Valpo and Viña

Hills of Valparaíso

One of the first trips I took when I got to Chile was to Valparaíso, which is about 120 km. west of Santiago on the coast. It's a small city of many hills overlooking the sea. Steep funiculars and long flights of steps allow people to go between the upper and lower levels. I stayed at a charming hostel owned by a Belgian couple who served wonderful breakfasts with freshly blended juices, home-made bread, and delicious cold cuts. It was there that I felt the first tremors of an earthquake whose epicenter was further down the coast. As I lay in bed wondering what to do, the nightclubs opened their doors, and the musical beat reverberated through the narrow streets. Although I couldn't see them, it sounded like all the young people poured out into the streets and just kept dancing.

Neighborhood stairway

The town has wonderful street art, and around every corner  is a sight to behold. Some businesses pay people to paint their walls, but I suspect that some don't, and they still get art, whether they like it or not. By night it's eerie, and by day, it's delightful. There are also a few museums, like one dedicated to Lukas, a cartoonist who made Chileans laugh through good times and bad with ironic one-liners. Shops, galleries, street vendors, outdoor cafés, and seafood restaurants make life idyllic for visitors and residents alike.

Port of Valparíso

On the southern edge of the town is the port, which was an important site throughout the history of Chile, first for the Spanish, whose ships came through the Strait of Magellan at the southern tip of South America and docked here. Later it was used by other European countries when immigrants came to settle, and trade increased. Today it is the official port of the Chilean Navy, a ship repair base, and a refueling station for the many vessels that move through the southern Pacific.
 

La Sebastiana

On one of the hills sits La Sebastiana, one of the three houses built and furnished by Chilean poet and Nobel Laureate Pablo Neruda. Named after the original owner, Don Sebastian Colloa, the outside is whimsical, and the inside is a maze of rooms filled with objects collected by Neruda and set in place with special care. He is said to have visited antique stores and flea markets on weekends to collect objets d'art, and it's easy to see how imaginative he must have been to search for and take pleasure in a myriad of treasures.

Wulff Castle

On the northern edge of the city is Viña del Mar, a separate town filled with high-rise apartments and upper-crust restaurants and shops. Wulff Castle is a seaside mansion rebuilt by a German baron in the early 1900s. From a adjoining restaurant, I could see pelicans, cormorants, and seagulls searching for their dinner. Unlike in Valpo, there are white sandy beaches in Viña, and the sea is a deep aquamarine. Both towns have their charm and are wonderful places to visit again and again.

Sunflower Hostal

Salvador Allende

Wall Art
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Teaching at UMayor

Manuel Montt Campus

For the past month, I've been teaching at the Facultad de Educación at Universidad Mayor, a private institution that was started about 30 years ago as a technical college. After a period of rapid growth, there are now 6 campuses in Santiago, each with different majors, and even one in Temuco about 700 km. south of the capital. I teach classes in the Manuel Montt Campus in Providencia, a residential area of the city. Education, Engineering, and Law are housed in the same building, and there are both day and evening classes.

Recreation in the patio

The two courses I teach are Lingüistica Aplicada/Second Language Acquisition to third-year students and Profundización en la Especialidad/TOEFL to fifth-year students majoring in English Pedagogy. They will become English teachers in elementary and secondary schools in the Santiago area when they graduate. Polite, friendly, and laid back, they are much like the students from Latin America we have at CELOP. As you can see in the picture, the outdoor patio has a café and ping-pong tables as well as benches for studying or relaxing.

School of Education - 4th floor

Since books are very expensive in Chile, the students can't afford to buy them so professors have to figure out how to supply material in other ways. We can upload some onto the Moodle platform assigned to each course or make limited copies of others, so creativity, time, and effort are required to figure it all out. It's a challenging teaching situation, but enjoyable, nevertheless. Universidad Mayor is very active in public relations, so it has many exchange agreements with universities around the world, including BU.

Youth groups

On weekends I wander around the city to see what's happening. Last week there was a procession on the eve of Palm Sunday, and I went to mass at the baroque cathedral on the Plaza de Armas, where groups of young people were waving flags and singing with gusto at the mass concelebrated by dozens of priests, monsignors, and the Cardinal of Santiago. Thousands of people were there, spilling out onto the plaza after mass. The youth groups were from different parishes around the city, and it was inspiring to see them so enthusiastic about their faith.

Girl selling palms

I bought a braided palm from a little girl with a painted face whose family was rapidly braiding and selling them for a dollar. After mass, I went back into the cathedral to take pictures, and here you can see an altar of ornate silver, probably  from the mines in Chile, and another one with a lovely statue of la Virgin del Carmen con Jesús, beautifully clothed in lavish robes that are changed according to the liturgical year. As I went around to the altars, cautiously taking pictures while people were praying, I was impressed by the faith Catholics have in the saints and angels and their devotion to the church. It's an inspiring example for people of all faiths.

Virgin del Carmen

Ornate silver altar
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First Few Weeks

Pool atop tower A

I've been in Chile for 3 weeks now, and the one-bedroom furnished apartment I found on Craig's List has proven a comfortable little retreat. It's in the heart of old Santiago, although I expected more colonial buildings and fewer skyscrapers. Some of the older buildings were damaged by earthquakes and torn down, and because of Chile's rapid growth in the past decade, the hum of construction can be heard day and night. My apartment is in a 22-story high-rise with 4 towers, one of which has a pool on the top.

Lookout on Santa Lucía Hill

As you can see from the background photo, there are small hills (ancient volcanoes) around Santiago, which were turned into places where the public could go to see different vistas of the city. My windows look out onto Cerro Santa Lucía, a small hill where Pedro de Valdivia's troops kept watch over the town after the conquest in the 16th century. Later, Fort Hidalgo was constructed in the early 19th century, and a little later, fountains and pathways were built so the public could enjoy the views. A bronze plaque on a boulder commemorates Charles Darwin's visit when he passed through Chile after visiting the Galapagos.

Patio Bellavista

There's supermarket beside my building and a traditional market several blocks away. The neighborhood is filled with small outdoor cafes and restaurants, where people still eat because of the unseasonably warm temperatures of 80-90 degrees during the day. The evenings cool down to 60-70, but the retailers are despairing of selling their fall clothing lines because of the heat. Besides national and Spanish goods and services, there are galleries on the first floor of many older buildings, filled with stalls the specialize in a certain trade. One day I wandered into a gallery for waxing and hair removal, and there were about 20 small businesses with women vying for attention by calling out their prices for this or that service - very funny! Other galleries have tradespeople like tailors, jewelers, or leather-workers; it's nice to know that these skills haven't been lost yet.

Dog snoozing on bench

One of the sad aspects of Santiago is the number of homeless dogs on the streets. There are pure- and half-breed large dogs that sleep on the sidewalk or wander around cafes and restaurants looking for scraps.  They run in packs in the park at night and tear the garbage bags apart scavenging. Some have scars from fights over food or territory, and it makes walking around the city heart-rending. If I eat out, I always take what I don't finish away with me, even it it's only bread. When I feed a dog, he looks at me as if he wants to be petted, which I do if he's not too dirty.

Dogs on pedestrian street

I've asked several Santiagueños about it, and they say that people abandon their dogs when they get too big to fit comfortably in their apartments - or small business owners have dogs for protection that sleep in the business at night, but wander the streets by day. The dogs aren't neutered, so they keep reproducing and the problem keeps multiplying. There is one week a year when veterinarians and vet students go out and give rabies shots and neuter the dogs they find, but that makes only a small difference in the situation.

Dancing the 'Cueca'
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Aside from that, life here is interesting and fun. People are polite but friendly, so if you sit down on a bench in a park or pedestrian street, they talk to you. I've gotten all sorts of information about cultural events and customs from just sitting and chatting - or stopping a person on the street when I want to know something (like the 'Cueca' dance contest that was going on in the Plaza de Armas the evening I arrived.) So I'm happy and very much enjoying mi tiempo en Chile.

Sliding down...

Climbing up...