Las Pampas

Rurrenabaque is a small town approximately one hour by plane north of La Paz. We took the tiny 10-seater, extremely turbulent Amaszonas aircraft through the spectacular mountains only a few kilometres to our side and over the vast blanket of trees that is the Amazon, into the stinking heat of sea level.

Once we found out that the hostel we wished to stay at, the one recommended in the guidebook, no longer existed, we made our way to the closest available room elsewhere. Instead of glass windows, it had mosquito nets and a beautiful view of the Rio Beni. At two o’clock in the morning, I moodily knocked on the neighbour’s door. All night he had been watching TV at high volume and with no glass to shut out the noise, mixed with the heat, I had lost my patience. The guy was asleep, not even realising the disturbance he was making. After that I slept well, until the morning when I got locked in the communal toilet; sick from something I had eaten the night before. Unfortunately, that sickness carried on for the next 5 days.

We left town in a rusty, dented four-wheel drive and drove 3 hours along a bumpy, dirt road, inhaling dust though our mouths, noses and ears until we finally arrived to Pampas del Yacuma, upstream of the Rio Beni. We couldn’t get there sooner. Other tourists crowded the lawn as we waited to board our motor canoe-like boat. Once cruising down the river, we lost sight of the other groups and soon we were alone in the wilderness, if not for the native animals.

The banks of the low river were filled with them soaking up the mid-afternoon sun; from alligators to turtles to the Capybara (the largest of the rat family) to an extraordinary array of bird life including local types of ducks, eagles, storks, chickens, herons, birds of paradise, you name it. We washed the sweat off our hot skin in the muddy water as Pink (Amazon River) dolphins swam around us. As kings of the river, neither alligator nor piranha dares come near.

At the lodge, we settled into our room, filled with mosquito net-covered beds and again, no glass windows. There was no electricity after 9pm anyway so there wasn’t any risk of being kept awake. The water for lodge came from rainwater so showers had to short and all the huts were elevated on stilts. Apparently the river rises so high in the rainy season that it floods the nearby pampas plain and hence the huts sit on water, with alligators swimming rather close by.

Yes, apparently the scenery is completely different in the rainy season of summer as opposed to the dry season of winter/spring. The water is said to reach 2 metres above the pampas grassy flatlands where we went to have a cold Paceña beer and watch the sunset. Lucky for us, because with the rain comes the mosquitos and with the banks of the river further away, the animals are suppose to be harder to find. Unfortunately for us though, the sloths only come out in summer.

The following day we set off early through the natural fields in search of an Anaconda. After a painstaking search through the tall grass, one of the guides found a baby, maybe 2 or 3 metres in length. They are non-venomous snakes so there was nothing to be afraid of. It seemed more scared of us if anything. There are other types of snakes and nasties hidden in the lush greenery so we wore gumboots for protection, and also so as not to get our feet wet. It may have been the dry season but the grass did well to keep in the moisture. It was already 30 degrees at 10am when we headed back to camp.

After lunch we went piranha fishing. They’re intelligent little things that nipped away at the meat without so much of a pull on the string. If someone did catch one, photos would be taken and the fish plopped back into the water. Further along the river and further away from camp, we came across howler monkeys whose loud howl woke us up at the crack of dawn each morning.

That night we floated along the river without the motor blasting out and listened to the eerie stillness. Then, out of no where an alligator would jam his jaws shut with an horrendous thud that made everyone in the boat shuddered. Without our flashlights, we could just make out the reflective, metallic eyes of those giant, reptile predators.

We watched the sunrise on the other side of the bank and listened to the music of Mother Nature in the morning. Everyone seemed to be out, except for the alligators. We saw toucans and macaws, and little yellow squirrel monkeys came right down to the edge of the bank to greet us. We rested from the heat in the hammocks before it was time to go back down the never ending bumpy, dirt road, once again filling ours lungs with dust and giving me heat rash across my chest and back, onto the tiny airplane and out into the cold, high altitude air of La Paz.

Note: The Pampas area within the limits of the Beni River is home to more than 1,000 species of birds, 300 species of mammals and 200 species of reptiles. If you want to see strange animals, it is much harder to find them in the Amazon.

Tiwanaku

It’s hard to imagine a time before the Incas built Machu Picchu, the Aztec built Tenochtitlan or the ancient Egyptians built the Pyramids of Giza.

As far back as 1200 BCE, the Tiwanaku people built a beautiful port at an astonishing altitude of 3,850m on the southern edge of Lago Titicaca, the side of the lake that now belongs to Bolivia. Recognised as being the oldest ruins in the world, Tiwanaku is one the most important precursors to the Inca Empire.

We took the local bus (van) to the site for about 20 cents and arrived after tirelessly waiting for the bus to fill up completely in La Paz and a very cramped 2 hour journey. The driver dropped us off a mere 3km from the archaeological site, although he had insisted he could take us directly there. We began the exhausting walk in the dry, windy high altitude heat before we hitched a ride on the back of a local's truck. The thrill of living on the wild ride was short lived as we soon approached our destination and profusely thanked our driver.

At first glance Tiwanaku was not what I had been expecting, no giant pyramid in your face or herds of tourists living through the lens of their cameras. It was quiet and sparse, and completely soaked in rich, mysterious history that archaeologists are mostly still uncovering.

It’s monumental architecture is composed of large, perfectly rectangle blocks made from ashlar. Each block is fitted perfectly above the other with no evidence of mortar to hold them together and were frequently fitted with elaborate drainage systems. More impressively is that the blocks were quarried at the volcanoes at least 40km away and it is a mystery as to how they were transported to the site, what with the largest block weighing 131 metric tons.

The Tiwanaku people believed the god Viracocha (creator of all things including the universe, the sun, moon and stars) created people from a great piece of rock and brought them to life through the earth. They also believed that he created giants to move the massive stone blocks but then grew unhappy with them and destroyed them in a flood.

The most impressive remains of the port are those of the Kalasasaya temple, now protected by UNESCO and which dates back to 200 BCE. The temple, a large courtyard of about 130m by 120m in size, was used as a ceremonial centre and for astronomical observations. Its four corners point north, south, east and west. In the centre of the courtyard once stood the Puerta del Sol (Gateway of the Sun), made from a single slab of andesite and estimated to weigh 44 tons. The light of the sun would shine through the gateway twice a year, indicating the autumn and spring equinoxes. However, the Spanish conquistadors tried to rob the gateway. Just as they were about to leave the courtyard, they dropped it and the gateway cracked into two parts. It now stands in this location, still with the huge crack scarring its archway.

Viracocha is carved into the middle of its arch so that he can overlook his people and lands. He is surrounded by what is thought to be either calendar signs or natural forces for agricultural worship. There also appear 12 faces covered by a solar mask and 30 running or kneeling figures, which seem to represent the 12 months of the calendar and their 30 days.

The Gateway of the Sun belongs to a series of gateways at the site, including the Puerta de la Luna (Gateway of the Moon) and Puma Punku (Gateway of the Puma). The puma, king of the animal kingdom, represented the present, the condor represented the future and the serpent was the representation of the past. The condor was the only animal that could carry the soul to the heavens and the serpent took the body back into the earth from where it first came from.

The archaeological site is also home to the temple of Akapana, a pyramid originally compiled of 7 superimposed platforms with stone retaining walls rising up to 18m. Only the lowest of these and part of one of the intermediate walls survive intact. Much of Tiwanaku was destroyed, looted or exposed to amateur excavations. Not much is known about the site and its people as there exists no local written language yet to be deciphered and even today, a lot of Tiwanaku still remains underground.

Our guide called the Tiwanaku people the forefathers of the Incas. When the lake began to dry up and Tiwanaku no longer deemed an appropriate place to live, the people moved west towards Peru and it was there that their sons became the Inca kings.

As one of the locals who still live at the Tiwanaku site, our guide was full of insightful and mysterious stories about the Tiwanaku people and yet hidden behind a perfectly, upright wall he would always try to sell us a piece of stone craftsmanship that he himself had excavated from the site. Indeed, he was a strange mix of morals.

La Mujer Indigena

In 2001, the Bolivian population measured as having a 55% indigenous population, primarily Aymara and Quechua, a 30% population of mestizo (mixed), and a small 15% of the population with European origins. That same year, the indigenous people of Peru formed about 31% of the population, mostly of Andean original but a small percentage also from the Amazon.

Aymara people are an indigenous ethnic group from the Andes and Altiplano regions, which include Bolivia, Peru and Chile. Their flag is known as the Wiphala, a bright assortment of squares quilted together in diagonal stripes and that showcase the seven colours of the rainbow. Don’t ever mistake it for the gay pride flag. It is the Aymarans who have grown and chewed coca plants for centuries, also using the leaves for traditional medicinal purposes as well as ritual offerings to the sun god Inti and Pachamama (mother earth).

Most notably, the Aymara women in urban La Paz wear bowler hats that somehow sit perfectly on their heads and never seem to fall off, even though they aren’t attached. The story goes that a shipment of bowler hats where sent from Europe to Bolivia via Peru in the 1920s to be used by the British workers constructing the railroads. However, the hats were too small and thus distributed to the locals who, along with the colourful aguayo cloth, a big blouse, embroidered long skirts and boots, have adopted it as an ethnic symbol. In fact, hats in general tend to identify indigenous women as being part of a particular ethnic group or village and sometimes even their status.

Most of indigenous women also seem to put their hair into two plaits and add pompoms to their hair-ties. The more extravagant the pompom, the more beautiful the woman/girl seems to be.

Quechua (pronounced as kichwa) is the collective term for several indigenous groups in South America, basically from the old Inka Empire, and also the language formally spoken by the Inkas. Many urban Quechua women also wear bowlers hat as an ethnic symbol, however outside of La Paz, the monteras (the quechua word for a traditional hat) vary incredibly. Just wearing a hat seems to be an ethnic symbol enough.

In Peru, we found the indigenous women to wear what seemed like fabric bowls on their heads, which they fill with fresh flowers and use a sanq’apa, a woven strap, around their faces to keep the bowls from falling off. In other places, the women were seen to be wearing flat, embroidered hats that completely shade their heads and necks.

The quechua men also have a traditional hat which tends to be the chullo, a woollen beanie that is knitted with earflaps. In other parts, quechua men wear decorated felted sombreros. It all depends on their place of origin and with where exactly they want to be associated. Everything is mostly hand woven by the women and extremely bright, and quite frankly, it’s a beautiful way of identification.

Despite their beautiful clothing and cloths however, the life of an indigenous woman in Bolivia, and Peru for that matter, is to the unaccustomed westerner quite unhygienic. Both the men and the women are seen to be urinating in the public streets of La Paz and close to Arequipa in Peru, we even saw a woman squat by the edge of the road and do a number two.

Due to the high attitude, more specifically forceful winds and heavy exposure to the sun's rays, the women’s faces tend to be very worn and weather-beaten. It is very difficult to determine their age and we saw what seemed like women too old to be carry tiny children on their backs, but you just never know. Yet when we saw them smile or laugh, their faces lit up and matched the beauty of their clothing. They truly are extraordinary women. We saw them working side by side with men doing road work, we saw them ploughing the fields or selling in the streets, and for some reason, it was they who always seemed to be carrying the heavy load. Again, they are extraordinary women!

El Camino de la Muerte

Death Road, more formally known as Yungas Road, was built during Bolivia’s war with Paraguay between 1932-35 and for many years it was the only route linking northern Bolivia to La Paz, the capital. It got its name because in 1994 alone, 26 vehicles went over the edge.

The dirt road is narrow and although vehicles come from both directions, there are only a few parts wide enough for them pass. If you get caught in a narrow spot, well one of the drivers has to reverse until they reach a part of the road that is wide enough for one vehicle to edge closer to the cliff wall and other closer to the drop off, roughly 600m straight down. With a total of 61km in length, descending more than 3596m from the Andean mountains into the Amazonian jungle, this means that many of the drivers simply drive off the edge.

Apparently, before setting off, drivers pour libations of beer onto the road as an offering to Pachamama (mother earth), and feed the stray dogs, supposedly the souls of dead drivers. Although there is a new road, it is clear that drivers still use the old dirt track to cut time. An estimate of 200-300 travellers die along the road each year. The new road is yet to be completed though and it’s apparently costing quite a mint. It's hard to believe that the Bolivian government can afford such an extravagant project, what with the bridges, drainage system and guardrails.

Today, the old road is mostly used by tourists who have ironically made it quite a popular tourist destination. Herds of travel agencies flock the streets of La Paz claiming to be to the best company to "Mountain-bike the most dangerous road in the world", a title awarded to the Yungas road in 1995 by the Inter-American Development Bank. In the end, the travel agencies are all pretty much the same and the prices really depend on what kind of bicycle you feel safe using.

When we first arrived from La Paz in our fluoro bike shirts, elbow/shin guards and helmets, the flog lay heavy over the mountains and not much of the view could be seen. The beginning of the journey meant following the new tarmac camino until it broke away and the old camino lay awaiting. We were lucky it wasn’t rainy season and mud wasn't an issue for us.

The group travelled fast and anyone left too far behind would be scooped up in the van following us. It was hard to take note of the dramatically changing scenery for the mind had to be tense with concentration. This was dangerous stuff. One bad move and I too could go over the edge. Every now and then, the guide would stop and check on the group. We would inhale the spectacular beauty and set off again, through the waterfalls cascading onto the road and past the dormant crosses where someone had fallen to their peril.

“Remember, left hand is your front brake and right hand is your back brake. Be careful now. The rocks in this section are very loose.”

I knew it was going to happen before it happened. It kind of flashed before my eyes; the big rock mockingly in my way. I tried to brake softly but it was too sudden, too much on the front brake and I kind just somersaulted over it, landing hard on my left side. I screamed in agony. Perhaps a little too dramatically but at the time, I thought it seemed appropriate. My elbow guard had come loose and blood oozed from my skin. I could feel purple and yellow bruises having field day down from my hip to my knee.

I was fine, eventually. I was told to rest in the van for the next leg. I watched the rich green mountains pass me by and I felt envious of the others with tears flooding their eyes from the wind, bugs flying into their noses and mouths, and panting from the hard slog of the uphill parts. As soon as I could, I was back on the bike, slogging away with them as we twisted and turned, ascended and descended finally to the bottom. We throw off our shoes and vests in the damp heat. We had made it. It was like a whole different country down there. My lungs felt heavy after only just one day of altitude denying them of oxygen.

Driving back, we were held up by indigenous protestors. Having travelled from their village in the Amazon, they were slowly progressing towards to capital to rally against the plans to build a huge highway straight through the middle of the jungle, a venture to be paid by Brazil so that their cargo trucks could swiftly journey from one side of the continent to the other. In the end, the indigenous won.

La Paz

Bolivia: the poorest country in South America with a population of 55% indigenous Amerindian, 30% mestizo and 15% white.

La Paz: the administrative capital and second largest city of Bolivia.

Our first impression of La Paz as we made our way into the valley was a whirl of automobiles driving in all directions, no traffic lights, just a multitude of female traffic wardens uselessly directing traffic and a constant echo of car horns and young boys commandeering people into their (min-van) collectivos*.

Then the altitude sickness kicked in. At 4,100m above sea level, La Paz leaves those unaccustomed to the altitude with a constant feeling of nausea or an irritating pain in the back of the head, not unlike a hangover. For this reason, the locals consume a lot of coca, a plant that has and still plays a significant role in Andean culture. Chewing the leaves or boiling them in water as mate (herbal tea) is not only effective against altitude sickness but also acts as a stimulant to overcome fatigue, hunger and thirst. It is also the coca in Coca Cola. We stuck to drinking mate de coca every morning though as the raw leaves are incredibly bitter and leave a flavour in your mouth that is definitely not for the faint at heart.

To make matters more difficult, the valley part of the city is composed of a cluster of hills so no matter where you wonder off to, there is always an uphill to breathlessly defeat. Yet, its intriguing indigenous culture makes La Paz highly appealing to the western adventurer, not to mention the fact that everything seems ridiculously cheap.

Door to door travel agencies and souvenir shops morph into the witch's market, packed with llama fetus' and voodoo-like statues of Pachamama (mother earth) or idols for love, work and luck. The witches will tell you that before constructing a new house, one should bury a llama fetus so it will remain underneath the house and continue to give it good luck. Here we had our fortunes told by a suspiciously-fraud one-eyed man reading from his tarot cards in the street for a few pennies.

Across the prada (main road) and through the plazas filled with colonial mansions now accommodating government institutions, and hidden amongst the slim alleyways lies Calle Jaen, an old colonial street that houses many old buildings from that era; all beautifully painted in soft pastels and all in amazing condition, a stark contrast to the crumbling, neglected and poor other side of town. Here, we found local designers exhibiting their skills and a cute cafe Café Etnö, where we stayed for mojitos de coca. Of course we became painfully bloated from the ice in the cocktail but it was a fun night nonetheless.

The real La Paz, understandably, is located up on the flatlands above the valley, where more than half the population of the city lives. This is where the indigenous way of the city life comes into its full glory. Here the main drag is filled with street vendors, selling fruit and puffed wheat amongst other things as well as herds of collectivos waiting impatiently to be fill to the brim before setting off.

Other interesting insights to note include the shoe cleaners who wear black balaclavas to hide their identities so as not to be recognised elsewhere as having the lowest of the low job, and the pedestrian helpers who dress in animal costumes to distinguish themselves from the rest of the crowd.

*Collectivos: public people movers, similar to buses in that they follow a designated route but often come in the form of a car or mini-van.

Viaje

And Julia Turns Latina takes 2 months off Chilean life to travel the world. Accounts of her adventure to come...

La Marcha

Last Thursday, 4 August, Santiago university students took to the streets in protest without permission from the government. For several weeks now, university students from mostly Santiago but also from other cities in Chile, as well as high school students, have been protesting for free and better quality tertiary education.

As the police took to the streets with tear gas, arresting people as they went, the students retreated to their houses. In the evening a strange thunder began to roar from the neighbouring houses. An act oh-so-familiar to the Pinochet era, people had actually begun to bang on their pots and pans in protest from the safety of their houses. I had never heard anything like it before. The thunder went on well into the night, as cars frequently passed by honking their horns. Thursday has become the day of protest for the students and their sympathisers.

Having worked at a university at the beginning of the year, I know how bad the quality of tertiary education can be and how expensive the classes are. My students were young, immature and badly disciplined which meant that they were failing. The policy at the private university was if a student failed a subject and the student intended to re-take the class in order to gain their degree, they had to pay the full semester of classes again. This was a university that hosted students from the lower socio-economical areas of the city. Their parents painstakingly saved the money for their education because in Chile, just having done a degree of 5 years means getting a better job.

If the duration of your degree was less than 5 years, then it is consider a practical degree, not a ‘proper’ degree. There is no government support to students unless they can prove they are poor enough to receive help. This means all fees must be paid up front. The only universities that have a highschool grades emission policy are rare and are mostly public with few positions on offer. This means all other universities are private. There is an absolute abundance of them. They are businesses that prey on the poor who seek to escape the shackles of poverty but end up wasting their money on so-called institutions that barely educate their children.

So the protest for better education seems only too appropriate but unfortunately, it isn't as black and white as this. In a corrupt system so far advanced, it is almost impossible to make education free for the protestors, none of which come from affluent backgrounds. The situation is becoming more and more complicated as students refuse to accept any negotiations and will not stop until they get exactly what they are asking for, right to the full stop.

And to make the situation worse, delinquents looking to sabotage constantly shadow the protests. Santiago centro has become their target area, where shops have began to close up early on Thursday afternoons to avoid vandalism. Last Thursday, during the surprise protests, herds of youth broke into a clothing store and having stolen the merchandise, they then set it on fire. With thugs like this taking to the streets every week now, will the protests even be able to stop?

(Image by Roberto Candia )

Un Soplo de Aire Marino

Viña del Mar is a breath of sea air for those living in Santiago. Head to the buss terminal early in the morning and buy a ticket on the spot for one of the multiple 2 hour bus trips to this famous seaport. My lovely Chilean and I jumped at the opportunity to take an Australian friend to visit the place.

Its sleepy atmosphere for a large town is a nice parallel to the rough sticks of the sailor's town, Valparaíso, the town with which it merges. The wide streets, several of which are boarded by palm trees, turn into narrow, calles with dark shadows. Our favourite Italian restaurant, Panzoni, can also be found in Viña del Mar. We made sure to stop at the quintessential picada for comida buena, bonita y borata (good, beautiful and cheap food). Its charming decor is very reminiscent of old Italian grandmother's country home, with the walls covered with retro Italian memorabilia and the tables covered with cute chequered-print table clothes, which perfectly suit the painted red and green retro chairs. The menu mostly offers homemade pasta with basic homemade sauces, which is only too fitting for a restaurant that is actually the front room of someone's house.

Viña del Mar was founded by the native Changos tribe who originally inhabited the coast of Peru down to the coast of the Atacama in Chile. The Spanish then decided to develop the land into a town separate to that of Valparaíso and it became a tourist attraction after the construction of the casino as well as a number of beachside hotels. The town was also one of the four cities to host the 1962 Football World Cup. As Valparaíso is enchanting in its heritage appeal, Viña del Mar is relaxing with its beach town vibes, although the water is always too cold to swim in unless you're brave.

The three of us walked down the main strip of shops and cafés, past the plaza where horses and carriages wait to take you for a ride, through to the garden clock and along the coast to sit on the sand and watch the huge, grey battleships sail off into the distance. When the waves began to lap up the shore and we had seen all the artisan market stalls, we took the bus back to Santiago.

Un Viaje al Cajón

One thing is for certain, the mountains looming next to Santiago valley look spectacular under their winter blanket of snow and after the rain washes away the dirty husk of the smog, the mountains seem to be everywhere you look.

Last long weekend, held in celebration for Saints Peter and Paul, a group of us decided to venture to Cajón del Maipo, the canyon southeast of Santiago. Having already visited the main village San José de Maipo a couple of times, my lovely Chilean and I weren't expecting too much from the outing, perhaps just a nice meal at one of the many gourmet restaurants. Never did I expect the canyon to extend on into a vast array of hikes, villages, waterfalls and thermals to choose from.

The only trouble was that the public buses barely hit the halfway point in the canyon and so without a car, it's practically impossible to get to any one of these amazing places. Having come this far by ridiculously slow public transport, we decided to wait an hour to take the bus that would take us onto the next village (the last place the buses drive to).

From San Gabriel, we walked along the highway to a little village by the riverside, where people picnicked or had beers at the little café, behind of which began a path that trailed up the Maipo River. We followed this as far as we could, leaping from stone to stone and climbing high up the quarried slopes to avoid the rapid current below. We found a spot to rest upon the rocks while we drank a beer and mediated upon the radiating beauty of the cordillera.

On the way back, we watched as three brave men prepared to kayak amidst the rushing rapids. As we walked up the hill to the bus stop, we saw them far below battling against nature, and then they turned a bend and were gone. Once on the bus, our eyelids became heavy and we awoke an hour later back in the city, the smog once again filling our lungs in a familiar embrace.

Una Hermosa Tierra de Contradicciones

The pride of the south is the longaniza: a sausage similar to the chorizo and commonly eaten in Chile with bread as a choripan. Chile in fact is like the longaniza; it's long and thin and full of different flavoursome components. It is rich in natural beauty of varying colours and rich in natural history.

So much of Chile seems untouched by humans... until now, as you can see by the highly protested decisions to install more dams and introduce transgenic foods and the powerful mining lobby.

I teach English to the private sector, mostly commercial engineers for that matter, a lot of whom are quite conservative in many regards. During one early bird class, a student of mine questioned why so many Chileans were out in the streets protesting against HidroAysén when none of them recycle. Litter is scattered across the streets and outside the rich business end of Santiago, there aren't any council street cleaners with their large palm leaves to sweep away the mess. A receipt is given to you for every purchase, not matter how minor, and the staff won't let you leave until you have received it. Water is treated as if it were in abundance with old men washing down the public footpath in front of their house and a very small minority of households owning a plug for their sink.

There is definitely the possibility to recycle here though. The shopping centres all have recycle bins in their car parks but if you don't have a car, it's very hard to travel half an hour on public transport with bags weighed down by bottles and cans. They have a great system where you can return your Coca-Cola or Cristal beer plastic bottles for a refill, and if you need ink for your printer, you simply take your ink cartridge to be refilled by sticking in a syringe full of ink.

And yet, at the supermarket a plastic bag is used for each individual item. You can't buy bread, fruit or vegetables without wrapping it in plastic. There is a ridiculous amount of plastic bags in my house, which we use to line the rubbish bin but that hardly makes a dent in the pile. Lider supermarket (owned by Walmart) has introduced environmentally friendly blue bags for a cheap price but it is yet to catch on with the masses.

I'm just waiting for the day that the local municipality decides to integrate recycling into their garbage collection system. But that seems a long way off yet. Chile is still in its economic developmental stage and everything is geared towards economic improvement. Until this is reached, recycling and other such things will be consistently pushed to the back of the agenda, something that is happening in many developing countries. And yet the contradiction lies in the enormous amount of people here who feel some sort of connection to the land in some way or another, whether it is to preserve it or to adventure across it.

Because of Chile's geography, it is full of astonishing natural beauty that most Chileans are proud of and are protesting to protect, and yet life in the city seems to suggest something different. The tree-hugging hippy is still having ridiculously long showers.

Bendición de la Casa

Chile is the most economically stable country in South America, making it as some might say, a safer place to live and work. There is an incredible influx of commercial engineers churning out from the many tertiary institutions. Let's face it, Santiago is the business capital of Chile and if you work in any other industry, your chances of getting a good income is just that much harder.

My lovely Chilean's mother's partner is a teacher in the field of educación especial, specialising in the education of the blind. His moral job involves extremely long hours at several places and at 40 years old, he has successfully raised enough money to buy one of the cute, 3-storey, Elizabethan-style townhouses in the same condominio as us.

Last Saturday, he held the bendición - a blessing of the house witnessed by his family. 14 of us gathered around the living room as his brother, who had studied 10 years of priesthood, recited various verses from the Bible and sprayed holy water around the room. This was followed by everyone chanting the Lord's Prayer and the blessing of a cross that was stuck onto the back of the front door as a reminder that the house was now under the protection of the Lord.

The smell of roasting meat on the barbeque drew us all to our seats and we spent the afternoon enjoying a merry Chilean feast. With bloated stomaches we congratulated the new residents and wished them the best of luck with the noisy dogs on one side and the woman on the other side who likes to complain about the light on the path outside the joining houses apparently never being on, even though the light switch is located in the new resident's house, meaning they have to pay the bill.

El Patrimonio Cultural

Sunday, 29 May saw Chile celebrate its twelfth Día de la Patrimonia (Cultural Heritage Day). On this particular day, government agencies, public and private museums and national monuments were open to the public, like Museo Bellas Artes, Santiago Municipal Theatre and the National Library to name a few in Santiago. Yet, what most people don't realise is that these state buildings are not the only heritage-listed feats to check out.

Santiago is filled with heritage-listed garden suburbs: a planned suburban development with open spaces, low-density housing and of course, many private gardens, that were popular in the early twentieth century in England and English colonies. This includes the English that settled here in Chile, most notably in Providencia.

After English sailor, William Noon, arrived in Chile and established Fort Bulnes as governor of Punta Arenas, he went on to construct what is now called the William Noon Community, located on the corner of Manuel Montt and Eliodoro Yanez. This historical area is composed of two-level dwellings that are organized around patios, each one painted identically in deep crimson and eggshell white.

After Noon passed away, he left his estate to the Sisters of the Dominican Order - the name Providencia actually being a derivative from the Convert of the Sisters of Divine Providence, who came to Chile in 1853 from Canada. Providencia now harbours 27 World Heritage sites, including the William Noon Community.

Today, many ordinary Chilean citizens live in these protected garden suburbs. Another such place is Población Leo XIII, again located in Providencia. This population was the first social housing in Chile and was named after Pope Leo XIII, who encouraged the awareness of the bad conditions for workers and hence their need for better housing.

Each one of these cute one-storey houses look very similar to the other, except for their unique shades of pastel. As you walk further along the street, you feel as if you have entered a charismatic country lane in a Hollywood movie set, each cosy-looking house inviting you in for a warm, homemade soup.

Then you step onto the set of My Fair Lady in Viña del Mar Street, with its grand English style houses that are characterised by their bow windows and Art Nouveau wrought iron fences. Nothing makes the street more distinctive though than the vibrant colours that awaken the senses like a fresh summer’s day at the beach.

You can find the Consejo de Monumentos Nacionales (Council for National Monuments) hidden amongst the casas, and from them you can get a map of the heritage route around Providenica, which takes you from Viña del Mar Street to the multitude of historical monuments in Bella Vista, including La Chascona and the Plaza Camilo Mori.

These are just a few of the garden suburbs in Santiago. Just aimlessly wondering down the streets of Providencia and Bella Vista is like stepping back into a time in the past when attention was paid to detailing houses and painting them the colours of the rainbow, and making them a part of a community. It just goes to show that you don't always have to pay a price for history.

La Burocracia Chilena

I remember the framer asking me whether or not I wanted to glue my enormous graduation certificate to the frame. Never even considering the possibility of ever using it, I of course said yes. Once happily installed as decoration on my bedroom wall, it was never thought about again. That is until I came to Chile.

Last year I taught English to a lawyer, the head lawyer in the company in fact, and he had said something very interesting that I haven't forgotten. In preparation for a business venture with an American company, he was in the middle of drawing up contracts but was having a difficult time because of the contrasting legal systems in each country. He told me that Chilean society is one that doesn't trust anyone and expects to be cheated.

At first I didn't see it but soon it became apparent as to how true his words were. 'Word of honour' just does not exist here or at least, there is little evidence of it. Every document must be made official by a notary: a lawyer or person licensed by the state to perform acts in legal affairs. If it isn't legalised, it is considered an unofficial document or fraud. In my blatant cultural ignorance, I had never even heard of a notary until I became involved with Chile.

When I signed my first work contract, I had to get it also signed by a notary. When I handed in my letter of resignation, I had to get it signed by a notary and most surprising of all, for the requirement of my next job at a university, I had to get my graduation certificate signed by a notary.

Now this wasn't an easy procedure, especially with my original copy hanging peacefully on my bedroom wall far across the Pacific Ocean. If I ripped it out of the frame, it would surely be destroyed. So I called my university only to find that they didn’t make copies. All I could ask for (ie. pay for) was a testimonial that I had indeed completed my undergraduate degree. I had it sent to my parent’s address. My mother had two photocopies of the document signed by an Australian Justice of the Peace (again something I had seldom heard of before my involvement with Chile) and she then sent them to me.

Two weeks later, we discovered she had sent the two photocopies and not the original. A legalised photocopy by anyone other than a Chilean notary is not recognised by the state so I had to wait another 2 weeks for the original to arrive. My patience grew thin as my work hounded me for a Chilean notarised copy of the document. They could neither put me into the system, so I couldn't even mark the absentees for my student or give them grades, nor pay me for my services.

When the time came, I took the original to first be stamped by the Australian embassy. As there is an abundance of universities in Chile (most of which are uncertified because basically anyone can open an university if they want to - just like opening a business really), I had to get the Australian embassy to prove that not only did I complete a 'real' degree but also that I did it from a 'real' university. Luckily the embassy had an electronic record of all the university registrars in Australia and if my testimonial was signed by one of them, they could easily legalise the document.

But this wasn't the case. In a country where you can simply write on your CV that you have a degree and employers will believe it, a referee had been used instead. The receptionist at the embassy came back and informed me that they could legalise the university seal and stamp but not the signature. I paid $10,000 pesos (more than an hour's pay) and got back my document which now had a giant 'Embajada de Australia' stamp of basically a paragraph of legal jargon. On the third line, the tiny writing "DO HEREBY CERTIFY that the signature" had been crossed out. It was so small you couldn't even tell.

With this, I travelled across town to the Ministry of Foreign Relations and had it legalised. Amazingly, there was no line and I didn't have to pay. The Oficial de Legalizaciones didn't even flip the paper over; he just saw the embassy’s approval and merely stamped and signed away.

The final step was to then take it to a notary, where I paid a little sum to get another 3 more stamps and two certified copies, one of which I gave to my work who then put me into the system. Yet by this time, I had missed the cut-off date for the first payment (which was already 2 months delayed) so I would have to wait another month to get paid - a 3 month wait in total. The incredible thing though was that once the original had arrived, I was unexpectedly able to get my extra 5 stamps in just one morning.

So if you're ever in Santiago, you will soon come to realise that there is a notary on almost every corner. Now how's that for red tape!

El Caos en Chile

Imagine one of the last places on earth that has remained wild and untouched by humans all this time, covered by folds of glaciers, which have unfortunately begun to melt away but only to reveal beautiful pale blue water that almost replicates the sky on land. Now imagine, five ugly dams with 2, 750 megawatts of power hindering the speechless beauty of this unoccupied part of southern Chilean Patagonia.

The HidroAysén project was approved by the Chilean government on 20 May, despite having faced consistent protest. This bill will affect six national parks, 11 national reserves, 26 priority conservation sites, 16 wetlands and 32 private protected areas in Patagonia. The dams would ultimately flood at least 5,700 hectares of globally rare forest ecosystems all for the sake of GDP growth.

80,000 protesters flocked to Plaza Italia in inner-city Santiago to protest, most of whom were peaceful but some of which began attacking the police, who then responded with water cannons and tear gas. All this came a week after a previous protest in Santiago against the dam project (pun fully intended) and some 50,000 protesters in Valparaíso as well as tens of thousands of protesters in 26 other cities. Latino celebrities have now jumped on the bandwagon in demonstrating their support against the project.

In reality more should be done to increase the amount of power obtained from renewable sources like solar from the driest desert in the world or the incredible amounts of geothermal energy. Oh, and did I mention that the President's wife's brother is the head of the energy company that is most definitely going to profit enormously from this venture?

This is all happening at the same time as Chile’s decision to sell copyright of all Chilean seeds to big, multi-national transgenic seed companies like Monsanto (USA), basically forcing Chileans to only produce transgenic fruit and vegetables as well as making small farmers and private owners pay a hefty fee for having even a small plantation of seeds.

(Image from timesonline.com)

El Metro de Santiago

The metro is such an integral part of Santiago life. It is the fundamental link between the hustle of the economic city centre and the poorer outskirts of the Santiago periphery. Consequently it is stuffed with those who have no other means of transportation and it is also snubbed by those who have the luxury of being able to afford to drive to work (the metro is seen to be for the poor people and who would want to mix with them, right?).

Yes, the subway/underground/metro is a metaphor for the Santiago mentality. Old women are the worst when it comes to aggression, as it is they who rudely push and shove to their best ability to make it to the empty seat. If they aren’t assertive, no one will stand to offer them a seat; not the middle aged men or the young men, neither will senoritas with their absurdly towering high heels or the kids in their stiff uniforms.

I remember the local community complaining that the students from my high school weren’t giving up their seats on the train. We were all subsequently lectured in school assemblies about behaving more appropriately and honourably in public, especially when representing the school by wearing our uniforms.

Now, every day I am faced with a constant battle for a seat. People will purposely miss the metro and stand right exactly where the doors open onto the platform just so they can get a seat on the next metro. People don't wait for you to get off the metro before they enter or walk to the right or stand to one side on the escalator for that matter. I have never felt like such an etiquette critic in all my life but dealing with thousands of rushing commuters has made me reflect upon what I consider to be respectful. So much for 'love thy neighbour'.

That having been said, the metro is an absolute lifesaver. It is clean, local and extremely frequent. Who said that a developing country couldn’t have great transportation? It puts my native transportation system to shame. Everyone has a BIP card, which they top up with money when needed and swipe it at the booth to enter the platform, paying the same price no matter how far they travel. So yes, there’s NO TICKETS and your card never goes OUT OF DATE!

The metro comes approximately every 5 minutes. During peak hour, they increase the metro flow with express metros, which are colour-coded red and green, and which stop at every second stop depending on the colour of the station. One disadvantage, however, is that it closes at 11pm even on weekends, even though the clubs only open at midnight. There are buses but they aren’t as direct...

A few years ago Transantiago monopolised the transportation system in Santiago. Before, the bus companies used to compete for passengers, racing around the city trying to collect as many passengers as possible before another company did. Even now, with only one company, the drivers have still retained they crazy driving skills, terrifyingly speeding around and hardly stopping to let passengers on and off.

The monopolisation also meant that the bus routes changed, encouraging people to travel by both bus and metro. Most people now just take the metro because it’s easier just to change lines rather than wait for the bus or sit in traffic. You pay one price for the metro and you get to travel by bus for free for the next consecutive two hours. If you take the bus first you have to pay an extra $20 pesos for the metro.

In general I think the metro is great, although the hardest part to really comprehend is the price. They fluctuate depending on the time of day, peak hour obviously being the most expensive at $560 pesos (A$1.20), which might sound cheap to a gringo but actually it doesn't correspond with the average monthly salary at all!

Last year, I worked at an English institute for $200,000 (A$420) pesos before tax a month. If I caught the metro an average of twice a day, including the weekend it would cost me about a quarter of my salary. Then take out the average amount for rent of about $120,000 pesos or so. That would leave me with less than $20,000 (A$42) for food for the month. Now how on earth do people do it when they have a mortgage and three children to feed? And what if they earn less? I just don't know how they survive, I really don't.

Centro Cultural Palacio La Moneda

Inaugurated in 2006 by ex-president Ricardo Lagos, the Centro Cultural Palacio La Moneda is a contemporary art museum located partly underneath the national governmental palace and the Plaza de la Ciudadanía; that offers the Chilean public access to the often exclusive palace as well as the promotion of the understanding and appreciation of national and international heritage though visual/audiovisual means.

After a day and night of exhausting rain, we awoke to a fresh fall of snow atop the nearby Andes Mountains. As the sun finally made an appearance, we headed into centro to visit the “Arte en América” exhibition at this mysterious museum I had been intending to check out.

For $1000 pesos ($2.50) we were able to see an array of modern and contemporary pieces dating from the 20^th century, some of which seemed extremely avant-garde for their time. An American artist created each of the 200 pieces, ie. an individual from the Americas (North America, South American and the Caribbean), from the collection belonging to the ‘Banco Interaméricano de Desarrollo’ and ‘La Organización de los Estados Americanos’.

Each artist instilled in his artwork a sense of his country’s identity, whether they faced dictatorships (Venezuela), communism (Cuba), slavery (El Salvador), poverty (Brazil) or even the fight for women’s rights (Chile). Each country seemed to be represented, from Mexico to the Honduras to Argentina and the USA.

The purpose of the exhibition was to reinforce the ‘American identity’ so that a common thread could string people together to achieve a better coexistence between neighbours within a neighbourhood and within each continent. Chile alone has 285 thousand immigrants; one quarter of them originating from Peru.

I picked up a few interesting facts from the exhibition’s brochure like that women are the household bosses in 31.5% of Chilean family homes, meaning that these women are the principal support for their family. Studies have shown that in the rest of Latin America, these kinds of households have better chances of surviving poverty.

Also, did you know that in Latin America and the Caribbean 47 million hectors of forest are destroyed each year? That’s more than half the entire territory of Chile!

The exhibition was an interesting insight into the Latino art heritage, especially as I had previously only been exposed to US art history at school. Afterwards, we ventured through centro and settled for lunch as a very cute café, canopied by trees in a very quiet city-centre street. We had a delicious organic menú del día followed by a tasty coffee. As we sat out the front in the Parisian-like patio, I couldn’t help but feel that the café was the perfect follow-up to a very cultural morning.

Now it is time for you to reflect on the question: what are you doing to promote equality in your community?