field trip to Achao

Today I'm theoretically going to go eat lunch at a restaurant in Quemchi, but it's almost 10:30 and I haven't even showered yet. Instead, I'll show you pictures of Achao, on the nearby island of Quinchao. (Chilote names are great. I'm going to Ancud tomorrow, and then back here to Castro [not a Chilote name] so I can visit Dalcahue and possibly Isla Mechuque.)

I'm not the world's best photographer, but there were some really nice shots around town. This one in particular gives the illusion I know what I'm doing.





In the most un-Chilean thing I've seen since Anna and I had chicken korma in Valparaiso, Achao has a working and quite beautiful little public library.

I'm sure there's a great story behind why this dinky village in southern Chile has a working library and Valparaiso, seat of the Chilean Congress, doesn't. (Technically it has one, the Biblioteca Santiago Severin, but it's been closed since the earthquake and shows no sign of reopening.)

The kids' section:

This is just from the bus ride back to Castro. This kind of scene just crops up everywhere. This is what Chiloe looks like.

Click on any of the photos to get to Flickr, or see them all in the Chiloe set.

Like Valdivia and La Serena, Chiloe is also very clean, which makes me think that Region V, and Valparaiso in particular, just doesn't care. In other words, I used to think that sidewalks covered in dog crap represented Chilean culture not valuing clean sidewalks. After a bit of traveling, I now think that in Valparaiso there's a cultural value on having the place look charmingly run-down, and disgustingly filthy.

Valdivia rundown

Lodging

I stayed at the Airesbuenos Hostel, which I guess is affiliated with Hostelling International. It's awesome.

• Off-season dorm rate is CH$8000.
• Excellent, non-Chilean breakfast. (Oatmeal/fruit/wheat toast/real brewed coffee.)
• Comfy beds.
• Hot water seemed a little unreliable while breakfast was happening in the kitchen, but fine after 9am or so.
• Awesome common areas, with a computer and reliable wireless.
• Good kitchen you can use to cook things.

Eating

• Café Hausmann was fine. I only had a bite of the crudo, a kind of Beef Tartar, spiced raw ground beef on toast. It was fine with the tartar sauce, but not my thing. (Remember: raw ground beef. Just so you're not surprised.) The paila de huevos was good, but since that's just eggs and toast, it's pretty hard to screw up.
• Café Las Gringas (Chacabuco and O'Higgins, kitty-corner from McDonald's). Good espresso and a fine strudel.
• Café del Museo (behind the Museo de Exploración) - Holy crap, this was possibly the best meal I've had in Chile. For CH$2500, I got kiwi juice, beet-carrot-celery-pepper-apple salad, creamy squash soup, corn/red pepper quiche, and gelatin with pear chunks and real whipped cream. You might skip breakfast that day, so your stomach doesn't hurt like mine did. I didn't try the coffee, but they had many varieties of actual coffee beans, so they're probably the best coffee in Valdivia.

Wifi Spots

Lots of random places have wireless, but like the Mac Dog fuente de soda, many are not really the kind of place you want to hang around on your laptop. Most also seem to allow smoking, which makes them not my favorite thing.

• Café Moro (Libertad) - The archetypical Chilean salon de te: lots of smokers and awful espresso. However, they have wireless and beer in the same place, and the café helado is pretty good.
• Cardamomo Café (Libertad) - Actually a centro de llamados (phone call center) with tables and a Nescafe machine, this has the unique combination of having wireless and being smoke-free. CH$500 for the Nescafe "cappuccino" (which is actually fairly tasty, though not a cappuccino) and you can sit around reading Lolcats for a while.
• Café Las Gringas - See above.

Doing Stuff

• Fuerte Niebla is awesome, both for the views and the 400-year old ruins. Chile's war for independence was in 1810, but Valdivia wasn't integrated into the Republic until 1820, because of these fortifications and cannon batteries. The more arcane placards describing the construction techniques are also well-translated into English.
• Museo Arquilógico - Well-done exhibits of lots of stuff from the Mapuche, Spanish, and Germans, all well-labeled in Spanish, with some stuff in English.. CH$1300 and it took me less than a half hour, but it was worth it.
• River boat ride! I took the Bahía Patagonia, but they all travel the same route and stop in Punucapa and eat once at the only once place in Punucapa, so just pick the nicest people/best-looking boat/most convenient time. It's CH$7000, so it's not the cheapest thing to do, but you get to see some of the rivers.
• And finally, Valdivia actually has a professional chamber orchestra, one of eight in the country, set up by a government culture program. I went and saw them do a pretty boring short piece by one of Bach's descendants, and then Stabat Mater by Pergolesi. It's a young group: out of the 20 including soloists, I think there were 3 who looked over 30.

Valdivia: awesome. I'll be back for a day at the end of the year, before I head farther south to Chiloé and beyond.

Valdivia photos

Here's the album. I'll keep adding to it. It's mostly in order, except for a couple of the videos, and there may be some duplicates. Mass uploading to Flickr is...not a reliable process.

It's just stunningly beautiful here. I forget how much I love rivers, because there aren't a lot in California, and what we have are often dammed beyond recognition. Here...well, just look at it.

Valdivia is sort of the size of Santa Cruz or Monterey in California, with that level of walkability, only it's interesting. I don't have a lot to say. It's just amazingly pleasant to be here, except for the aggressive duck who attacks me when I try to go into the backyard of the hostel. (His name is Gardín. He's huge and I'm not allowed to harm him in self-defense, which is challenging. I'll get a picture today sometime.) Other than the duck, it's perfect.

In other news, I don't usually read MetaFilter (too much content), but I did get linked to this post on You've been doing it wrong and discovered that I, too, have been tying my shoes in a granny knot all this time. Changing direction to a square knot feels weird, but I have high hopes for my shoes not coming untied.

ethnic food fail

I violated my own rule today (about not trying Mexican restaurants in Chile) and, based on appearance and the presence of milanesa (Mexican breaded steak) on the specials menu, hoped against hope that Restaurant Guacamole in Valdivia might not suck.

There were hopeful signs at first. The entrees sounded a little odd (zucchini in the burrito, and no mention of rice?), but the chips were funky-homemade and tasty, and the accompanying salsas were mid-high quality by California standards. Unlike Distrito Federal in Vina, someone here had at least taken the trouble of opening a Mexican cookbook to see what spices they used.

It went downhill from there. The separate bowls of rice and black beans were a bit suspect: clearly spiced, but not in a Mexican sort of way. After an excessive delay, they brought Steve's soup: he'd ordered consome' de ave and sure enough, he got the Chilean soup by that name.

Then the "burrito" came. Mushrooms on top--okay, quirky, but not out of bounds. Why does it smell like oregano? And coated half a centimeter thick with a cream sauce that would have served admirably on a pile of linguini? It was tasty enough, but it's a travesty to call it Mexican food.

This is why we have rules.

Valdivia

By way of welcome, we had a 6.5 earthquake last night. It went on for at least 7-12 seconds after I woke up, which means it was going for a bit of time before that, because earthquakes are not one of those things that wake me up right away.

When people refer to "the south," this is the area they're usually talking about, also called Sur Chico ("Little South"). This is to distinguish it from Patagonia, which is really its own complicated, beautiful, deserted thing. People often say Chico Sur is the heart of Chile, in its culture and people. We did notice that starting in Chillan, people are more open and relaxed, and there's a sense of...what? Chilean-ness? There's a more traditional vibe to the people and how things are done, and less like the feeling in most cities in the world. It's hard to see, visually: there's this feeling, and then you have to interact with people.

Field Director Allyson was teaching last year in Angol, about a half hour away, and had told us a bit about Valdivia. Here's what I've seen so far:

• There are not so many dogs, which explains the stunning lack of dog shit on the sidewalk.
• Dog shit aside, the city looks really clean. There's not trash everywhere.
• People generally talk slowly enough to be understood.
• The coffee here at Airesbuenos is actual brewed coffee, and not Nescafe.

It's like being in a different country.