Family Stays
I left you on the point of camping with my Chillan family, so that seems like the appropriate point to pick up again. Chillan seems like so long ago, and the ten days I spent with the family flew by. The midday heat made anything other than playing in the kiddie pool outside the house or sitting in front of the fan to watch TV or write next to impossible. I don´t think I have ever spent so much time watching TV in my life. Also, the boys have some strange fascination with the paranormal, and they regularly scare themselves with it. Nighttime is the time to get active, and even three year olds hanging on to their mothers barely walking and talking are out until at least midnight.
The plaza in Chillan Viejo would have been a dream come true if I was a child - really, I still love it and I don´t know why every city doesn´t follow their example. The trees are covered in lights and strings of lights create a passageway over the streets around the square. Cooked sugar from maní confitado (sugar coated peanuts) and palomitas (sugar cooked popcorn) wafts all the way to the house, luring Lucas and me out, while the zipline, bounce castles and bounce obstacle courses and slides attract the younger kids. Did I mention it´s all free? It´s free. That means they have a free zipline. Awesome. Everything runs until midnight, then the parents take their kids home so they can watch Mundos Opuestos, the current reality show. Reality shows are weird here. They are filled with celebrities, the marketing is absurd (every other day someone sponsors some new obstacle course), guests come on every week, the whole ¨survivor¨ thing is a complete sham, and every time someone leaves, they replace them with someone new so the series will be longer. And it plays every single night.
Anyway, on days that we didn´t drag the kids out to play, we spent a few nights jogging. Bread is a staple for breakfast, lunch and dinner, and I needed some exercise. Despite disbelieving stares, I did convince the whole family to come out jogging one night, and Yahel came out a few nights after that too. Evidently exercise isn´t a thing, and Martin was a little young for the length of our walk, so getting home became a game of make believe, turning into different animals, dinosaurs or airplanes and chasing each other in the hopes of not getting eaten. I got eaten a lot, but we made it home without too many tears.
Back to camping. Camping is an ordeal. We literally spent from 10 am to 5 pm getting ready and packing up the car while Leo finished some woodwork, and the car was completely stuffed. In the end 19 of us went camping, and six of them were kids, but camping isn´t the right word. We moved house. We brought tents, matresses, sheets, a tabletop, a folding table, chairs, mugs, glasses, plates, ingredients for sopaipillas, coolers of food, cell phones, paint for rocks, and everything else under the sun. It was all a bit of madness, but we made it out and set up before dark, and everyone had a mug for tea. Although it was cloudy, everyone had a good time and the kids braved the river water for hours.
The drama happened on the second night. We made some bomb sopaipillas and everyone ended up stuffed, and I retired early with the kids. The adults stayed up until 5 am chatting and playing guitar, then headed to bed. 5:30 am was pandemonium. Ita and Carlos woke all 19 of us in a panic as their tent ¨flooded.¨ Really, who goes camping without a rain fly? Carlos was convinced that the river would rise and flood us all, an unlikely situation with a fine morning drizzle. He started frantically packing up everything from their tent while the rest of us heated water for morning tea and generally went about our normal routine until he realized that no one was packing or leaving, and settled down for breakfast with us. Running on half an hour of sleep is no good for anyone, so one by one they drifted back to the tents for a few more hours´ rest. In the end we packed up and headed home, napping again after their first exhausting camping experience, then happily sitting down to another meal.
I should have bought my ticket before we left to camp, but it never crossed my mind. I ended up leaving two days after I planned, thoroughly fed up with the bus system before I even started. Hitchhiking is much cheaper, more fun and generally more satisfying than using buses, especially in Chile. I made it as far as Curico, convinced a guy to drive me across town to the bus station (really he just offered when I asked where it was), then hopped on a local bus to Pichilemu. Early evening and an interesting conversation with a campesina who after an hour invited me to visit her home any time I like saw me safely to Pichilemu.
Pichilemu may be one of my favorite places ever. There is nothing that should make it so, and yet it is. My memories of Pichilemu, melacholy and ecstatic, in full sunshine and torrential downpours, are those I cherish most. Pichilemu is a little suf town about four hours from Santiago that explodes during the summer and slumbers the rest of the year, despite good waves every day. I arrived just in time for the yearly Festival Pichilemina, a week of concerts and games and a beauty contest and general merriment for all. I spent a few days laughing, chatting and wandering along the beach and through town with a friend whose son recently turned three.
I will leave you in this post with a mini tour of Pichilemu as I experienced it at midnight.
Clop clop clop. A horse and buggy carry a family past the house as we sit down to tea. Strolling past fruit trees heavy with peaches, canned music wafts down the street, only to be drowned out further on by a clown´s monologue, repeated night after night to new crowds searching eagerly for some manufactured memory of their time in Pichilemu in the artisan market. Tinny echoes from speakers turned up too loud in the plaza advertise Chico Trujillo on Sunday to close the semana Pichilemina. By Sunday I will be back in Valparaiso.
The stage is returned to the night´s entertainment, traditional cueca singers and dancers, comedians and the Miss Playa Pichilemu competition. Walking towards the shore, couples hold hands and plan their Valentine´s day night. Families flow towards the carnival, the roars of ATVs racing around a makeshift track, the ferris wheel and the market. Snatches of conversation drift by...Más ánimo, va a llegar más gente, y eso significa más plata para mi! That last from the robot dancer/puppeteer near the artisanry. Tonight in the back of the market another clown is performing as well, defying gravity with his balancing and juggling tricks on an extended unicycle. I visit the plaza for a moment, smelling the sweet sugary mix of popcorn, cotton candy and maní confitado, but the ocean attracts me more than the masses.
Humanity´s noise fades away, and darkness highlights waves lapping at the shore. Pichilemu holds too many memories. Too many good memories. Too much melancholy remembrance of days and emotions that bear no public explanation.
Ba-boom. Ba-boom. The bass beat of the discotheque next door pulses into the night as I return home, mingling with fragments of laughing conversations. Alcohol, friendship and darkness raise voices to shouts rather than whispers. Valentine´s day night, time to love, time to sleep.
Sorry to leave so abruptly, but I am currently in Argentina waiting to take the bus to Buenos Aires to meet up with an old friend. Argentina is for another post, another day.
The plaza in Chillan Viejo would have been a dream come true if I was a child - really, I still love it and I don´t know why every city doesn´t follow their example. The trees are covered in lights and strings of lights create a passageway over the streets around the square. Cooked sugar from maní confitado (sugar coated peanuts) and palomitas (sugar cooked popcorn) wafts all the way to the house, luring Lucas and me out, while the zipline, bounce castles and bounce obstacle courses and slides attract the younger kids. Did I mention it´s all free? It´s free. That means they have a free zipline. Awesome. Everything runs until midnight, then the parents take their kids home so they can watch Mundos Opuestos, the current reality show. Reality shows are weird here. They are filled with celebrities, the marketing is absurd (every other day someone sponsors some new obstacle course), guests come on every week, the whole ¨survivor¨ thing is a complete sham, and every time someone leaves, they replace them with someone new so the series will be longer. And it plays every single night.
Anyway, on days that we didn´t drag the kids out to play, we spent a few nights jogging. Bread is a staple for breakfast, lunch and dinner, and I needed some exercise. Despite disbelieving stares, I did convince the whole family to come out jogging one night, and Yahel came out a few nights after that too. Evidently exercise isn´t a thing, and Martin was a little young for the length of our walk, so getting home became a game of make believe, turning into different animals, dinosaurs or airplanes and chasing each other in the hopes of not getting eaten. I got eaten a lot, but we made it home without too many tears.
Back to camping. Camping is an ordeal. We literally spent from 10 am to 5 pm getting ready and packing up the car while Leo finished some woodwork, and the car was completely stuffed. In the end 19 of us went camping, and six of them were kids, but camping isn´t the right word. We moved house. We brought tents, matresses, sheets, a tabletop, a folding table, chairs, mugs, glasses, plates, ingredients for sopaipillas, coolers of food, cell phones, paint for rocks, and everything else under the sun. It was all a bit of madness, but we made it out and set up before dark, and everyone had a mug for tea. Although it was cloudy, everyone had a good time and the kids braved the river water for hours.
The drama happened on the second night. We made some bomb sopaipillas and everyone ended up stuffed, and I retired early with the kids. The adults stayed up until 5 am chatting and playing guitar, then headed to bed. 5:30 am was pandemonium. Ita and Carlos woke all 19 of us in a panic as their tent ¨flooded.¨ Really, who goes camping without a rain fly? Carlos was convinced that the river would rise and flood us all, an unlikely situation with a fine morning drizzle. He started frantically packing up everything from their tent while the rest of us heated water for morning tea and generally went about our normal routine until he realized that no one was packing or leaving, and settled down for breakfast with us. Running on half an hour of sleep is no good for anyone, so one by one they drifted back to the tents for a few more hours´ rest. In the end we packed up and headed home, napping again after their first exhausting camping experience, then happily sitting down to another meal.
I should have bought my ticket before we left to camp, but it never crossed my mind. I ended up leaving two days after I planned, thoroughly fed up with the bus system before I even started. Hitchhiking is much cheaper, more fun and generally more satisfying than using buses, especially in Chile. I made it as far as Curico, convinced a guy to drive me across town to the bus station (really he just offered when I asked where it was), then hopped on a local bus to Pichilemu. Early evening and an interesting conversation with a campesina who after an hour invited me to visit her home any time I like saw me safely to Pichilemu.
Pichilemu may be one of my favorite places ever. There is nothing that should make it so, and yet it is. My memories of Pichilemu, melacholy and ecstatic, in full sunshine and torrential downpours, are those I cherish most. Pichilemu is a little suf town about four hours from Santiago that explodes during the summer and slumbers the rest of the year, despite good waves every day. I arrived just in time for the yearly Festival Pichilemina, a week of concerts and games and a beauty contest and general merriment for all. I spent a few days laughing, chatting and wandering along the beach and through town with a friend whose son recently turned three.
I will leave you in this post with a mini tour of Pichilemu as I experienced it at midnight.
Clop clop clop. A horse and buggy carry a family past the house as we sit down to tea. Strolling past fruit trees heavy with peaches, canned music wafts down the street, only to be drowned out further on by a clown´s monologue, repeated night after night to new crowds searching eagerly for some manufactured memory of their time in Pichilemu in the artisan market. Tinny echoes from speakers turned up too loud in the plaza advertise Chico Trujillo on Sunday to close the semana Pichilemina. By Sunday I will be back in Valparaiso.
The stage is returned to the night´s entertainment, traditional cueca singers and dancers, comedians and the Miss Playa Pichilemu competition. Walking towards the shore, couples hold hands and plan their Valentine´s day night. Families flow towards the carnival, the roars of ATVs racing around a makeshift track, the ferris wheel and the market. Snatches of conversation drift by...Más ánimo, va a llegar más gente, y eso significa más plata para mi! That last from the robot dancer/puppeteer near the artisanry. Tonight in the back of the market another clown is performing as well, defying gravity with his balancing and juggling tricks on an extended unicycle. I visit the plaza for a moment, smelling the sweet sugary mix of popcorn, cotton candy and maní confitado, but the ocean attracts me more than the masses.
Humanity´s noise fades away, and darkness highlights waves lapping at the shore. Pichilemu holds too many memories. Too many good memories. Too much melancholy remembrance of days and emotions that bear no public explanation.
Ba-boom. Ba-boom. The bass beat of the discotheque next door pulses into the night as I return home, mingling with fragments of laughing conversations. Alcohol, friendship and darkness raise voices to shouts rather than whispers. Valentine´s day night, time to love, time to sleep.
Sorry to leave so abruptly, but I am currently in Argentina waiting to take the bus to Buenos Aires to meet up with an old friend. Argentina is for another post, another day.
Comments
Post a Comment