gimme da link gimme da link

Biggie references aside, this is an interesting video sent to me by my friend Jacob. Shows a tiny bit of insight into what it's like to be in Haiti.

http://vimeo.com/channels/hd#10282740

Kind of makes me bummed.

Long Time No Blog

I apologize to my faithful followers for the big break in blogging. Things have begun to settle down here, jobs are picking up and such. I now work everyday like a real person! Well, almost like a real person, I don't quite have the whole 9-5 thing. Speaking of which, in Chile they work 9-7! Business is very important here and so is working a lot.

We went on a nice little weekend jaunt over to Valparaíso and VIÑA del Mar last weekend. Valparaiso is the second largest city in Chile I'm told. I believe it's about 250,000 people. The city is very very old and so are most of the buildings. There are 46 hills in Valpo, each of which is littered with these tiny houses.
This is the view of the city from the hostel that we stayed at. You can kind of see all of the houses in the background that go up the hills. The hostel we stayed at was actually very nice. It was incredibly clean and the hostess was friendly. She even offered to take us out on the town the first night. That's at least what we thought she offered. We all climbed into a collectivo (a taxi that travels 1 specific route and has a fixed price) and were carted off to the center of Valpo. When we got out she said, "I have an appointment to make so that area over there is where the bars are. Here are the keys to the house I don't know how late I'll be coming home!"

Valpo, although it is on the ocean, has no beaches. It's a port town and you can see all of the big cargo and fishing boats parked in the harbor. One can understand how Valpo has developed like it has. It is very much a sailors town. The people hanging around the bars were punky and the bars seemed to follow suit. That said we did not stay out for very long. I think Bree summed up our experience in Valpo pretty well when she said "Valparaiso smells."

Here are some pictures from Valparaiso including our nice pink hostel. Our hostel was on top of a hill on the water and had some very nice views.


Valparaiso really wasn't that bad. We had fun exploring the old city. I went and visited Pablo Neruda's house which was pretty incredible. No wonder the man wrote beautiful poetry when he woke up to such spectacular views everyday. Bree and I also had some wonderful fresh seafood. We went to a restaurant and shared a big steamed bowl of goodness in a white wine fish sauce. That was probably the best thing ever.
It is a shame we didn't take a picture of the presentation. It's baked in this big pot here and came with a huge cover on it. When they took the cover off all the steam and smells came pouring out and it was awesome. Unfortunately this picture is about halfway through the meal so it doesn't give justice to pure righteous power of the steamed seafood medley!

The next day we went to Vina del Mar to explore a proper beach town. When we first arrived in Chile we met a Canadian named Glen. Glen gave us some advice about getting around the city and fun things to do and all that jazz. He also told us how lazy Chileans can be. He said that they are more likely to take a bus or taxi than to walk 3 blocks. A perfect example of this is the relationship between Vina del Mar and Valparaiso. Ask a Chilean how to get to Vina del Mar from Valparaiso and they will say that it's too far to walk and is about a 10 minute bus ride. Upon taking a bus there ourselves we realized that in fact it is a 1 minute bus ride, and Vina del Mar is literally just around the corner from Valparaiso.

Given their outrageous proximity, two cities could never be so different. Valparaiso is a big industrial port town. Vina del Mar is a beautiful resort town, with white sandy beaches and clear water. Everything you would expect from a place named the vineyard of the sea is there. We had a blast exploring Vina del Mar. There are tons of very funky shops and restaurants. The beaches were beautiful, though the water is cold because of the Antarctic current (or something like that). There are massive hotels and resorts along the coast that are very impressively designed. There are old castles and houses as well, some of which have been made into free museums. We decided the next time we come we are definitely staying here.







At the Vina Del Mar Sheraton!!

Just kidding, our wallets are feeling quite squeezed these days. Time for MORE Pictures!





There is not much else to say for today. I'll try to start posting more often!

This is Definitely NOT the White Mountains

School and tutoring still haven't started for us. Bree starts on Monday and I have no idea when I finally get to start making back all of the money we have spent here. Since we have no form of income we have been trying to find fun free things to do around the city. The other day we went to the museum of contemporary art (which costs 600 pesos or about a dollar) only to find out its closed due to structural damage!




Since our museum visit was nixed we decided to plan a hike. Given that Santiago is surrounded by the mountains this seemed like an easy task. We already hiked the parque metropolitano which is about 900m tall. We decided that we would try to hike mt manquehue which is relatively small it has two peaks one at 1200m and one at 1800m.

Now when you go hiking in the White Mountains, you whip out your little hiking book and read about the trails to the top and how to get to them and you drive to the start of the trail park your car and head into the woods. Having no guidebook or knowing of no guidebook for hiking around here we were stuck with the internet. We found a site called wikiloc.com which people post hikes and trails they have been on. Great! a trail! posted by some random dude that comes off a street called vio rojo.

I was a bit weary in trusting these random posts about trails but they had pictures and what not and my companions deemed them safe. So we went. Having no car to drive we were stuck taking the metro as far east as possible and then taking a taxi as far north as possible. When we got to the base of the mountain the driver told us Vio rojo was this way and started driving into a gated community. Then as the car scaled the mountain another gated community. Then another. Then past signs that said residents only. Eventually we got to an area where it looked like we should be able to find trails and got out. We followed the road up and saw a sign that said CERRO MANHUEQUE NO FIRES NO CAMPING NO TRASH. Yay a trail! However next to that sign was another sign saying PRIVATE PROPERTY. We thought what the hell and walked through the gap in the barbed wire fence and continued on.

As we marched on we past some nice scenery but were a little uneasy about the idea of following a shoddy barbed wire fence. Until we got to this.
So once again we thought, well what the hell and wandered right on through that barbed wire gate. Once we got to a sketchy rickety shack in the woods we decided it was time to turn around. However that wasn't the end of our hike because there were other trails we hadn't tried yet. Each trail lead to another sketchy rickety shack on the mountain. This was when we decided to go home. So we walked down the mountain through these gated communities to the bottom and caught a taxi home. Well not home, instead we went to California Cantina for some Pisco Sours to commiserate our failed hiking experience!

I will leave you with some random photos from throughout the city.

Bent Cross on top of the church near our apartment
Bree looking her best on the hike
Bree's delicious chicken sandwich from California Cantina

I should probably just get a flickr account or something so I don't have to post so many pictures on my blog. Or not. Until next time!

Santiago 2 days later

This is just going to be a quick update. We were woken up on Sunday around 8am to another aftershock. That was the second aftershock over 6.0 that we've had. There have been some more minor rumblings since then, but you get used to it. This morning we had our windows open and a large truck went speeding by and since our road is cobblestone it sounded like our building was shaking. I was getting used to the earthquake alarm clock but this time it was just pretend.

Santiago has pretty much gone back to normal. Everyone is back at work (except for us teachers), most of the metro is up and running, and people are going about their business as usual. School has been postponed until the start of next week and tutoring will start around the same time.

Some people still have lots of repairs to do to their homes, some people still don't have homes, and a lot of business are still cleaning up glass and debris.

A few ATMs are back online, but it looks like Bank of Chile is running while Santender (the other Santiago bank) still is out of order. I went and withdrew a bunch of cash in case anything happens to go wrong.

Last night we got our gas turned back on so we finally took some showers this morning because we have hot water now! Our stove also is back on so we don't have to rely on the microwave anymore.

This was Saturday morning at the gas station near our apartment. A relatively small line compared to what it had been before. The lines stretched for a few blocks and lasted all day/night.

The map at Los Leones metro station broke.

There are a lot of pictures of this church on the news. This is the most severe damage we have seen. There are some areas of Santiago that are reportedly pretty bad but we haven't seen them.

Sectioned off part of Baquendo metro station with emergency lights still on. Some of the metro lines are still closed for repair.

It looks like the supermarkets are starting to get stocked back up. People are still sucking them dry today. I'll post some more photos as we take them.