Amigos
3 - 7 October, Ian
Many thanks to everyone who replied to the last
blog with links, information and suggestions. We're okay
now.
For the moment, at least, we're still at the same place. Our first step was to make it a little more habitable by buying some reasonable bedding. The guy who skulks around - Oswaldo - looking after the grounds brought us a paraffin heater, and when we conveyed to him that, for the sake of the girls, we would prefer something that didn't exude toxic fumes, he upgraded it to a highly temperamental gas heater. When we can get the thing started it warms up a zone of air around itself just large enough to dry clothes and take the edge of the chill. We have to watch the gas consumption though as we don't really want to be searching around Santiago for new canisters, and the chances of getting Oswaldo to replace it are only moderate. To be fair, I should report that he is a very nice smiley guy, notwithstanding his air of being like the Scooby Doo baddy who ends up getting his face mask removed and cursing that he would have got away with it if it wasn't for those pesky kids. And I certainly don't blame him for not knowing a word of English - why should he? If anything, it probably helps force us to learn at least a few phrases of Spanish. The fourth Spanish phrase that I learned was, "Last night we had no electricity", which I've needed enough times now to have it burned onto my mental hard drive.
The "solar power" system here is quite a novelty: as you can infer, it usually doesn't work. After one of our first nights without electricity I prevailed upon Oswaldo to give us some power in the daytime from "the generator" that the owner had described to Paula. This was good for one hour. When I asked for it again another day Oswaldo took me over to the area of the patio where the generator lives and pulled back its cover to reveal a beat up old lawn mower that had run out of "benzo" - if I wanted more electricity, I discovered - with the aid of the Lonely Planet phrasebook - that I'd have to drive down to the petrol station and get more fuel for the mower. We didn't bother. After our burst of power I called up the other guys whom the owner had lined us up with for local assistance - Marco and Robert - to ask whether now Oswaldo had re-cabled the power system to use the lawn mower it would still work when we tried to draw on the solar power-charged batteries in the evening. They swore that this would not be the case. Guess what.
All our evidence suggests that the owner, M* Fin*, is a shark. He's Iranian by birth and imports South American artefacts to his shop in Bath, England. Paula went there and met him when she paid our deposit and he was all charm. Now she's mailed him with our list of major grievances and he replied with little more than a caveat emptor message. We've since learned that he also has strong views on which nationalities he allows to stay at the house (no Americans, no Chileans). Given that the average American is probably more legally capable than we are, I can understand this one.
Marco and Robert, though, are very decent guys. Marco is a local and also speaks no English. But seeing all of the problems that we're having and how miserable it can be here in the cold, he suggested a couple of spots that we could get away to and has offered to give up a couple of days to accompany us and help us out. We probably wont take him up on this - maybe we would if we could communicate with him - but it was nice that he wanted to help. Marco appears to work in a cafe owned by Mo Fino and to be his general factotum in Santiago.
Robert is a different kettle of fish. He is Dutch and has good Spanish and near perfect English. When we arrived on our first day and were wandering around outside a locked up garage on an industrial estate that our directions promised would be a personal residence, Robert and Marco appeared from nowhere and it was the English-speaking Robert who could actually help. He took us to a shop to get some basic supplies and then, with Marco, showed us up to the house. A couple of days ago Robert spent the whole day escorting us around Santiago helping us with any manner of mundane chores, from getting our watches fixed (and my iPod, which, after I spent an enjoyable hour or two doing various updates with the guy in an Apple store here, is now working again) to looking, fruitlessly for the time being, for a Short Wave radio. It's difficult to gauge Robert's age. I would have guessed that he was around 50 and I calculated from various of his anecdotes that his wife is 48. But then he mentioned that he has a 39 year old son. Previously he worked as a director for a company that ran commercial planes and helicopters and he often seems to have found himself caught up in the middle of a crisis. For example, his company had plenty of Shah-friendly staff in Iran at the time that Khomeni swept to power and Robert had to negotiate for the freedom of his colleagues alongside Terry Waite, who was then negotiating for the release of missionaries. One of Robert's guys spent a year in prison although they all ultimately were freed. He describes Waite playing the role of a big Christian Mullah, and confirms the view that we gained from afar that he was naive and out of his depth in the disaster into which he brashly parachuted himself. Later, Robert had to negotiate with Galtieri's guys at the time of the Falklands war to be able to continue operating his air fleet for the convenience of at least some of their gringo clients.
Although Santiago is apparently a city that Robert cannot yet navigate with ease, he was cheerful and helpful all day long and a good tonic for our ragged nerves. His home is in Holland, although he's now moving here to set up a new business and, having insisted that his Chilean wife speak only Dutch at home for the past 20 years, the boot is on the other foot and she's now insisting that he speak only Spanish. Amazingly, we discovered that he's never met Mo Fino and had only run into Marco two days before we turned up while trying to hire a car off Marco's brother (the car hire didn't work out). He visited the house for the first time the day before we arrived when they asked him, as a favour, to be prepared to help us, and then he wasn't allowed inside. So his generosity with his time was all the more remarkable.
But Santiago is the friendliest city on earth. The guy in the Apple store, for example, offered me cigarettes and encouraged me to download a stack of music from the store playlist to my mac. The guy in the music shop I visited to buy a couple of CD's (by Cafe del Mar and, on impulse, the Gotan Project) tried genuinely to help me save money and to introduce me to good local bands. A girl in Starbucks offered me tickets for a jazz concert tonight and volunteered to arrange our trip to a nearby vineyard. (For various practical reasons I had to decline each of these offers, hopefully not seeming too rude.)
As we've been doing all of this we've also been unwinding from our reliance on the place where we're staying. For the next few days we're off to a cattle ranch in Argentina, which we'd already arranged, and we'll spend a few more days somewhere in the country (maybe Buenos Aires, Mendoza or Cordoba) before returning. (Thanks again for all the helpful information.) When we do return to Santiago we're spending a week at a modern apartment closer to the heart of the city (thanks to Kate for finding it) - now that we've driven through the city a few times this is an exciting prospect, and luckily also an affordable one. And then there are plenty of one or two day excursions that we'll make out of town. Ironically, we've also had a couple of days of warmer weather when the shortcomings of this place become less material and we enjoy fantastic vistas over the city. (These same vistas seem less wonderful when we're looking across a city ablaze with night lights and we're gathered around a few candles.) And it's great to look up to the hills behind us and see the mountains covered in fresh snow when the association with our own night time chill is less immediate.
So things are looking up. To give Paula a break the girls have done all the cooking, under my reasonably light supervision, all this week and have done a bang-up job. We've all been reading here, too. I finished Prime Obsession, which I recommend to anyone wanting to learn some cool maths, and just started an Agatha Christie (Partners in Crime) that Paula and the girls have all read already; it was written 75 years or so ago and has reassuring period genre charm. Zoe has compiled a list of over 20 books that she's read since we've been away, and Heidi has probably read more. While the power here usually precludes DVD watching, the radio is still entertaining too, either played from my mac for us all or enjoyed privately on my iPod. I heard on a From our own Correspondent podcast the other night that the show has been running for 50 years now and there's a book out to mark the anniversary; that's one that I might try to pick up in Aus.
For the moment, at least, we're still at the same place. Our first step was to make it a little more habitable by buying some reasonable bedding. The guy who skulks around - Oswaldo - looking after the grounds brought us a paraffin heater, and when we conveyed to him that, for the sake of the girls, we would prefer something that didn't exude toxic fumes, he upgraded it to a highly temperamental gas heater. When we can get the thing started it warms up a zone of air around itself just large enough to dry clothes and take the edge of the chill. We have to watch the gas consumption though as we don't really want to be searching around Santiago for new canisters, and the chances of getting Oswaldo to replace it are only moderate. To be fair, I should report that he is a very nice smiley guy, notwithstanding his air of being like the Scooby Doo baddy who ends up getting his face mask removed and cursing that he would have got away with it if it wasn't for those pesky kids. And I certainly don't blame him for not knowing a word of English - why should he? If anything, it probably helps force us to learn at least a few phrases of Spanish. The fourth Spanish phrase that I learned was, "Last night we had no electricity", which I've needed enough times now to have it burned onto my mental hard drive.
The "solar power" system here is quite a novelty: as you can infer, it usually doesn't work. After one of our first nights without electricity I prevailed upon Oswaldo to give us some power in the daytime from "the generator" that the owner had described to Paula. This was good for one hour. When I asked for it again another day Oswaldo took me over to the area of the patio where the generator lives and pulled back its cover to reveal a beat up old lawn mower that had run out of "benzo" - if I wanted more electricity, I discovered - with the aid of the Lonely Planet phrasebook - that I'd have to drive down to the petrol station and get more fuel for the mower. We didn't bother. After our burst of power I called up the other guys whom the owner had lined us up with for local assistance - Marco and Robert - to ask whether now Oswaldo had re-cabled the power system to use the lawn mower it would still work when we tried to draw on the solar power-charged batteries in the evening. They swore that this would not be the case. Guess what.
All our evidence suggests that the owner, M* Fin*, is a shark. He's Iranian by birth and imports South American artefacts to his shop in Bath, England. Paula went there and met him when she paid our deposit and he was all charm. Now she's mailed him with our list of major grievances and he replied with little more than a caveat emptor message. We've since learned that he also has strong views on which nationalities he allows to stay at the house (no Americans, no Chileans). Given that the average American is probably more legally capable than we are, I can understand this one.
Marco and Robert, though, are very decent guys. Marco is a local and also speaks no English. But seeing all of the problems that we're having and how miserable it can be here in the cold, he suggested a couple of spots that we could get away to and has offered to give up a couple of days to accompany us and help us out. We probably wont take him up on this - maybe we would if we could communicate with him - but it was nice that he wanted to help. Marco appears to work in a cafe owned by Mo Fino and to be his general factotum in Santiago.
Robert is a different kettle of fish. He is Dutch and has good Spanish and near perfect English. When we arrived on our first day and were wandering around outside a locked up garage on an industrial estate that our directions promised would be a personal residence, Robert and Marco appeared from nowhere and it was the English-speaking Robert who could actually help. He took us to a shop to get some basic supplies and then, with Marco, showed us up to the house. A couple of days ago Robert spent the whole day escorting us around Santiago helping us with any manner of mundane chores, from getting our watches fixed (and my iPod, which, after I spent an enjoyable hour or two doing various updates with the guy in an Apple store here, is now working again) to looking, fruitlessly for the time being, for a Short Wave radio. It's difficult to gauge Robert's age. I would have guessed that he was around 50 and I calculated from various of his anecdotes that his wife is 48. But then he mentioned that he has a 39 year old son. Previously he worked as a director for a company that ran commercial planes and helicopters and he often seems to have found himself caught up in the middle of a crisis. For example, his company had plenty of Shah-friendly staff in Iran at the time that Khomeni swept to power and Robert had to negotiate for the freedom of his colleagues alongside Terry Waite, who was then negotiating for the release of missionaries. One of Robert's guys spent a year in prison although they all ultimately were freed. He describes Waite playing the role of a big Christian Mullah, and confirms the view that we gained from afar that he was naive and out of his depth in the disaster into which he brashly parachuted himself. Later, Robert had to negotiate with Galtieri's guys at the time of the Falklands war to be able to continue operating his air fleet for the convenience of at least some of their gringo clients.
Although Santiago is apparently a city that Robert cannot yet navigate with ease, he was cheerful and helpful all day long and a good tonic for our ragged nerves. His home is in Holland, although he's now moving here to set up a new business and, having insisted that his Chilean wife speak only Dutch at home for the past 20 years, the boot is on the other foot and she's now insisting that he speak only Spanish. Amazingly, we discovered that he's never met Mo Fino and had only run into Marco two days before we turned up while trying to hire a car off Marco's brother (the car hire didn't work out). He visited the house for the first time the day before we arrived when they asked him, as a favour, to be prepared to help us, and then he wasn't allowed inside. So his generosity with his time was all the more remarkable.
But Santiago is the friendliest city on earth. The guy in the Apple store, for example, offered me cigarettes and encouraged me to download a stack of music from the store playlist to my mac. The guy in the music shop I visited to buy a couple of CD's (by Cafe del Mar and, on impulse, the Gotan Project) tried genuinely to help me save money and to introduce me to good local bands. A girl in Starbucks offered me tickets for a jazz concert tonight and volunteered to arrange our trip to a nearby vineyard. (For various practical reasons I had to decline each of these offers, hopefully not seeming too rude.)
As we've been doing all of this we've also been unwinding from our reliance on the place where we're staying. For the next few days we're off to a cattle ranch in Argentina, which we'd already arranged, and we'll spend a few more days somewhere in the country (maybe Buenos Aires, Mendoza or Cordoba) before returning. (Thanks again for all the helpful information.) When we do return to Santiago we're spending a week at a modern apartment closer to the heart of the city (thanks to Kate for finding it) - now that we've driven through the city a few times this is an exciting prospect, and luckily also an affordable one. And then there are plenty of one or two day excursions that we'll make out of town. Ironically, we've also had a couple of days of warmer weather when the shortcomings of this place become less material and we enjoy fantastic vistas over the city. (These same vistas seem less wonderful when we're looking across a city ablaze with night lights and we're gathered around a few candles.) And it's great to look up to the hills behind us and see the mountains covered in fresh snow when the association with our own night time chill is less immediate.
So things are looking up. To give Paula a break the girls have done all the cooking, under my reasonably light supervision, all this week and have done a bang-up job. We've all been reading here, too. I finished Prime Obsession, which I recommend to anyone wanting to learn some cool maths, and just started an Agatha Christie (Partners in Crime) that Paula and the girls have all read already; it was written 75 years or so ago and has reassuring period genre charm. Zoe has compiled a list of over 20 books that she's read since we've been away, and Heidi has probably read more. While the power here usually precludes DVD watching, the radio is still entertaining too, either played from my mac for us all or enjoyed privately on my iPod. I heard on a From our own Correspondent podcast the other night that the show has been running for 50 years now and there's a book out to mark the anniversary; that's one that I might try to pick up in Aus.
Posted: Sat - October 8, 2005 at 12:41 AM
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Published On: Feb 08, 2006 06:20 PM
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Published On: Feb 08, 2006 06:20 PM