Parks, fitness, flowers...

Santiago has parks everywhere!  Parque Forestal is the largest and follows the main highways downtown along the Rio Mapoche for miles and miles.  It is long and narrow with thousands of trees, flowers, benches, and wide paths for walking and riding bicycles.  In one of my first posts I put pictures from Parque Bicentenario, which connects with Parque Forestal and is smaller but really beautiful with swans and exotic birds.

Every neighborhood has a local park with swings and more for kids years agoith workout machines for everyone!  These machines are permanently placed and they use your body weight for resistance so there are no weight stacks.  One I like a lot is a rowing machine.  I sit on the bench and when I row, I lift my own body weight.  It´s hard!  These machines are used often by young and old and I can always walk and find a park with workout equipment nearby.  It is a new campaign within yhe last few years to get fitness machines in every park. 

Also, many fitness classes with trainers are held in the parks. 
They have the same bike share program as Boulder and many places in the world, except their bikes are orange.  

Since I´ve been here I´ve seen so many athletic events.  Last weekend was a 10K on Sunday when we were riding bikes.  That Sunday there was also a hill run (that really steep hill up to the ski area).  It started in Santiago and had 3 distances to run up - the longest was 33K, about 19 or 20 miles.  There are running clubs, riding clubs, and many sports shops.

They also have an obesity problem here.  I´ve seen many overweight people in the city.  Every corner has a vendor selling sweets, nuts, and pastries and pastry shops are everywhere, so I am not surprised.  The news had a report about it one night and I don´t know what they were saying but I got the word - obesa.

My Chilean spanish teacher says Chile has all the same problems as the U.S. because their role model is us.  Kind of sad....

Flowering trees are everywhere!   The most abundant and beautiful are the Jacaranda which are covered in purple flowers for weeks.  No photo but will post one later. 

I have enjoyed the big city very much and have found it easy to get around.  I´m leaving on Saturday for Patagonia trek!  - a big change from Santiago and it´s heat.  Looking forward to it although my trip mates will all speak English and I need to continue practicing Spanish.  But I´ll manage.  :-)

Claudia's house

Some pics from Claudia's house....

I am so lucky to have found this living situation.   There are 4 renters at the house and I have so many opportunities to speak Spanish at home.  Plus my room is big enough with lots of light. .it is perfect.  

I like the two little dogs who are puppies.   They are great fun. 
The male, Zombie, is wild and crazy and the female, Emma, is just sweet.  I rescue her from Zombie attacks sometimes.in the picture of Claudia and her Patricio, he is holding 2 of the old dogs, including the one on the right with Tina Turner hair. 

There are neighborhoods in Santiago, but also many apartments and condos in tall buildings.  All living areas are behind walls and with locked gates. Our house has many floor to ceiling windows and metal grates that roll up and down.  Mine is partway down in the photos.  One picture shows the second floor of the house and the vines growing on the fence around the house.  Violence is rare here but theft is very common.  Everyone I've met has had their locked bicycle stolen.  Every store has an employee who hangs out by the door and watches for theft.

I'm including a few pics of Santiago.   Sunsets are often red and amazing.  The mountains on 3 sides of the city are spectacular.  

Santiago Entertainment, Arts, and some History

I suppose Santiago is like any big city- there is always someone playing music in the subway with their case sitting out for tips, but one day a 4-man band got on the subway and played music for a few stops.  They were great and people gave tips.  How you stay standing on the buses or the subway without holding on to anything is a mystery to me.  Most drivers hit the gas, then hit the break, repeat... nothing smooth about public transportation.

The other evening,  a guy got on the bus with his electric guitar and an amplifier.  I thought he was taking the bus to his gig, but he played a canned music track and then played electric guitar.  He was so into it for the 15 minutes I was on that bus and I don´t know how he could stay upright while making good music.

It is common for entertainers to stand in front of lanes of traffic at a red light and do something entertaining until the cars get the green light - so they do their thing and walk the first cars in the lanes for tips.  I saw two young ladies taking turns twirling flags, a guy juggling, a guy juggling on a unicycle, but the most amazing was the guy who attached a rope from light to light (in front of the stopped traffic!) and walked the tightrope while juggling.  I am always amazed at what people do for coins!  There are regular beggars who don´t entertain but are physically disabled, and I have seen some street people sleeping it off, but not many.

The Carabineros are the police in all of Chile - they don´t have local police, only the military police or Carabineros.  They are standing and walking around everywhere.  You can´t go very far without seeing one or a pair of them.  I have never seen them be aggressive and it is nice to know they are around.  I have seen them regularly in every place I´ve visited.

I´ve seen and heard quite a few demonstrations in the streets, which is also interesting because the people are taking action against some things they are concerned about.  One big one was because the government wants to consolidate their version of social security as a government program.

Chile had a coup and the U.S. backed dictator Pinochet took over the country in 1973 by killing the popular Socialist president, Allende.  He imposed curfews and took drastic measures to quiet those who disagreed.  He was a dictator so you can imagine the atrocities.  He was ousted in 1990 and later arrested for crimes against people.  My friends say the nature of Chilean people is to go along quietly, but since Pinochet, many are speaking out.  So these peaceful demonstrations seem to be a good thing.

Dogs!   Street dogs are everywhere I've been and are accepted as part of Chile.  They sleep wherever they want and everyone walks around them.  In parks they sometimes sleep on the benches.  I've seen several instances in busy Santiago where the dog will stand on the corner with the people and cross the 8 lanes when the people cross.   They are big and docile.  They get food from trash or restaurant owners leave the scraps outside for them after closing time.  It is odd to see dogs sleeping anywhere and everywhere.  

Also including 2 pics of my Spanish school and the coffee spot for our daily break.  I am sitting with Yuko from Japan. 

Food!

This is an old post that I wrote but never published so I'm posting it now for myself.  Great food photos below bring back nice memories!

I'm enjoying trying new foods here and have had some outstanding meals and some familiar meals just like I would have at home.  I'm surprised that they eat so much wheat here.  There are bakeries with fresh breads and pastries everywhere!  Lots of empanadas and hot dogs too.   

 

We ate so much fresh seafood last weekend on the coast! We saw much of the fish and shellfish fresh on the docks and in the mercados.  It was my first time to eat Machas a la Parmesana.  These are pink clams native to Chile that sit in half their shell and are covered with parmesan and baked.  They are delicious!  I also tried locos, which are a Chilean abalone (or so a website says).  It´s a huge shellfish that tastes a lot like scallops and I´ve never seen anything like it.  You cover them with salt, lemon, and onion salsa and eat. Yum!  Que rico! See picture below with 3 on the plate.

Salmon and many types of fish are common and delicious.  It is difficult to order from a menu because we don't know their names for meats and fish.  Potato puree' is mashed potatoes and papa myo is potato salad.  They usually have mayonnaise,  lemons, and some type of salsa with every meal - and Chilean wine.  Another typical food I ate is pastel de choclo (corn).  It's baked in a round pottery bowl and  has an egg,  a hidden green olive, and a piece of chicken inside and is topped with a sweet cornmeal cake.  Love it!

I also ate a soup and a platter of a variety of shellfish including shrimp, crab claws, scallops, calimari, and other things that I didn´t recognize but it´s all good!  And it was my first time to try Chorillana, which is common and traditional.  It´s meant to be shared and is a big platter of french fries and on top is meat (chorizo and beef), fried onions, and some fried egg.  It´s greasy but good and everyone just digs in with a fork.

Other popular foods - salads of tomato, onion, fresh corn, lettuce, carrots.  Canned sardines come in a variety of flavors and are good.  We drove back to Santiago through a town known for olives and tuna (not the fish).  It´s very dry there so there are miles of olive trees and you buy big scoops of black and green olives at roadside stands.  And tuna is a fruit from a huge cactus.  The fruit is round, about the size of a pear and you peel and eat.  It´s green and very sweet.  A favorite fruit in Chile is Chirimoya, which is only available for about 3 months  and it´s now!  The fruit is large, green, and hard and inside with big seeds but a sweet creamy fruit.  

Another first was Manja - which is very sweet creamy goo made from boiling milk and sugar into a paste.  It is pictured below as darker layers in a layered pastry and a cortado (espresso cut with milk).  

Other faves here - everyone drinks Chilean wine often and they believe it is the best.  I´m becoming a fan of wine.  The pisco sour is a drink made with pisco (which is something made from grapes grown here), lemon juice, sugar, and some frothy egg white.  It´s my favorite.  

Another common drink is a Terremoto (earthquake) that I tried this weekend at a bar called El Piojero - filled with young people.   It is a form of early white wine  poured over pineapple ice cream and a splash of grenadine. Everyone says to stop at one or your head will feel the terrremoto, so I had less than one.  They go down very easy.  A coffee in a little cafe is good but they are small.  People drink Nescafe instant a lot and the nearby OK market (just like 7-11) has a machine with Nescafe unsweetened latte that I enjoy every morning.

Grocery stores are large and have everything we have and things we don't have.  I've enjoyed shopping and have cooked a few times too.  you can also find everything in big outdoor markets. Restaurants usually offer ceviche on the menu and there's always lots of outdoor seating.   Chinese restaurants and sushi are common but friends say it's not like what we know.  The sushi often has cream cheese in it!  There are many food vendors on the streets too but the only thing I've tried is nuts.  I think there will be more interesting food in my future here in Chile. 

Enjoy some photos I took! 

Saturday bike ride to Parque Bicentenario

This is an old post that I wrote but never published so I'm posting it now for myself.  

Claudia has a bicycle and she lets me ride it!  See it by the palm tree below with pink-wall tires.  

Beautiful day for a ride with views of the Andes (a little snow still on top) and a lively and beautiful park full of people. In the first photo you see hills, not the Andes peaks.  I saw many people and families jogging, biking, walking, picnicking,  and enjoying the outdoors. 

Santiago seems very much like any US city.  So far, no culture shock at all.  I saw a Starbucks and a McDonald's today on my walk and a couple historical things we wouldn't see at home.  It's clean, green, and people are friendly. 

School and more in Santiago

Some general thoughts....

Two days of language school (mornings from 9:30 until 1:00) and I´m happy I made the decision to do this.  My class of 8 others includes two native English speakers - a guy from Washington D.C. whose wife works for the State Dept. and they are here now but have lived in many places and a guy from Australia who met his Chilean wife in Australia where she was a tourist (so she stayed there for 6 months to learn English and now he is learning Spanish here - he said they used Google Translate to communicate for months!  A girl in my class from Holland speaks 7 languages already and will travel for 9 months now between high school and college.  In January she will go to Indonesia for 6 months to live with her father´s family and to study the native language.

In my class are also folks from Holland, Germany, China, and Japan.  Many people in the school are from Brazil and work in tourism.  It´s an interesting place with activities and good people.  They offer a free Salsa class on Wednesday afternoon and I´m going.  Me encanta salsa y la musica.

I´m living at Claudia´s for these next two weeks and it is very comfortable.  To get to school from her house I can walk to the metro station or take the bus to get there, then take the metro (subway) for about 20 minutes. Easy!  She has a husband who is always making jokes (in Spanish) and is very pleasant and she has renters.  I met the young man from Mexico today - he is working here for one year with his company and speaks English well.

On Friday the metro had electrical problems and 4 of 5 metro lines were down.  Traffic was a mess and most people could not get to work and I´m glad I did not have classes yet.  The chief of the metro was fired.  The metro is easy and clean and I´m very comfortable on it now. I also walk a lot and yesterday I went for a run, which felt so good!  It´s pretty hot in the afternoons and I was red as a beet afterwards.

Every outdoor park has workout machines installed and people use them.  They look like a standard bench press or stairmaster but all use your own body weight for resistance - no weight stacks.  There are gyms everywhere, runners, bicyclists, and generally people who move a lot. People have tattoos and piercings and wear all the same clothing we do so I fit in quite well.  It´s not cheap here though.  Their economy is doing well and there´s tons of bars, restaurants, dance culbs, coffee shops, etc.  It´s comfortable here.

I am posting this without photos because it's time for a post.  I'm suddenly very busy with school, homework, and friends!  I talked with Claudia and her Patricio a lot today, and to Eduardo and Francesca who both rent from Claudia.  I never turn down a chance to practice listening and speaking Spanish... so another night and I have not uploaded photos.  Having friends is so good! 

Hoping to post photos tomorrow.  

Valparaiso, Vina del Mar, and other tourist spots

The weekend was fabulous again because I got to see more places on the must-see list!  I went with Patricio to Valparaiso and on the drive to the coast from Santiago went over the coastal range, saw many vineyards and grapes growing, and beautiful mountain scenery.  On Saturday some of his friends came there too and we had so much fun even though none of them spoke English.  Valparaiso is very large and is all hills - you just can´t believe how people build on the hillsides.  There are shacks and skyscrapers and it´s the main shipping port for Chile so is quite working class but with many tourists.

Things to do there:  You can walk along the coast but it is a shipping coast so no beaches.  We took a boat ride in the harbor to see the city from the water and hear about the churches, various historic buildings, museums, and the city´s long history.  There are many funiculars (a small car that goes up and down very steep hills) that are used regularly, many plazas and paseos.  The paseos are because the city is on hills so these are walkways that look out over the hillside and get you from one area to another.  And there are billions of stairs to climb or descend.  Graffiti is also abundant and accepted and much of the artwork is really good.

I bought a sweater in Valparaiso made from alpaca wool.  The nights are chilly and the sweater is really warm.  It will be great for Patagonia!  I also bought a hat here because my baseball cap makes me stand out.  But I am not buying much because I have to get everything into my backpack.

We also went to Vina del Mar which is adjacent to Valparaiso but is a bit higher class and is not a port.  There are tall apartment buildings and a casino and a lovely walkway along the coast with some beach areas but mostly huge rocks with crashing waves.  The weekend traffic was bad because so many people go to the coast for the weekend, but it gets much worse in the summer.  School will be out for students in less than 3 weeks!

Did I mention Salsa dancing from midnight until 3:30 for the two nights in Valparaiso.  Dinner at 9:30 or 10:00 followed by dancing is common.  We went to a happening place called La Piedra Feliz - Happy Stone, which has 5 different rooms for music.  The two live bands were great and the room with salsa, merengue and bachata music was where we spent the most time.  I´m getting the hang of salsa and very much enjoyed watching the great dancers on the dance floor and trying to learn to move my hips like that while keeping my shoulders level.  It is not easy.

Travel is ups and downs and I´ve had many ups and met so many good people.  Claudia says that Chileans like everything western and will go out of their way to help westerners - that they will be more helpful to me than they might be to another Chileno.  I don´t know if it´s true but I can´t even recount how many times I´ve asked for something and someone has walked me to a subway stop or asked people on the street until someone knows what I want (it took forever to find this tiny street that the school is on but enough people helped that I got here!).  Of course there are people everywhere eho will rake advantage if possible.   But so far it´s been a fantastic experience with kind, fun, and helpful people.

I know it´s getting close to Thanksgiving there and you are all making plans for meals, friends, and family.  No Thanksgiving here.  I´m sending a big hug to all.