Today, in lieu of anything more comprehensive I hereby bring to you the scariest llama related animation ever made. Had I seen this before my trip I might never have gone. Enjoy.
Showing posts with label time out. Show all posts
Showing posts with label time out. Show all posts
Thursday, February 11, 2010
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
Voted off the island..
... fortunately, there's plenty of places to escape to in these parts.
Funnily enough, amongst the llamas and alpaca herders, internet wasn't a priority here. So I haven't been ignoring you all, I've just been ... away.
More soon when I've washed the travel out of my hair, burned my clothes and regained my breath.
Funnily enough, amongst the llamas and alpaca herders, internet wasn't a priority here. So I haven't been ignoring you all, I've just been ... away.
More soon when I've washed the travel out of my hair, burned my clothes and regained my breath.
Saturday, December 12, 2009
Cerro Manquehue, or how we almost died of exposure just ten minutes from the city
Photo from Flickr by Rodrigo Martens
Ask a Santiaguino about what they like best about living in their city, and chances are they won't mention anything about good public transport, friendly customer service or having clean lungs - and rightly so because these things are scarce on the ground here, if not actually mythical. Instead, chances are they will mention being able to leave your house and within a couple of hours drive be either skiing in the Andes in a fluoro 80s ski-suit or, if you drove in the other direction, be indecently exposing large amounts of buttock at a sea-side resort.
Yep, it appears that the best thing about living in Santiago is being able to get out of it.
With this in mind, on the recent long weekend O and I begged a car from his parents (as without one you are pretty well screwed here, or at the very least condemned to spending large amounts of time on rattle-trap buses / with your face jammed uncomfortably close to someone's armpit on the metro) and set out to enjoy what the city has to offer. i.e, we left it. For the mountains.
In a city surrounded by mountains, its funny that they are not a constant presence in people's minds, in fact, people kind of forget that they are there. (For a very funny example of this, see Sara's post on giving directions in Santiago). One reason for this forgetfulness might be the obvious: obscured by the thick smog you could argue that quite often the mountains aren't there.
Peanut seller on Cerro San Cristobal; note obscured / non-existent Andes in background
Yet on the weekend, all kitted up with our wheels and ganas de salir, we discovered perhaps another reason that Santiago's mountains are not on the radar here - its damn hard to get onto them.
Chileans love a gated community, and with the city in a constant state of expansion, it is gated communities all the way to the foothills of the Andes. And by gated I mean you may not under any circumstances enter. And by community I mean a group of houses with a big-ass fence all the way around them cutting off public access to anything in the zone plus anything on the other side ie the god damned hills.
Chileans love a gated community, and with the city in a constant state of expansion, it is gated communities all the way to the foothills of the Andes. And by gated I mean you may not under any circumstances enter. And by community I mean a group of houses with a big-ass fence all the way around them cutting off public access to anything in the zone plus anything on the other side ie the god damned hills.
Now, there's a lot to be said about this, about a culture of fear, the media, the aspirational middle classes and the fact that I damn well hate fences. Unfortunately for those who like the sound of a bit of semi-political ranting, all that will have to go into another blog post. Once I've slept off my hypertensive migraine.
In the end our first attempt to get out onto Santiago's mountains was, if not actually thwarted by the condos, technically it was trespassing. We spent a while driving around some of Santiago's wealthier suburbs, looking for the public park or hiking trail that I insisted must be there, and found only fences, private land and security guards. On our way up one of the subidas we gave a lift to a skater, who pointed us in the direction of a broken bit of fence through which we could squeeze, proving true the old adage that if you want to do something illegal, your best source of info is a teenager with a skateboard. Squeeze we did and our picnic was fine, the bad feeling in my stomach coming not from the food, but from the fact that we had to force our way into an area that should, in my not-so-humble-because-its-my-blog opinion, be available for everyone to enjoy, not just those willing to break property laws.
Not to be defeated, and slightly delirious after an all-night film shoot so randomly hilarious that it will get its very own blog post in the coming days, the next day we decided to climb Cerro Manquehue. As a disclaimer, and before you read the rest of this post, this undertaking was described to me, by Chileans, as 'a walk up a hill, although perhaps you shouldn't wear those sandals.'
Cerro Manquehue is the big volcano looking thing just outside Las Condes. You can see it from the city. Perhaps the fact that it looked like a volcano should have tipped me off that what we were about to do was not, essentially, the smartest decision. Yet strangely it did not. Thus I can now report that despite all appearances Cerro Manquehue is a) not a volcano and b) not a bloody hill. It is a mountain.
Its also the exact place we had been looking for the day before - I'm not sure what the legal status of the land is but I can say that there are no fences and a lot of paths, so I'm guessing that its either public access or that no-one cares much. Regardless, its a wonderful escape from the city, just a short drive from downtown. A walk in the park you might say. So did I. Incorrectly as it turns out.
At a certain stage (ie several hours after setting out and half way up what can only be described as a sheer cliff face) I wondered if we should not, perhaps, be using ropes. Or a helmet. Or at the very least have on us a larger supply of water that two 500ml bottles. I also wondered where the path was. This was a question that we were all contemplating. There was no way to find out, because there was also no cell phone coverage.
Now I've seen Alive, and therefore I know what happens when you get lost in the Andes. So as the prospect of us finding the path faded with every passing moment, I started eying up my companions as potential meals. O, ever the gentleman, assured me that if a reenactment of Alive was going to unfold here on the hillside with Santiago in full view, that at least I would not be first on the menu. Realising that I was not only more succulent but also somehow cleaner than everyone else, and that O was perhaps intending to lull me into a false sense of security before braining me with a boulder ready for first course, I promptly face-planted into a pile of dust and prickles. In fact, I'm fairly sure that Manquehue is Mapuche for Prickle Mountain, such is the prevalence and persistence of the flora. There were thistles god damn it. I thought those things only grew in Scotland.
Having given away somewhat the punchline, that we survived Manquehue and that no-one got eaten, by the fact that I'm still here to write this blog, all that remains to be said is that we scaled that god damned mountain in a way that no-one has before and no doubt no-one ever will again.
The true thorn in my side is that after staggering down the other side, three and a half hours later, filthy and dehydrated, in the carpark we bumped into the two friends who'd we'd been aiming to meet up with on the hill. They were fresh. They were clean. They had water left. They had spent the afternoon drinking beers and enjoying the view.
Oh, and they told us that the reason there were no other people on the hill was because the night before the news had reported of a masked mugger who roamed the trails and relieved hikers of their cameras and wallets.
Somehow, I don't think he would have chosen the path we were on. Small mercies, anyone?
In the end our first attempt to get out onto Santiago's mountains was, if not actually thwarted by the condos, technically it was trespassing. We spent a while driving around some of Santiago's wealthier suburbs, looking for the public park or hiking trail that I insisted must be there, and found only fences, private land and security guards. On our way up one of the subidas we gave a lift to a skater, who pointed us in the direction of a broken bit of fence through which we could squeeze, proving true the old adage that if you want to do something illegal, your best source of info is a teenager with a skateboard. Squeeze we did and our picnic was fine, the bad feeling in my stomach coming not from the food, but from the fact that we had to force our way into an area that should, in my not-so-humble-because-its-my-blog opinion, be available for everyone to enjoy, not just those willing to break property laws.
Not to be defeated, and slightly delirious after an all-night film shoot so randomly hilarious that it will get its very own blog post in the coming days, the next day we decided to climb Cerro Manquehue. As a disclaimer, and before you read the rest of this post, this undertaking was described to me, by Chileans, as 'a walk up a hill, although perhaps you shouldn't wear those sandals.'
Cerro Manquehue is the big volcano looking thing just outside Las Condes. You can see it from the city. Perhaps the fact that it looked like a volcano should have tipped me off that what we were about to do was not, essentially, the smartest decision. Yet strangely it did not. Thus I can now report that despite all appearances Cerro Manquehue is a) not a volcano and b) not a bloody hill. It is a mountain.
Its also the exact place we had been looking for the day before - I'm not sure what the legal status of the land is but I can say that there are no fences and a lot of paths, so I'm guessing that its either public access or that no-one cares much. Regardless, its a wonderful escape from the city, just a short drive from downtown. A walk in the park you might say. So did I. Incorrectly as it turns out.
At a certain stage (ie several hours after setting out and half way up what can only be described as a sheer cliff face) I wondered if we should not, perhaps, be using ropes. Or a helmet. Or at the very least have on us a larger supply of water that two 500ml bottles. I also wondered where the path was. This was a question that we were all contemplating. There was no way to find out, because there was also no cell phone coverage.
Now I've seen Alive, and therefore I know what happens when you get lost in the Andes. So as the prospect of us finding the path faded with every passing moment, I started eying up my companions as potential meals. O, ever the gentleman, assured me that if a reenactment of Alive was going to unfold here on the hillside with Santiago in full view, that at least I would not be first on the menu. Realising that I was not only more succulent but also somehow cleaner than everyone else, and that O was perhaps intending to lull me into a false sense of security before braining me with a boulder ready for first course, I promptly face-planted into a pile of dust and prickles. In fact, I'm fairly sure that Manquehue is Mapuche for Prickle Mountain, such is the prevalence and persistence of the flora. There were thistles god damn it. I thought those things only grew in Scotland.
Having given away somewhat the punchline, that we survived Manquehue and that no-one got eaten, by the fact that I'm still here to write this blog, all that remains to be said is that we scaled that god damned mountain in a way that no-one has before and no doubt no-one ever will again.
The true thorn in my side is that after staggering down the other side, three and a half hours later, filthy and dehydrated, in the carpark we bumped into the two friends who'd we'd been aiming to meet up with on the hill. They were fresh. They were clean. They had water left. They had spent the afternoon drinking beers and enjoying the view.
Oh, and they told us that the reason there were no other people on the hill was because the night before the news had reported of a masked mugger who roamed the trails and relieved hikers of their cameras and wallets.
Somehow, I don't think he would have chosen the path we were on. Small mercies, anyone?
Monday, November 30, 2009
Random Piñera Spotting in Puerto Varas
When I decided that I wanted to work in TV, I had several friends who went into being 'real' journalists. A couple are now political reporters, and at least one spent the last Australian election 'on the campaign trail' following in the steps of some god-awful politician as he toured around the country kissing babies and doling out soup to the homeless.
For a while, as I sat at my desk surrounded by people playing guitars and pondering the tough decisions such as whether to send our next shoot to Morocco or Madagascar, I wondered whether I was missing out. Last weekend in Puerto Varas, I discovered the answer to that question.
Puerto Varas is a small town on the edge of a lake in the getting-towards-being-in-the-South-but-not-quite-there-yet region of Chile. We were there more or less by accident - after a super early flight to Puerto Montt, our planned bus to Bariloche never showed up, and after several hours waiting in the always-entertaining Puerto Montt bus station (nice to see you Ruth and Charles!), we decided to blow that particular popsicle stand and head to Puerto Varas for the night. We´d heard it was nice, and that you could see volcanoes, which is all I really need to be happy.
Because we are focused on our stomachs precisely 100 percent of the time, and because we had got up early and LAN´s idea of breakfast is three chocolate biscuits, we dumped our bags and headed straight for the nearest German cafe, of which there are about a gazillion in Puerto Varas. After rendering my I-don´t-eat-sweet-things rule a lie (although I still maintain that delicious küchen is not in any way in the same category of sweet things as say.. manjar, which is the work of the devil), we discovered that this same cafe also did what looked like a roaring business in empanadas, judging from the industrial-sized parcels of the things that locals kept staggering out the door with.
We purchased two of these delicious Chilean 'snacks' (read: Chileans consider them a snack, pronounced 'esnack', but anyone in the rest of the world might more accurately suggest that they are more akin to a complete meal) and headed off to the pier to take in the view of the lake and volcanoes.
Unfortunately, Chile lived up to its shitty weather reputation, and there were no volcanoes to be seen. Fortunately, the lack of volcanoes was more than compensated for by the announcement over a loudspeaker that shortly Presidential candidate Sebastian Piñera would be gracing the town with both his presence and the whitest pair of chops that have been seen in provincial Chile for a long time.
Pause for a bit of (I dare say ill informed) info: for those not in the know, Chile's about to have an election. Its a big deal here, and although a fair percentage of the young people that I know haven't actually enrolled to vote, there's still a lot more round-the-dinner-table debate than I'm used to seeing in Australia. There are two 'main' candidates (of course there are more running but from what I can tell most people expect the election to go to one of these two men): Frei and Piñera. Frei is from the Party currently in power (centre-left coalition), and Piñera from a centre-right alliance. Despite Chile´s historic problem regarding right wing governments I´m told that many will this time vote for Piñera because they are sick of having the same party make government every time - with all the corruption, crony-ism and old-boys-club thinking that that implies. That may be, all I can say is that they´re not exactly spoilt for choice here. Frei´s about a zillion years old and he´s already been President once (and he didn´t do a very good job the first time round) and Piñera looks like he´d sell his own grandmother to make a buck. Chile needs a change but I don´t think its coming in this election. Ominami?
So, enough of that. Back to the campaign trail.
Not wanting to pass up an opportunity, we stuffed our half-eaten empanadas still oozing their meaty goodness into my backpack (a decision for which I´m still suffering the consequences) and headed off to meet the man himself.
Now, I´ve not seen many Presidents in my time, or even Presidential candidates, but there were several things about the whole Piñera show that struck me as a bit odd. See if you can pick which ones:
First, on arrival, he was literally mobbed by the crowd. There was hair-pulling and clothing grabbing on a scale not seen outside a Bolivian prison. Not something that I can really see happening to Obama. Admittedly, this wasn´t terribly odd, just one of those details you wouldn´t see at home.
Secondly, while on stage Piñera has a mariachi standing behind him... a new kind of secret service perhaps?
Thirdly, and most bizzarly, at certain points in the rally, Piñera breaks into song. Its like a Presidential campaign come open air karaoke session. The crowd love it. He also makes his son sing, and the deputy for the district sing. Out of the three, we decide that Piñera is the best singer. His teeth are also the whitest.
So on reflection, I'm happy to work in TV, because if it were my job to make this kind of che make sense, I might be donning a mariachi costume and grabbing a mic myself.
For a while, as I sat at my desk surrounded by people playing guitars and pondering the tough decisions such as whether to send our next shoot to Morocco or Madagascar, I wondered whether I was missing out. Last weekend in Puerto Varas, I discovered the answer to that question.
Puerto Varas is a small town on the edge of a lake in the getting-towards-being-in-the-South-but-not-quite-there-yet region of Chile. We were there more or less by accident - after a super early flight to Puerto Montt, our planned bus to Bariloche never showed up, and after several hours waiting in the always-entertaining Puerto Montt bus station (nice to see you Ruth and Charles!), we decided to blow that particular popsicle stand and head to Puerto Varas for the night. We´d heard it was nice, and that you could see volcanoes, which is all I really need to be happy.
Because we are focused on our stomachs precisely 100 percent of the time, and because we had got up early and LAN´s idea of breakfast is three chocolate biscuits, we dumped our bags and headed straight for the nearest German cafe, of which there are about a gazillion in Puerto Varas. After rendering my I-don´t-eat-sweet-things rule a lie (although I still maintain that delicious küchen is not in any way in the same category of sweet things as say.. manjar, which is the work of the devil), we discovered that this same cafe also did what looked like a roaring business in empanadas, judging from the industrial-sized parcels of the things that locals kept staggering out the door with.We purchased two of these delicious Chilean 'snacks' (read: Chileans consider them a snack, pronounced 'esnack', but anyone in the rest of the world might more accurately suggest that they are more akin to a complete meal) and headed off to the pier to take in the view of the lake and volcanoes.
Unfortunately, Chile lived up to its shitty weather reputation, and there were no volcanoes to be seen. Fortunately, the lack of volcanoes was more than compensated for by the announcement over a loudspeaker that shortly Presidential candidate Sebastian Piñera would be gracing the town with both his presence and the whitest pair of chops that have been seen in provincial Chile for a long time.
Pause for a bit of (I dare say ill informed) info: for those not in the know, Chile's about to have an election. Its a big deal here, and although a fair percentage of the young people that I know haven't actually enrolled to vote, there's still a lot more round-the-dinner-table debate than I'm used to seeing in Australia. There are two 'main' candidates (of course there are more running but from what I can tell most people expect the election to go to one of these two men): Frei and Piñera. Frei is from the Party currently in power (centre-left coalition), and Piñera from a centre-right alliance. Despite Chile´s historic problem regarding right wing governments I´m told that many will this time vote for Piñera because they are sick of having the same party make government every time - with all the corruption, crony-ism and old-boys-club thinking that that implies. That may be, all I can say is that they´re not exactly spoilt for choice here. Frei´s about a zillion years old and he´s already been President once (and he didn´t do a very good job the first time round) and Piñera looks like he´d sell his own grandmother to make a buck. Chile needs a change but I don´t think its coming in this election. Ominami?
So, enough of that. Back to the campaign trail.
Not wanting to pass up an opportunity, we stuffed our half-eaten empanadas still oozing their meaty goodness into my backpack (a decision for which I´m still suffering the consequences) and headed off to meet the man himself.
Now, I´ve not seen many Presidents in my time, or even Presidential candidates, but there were several things about the whole Piñera show that struck me as a bit odd. See if you can pick which ones:
First, on arrival, he was literally mobbed by the crowd. There was hair-pulling and clothing grabbing on a scale not seen outside a Bolivian prison. Not something that I can really see happening to Obama. Admittedly, this wasn´t terribly odd, just one of those details you wouldn´t see at home.
Thirdly, and most bizzarly, at certain points in the rally, Piñera breaks into song. Its like a Presidential campaign come open air karaoke session. The crowd love it. He also makes his son sing, and the deputy for the district sing. Out of the three, we decide that Piñera is the best singer. His teeth are also the whitest.
So on reflection, I'm happy to work in TV, because if it were my job to make this kind of che make sense, I might be donning a mariachi costume and grabbing a mic myself.
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
Long live long weekends
End of a week / end of an era?
Last week I finished up at work. Crazy doesn't begin to describe it.. just trying to get everything finished on time took about every bit of endurance I had, to which the bags under my eyes can probably attest. If you'd asked me Wednesday if I'd be able to make it.. well, I'd have said 'yes' because I'm yet to learn the fine art of saying no to work-related things, but what you wouldn't have known was that deep down I was quaking in my boots.
Last week was script-annotating week, which is a unforgivably tedious task, and really brings home the unfairness of life when you're told Wikipedia is not considered a 'reliable source.' At least I didn't have to cope with trying to annotate the statement 'Jesus walked on water' to broadcasting's exacting standards as happened in a prior episode in this series... Nope, no messiahs in Alaska, just lots of stuff about grizzly bears - about which I'm now something of an expert thanks to the very informative people at the Alaskan Fish and Game Department. Two facts for you - one - did you know that hunting grizzlies is allowed? I'm quite appalled. And two - if a grizzly is attacking you, you should under no circumstances make 'a high pitched squealing noise' as apparently it enrages them.
So despite the rare opportunity to learn lots about bears and call it work, last week was crazy, and to top it all off, we'd decided to get out of the city on the weekend to regain some much-needed sanity, it being a long weekend and all here. Working from Chile has been great money-wise, but trying to coordinate with three different time-zones is not easy - as a result of which I'm often up at 3am responding to questions from Australia, then up again at 9am to deal with the US. Ok, I'm saying 'often' but actually I mean 'sometimes.' But Friday was one of those times - come 9pm Friday night I was still sending stuff through to Aus, even though we were meant to have left for the beach hours previously.
I must have wowed them all with my bear-facts though, because just when I though we'd have to call off the trip so I could stay here and finish the script, I got the all-clear. Ta-DA.
So, here's where we went to celebrate:
Last week I finished up at work. Crazy doesn't begin to describe it.. just trying to get everything finished on time took about every bit of endurance I had, to which the bags under my eyes can probably attest. If you'd asked me Wednesday if I'd be able to make it.. well, I'd have said 'yes' because I'm yet to learn the fine art of saying no to work-related things, but what you wouldn't have known was that deep down I was quaking in my boots.
Last week was script-annotating week, which is a unforgivably tedious task, and really brings home the unfairness of life when you're told Wikipedia is not considered a 'reliable source.' At least I didn't have to cope with trying to annotate the statement 'Jesus walked on water' to broadcasting's exacting standards as happened in a prior episode in this series... Nope, no messiahs in Alaska, just lots of stuff about grizzly bears - about which I'm now something of an expert thanks to the very informative people at the Alaskan Fish and Game Department. Two facts for you - one - did you know that hunting grizzlies is allowed? I'm quite appalled. And two - if a grizzly is attacking you, you should under no circumstances make 'a high pitched squealing noise' as apparently it enrages them.
So despite the rare opportunity to learn lots about bears and call it work, last week was crazy, and to top it all off, we'd decided to get out of the city on the weekend to regain some much-needed sanity, it being a long weekend and all here. Working from Chile has been great money-wise, but trying to coordinate with three different time-zones is not easy - as a result of which I'm often up at 3am responding to questions from Australia, then up again at 9am to deal with the US. Ok, I'm saying 'often' but actually I mean 'sometimes.' But Friday was one of those times - come 9pm Friday night I was still sending stuff through to Aus, even though we were meant to have left for the beach hours previously.
I must have wowed them all with my bear-facts though, because just when I though we'd have to call off the trip so I could stay here and finish the script, I got the all-clear. Ta-DA.
So, here's where we went to celebrate:
Where we found this:
And lots of this:
It was wonderful. There was guitar-playing and barbecue-making, and even sleeping in. Bliss. Long live the long weekend.
Now, anyone need someone to work on their next show?
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