spaniard, came upon him.

In Cajamarca, Vicente de Valverde, a priest in Pizarro's band of explorers, upon meeting Atahualpa, raises the Bible with one hand and a crucifix with the other, as though conjuring a storm on the high sea, and shouts that here is God... the interpreter translates and Atahualpa, high above the crowd, asks:
-Who told you this?
-The Bible says this, the holy book.
-Give it to me, so that it may tell me.
Atahualpa looks at the Bible, turns it around in his hand, shakes it, and presses it against his ear.
-It says nothing.  It is empty.
And he lets it fall.

At this point, Pizarro uses this blasphemous act of dropping the Bible on the ground to launch his surprise attack, capture Atahualpa and hold him hostage in return for the famous Inca's Ransom.  Once the Ransom was delivered, Pizarro reneged on the deal and had Atahualpa put to death after all.  Only after Atahualpa accepted baptism and the Christian name of Francisco, his conquerer.

The same day I read this story while sitting on my patio in Cuenca, I attended a lecture on the musical instruments of the Inca and the other indigenous people of the Andes.  The sounds of rattles, whistles, conch shells and drums, in a culture with no written language, were the means of communing with the divine, much as the Bible is in the Christian world.  So, was Atahualpa merely exercising his own cultural means of spiritual communication by shaking it like a rattle and then holding it to his ear like today we hear the ocean in a seashell?  Or was he truly challenging this lowly but arrogant priest from his position as triumphant Emperor?

More recently, we have come to Chile, and in the meantime I had progressed into modern times in Galeano's series.  This year, as the US remembered September 11th, Chile remembered the military coup of September 11th, 1973.  In another coincidence, I had reached the 1970's in El siglo del viento.  The themes of this time revolve around the storm of military dictatorships and political assassinations that swept over Latin America, a truly dark time in history that Galeano captures with his unapologetic accusations and intimately told revelations of atrocity.

The series abruptly concludes, seemingly, with the year 1982.  Up to this point, you find yourself reading hundreds of stories, one after another, in the inexorable march through time.  When the final story comes and goes and no other follows, you are left with the sense that so goes history, one event after another, in such a way that any attempt to chronicle it will inevitably end, and time will still continue, unpausing, unstoppable.  But why 1982, rather than some other year either earlier or later?  Galeano, in his letter to the editor of the series on the final page of narrative, reveals why not before, or after, I don't know.  Perhaps because that was the last year of my exile, the end of a cycle, the end of a century.

Galeano, from Uruguay, left his country in 1973 as it too was gripped by military dictatorship and the killings, disappearances and imprisonments that followed.  He returned in 1985, having composed all of his epic historical narrative during his time of exile.  These final words, as all his words do, frankly deliver the reality of history, to your heart.  This defines Memoria del fuego against your traditional "history book," which itemizes history, catalogs it, filing it and placing it neatly in your analytical mind.  In addition, it has introduced me to countless figures, moments, concepts, other books, which the coming years will no doubt find me exploring further.  In so doing, these three books will continue close by, having slowly gone from an endless source of discovery to an endless source of reference and light.  The book and I know that the last page is also the first.