Evolve or Die

Sophie is unwell – a stomach bug.  We have been very fortunate to have dodged that bullet until now.  We are not extremely careful about what we eat. I feel compelled to stay in while she convalesces so, unfortunately, that means more blogs.  Sorry.

The images are of urban decay.  Taken in Valparaiso, not Santiago. You can't help but feel the pain when you examine the content. We realized we were in 'the wrong part of Valparaiso' just after I took the last one.  You don't venture into those hills with a camera and a wallet we were warned...  Still, my angels looked after us and there were no incidents.

Vomito is prolific in Valpo

I've taken some jaunts out into Santiago and formed some impressions. Aside from the lumps of poverty that we find there is much to admire about both Buenos Aires and Santiago in terms of intentional design.  Latin cities tend to have a central square – sometimes called a Plaza des Armes, sometimes a Zocalo. These verdant gathering spots form the nucleus of exterior social engagement in many towns and cities.  Of course a city like Santiago has many different squares and parks.  It is mind-bogglingly (?) immense and not without its design flaws.  For instance, different neighbouring jurisdictions within the greater city of Santiago fail to harmonize with respect to road construction and design so major arteries suddenly disappear or shift radically.  Who needs earthquakes when you can’t agree with your neighbour where your roads should meet? The locals have accommodated themselves to these vagaries but it is stressful to the visitor.

The subways in Santiago are as different from those in Buenos Aires as New York’s are from Paris (in the reverse order).  They are modern, well-lit with wide platforms for crowds.  The cars are well-lit, clean -and air-conditioned. The Buenos Subte felt medieval. Though there was some nice ceramic work in several of the stations it was filthy, dark, usually hot and the cars were always crowded – any time of day. Santiago’s appears to be an efficient and well-designed system.  Other public transit is also important here and if it weren’t for the fact that it takes a degree in logistics to work out which bus to take we would probably use them as well.

Another thing we observe even in rather small towns in Chile is the pedestrian mall.  The one in downtown Santiago is immense, covering many city blocks.  Cars are not allowed except thru a few lateral streets.  The wide walkways – formerly known as streets – are tiled and have planters with immense trees and shrubs.  It’s very appealing and makes this part of the city extremely hospitable.  The malls appear to benefit both pedestrian and merchant because it all feels very vibrant and healthy.  When I consider cities I am familiar with in Canada I can’t really lay the same template over a sector and imagine it working.  Yorkville?  Well that’s too elitist - too monocultural with respect to income bracket and commerce – where would the fishmongers go, the shoe repair, the fruit and vegetable stalls? Kensington Market?  How would they carry on all the stocking of produce etc. with no ready access for service vehicles.  I suppose it remains to us to take the plunge and see what happens.  Air pollution seems much less in these malls and there is a pervasive sense of community; however illusory that might be.  Oakville could probably pull it off but they would have to open space for the x-mongers. I don’t see Oakvillians tolerating smelly fish and rotting vegetables.  But the prejudices against those things – decay, a bit of olafactory offense – deny us the huge benefits of communing with our neighbours, making new connections and enjoying a richer, more complex way of living – and artisanal fare.

In my imagined future, where Buckminster Fuller-esque domes of one-molecule-thick carbon material hover over tracts of our cold cities, we could have public market spaces and even zocalos with climates adjusted to accommodate sub-tropical verdure and we could walk and conduct our commerce without losing an appendage to the bitter cold.  While I’m at it let’s add some elevated public transport systems that magically don’t offend the airspace of residents below and make no noise.  Throw in some elevated bike corridors that easily convert from open-air to covered. Toronto is filling up and in.  With greater density we must ensure that there is a safety valve that provides for communal experience and ease of use.  Otherwise we will rot at the core like some of the places we are traveling through. Canadian cities are precious.  Winnipeg has its challenges but it was a fantastic place to grow up in and it still has a very workable scale.  Could we harness mosquitoes to pull the buses around?  Montreal could be one of the world’s jewels because of its quasi-European qualities and excellent hairdressers and, unlike Toronto, it has a hill.  Vancouver has natural beauty up the wazoo – where does it make an adjustment to make it affordable? Sorry Moncton.  You’re screwed.

If I can not reform it is not my revolution

We are looking at extreme change in our near future.  Finance systems will be overhauled, globalism will have both positive and negative effects on our economies. Immigration will infuse our cities with a rich admixture of cultural diversity and potential friction. When will our youth become adequately and proportionally employed to match their magnificent skillsets and education?  Unemployment is, here, clearly the most significant problem in large urban centres. How will change take place – what will change to reboot our nearly lifeless economy?  (I am saying this because I am witnessing so much more passion and industry in these developing countries.  I recognize that many of you are hard-working, creative folk so no offense meant). Traveling through less advantaged parts of the world one can’t help but notice the hunger and energy that the citizens here exhibit. (also the hopelessness and sloth of the unemployed). We are slack and less fit philosophically regarding work in Canada I think – having enjoyed plucking the low-hanging fruit that we have come to believe is our natural advantage.  But the world is huge and teeming with tough, hungry fish. We don’t compete with our neighbours or with the United States any more – the world is opening up and we need to be prepared by being excellent and highly creative in our craft and purpose.

So the city planners for these cities had a better idea - with generous public spaces for commerce and interaction.  Can Canadian cities retrofit to accommodate this ideal?  Let’s see.  All Problems are Design Problems. Again and again I see that what we tend to regard as injurious to our economy or social well-being (environmental rehabilitation, social support, alternative energy, sustainable agriculture, decriminalization of most drugs) turns out to have a positive impact across sectors (not just economic).  Why do we keep running from the challenge we have ahead? Why aren’t we plunging into the future with ideas and innovations and knives, forks and spoons to solve the existing and anticipated problems and thereby steal the march on other countries who we are competing with who are facing the same issues? Easy for me to say, I’m not putting the capital in....But I believe that opportunity lies explicitly where the problems are.

Very piratical wall - maybe meant as a warning

Birds and Cacti

Here are a few selects.  I've whined about not having my Lightroom software to edit the images properly so these are not to a standard, nor, I fear, are they particularly compelling. I haven't felt that sensation that I was really 'on to something' during my time here in Argentina and Chile.  While some images are ok as reportage very few are striking I think. In any case, here is a wee gallery of some 'moments'. Maybe they will provide a sense of place and atmosphere.

The birds, mostly vultures, were taken on a beach a bit north of Los Vilos in a wetland preserve.  The cacti were in a sere field near Socos - about halfway between Los Vilos and La Serena near the Pacific coast. Careful inspection reveals that all cacti are not the same.  There were young, supple ones, strong, middle-aged ones and rotting, parched, insect-riddled ones. I could relate to the latter. The red flowers are not visible from the highway as one flies past.  Getting out and kicking around the gravel and dust, smelling the flinty air with a distant spoor of creosote was a visceral pleasure. 

As for the vultures I am not sure who was more interested in the other - I might have looked like easy game with my distinct hobble and dusty cane. There were enough of them that if it came to a battle I am not sure I would have been victorious. Luckily they are not predators but scavengers.


Again,if you click on the pix they become large enough to reveal some details.  Then you can right and left click to view the lot kind of like a slide show.

No Country

I am offering a smorgasbord of themes tonight so load your plate my friends.

No Country For Old Dogs

Except for Santiago, Chile appears to have an open policy on canine restraint.  This leads to a few obvious artifacts – namely an abundance of poo-mines.  In Valparaiso they were so dense that high-speed navigation of same would be excellent practice for football and bootcamp agility training.  Every time one passes a pet food store – and they are numerous – a feeling of helpless resignation fogs the cabeza.  Input/Output.  It’s inevitable - and probably one of the laws of physics except I can’t remember which one – not the one about conservation of soya product.

 Other obvious evidence resulting from copious unbound dog-kind is barkaramathons.  Everywhere we have travelled – except perhaps tonight in downtown Santiago (we hope) - we have been regaled with La Woofiata.  When the beasts get a head of steam of up it can be awesome and generally lasts for hours. There are, it would be fair to say, some promising dog-tenors in Chile. Dog arias have interrupted our repose on more than one occasion.  Travelers who are considering visiting this or any other country south of the US would be well advised to bring earplugs, or, for a more permanent solution, have their eardrums surgically removed. It is small wonder that those haystacks of pups are usually dozing in the golden sunlight; they must be completely wasted from a hard nights howling.

Sidebar: most male dogs here are intact with respect to their sexual apparatii.  I don’t generally pay a lot of attention to that kind of thing as a matter of course but it is pretty much in your face so to speak – if you are a midget at least. Thus Chilean dogs are remarkably sexually active before marriage despite their living in a predominantly Catholic country.

The last and most tragic result of dogs running free is traffic fatalities.  The number of canine corpses we have seen is staggering and upsetting.  We clearly have a different tolerance for the carnage than the locals because they don’t seem to focused on removing the bodies. There is no shortage of collateral for the damage though.  Each home seems to have at least three dogs.  Do the math. Most mutts are just that – few purebreds except in the larger cities - but despite their assigned role as gate-keepers we have found that they are usually very intelligent and friendly though usually quite dusty and dirty - and they greatly appreciate a bit of a scratch on the pineal gland (behind the ear - get your mind out of the gutter) as dogs are wont to do.  I get the sense that they are not usually pampered with human affection because they practically melt when you give them attention.  One part-shepherd in Los Vilos followed me down the road after a bit of a skritch – aggressively demanding more pampering by fixing his teeth firmly on my leg – no, it wasn't sexual.  He practically chewed my leg off.  Have you ever had a boy/girlfriend like that?  I had to use my cane to deflect him from his attention. Stick-handled him to submission so to speak. No act of kindness goes unchewed. Hm.  I’ll have to work on that.

No Country For Old Crabs

In this instance I am referring to the crustaceans, not myself. Having been born a prairie boy and then resettled in Muddy York where there is a paucity of any kind of marine shell under 400 million years of age it is always a thrill to wander along a beach and see the wonders that nature’s casino has shuffled up on the sand.  The Pacific – along the American coastline – doesn’t have any coral reefs and so there are not many shellfish or really much of anything other than exquisitely weird Giger-esque seaweed clumps.  

Giger image from internet

Chilean Seaweed

Anyone who has staggered along a Caribbean beach will encounter many different kinds of gastropod ex-domiciles but there are generally about three different types of carapaces on the West coast.  There are clams, oysters and then the crabs (obviously not a gastropod). I was pretty thrilled to find my first beautiful salmon-coloured crab shell on the beach north of Valparaiso.  Then I stood up and saw about 5 more within spitting distance.  Crabs are amazing creatures though they make poor lovers I am told.  I love the stalked eyes and the magnificent hinged claws with their beautifully detailed inner surface perfectly adapted for clinging to prey and subway handles and, interestingly, for frailing on the 5-string banjo.  It makes you want to cry to witness such amazing adaptation – remember we are all evolved from the same stuff – except for a few of us (right Paul?).  A group of crabs is called a cast. So is a group of actors - which is a strange coincidence when you think of it. Recent experiments reveal that they do feel pain when thrust into boiling water  so keep the thermostat low on your water heater. Crabs are fairly cooperative in groups (although the crabbiest tend to be solitary and tend to grow stubbly beards and smell vaguely of stale urine). They usually send their crablets to school (they call them castanets because schools are for fish of course) until grade 3 but have been known to go all the way to senior matriculation.  There are very few crab surgeons unsurprisingly. There is a famous Chilean crab poet named Pocuro. I don’t have any examples of her writing but I am told it is quite witty. Like most Chileans her work is magic realism.  Crabs don’t generally write in couplets because they have a tendency to walk sideways which messes up the ink.  Most crabs communicate by clacking their claws, called chelae. Not surprisingly, crabs tend to prefer classic Blackberry devices over Android and iDiot phones. I like to be informative in my writing you will have noticed. Some of this knowledge is known to very few people.

Anyway, it doesn’t really follow that this is no country for old crabs but I didn’t really have a useful entre to write about them.  I haven’t actually seen more than one live crab scuttling around on the beach but they are out there somewhere and in generous numbers. So Chile is a good country for crustaceans to be born - they are, unfortunately for them, a very popular food.  We have seen Jaiba advertised in every single restaurant in Chile.  A very common dish is Pastel de Jaiba which is a sort of uber-thick chowder that is baked in an oven.  It is usually quite bland but it's very rich in all the main fat groups.  There is bread and cheese in the sauce - the two foods that Chileans so adore. So, in fact, there are very few old crabs in Chile as they tend to get caught and consumed before they reach their senescence - which is perhaps a decent idea for most humans. I know it is not a new idea but perhaps we should revisit it.  The bread and cheese might just be the combination we have been missing.

No Country for Old Humans

An animita near Los Vilos, Chile

I’ve seen them in many Latin-American countries and Chile is not different - everywhere we have traveled there are little shrines called animitas.  I am told that they are not sites of mourning, rather a celebration of life.  I have always assumed that they mark the place where someone died.  If that is so then a lot of people have died along the roadways.  Were they walking, crossing?  I don’t know but I choose to remain ignorant.  In Mexico they call speed bumps (topes) ‘sleeping policemen’.  I keep imagining that the animitas mark the spot where someone decided to lie down on the warm pavement on a cold night to catch a few winks before heading home to kith and kin and when they woke up their thorax and their abdomen were...more distant than is generally recommended.

No Country for Square Rocks

I don’t feel like doing the work myself so if someone can explain to me why most of the rocks, pebbles, stones and likewise in Chile are rounded I would appreciate it.  From the highest hills (with the possible exception of volcanic cones) to the beachiest beach the rocks are round or, more precisely rounded.  Where I come from that usually suggests that the rocks have been subjected to millennia of erosion by running water.  I know the world is old-ish; nearly 4000 years last time I checked the Bible, but Chile is dry, dry, dry – at least where we have been traveling it is.  I can imagine that it might have had rivers at another time in history – maybe the early 1800s – but EVERYWHERE the rocks are rounded.  Look high, low, left, right.  Examine the cross-section revealed in a highway incision and from top to bottom; egg-shaped rocks.  I don’t think Chile was subjected to glaciations.  Is there another way that rocks get rounded?  Was God practicing with sandpaper for about a billion years?  So if you are reading this please do me a favour and find out why the rocks are enrondeleado (?) here.  Thanks.  I couldn't find any perfectly spherical rocks mind you and Sophie will gladly tell you that I spent a WAY TOO MUCH time combing the beaches, hills, deserts and wadis looking for same.  Still I have some decent eggy ones. I’ll trade 3 eggy ones for 1 spherical one if you found one.

A Toni Onley print

 

a Colin Gillies snapshot - The exquisite Elqui Valley While I am on the subject: angle of repose (maximum angle at which an object can rest on an inclined plane without sliding down. This angle is equal to the arctangent of the coefficient of static friction μs between the surfaces.) I have a feeling that all this rounded rock material goes some way to explaining the interesting sameness of the hills we have seen.  The ‘mountains’ tend not to be very steep.  They are soft, undulating creatures with an inclination usually not exceeding about 35 degrees.  Combined with the constant (before 2pm or so) haze that pervades the atmosphere due to the proximity of the cold Humboldt current (it's kind of technical, look it up if you are interested), they have a very Toni Onley-esque quality.  In fact Mr. Onley’s work would probably provoke huge yawns here given the ubiquity of the effect. Are the mountains here – about to slide under the Pacific Plate in about 500 million years – so old that they have lost their edge so to speak? It’s a mystery.  One eggy rock to the first person to satisfactorily explain the roundness of Chilean stones – no Wikipedia please. This contest is open until June 30th, 2015.  Potential winners will have to answer a silly math question that won’t have that goofy Greek letter in it.

Note: unfortunately the angle of repose is dramatically affected by the presence of water.  The lubricative quality of water altered the frictive status of the rocks during the unusual and profound precipitation in the north of Chile last month and tragically resulted in many deaths due to a dramatic rearrangement of the angle of repose.

Last Thoughts

Tonight as I was scanning the booze list of a menu my eye fell on a funny translation:  Clavo Oxidado.  It took me a moment.  Rusty Nail.  Cute.

She's Gonna Blow!

Mt. Calbuco.  Not my photo

This is going to be a large-ish rant.  If you want to sustain any kind of impression that travelling in Argentina and Chile is altogether enjoyable please stop reading here and go read a poem or two by Pablo Neruda.

I gotta say I feel a lot in common with Volcan Calbuco these days.  I have been trying to keep my blogs as positive as I can – believe it or not.  I was thinking today that if anyone ever had the misfortune to contract me as a writer for touristic activities I would create a book that would send potential visitors away in droves - if I let loose with my candid impressions. Humans are funny, but lately I’m not laughing with them. Maybe it’s my age, maybe it’s my increasingly short temper but I have such a hard time writing enthusiastically about Chile and Argentina.  I am having an interesting time – but not a particularly positive one.  I don’t want to come across as a racist, culturist, sexist, ageist griper though pretty much that’s what I am. It all seems to come back to that same opening phrase – ‘Why can’t they just.....’. I feel like exploding approximately 4237.5 times each day. I dreamt a few nights ago that I had been hired in Canada to design public spaces in a conscious, practical fashion – eliminating all the stupid barriers, restrictions and plain bad ideas that typify our urban experiences.  I think my subconscious is working overtime on this new obsession.

Start with the food?  Why not?  Why such a cavernous lack of imagination in Argentina and Chile regarding publicly available cuisine? Is Canada unique in its agglomeration of different styles and types of cooking.  I have always worried that might be the case –about 80% of the volume of our refrigerator is occupied by different condiments, pastes, chutneys, seasonings because we love to prepare meals from all over the world.  What I wouldn’t give for a Szechuan, Indian or Middle Eastern dish right now! Hell is filled with Parilla restaurants.  ‘What would you like today sir? We have beef, beef, beef, sirloin, flank, ribs, beef and beef.’ Of course you can have some potatoes on the side. ‘Salad?’ There’s lettuce, tomates, avocado and.....well that’s about it. For your dressing here is some olive oil and here is some white vinegar.  Help yourself to some salt.  Good luck finding some fucking pepper. Of course I exaggerate.  Chile has seafood as well.  Ceviche, mariscos, ostiones (clams) with some gloppy cheese that turns your mouth into a Carlsbad cavern of queso stalactites and there’s a decent fish called Reineta.  But no matter where you go it is all prepared the same way.  Overcooked and bland, bland, bland.  Did I mention that they don’t believe in pepper here?  Or any spices for that matter.  In fact there is no Spanish word for spice until you get up to Mexico where suddenly all that pent up avoidance of anything that might stimulate the oral cavity turns into, well, Mexican food = oral Calbuco. Only coriander here is de rigeur. I’m getting de rigeur mortis. (groan)

But the topper is bread.  I am told that Chileans love their ‘pan’.  You get soft, white bread with everything.  And LOTS of it.  Bread for breakfast, lunch, dinner and anytime you open your mouth.  Always that soft, bland, tasteless, slightly chewy bread. Never toasted, never a molecule of whole grain or, God forfend and Yoicks!, rye, spelt, quinoa, oats...  It’s like eating sugarless marshmallows every day.  One would avoid all that bread if there was an alternative – like fruit for instance – in an abundance of water the fool is thirsty – well where’s the collective dunce cap?  Everywhere you look while walking around you see are piles of fantastic fruits and vegetables but the hotels and restaurants can’t seem to get past bread. Their jams are delicious. I haven’t yet stuck just a spoonful of jam in my mouth yet to avoid the bread carrier but I have been sorely tempted.

Outside the room I am writing in there are dates, passion fruit, olives, lemons, limes and apples growing –  practically within arms reach.  But for breakfast we get... bread.  And Nescafe for heaven’s sake.  In Argentina they had high standards for coffee at least.  Really – it’s almost worth travelling to Argentina for coffee alone. Here you get mud-brown volcanic ash that dissolves in your cup.  Mind you Argentina was a bit manic with the medialunes – croissants that complemented the morning coffee - a novelty at first but after a few weeks that croissant would just perch like a Cheshire rictus on the breakfast plate each morning, cruelly reminding one that each bite delivered 5 cms of fat to the belly. Spontaneously.  Hideosity.

Ok, enough food.  Street layout and driving habits.  When we were primarily pedestrians in Buenos Aires it didn’t really faze us that streets were predominantly one way.  The traffic lights were tricky then – they often didn’t face you if you were walking on a one way street that ran opposite to your direction so it was difficult to know if it was safe to walk or you were going to be turned into human butter.  But we survived by observing what other people, or dogs, were doing.

But here we are driving much of the time. Chileans invented the phrase ‘You can’t get there from here.’  Streets are not only almost entirely one way; each direction alternates and each right of way is based on some infernal system I haven’t unravelled (so no need for stop or yield signs?). That seems easy enough except you have to add in the fact that you often can’t make a left on to the street you want (???!!?????don’taskmewhy!!!????!!!@#%$*^&LORD).  So, in Chile two wrongs don’t make a right but three rights make a left.  It’s enough to make you take up knitting.  And no u-turns on the boulevards and no right turns on a red light andthosefuckingChileanswhohonktheirhorn any time you slow down to only twice the speed limit and who try to jam their front fenders up your arse.  Just when you think you have it solved and you are confident that the generous thoroughfare you are on is going to take you out of whatever hellacious town you are suffering through the capacious artery dwindles to a minor corpuscle thruway which then turns into a wee blood vessel and then ceases to exist altogether – turning instead into a road that runs the opposite direction and offers you only one way to turn – right.  I have popped three eyeballs already.

The physical condition of the roads is pretty good in Chile.  And the sidewalks are generally smooth and free of bear-pits – so top marks for that. In fact I will go further, Canada could take a page or two out of the sidewalk design in Chile.  Sidewalks – amazingly true to my earlier proposal regarding standardized surfaces – are usually tiled, with a nice textured impression for good footing.  AND most sidewalks, even in this little town I am/was in (Vicuna), have that nifty textured path that enables blind persons to navigate by following the street Braille.  At most intersections the sidewalks have a nice, sloping ramp to road grade for wheelchair and cart use.  So, top marks there.  Get the Department of Sidewalks and Pedestrian Ways to talk to the Department of Insane Roads and Passive-Aggressive Thoroughfares people. I am not certain that the slope on the sidewalks that drop to street grade would work perfectly in Toronto with the Department of Public Jerk’s uniquely satanic treatment of putting salt on snow, thus turning it into zero-friction shaving-gel - creating a medium so slick in fact that there are often luge teams practicing at the foot of our street. We would have to design a grippier texture for that portion of the walkway.  Still waiting for those robotic sidewalk scrapers please.

I think that’s enough.  Half of my spleen is on the floor and some prick just tried to pick it up to cook it in the Parilla next door so I will retire for esta noche.  I’ll give myself a day to review this diatribe and perhaps edit out some of the more kind-hearted bits.

Doors of Valparaiso

There is a lot to like and a lot to ... hate? about Valparaiso, Chile.  It's got natural charm and remarkable geophysical features but we were told on maybe a dozen occasions today to be careful - that pickpockets and purse and camera snatchers were everywhere so hide your phones, hide your camera, hide your purses. We didn't have any problem but it created a creeping sense of impending disaster that spoiled the richness of the place..  Mind you some of the richness is olfactory and the source is an abundance of dogshit and human urine.  It's a fucked-over city with rich murals and graffiti too. Many of the houses are crumbling, vacant, deserted and ramshackle (good word ramshackle). My favourite subject matter (on this trip) seems to be decay and urban rot.  So here is a small gallery of some of the doors of Valparaiso.  

Valparaiso was a wealthy city once but the opening of the Panama Canal in 1914 spelled its doom as the 'Pearl of the Pacific'.  Like Havana the city has seen much better days.  The sudden failure of the economy delivered a shattering blow and then repeated earthquakes (a big one in August of last year) have been the sucker punches that keep it on its knees.  It certainly is not experiencing the renaissance that we see in Santiago.

If you have had the misfortune to have seen Robert Altman's movie Popeye starring Robin Williams as a mumbling, spinach-addled cretin - one of the most unintelligible movies ever made - then you will have reasonably good idea of what Valparaiso looks like.  Altman must have used Valparaiso as the visual inspiration for Sweethaven; that sunblistered shantytown perched like a broke-legged curlew on barnacle-crusted rocks. That town was the best thing about the movie because neither Williams nor the otherwise excellent Shelley Duval could save it.

Just a reminder, you can see a larger version of the photo by clicking on it.  Later

.