Pain Below the Equator

by Scott Skipper

Germany. This I can only attest from photographs and Sandy’s testimony as I have not yet set foot in the Rhineland, but the hills sweep upward carpeted with verdant fields and the houses, being generally large and recent construction are nearly all in the style of chalets. The place abounds in roses, hydrangeas, and incongruously, eucalyptus trees until we approached the national park, then the flora was strictly native. The large German population in the area predates the era of Nazi refugees by more than one-hundred years, but many Chilean Germans repatriated themselves to fight in the world wars. Our guide told us they were persecuted on returning to Chile. There is a great deal of German, and corrupted German in the signage of the shops and restaurants along the route.

  Lago Llanquihue is the largest lake in Chile. When viewed from the south, volcano Ordono’s symmetrical cone rose over the reflective water with its pristine snow cap radiant in the sunlight of one of the only sixty days of the year that it didn’t rain; at least it didn’t rain until after five when we were back on the ship. The road ends at Emerald Lake that straddles the border with Argentina. True to its name the water reflects the intensely green hills that tower above its shores, but when the water flows into the sizeable river that parallels the road, it is icy white and cerulean in the rapids that crash over the black volcanic rocks. The entire region is gray ash with great chutes—left from pyroclastic flows—falling from the flanks of the mountain to the river. They offer superb viewing areas of both the peak and the rapids with one downside: they are infested with swarms of the biggest horseflies we ever saw. Bizarrely, there was a couple sunbathing by the lake with the monster bugs swarming over them. We paid a small fee to enter the national park so we could see a cascade. It was miserably crowded, but we thought it worth the trouble.

  Returning to Puerto Montt the guide told about political and economic conditions in Chile. I couldn’t hear him but Sandy relayed a couple items. He said that books are taxed 42%, including textbooks. I may try to sell my Garcia-Marquez collection that I acquired in Argentina and Uruguay. Later I investigated the price of books and was astounded. That’s one way to keep people from reading subversive literature.

  We passed a Chilean ghetto. It was a huge swath of government built housing that could not have been very old as there was little sign of blight. The guide claimed that the occupants had been relocated from Santiago—out of sight, out of mind, I suppose.

  It was late afternoon when we returned to Puerto Montt, but we were determined to get some shore food before boarding the ship of the malnourished. All we could find that offered a no smoking area was a raucous neighborhood place with music videos by the Bee Gees playing much too loudly on ubiquitous TVs. The portions were laughably huge. Sandy got a hamburger that was ten inches in diameter. I had pork loin with a Chilean version of sauerkraut and a pound of French fries. I only ate a few of them.

  As previously mentioned, the rain returned as we motored back to the open ocean on the next to last night on the floating purgatory.

  February 13, 2010 a drift:

  The sun sparkled on the dark blue water, and it was warm again. Most of the day we sailed out of sight of land. There was no change in the onboard foolishness. I tried to get pesos from the ATM and was rewarded with a fistful of dollars. The lime sherbet turned out to be coconut, the ciopino was mushy, and the wine steward was absent at lunchtime. One fairly bright spot on the Norwegian Sun was the tapas bar. Even if the tapas were a little strange and the entertainment was a Canadian folk singer, the ambiance was pleasant and the staff was kind to us.

  February 14, 2010 Valparaíso:

  At Valparaíso the Hotel Zero (yes, Zero) was a beautiful nineteenth century house occupying at least three levels of the hillside. The maze of buildings and trees makes it hard to distinguish how many stories belong to which building. There were only nine rooms in the hotel. They were large with wonderful views of the harbor, and nicely appointed with modern European fixtures. We enjoyed it greatly even though it was purely touristic and the staff right down to the bellboy spoke English with barely an accent—everybody in Chile speaks English and they are rather arrogant about it. They directed us to good tourist restaurants for lunch and dinner where the language problem was almost as disappointing as in the hotel. We celebrated Valentine’s Day with a sumptuous dinner while perched above the lights of this uniquely situated city.

  Valparaíso is built on fourteen hills and getting from one place to another is facilitated by several―six, I believe―funiculars. They were built at the end of the nineteenth century and appear fairly original. UNESCO has declared them a World Heritage Site and sends millions each year to maintain them. I was curious what the Chileans are doing with the money as it is clear that not much is going into the funiculars.

  February 15, 2010 Santiago:

  We thought that we would have time to explore more of Valparaíso on Monday morning and get up to date with our email, but the driver and guide arrived at 10 AM so we barely had time for breakfast. They drove us around Valparaíso for a while then we asked to see Viña del Mar which put us in mind of La Jolla. They were trying to keep us entertained until it was time to check into the hotel in Santiago, but in truth we would have much preferred to have been left to ourselves until the afternoon. The trip to Santiago takes ninety minutes.

  The Hotel Torre Mayor wasn’t as plush on the inside as it appeared on the outside. There was a nasty sewer gas stink in the bathroom, the water was tepid and they are stingy with towels. The first thing it is necessary to do is buy enough water to get by since the hotel, and all of them, charge six dollars per liter in the rooms.

  There was the heat of full summer on Santiago’s sidewalks during our quest for agua mineral con gas and a casa de cambio. The sere mountains visible behind the modern high rise buildings convinced us that we could as well have been in Los Angeles.

  Dinner in a neighborhood restaurant called Lomit’s, not frequented by tourists, was better than we expected, and we hope we will find more like it when we return from Easter Island.

  February 16, 2010 Rapa Nui:

  It’s a long haul to Easter Island. We rose at 4:30 in the morning, sat around the airport for three and a half hours, flew for five hours and had a two hour time change. On arrival we were bemused to make the acquaintance of our guide, Chris from Virginia. He told us that we standing due south of Denver and many other intriguing facts, but that afternoon we only retired to our room, explored the tiny town, had a few piscos, finally decided on a place for dinner, and were barely able to stumble to bed after the meal that was way too large. It was my fault. I wanted to try several things and the portions were huge as they are all over South America―the ship excepted.

  It might confuse some that I use three names for this place. Easter Island is of course our English name for it, Isla de Pascua the Spanish and Rapa Nui being Polynesian means "Navel of the Earth".

  February 17, 2010 Rapa Nui:

  According to Chris, Rapa Nui is the most remote inhabited place on earth. It has four-thousand permanent inhabitants, and twice that many horses, many of which run wild. The only town, Hanga Roa, is near the airport, which has a runway that was enlarged to two miles in length by NASA so that the space shuttle could land there in an emergency. Until the sixties the locals were forbidden to leave Hanga Roa, and all the Moai were lying face down in the sand. Thor Hyerdal, whose ideas about the origins of the islanders have been completely debunked, was nevertheless largely responsible for the world becoming aware of the place and for generating interest in the Moai. As recently as the late nineteenth century Rapa Nui was raided by slave traders from Chile and Peru, and the population was ultimately reduced to thirty as a result of the kidnapping and introduction of disease, which put the indigenous gene pool in a very risky position. The near extinction of the natives was not completely due to outsiders however, intertribal wars had been the standard for centuries and one act of retribution eradicated a sect―believed to be of distinct genetic origin―to one individual. T
he indigenous Rapa Nui had a way of finalizing their conquests by dining on the vanquished. Some people just know how to throw a party.

  The Moai are an awe inspiring sight both reconstructed on the kings’ burial platforms which are situated along the coast—but face inland—and in situ at the quarry. There are just under nine-hundred statues known, and about 390 are still in the caldera that was the quarry. It is postulated that some of the figures grandly displayed on the hillside below the native rock that spawned them are models pitching the artifice of the carvers. Others are perhaps rejects, and some in pieces by the road to the coast are freight damage.

  Young Chris was extraordinary at reciting the Rapa Nui legends and his narrative added great depth to the explanations of archeological finds. I asked him to recommend some reading material so I could reinforce what he told us. Later at the airport I found the books that he recommended but opted to try Amazon.com when I saw the $US 70.00 price tag. Chile’s surtax on books is a curious, if not sinister piece of federal manipulation.

  February 18, 2010 Rapa Nui:

  Isla de Pascua probably had no indigenous species before the arrival of the Polynesians. It has experienced several extinctions and introductions of flora, fauna and humanity since then. Chris told us that living Rapa Nui elders remember a time before the introduction of flies and mosquitoes. While we were waiting on the tarmac to return to Santiago the flight crew passed through the cabin spraying insecticide. I was oblivious to it but Sandy later observed that it was patently ridiculous to worry about carrying Rapa Nui bugs to the mainland and not the other way around.

  At Santiago we were greeted by our minder, Antonio, who announced that he would be taking us on a four hour city tour at 9:30 Thursday. We would have preferred to do some laundry, but that wasn’t in the cards. Antonio was a condescending prick who I disliked intensely and he came with a driver just so there would be somebody else to tip. My being able to speak Spanish appeared to irritate him and he seemed surprised that I was also able to read the headlines at a news stand. Spanish is phonetic, if you can pronounce it you can read it but I guess that didn't occur to him.

  February 19, 2010 Santiago:

  For four hours we were driven around while Antonio pointed to tall buildings that we couldn’t see because the windows of the van were too low. He quizzed us about what kind of cars we drove at home and I think being sufficiently satisfied with the opulence of our vehicles made us go to a high end knick-knack shop where I'm sure he collected a gratuity. We didn't buy anything but they did give us a pisco. I wonder where he would have taken us if we had driven Hyundais. When we were released there was only time for lunch and to answer email. I would have liked to have seen the museum of anthropology, but had to forget it. As I may have previously said, Santiago looks like a cleaner Los Angeles. It’s very modern with shiny high rise towers overshadowing the colonial architecture, and brown mountains in the background. When the smog clears you can see some snowcapped peaks in the cordillera. One observation that we could not help but make is that the beautiful old buildings were all once private mansions, excepting the cathedrals and cabildes, but now they all belong to the government.

  That night we stumbled onto a fabulous restaurant where they had real, imported from Galicia, angulas, correctly prepared and for a reasonable price. Angulas in Spain and the United States are prohibitively expensive. I once, in a fit of extravagance on my birthday, paid $80 for two ounces of them from an importer in Florida.

  As we prepared to leave Chile we reflected on the people of South America. We were in agreement that the Argentines are generally a little rude, and the Chileans are rude and arrogant. The Peruvians remained to be seen. While with Antonio on the blind tour we learned more about the Chilean brand of socialism, which is extreme. He clarified what apparently we misunderstood at Puerto Montt; that the taxes are a value added tax and the percentage varies depending on the commodity. The medical system costs seven percent of your income, unless of course you’re on welfare, then it’s free to you but of course not the people with jobs. If you chose private insurance the cost is double. We’re not sure about deductibles and so forth. Antonio said the medical service the government provides is so-so. He shrugged his shoulders and went on to say that his son had required surgery and bragged that it didn't cost him anything. He seemed to forget about the seven percent and the undesirability of so-so surgery.

  February 20, 2010 Lima:

  The manager of the tour company met us at the Hotel Jose Antonio in Miraflores. She told us that Machu Picchu had been closed by the government until April in spite of the fact that the ruins were undamaged by the landslide and could be reached with enough effort. She tried the bait and switch to which we responded: “Cancel it.” Now we have to fight for refunds.

  Lima looks like a slightly more upscale Tijuana and the weather is similar. They have an enormous bay where we ate an excellent, if overpriced, lunch in a tourist mall. Later at the hotel we cashed in our Pisco Sour tickets in the bar and retired to the dining room where we were unable to locate a waiter. Thinking to try the street we were soon frustrated by the lack of restaurants—rather like Buenos Aires. They have an overabundance of casinos and opticians, and a dearth of restaurants. Exhausted, we decided to return to the hotel and make demands. It wasn’t necessary. We discovered the waiter clearing the tables of dinner ware in anticipation of breakfast. We enjoyed a utilitarian meal and went to bed.

  I should tell that the Pisco Sour is the national drink of Peru and they claim that the Chileans stole it. It's a tangy little libation with a foamy texture that comes from egg whites.

  February 21, 2010 Cusco:

  Cusco looks like a small city, but we later discovered that it might have as many as three million inhabitants. After we arrived at the hotel and got rid of the tour people, had our mate de coca and did deep breathing exercises to combat altitude sickness—it is at 11,000 feet—we hiked to the Plaza de Armas. It was alive with kids of all ages and descriptions having water balloon fights. Some of them, mainly girls, were armed with spray cans of white foam that soon matted the black hair of every indio and some touristas in the plaza. We found a balcony table, safely above the melee, and lunched for well over an hour while capturing the chaos. The waitress said it was a part of the celebration of carnaval.

  The jilted tour guide gave us the tickets that we had already purchased for our cancelled city tour, and after lunch we visited the Convento de Santo Domingo that is a large monastery built on Incan walls. The contrast between the colonial construction and the Incan is amazing. I who have spent years ooh-ing and ah-ing over Mayan construction have never seen anything like it. Where the Mexican cultures built with rubble and faced it with cut limestone, these walls are made of blocks of granite that fit together to make solid, weight bearing walls many feet thick. The joints are perfect. The layers are perfect, and if a block ends out of vertical, the adjacent block was made to conform to it perfectly. The Spanish scavenged much building material from the Inca’s buildings to reuse but they put the blocks together with mortar resulting in walls that look frail and decadent by comparison. One urchin who made his living regaling tourists of Inca splendor—in English—referred to 'Inca walls' versus 'incapable walls'. As I write this I contemplate coming a third of the way around the globe with the primary purpose of seeing Machu Picchu, and we won’t see it because of the damned Peruvian government—or is it the damned tour company?

  While Sandy was photographing the exterior and gardens of the convent it began to sprinkle, and then harder, so we waited inside until the sun returned and we thought it was stopping. No sooner were we on the sidewalk than a serious rain began falling. We sheltered in the doorway of a farmacia and tried to flag taxis. The first driver that saw us was a kid who may have borrowed his older brother’s cab for the day. He didn’t know where our hotel was even though it is one of the larger in the tourist section. I told him it was at the foot of the principle street and our adventure began. The rain wa
s falling hard enough to defeat his windshield wipers and the windshield was so dirty that when he turned toward the sun I couldn’t see through it to identify landmarks. Soon the windows were steamed making it impossible to see in any direction, but he was undeterred. Wiping a peephole on the windshield in front of his eyes he managed to dodge the other blind drivers as he made one wrong turn after another.

  Three times we got within a couple of blocks of the Hotel Jose Antonio without being able to see it or to convince him to turn where we thought he should. Finally I could see it and told him that it was the yellow building in front of him, but unfortunately most of the buildings were yellow and he kept trying to turn left. At last he spotted the front door and insisted on going past to make a u-turn―God forbid he should park facing the wrong way. He was so embarrassed he didn’t want to name a fee, so I gave him ten soles and wished him luck. See! You don’t get that kind of adventure on a stinking tour.

  I should tell you that the Peruvian unit of currency is called nuevos soles. This makes one think that “old” soles didn’t work out very well. You get 2.8 soles for a dollar, and things in general are fairly expensive. Wine especially seems pricey. In Argentina a good domestic bottle was about fifteen dollars, and in Chile it might be under ten, but in Peru one of those same bottles is thirty dollars. Of course it’s imported, but that can’t be the whole reason since the Tanqueray is also imported and I discovered at lunch that I could buy six gin and tonics for the price of their cheapest bottle of wine. I didn’t buy six. I was moderate.

  We went to redeem our welcome to Cusco piscos coupons before dinner. I had to have the concierge call the bartender who may have been napping. He was a young soft spoken Peruvian—they are all soft spoken—named Nelson, really, Nelson. I engaged him in conversation with the intent of gleaning more information about Machu Picchu and he maintained that the park itself had not been ordered to be closed by the government, but that there was still go practical way to get there except on foot. He was so soft spoken that I wanted to shake him and tell him to speak up. I am always hesitant to ask people to repeat themselves