Socialists, Social Events, and Associations

Sunday, December 15, 2013: “ Michelle Bachelet Easily Regains Presidency”…

Today was the run-off election.  None of the 11 candidates who ran on Nov 17 had a certain majority.  Chileans have now re-elected Bachelet, the center-socialist, and maybe she'll use her position wisely.    http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2013/12/15/michelle-bachelet-chile-presidency/4033693/

Recent Social Events in Puerto Montt: 

Frauenverein

Our neighbor in the apartment next door is Yolanda, a lovely woman of la tercer edad, who gave me a ticket to the traditional Christmastime Onces party by the Frauenverien of Puerto Montt.  Women of German descent, they do good works in the community, and hold these parties a couple times a year to raise money for their causes.  We gathered in the large hall of the Club Aleman, where thirty big round tables were set with plates of petit four sandwiches, cookies, and cakes of every kind.  Champagne glasses of freshly minced strawberries topped with sparkling soda, marked each place, and every table had a big bowl of Nescafe instant coffee, a pitcher of hot milk and a thermos of hot water.  (Photo is from the Club Aleman website ... there really were 30 tables, each set for ten, and every seat held a lively, lovely woman!) 

Yolanda sat me next to an English-speaker named Ursula, a young woman who told me she's known most of the women in the club since she was a child. She was attending with her mother, and many tables, she said, included three generations of women from the pioneer German families of Pto Montt.  During the first hour of chatting, sipping and nibbling, club members circulated among the tables selling tickets for the raffling of prizes.  You wrote your name next to whichever numbers you wanted on the offered page, 500 pesos per number, probably 20 numers per page. Other club members carried trays of more cake for those who weren't quite satiated yet!  I'm sorry I didn't figure out a way to wrap a sticky-creamy sweet slice or two to take home to Richard.

During the second hour, once all the tickets were sold, cut apart and folded, club members conducted the raffle.  What a scene!  While women with microphones stood in the front of the room by a long table loaded with prizes, a tiny, beautiful, white-haired mujer carried the big shopping bag full of tickets around the room, choosing someone here and there to pull out the winner of the next prize.  A red-faced runner carried the chosen ticket to the front, where it sometimes took two or three to decipher the handwriting and call out the name.  Prizes included donated store-bought treasures like a hair-dryer, and a crystal platter, as well as hand-made items like an afghan, and a set of embroidered towels ... plus a couple of cash prizes, some gift certificates to various restaurants, and a huge cake that would do any wedding proud.  I didn't win a thing, but thoroughly enjoyed chatting with Ushie about her work as a psychologist at the local prison, and her family's preparations for summer vacations.  

Almozar

Richard and I went together to the next event, when Marlene, of RePacMar, invited us to her home for lunch.  We walked about a mile and a half to her Angelmo office, arriving at the appointed hour (1 pm.  Not a half-hour late, the usual tiempo Chileno). Marlene drove us to her lovely casa, up on Puerto Montt’s fourth terrace.  She's a flower-gardener with a fine collection.  (I am a giantess in this country!)

Can you see that the centers of these daisies are blue?!?

Inside, Margarita, the live-in cook, served us pirotas con longaniza, a typical Chilean bean soup with sausage …delicious ... with tomato salad, homemade rolls, and a wonderful dessert of frozen blueberries atop a melange of shredded orange and banana.   

'Twas fun to talk about the language.  I made my usual complaint about how hard it is to understand, when I can’t see the words I’m hearing.  Harina / arena … Vas hacer /  Vas a ser  … ai yi yi!  Marlene understood completely, and gave another example:  Se pare / separe … the first means he pairs with someone, the second means he separates!    

Richard got onto a story from his voyage in the south of Chile … about trading fresh-caught tuna for a certain shellfish harvested by local fishermen.  “Puro” – he recalled, a bright red oyster-like flesh extracted from rock-like shells.

Marlene corrected him:  Piure  … She talked in Spanish about what an important source of yodo, this particular shellfish is.  Yodo, she said, the essential life ingredient.  ¿Que?  (photos from internet) 

Yodo was NOT in my dictionary. 

Back home later:  Google translate explained.

Have you guessed? 

yodo = iodine 

English-Speakers' Book Club of Puerto Varas

During a very lucky momento at the grocery store not long ago, a woman named Lia overheard R & I talking in English about how to ask for the cheese we like (from Wisconsin … lo siento … we haven’t found a Chilean cheese to compare with Monterey Pepper Jack, or with U.S. Cheddar.)  Lia introduced herself,  offering to help with our request if we needed some Spanish.  She’s Columbian by birth but has been living in Chile for decades, since she married the gringo, Thomas, who came to Chile 20+ years ago from New Hampshire to work in the salmon industry and is now building homes on the 30-acre farm he purchased in Pelluco, just outside of Puerto Montt.  We were satisfied more or less with the grocery store clerk’s answers about our cheese (“maybe next month") but Lia was so friendly we just stood there in the cheese aisle chatting.  While Richard and Thomas discussed their sailboats, Lia asked if I’d like to attend the English-Speaking Book Club in Puerto Varas with her the next day, Friday.   Yes, please! 

She picked me up outside my building at about 10:30 next morning.  We got stuck in traffic in downtown Puerto Varas as one of the elementary schools was celebrating its five year anniversary with a parade thru town.  But the book club group runs on Tiempo Chileno, so even tho we were 45 minutes late, we were not the last to arrive. 

The book, The Good Doctor, by Damon Galgut, is set in post-apartheid South Africa, in the almost-deserted hospital of the former Bantu homeland.  I’d Googled it the night before the meeting, so was not completely ignorant.  But what a pleasure when Vanessa arrived.  She and her husband had emigrated from South Africa some three or four years ago, so she was able to provide a lot of background for the story.   

I will ramble on about the various women of this group in future blogs, as I’m sure to be attending future book group meetings.  Next book:  The Dalai Lama’s Cat… which, I don’t know, doesn’t sound like my cup of tea, really, but I will look forward to hearing Sonia and Doreen and the others discuss it.  Doreen, Chilean, lived in Seattle for 40 years.  Sonia, Chilean, and widowed now, worked at UCLA for years before marrying a retiring American prof and moving to Texas.  He was quite a bit older than she, and told her that one of the good things about her country was that she should be able to live well there on their savings after he was gone. 

Filosofia with the Nueva Acropolis
A poster I kept seeing around town intrigued me, so last Wednesday night Richard and I walked about a mile across town to the house on Anibal Pinto where the local branch of Nueva Acropolis holds its meetings.  The advertised lecture:  
La Personalidad Como Máscara de Yo Interior. 

Interesting topic … who knew if we’d be able to understand more than 10% of the talk, but it would be a good chance to immerse our ears in Espanish, si?  

A very good speaker (he enunciated, spoke slowly and distinctly, and enhanced his presentation with gestures and tidy printing on his white board) delivered a review of basic concepts of filosofia:  the personality is comprised of el cuerpo fisico, el cuerpo energetico, el cuerpo emocional, y el cuerpo mente-deseo.  These temporal layers are all supervised by the a-temporal alma.  Sign up for the full course to learn more about Greek, Chinese, and Egyptian interpretations of the meaning of life! 

We did not stay for the coffee and chat afterwards, but might go back for another session one of these weeks.   

Asociaciónes

Two more things this week:
First:  My friend Beccy commented that my addiction to the soap opera is a legitimate way to learn to hear the language.  Thank you!  I have to add that Avenida Brasil has also been a great spark for good posture.  Every one of the women in this tempestuous telenovela set in Rio de Janeiro holds herself wonderfully straight, erect, long in the spine, breast bone held high, shoulders back, neck lifting the brain to the sky as if to affirm that her body is a conduit connecting her heart with the celestial spirits above. 

That’s an image of Life Force more accessible to me than yodo.

Second:  The cruise ships are delivering tourists to Puerto Montt on a regular basis again, now that the weather is warm and the sun is shining most days.  ¿Quien sabe quien puede aparecer?  Cat Stevens is scheduled to be in Santiago sometime soon.  Maybe he'll stop in down here, too?
Richard took this photo from the end of the waterside tourist pier just outside El Mall Costanera.  Those little boats actually deliver the tourists to Angelmo, almost two miles from the Mall.  The tourists have to ride the buses, or take taxis or collectivos, or WALK like we usually do, to get to el plazo central in Pto Montt.  

Saturday Morning Market

Today, just a few photos from the President Ibañez Mercado this past weekend.  Having arrived BEFORE 9:15 a.m., we walk upstairs first to visit the meat vendors, and look down for an overview of the regular fruit & veggie stalls:

Then we scan the central fresh fish area …

… on our way to the back end of the market where the farmers from the countryside have come to the city to sell. 

We are actually TOO early to catch "The Stevie Wonder of the Market," an aged, blind accordion-player with a great voice.  Maybe next week we'll go a little later again, and capture a bit of video for you.  

Buyers and sellers ...

   
lettuce and peonies ...




The crowd seemed to multiply by the moment ..
Have a great week, yourself, and eat as fresh as you can.  'Ta Luego.

Food, Glorious Food ...

All the walking we’ve been doing - up and down steep hills and stairways, back and forth to the Jumbo, the wine store, the fresh vegetable market, the fish market – creates so many advantages.  Fresh air, bella vistas, great stretches, potent taxing of the heart, and regular burning of calories … which means regular appetites for our favorite fuel:  good food. 

Richard fixed his special garlic-crusted fried chicken on Thanksgiving Day, with spinach and mashed spuds.  Nothing left-over, so we had to go out shopping on Black Friday, but only as far as the grocery store. 

At the fish markets, you buy the whole fish and then watch the expert clean & fillet it.  We like fresh Pacific Sierra, a mackerel-like white fish at about $2 US/lb, that we fried … still have a few pieces in the freezer.  We like Congrio, a delicious, white-fleshed, eel-like fish. $8 US for the whole fish.  We ate half of it fried, and cooked the other half in a tomatoey broth w. other veggies.

We will definitely try (still working up the courage) the picoroco, or giant barnacle. 

Eating picoroco at Angelmo Mercado in Puerto Montt

(watch the 1^st 2 minutes …after that the same video is repeated without sound.)  Last week I learned we are to cook the picorocos in their shells in a large vat of water for 45 minutes, before extracting them to serve with lemon.  Our friend G claims that the picoroco is actually a type of crab, but I don’t see that confirmed on the web.  We know they taste like crab, as we enjoyed a dish of them at the Club de Yates restaurant here in Puerto Montt when we first visited in 2005.  It’s gonna be messy to cook them at home.  Maybe we’ll eat them at the market.  Uncooked, they were going for $1 US each at the Angelmo fish market last Saturday: 

Today, for lunch, we tried the sushi joint on Rancagua Street.  Not too exciting.  For almost $17 US we had nori-wrapped maki rolls made with centolla (recently-thawed & bland), and maki with palmitos (vegetarian- pretty good).  Tried the “special rolls” – wrapped in panko crumbs & fried, with shrimp (good) & cream cheese (huh?) inside.  The green tea, by Lipton, was tasty.  We were the only customers for the young woman who served us.  She’d answered Richard’s very important question, “Tienes wasabi?” in the negative, at first; but fortunately another woman stopped in, and pointed out “el verde, abajo” so we got wasabi after all, even tho it was paste-style from a tube, a disappointment.    

You’d think a seaport/fishing village like Puerto Montt would have great sushi, Richard says.

Maybe not on Mondays.

Low-tide view from the malecon at Angelmo:  this boat doesn't fish anymore.

High-tide view of the beach on Isla Tenglo across the channel from the malecon we walk towards Angelmo.







Last week our friend, Marlene, the owner of the marine supply store, RePacMar, in Angelmo, joined us for lunch at a restaurant called “Adele’s Corner”  …Rincon de Adela … downtown.  Marlene is very patient with our Spanish efforts, and even ventured a few words in English.  I’d been accumulating my list of questions for her for weeks:

1. Where does the city’s water come from? (Well water is pumped into storage tanks arriba, and treated before being dispersed.)  My tap water is sometimes cloudy.  Marlene suggests that might be due to the storage tanks in our building.  When the water is cloudy, I drink the bottled stuff.
   Photo above:  one of the water tanks on the upper level of the city (left), and Volcan Calbuco (right).
2. Where can I get buttermilk for my Ranch dressing recipe? (Probably have to go to the dairy where the butter is made.  Nobody sells buttermilk in the grocery stores.)  I’ve been making do with Greek-style yogurt.  Mixed with a little cider vinegar, mayo, minced parsley & green onion, & a clove of garlic mashed with salt into paste, it’s close enough to Hidden Valley to satisfy.  Add some good wasabi freshly made from powder, and it’s perfect with celery and carrot sticks. 
   
3. Where can I get curly parsley?  Aka perejil?  Marlene says it’s available at the grocery stores or the Mercados … but we’d only found it once.  Everybody has cilantro; often we see the flat-leafed Italian parsley.  Sin embargo, the dark, curly kind, so full of flavor is rare.  Marlene insisted that we try the Mercado first thing on a Saturday morning, when all the gente from the rural areas bring their produce into town. 

Well, we’d been to both the Angelmo Mercado down on the waterfront and the President Ibañez Mercado up on the third terrace quite a few times, but not on a Saturday morning.  So this past weekend we hiked up to Ibañez at 10:30 a la mañana, Sabado.  ¡Que multitude!   The usual stalls, full of cherries, nectarines, carrots, cabbage, beets, garlic, onions and tomatoes served many buyers.  The fish and shellfish tables teemed with congrio, salmon, mussels, clams and customers.  AND that whole large area at the back … fully one third of the market’s indoor space, which we’d only seen empty before … now teemed with Chilenos at laden tables on which dozens of individual entrepreneurs displayed the spinach, cilantro, radishes, lettuce, potatoes, flowers etc etc etc from their gardens.  Picoroco and heaps of clams & mussels for sale at the very back.  Fresh-baked cookies and cakes at one table.  We had a lot of fun searching for the curly parsley … the one thing nobody had! 

We climbed up to the second level for a balcony over-look …oh, so sorry, the camera’s battery was inoperado.  But now we know.  Saturday morning really is the time to shop.  Next week we’ll have a charged camera.

As it happened, we found perejil at one of the regular stands after all.  A full, fresh, fragrant bunch, tied with a strand of straw, for 350 pesos … about 60 cents US.   I chopped some tonight for the latest batch of Ranch.

Two projects, outside of food, occupy our “working hours” (or maybe I should say our working moments) these days:  1) getting the boat “imported” into Chile, and 2) opening a bank account here.  Richard (a Taurus with moon in Capricorn) is patiently stepping his way along both paths.  Two weeks ago we took the bus (45 minutes) up to Frutillar, where his English-speaking attorney, Zandra, has an office just above the gorgeous Lago Llanquihue.  A lovely, blue-sky day allowed a view of the nearby Volcan Osorno:

…and we enjoyed a walk along the lakeshore to the Teatro, before getting the bus back to town. 

Zandra agreed that the prices R had been quoted for appraisal of the value of the boat, and for “agency” to get through the customs process of importation were both higher than normal.  She’ll act as coordinator with both appraiser and customs agent, and maybe that will turn out all right.  I’m almost positive that the price the customs agent quoted was due in good part to our atrocious Spanish when we met with him.  Who wouldn’t add a few hundred dollars worth of work to deal with such inept strangers?  Our Spanish is improving every day … but sheesh!  The language of customs, taxes, values, and bureaucracy is still very much a challenge. 

Meanwhile, the Se Vende flyers R had printed, and distributed himself among the marinas of Puerto Montt, advertise the Sailing Vessel Abrazo for sale at $35.000,000 CLP, or about $70K US.

Feedback says that’s too much.  Since the boat has not yet been imported, a buyer would have to pay the Chilean government a 19% IVA tax, plus some unknown customs charges.

Richard has already experimentally slashed the price to $28,500 CLP on the flyers at Marina Reloncavi … but he’s not advertising anymore till he gets Abrazo thru the importation process.

He’s found quite a few examples of “similar” boats on Yachts.com, and hopes the Chilean appraiser will agree to a value less than $30K U.S. for import taxes.

Vamos a ver.

The bank account project has involved already several hours with Spanish-speaking account managers, several trips to the copy service to print out US records required by the Chilean bank, and many dollars invested in special delivery of signed papers for wire transfer.  $5500 US minimum balance required or else they charge a service fee of $66 US per month.

On the plus side, if you maintain the minimum balance, the bank pays 4% interest.  When was the last time we saw that from a US bank?  

I’m reading a 1995 book called Trust:  The Social Virtues & The Creation of Prosperity, by Francis Fukuyama.  Very interesting.  The author proposes that modern, free-market economic theory is 80% correct.  What’s missing is the importance of cultural differences, something recognized in classical economics.  If there are high levels of trust in a society, the economy can be more efficient and successful than if trust is limited, for instance, to within close family groups.  The US, Fukuyama says, has a historically “communitarian orientation,” even tho we think of ourselves as “rugged individualists.”  And then, unfortunately, there has been a steadily worsening breakdown of trust in our country:  We spend more for police protection than other industrialized nations; we keep more than one percent of our population in prisons; we pay substantially more than Japan or Europe to lawyers so our citizens can sue one another.  These costs are “a direct tax imposed by the breakdown of trust in the society.” 

I recognize that one reason this book is so interesting to me has a very personal root.  When I was a kid, newly able to read, and Mom was soon to give birth to my next brother or sister, I studied the Baby Names book and learned that my name, Susan, means “trusting.”  I ran to Dad with this fabulous new information, but he made a terrible scowling face at the book, and said, “Christ! You don’t want to be trusting!  You’ll lose everything!”  Hmmm.  The “Question Authority” aspect his remark sparked was mostly positive, I think.  What else he planted in my subconscious, tho?  ¿Quien sabe?

One more quote from Fukuyama:   “In addition to its physical capital, the US has been living off a fund of social capital.  Just as its savings rate has been too low to replace physical plant & infrastructure adequately, so its replenishment of social capital has lagged in recent decades.”
I’m hopeful that Part V of this book will bring ideas for “enriching trust.” 

On the other hand, as part of my study of the Spanish language, I’m watching a telenovela called Avenida Brasil.  Originally in Portuguese, this celebrated soap-opera is dubbed for Chilean TV in Spanish, so there is that small problem of the lip-synch being un poco confundiente.  However, I’ve invested many hours and have begun to train my ear.

 

 The story involves unbelievable passion, revenge, fierce love, vast idiocy, and is set in Rio with scenes of children working in the huge landfill-dump, and wealthy ex-futbol stars in their Ipanema mansion, with lots of marketing in the Divino neighborhood and Copocabana beach scenes too.  I’m afraid I’ve become addicted.  According to Wikipedia, the series will begin in English in the U.S. next year.   If you go to the Facebook site:  telenovelas chilenas  you can scroll to find a link to the latest chapter.  I’ve just watched Capitulo 92. 

Onward, into the future.  May December delight you with holiday warmth.  We're wondering when the ssssssummer is going to show here in the Southern climes.
'ta luego ...

Cost of Living

From our living room window,
 looking towards the waterfront...
<- the band of aluminum at the base of the photo is the roof of the covered parking.



From our living room window, looking up towards the third level of                                                       the city. ->


From our doorway, looking at the living room window...

Monday: Pagamos las cuentas. What does it cost to live here? Today we hiked downtown to the O’Higgins Plaza building, where Ivón works on the fifth floor in the office of Propiedades Nor/Sur. She showed us the departamento we are renting, so we visit her to pay the monthly rent. CLP 300,000. Around $600 US/month. A week or so ago we paid the gastos communes … similar to condo fees … paid to the conserje in our building. Gastos were CLP 36,000 or $72 this month. We’re told they vary month to month depending on …. cosas.

I had a report to make to Ivón while in her officina. The hot water faucet (la llave) in our bathroom sink is often goteo (goteando?) dripping. Ivón called someone right away, and we think that someone will be calling us whenever he or she is ready to visit our departamento to fix the problem.
It better not be tomorrow afternoon, though, as we have a date for lunch at Cotele, the fabulous steak restaurant in Pelluco run by Jeremy (our landlord for the island house). http://www.cotele.cl  We’ll be celebrating with a friend who plans to sail away on his voyage out of Chilean waters.

Back to the cost of living: At Telefonica Sur on Avenida Guillermo Gallarda we took our bill to the caja and paid CLP 22,000 - aka “22 mil” - or about $44. That covered the installation cost of our internet at the apartment ($36) plus the pro-rated cost of the monthly internet @ $28/mo from the day of hook-up (10-21) to the end of October. At least, we’re pretty sure that’s what it covered. We’re on the cheapest available plan and we’re happy with the internet service at the apartment. There are occasions when it fails, but only for a few minutes at a time … 6 pm and 10 pm being the likely moments of failure. Richard explains that that’s most likely because people in other parts of our building are connecting at those times to check email or whatever.

We had to ask directions to find the closest Caja Vecina where we could pay our electric bill for the past month. 9 mil … or $18. Electricidad powers our hot water heater at the apartment, as well as lights and the various battery-chargers for phones & computers.

Our gas bill for this first month in the apartment should be arriving any day now. We do a lot of cooking here, so I can hardly wait to learn how much gas we’ve used.

This week’s load of laundry only weighed 5 kilos, instead of the 6 it’s been the last couple weeks. At 1.2 mil per kilo we’re paying $12 to $14/ week to have our clothes, towels & bedsheets washed and dried.

We stood in line for a few minutes at the Banco Estado to pay our final charge for today: a one-time fee of $100 US to extend my 3-month tourist visa for another 3 months.  Current visa cost is $160 - good for a 3-month visit thru-out the life of your passport.  (We paid $100 the first time we came to Chile in 2005. I had to renew my passport last year, so had to pay again to get the initial 3-month tourist visa this time.) 25 cents to have my passport & original tourist visa copied. Senora Gladys, at the Office of Estraneros in the government building downtown made things easy. She remembered Richard from last year, asked him about his boat, and understood perfectly that living in an apartment was more comfortable than living on the boat. She filled out the application for me, scanned a signed copy into her computer, and gave us the chit to take to the bank to record our payment. We took the bank receipt back to her to be scanned and added to the application package. I go back on Wednesday to get my extended tourist visa.

By 1 pm our financial chores were done. We hiked back up Guillermo Gallardo to the Bikram Yoga studio and ascended the concrete ramp up to Avenida Padre Harter, past the Kofke market, past the wild fennel field and the Dental Clinic to our building up on O’Higgins. Time for lunch, and rest, and checking email. 

I chopped the contents of our little compost tub and buried the vegetable material in the window box amongst the geraniums.

 In the late afternoon, I walked out to the Jumbo to replenish the wine supply: cabernet sauvignon for Ricardo and chardonnay for me. In the future, I’ll give you the economic analysis of what we spend on food and drink.

Tuesday: What was that about the internet service here being so good? Somehow paying the bill yesterday coincided with a total collapse of our service! Rebooting the modem didn’t help; and the special phone # we’d been given if we needed help just rang, and rang, and rang. We had to walk to town anyway, to collect the clean laundry, so we stopped at the Telefonica Sur office to ask for help. They’ll have to send a technician to the apartment. Someone will call us within 48 hrs to set the time of the visit.

Walking to town includes descending to the waterfront level.  One way to do that is to take the Rancagua stairway.  From our building we have walked one block south-ish on O'Higgins and turned a la derecha (west-ish) onto Seminario.  When Seminario begins to descend (on the right), we take the stub street to the left.  Next, you see Richard standing at the top of the Rancagua stairs.

On the way back up the Rancagua Street Stairway .... below shows the view from the bottom ...

... we were almost to the top when my cell phone rang.  I have trouble enough hearing a Spanish-speaker correctly in person, and the phone is an extra challenge, even when you’re not outside with the noise of traffic and birds, not to mention the pounding of my heartbeat near the top of that stairway. So you’ll forgive me if I interpreted the caller to be the Telefonica Sur technician wanting to set a time. The caller used the word clave several times: that should have reminded me to think of the bathroom sink faucet since both llave and clave mean “key.” My over-heated mind heard clave and interpreted that as needing ingress to the apartment ….
Well, anyway, I knew it would have to be after 3:30 or 4 pm, due to the aforementioned lunch date at the steak house. I managed to convey that time frame, and the caller seemed to agree. Yay!
Later, while putting the laundry away, I realized I’d probably made that appointment with the plumber, not the internet tech guy. Ai yi yi.
DURING lunch with our sailing friend at Cotele, Richard’s cell rang with the call from the internet guy. He passed the phone to me … !!! There was something about dies y ocho horas but all I could manage was that anytime after 4 pm today would be perfecto. What will it be like to feel any kind of grace or competence in this strange lingo!?!?

After a wonderful lunch, we were home around 3:22 pm, but Luis, the plumber didn’t get there till a little after 4, and it was almost 7 pm before the Telefonica techy arrived. Luis took things apart in the bathroom, then took off to get the part he thought would work … a new washer/seal. When he returned, he told us he’d gotten the new part at the hotel down the street. (They just have a different way of doing business here.) Maybe it wasn’t exactly the right part, or maybe the problem is beyond the washer/seal. We’re pretty sure Luis said he would have to return with an entirely new faucet. He did leave us better off than before: the leak is only a drip now, not a stream.
The young man from Telefonica fiddled with the modem for ten minutes, then called in to Ground Control for another ten. Pretty soon he wanted Richard to tune in and see that the link had been re-established. Success. Could he tell what had gone wrong? I asked. It had to be reconfigurado. Maybe there had been a cut in the power. Okay!

Our current nest in Pto Montt ...

... is the small apartment we're renting in a building called Los Almendros.

The red arrow on the LEFT points to our building. The red arrow in the CENTER points to the low spot on Avenue Padre Harter, where we turn DOWN to the left on Guillermo Gallardo, to descend to the waterfront level of the city. (We're ALWAYS on foot going down to Centro; occasionally we take a collectivo to get back home.) The red arrow on the RIGHT points to the Civil Registry Building, up on the city's top level. Richard has been there several times in the last weeks, hoping to pick up his Chilean Permanent Resident card, which hasn't been ready yet. Now the whole team of government bureaucrats is on strike, in support of the nation-wide strike of Municipal workers. Paciencia.

Walking up Padre Harter, from centro, we see the back side of our building. That gate is security for a quiet, residential community separate from ours. The red arrow in the pic on the right points to our double sliding doors over a concrete window box that serves as our balcony. Each of the bulging corners of the building are other people's apartments. Our neighbor, Yolanda, gave us a bundle of asparagus, fresh from Chillan, just yesterday.

Yesterday afternoon, after Richard left to catch the bus out to the marina, I walked out the front of our building, aiming to cross Padre Harter and climb the hill on Avenida O'Higgins. I wanted to take photos from on high. I'd already done part of my "elevation gain" exercise that day: back-packed the week's laundry downtown to the lavanderia, where I left it with Senora Maria. Got my hair cut, too, by Gabriela, across the hall.

That's Heraldo, my favorite of the four or five conserjes who take care of our building. He pulled out his earbuds when I asked if I could take his pic. He also pointed out to me that there is a mirador up there at the top of the hill ... an overlook for tourist-types like me.

From there on this gorgeous afternoon, let's take a little tour. Looking west-southwest you can see Isla Tenglo across the channel ... on certain days of the week, you would see the Navimag Ferry in the channel itself. Navimag travels south for 5 days through the fjord country of Patagonia.
That grey patch beyond the red roofs that looks like it might be a bridge across to the island is actually the top stories of a high-rise hotel on the beach level. The twin towers of El Mall rise high on the left. Those, too, are on the beach level. The mass of blue roofs in the foreground is the hospital, a block away from O'Higgins and our building

Looking south-southwest, the reddish roofs in the lower left corner are mostly part of a Catholic school complex we walk past almost every day on trips to the Jumbo ... that patch of grey-metal roofing before you see the darker red roofs beyond.

Then looking south southeast, the coastal highway towards Pelluco.

Okay, one more for general orientation. We had almost a full week of rainy days this past one ... you can probably guess from this map view that Puerto Montt is similar to Seattle in it's rain-catching terrain. We hope you're getting a share of sunshine, wherever you are.

Our first home in Puerto Montt ...

,,, was Jeremy's summer house on Isla Tenglo, where we stayed for a week, October 10 thru 17. Looking out from the cruisers' office at Club Nautico, you see Isla Tenglo across the channel from the marina. Abrazo's dark brown sail-covered main boom is visible among the yachts, if your sight is good.

We would cross on the "Buffalo" ferry, for 300 pesos apiece (about 60 cents). From the end of the dock across to the beach took about 8 LOUD minutes; then walk about 1000 meters on a dirt trail to Jeremy's gate.
This view is from inside the gate. You can see another islander out there on the trail we walked.

The gate is padlocked. Sometimes three or four island men - Jeremy refers to them as "The Council" - sit on the stone steps of our gate, or a neighbor's, in the afternoon sun, drinking "Santa Rita 120" wine from waxed cartons which they always seem to leave behind when they're done.

Looking back across to the mainland, farther west than the marina, you see one of the ships being built at the yard that cranks out quite a fleet to service salmon farms far and near.

Inside the house, where we had opened the curtains to let in the btu's offered by that sunshine, Richard lit the wood stove (door is open, far right). A glass of red wine helps warm the blood, too.

The kitchen looks out into the back yard ... that's the woodshed/bodega/garden shack at the left, and the big old cypress tree with its TWO bandurria nests in the back right corner.
I know, you can't see the nests. I wish you could hear those birds, though. At first, they irritated me ... such a crotchety-outlandish explosion of noise they make! Soon they sounded hilarious to me, and I began to develop theories about what they discussed with such gusto. Mostly, I think, it's all about monitoring the nests carefully, and maybe, raising the young.

http://www.rutaschile.com/eng/parques/Bandurria.php

A close up of the oncoming blooms outside the kitchen window.
I'll get to my Chilean botanizing one of these days.

Jeremy and his family use the house a lot during the summer, but maybe we could rent it for another week at some point if we had visitors from the North.
You have to be willing to pack a 20 lb bottle of gas to have hot water, tho ... a bit of a challenge.

I'm happy that we found a place "in town." Photos of our current pad coming soon.

Asado in Pto Varas

10/28/2013 Monday
I found a mug at the grocery store today ... good to hold what I consider a real cup of coffee, not the tiny demitasse with which my kitchen was furnished. So many adaptations are required by the new culture.
We had a fine time on Saturday out in Puerto Varas at the home of David & Katta and their 3 yr old son, Simon. David does a lot of mechanical work for the various yachtspersons at Marina Reloncavi, and since some of them are about to depart for other ports, he hosted a pot luck barbecue. Our friend collected Richard and me for the drive out thru the countryside. Capitan Frank and his Belgian crew, Jann, along with Julia, who might crew on another boat, and the Australians, Chris & Margi ... we gathered at David's suburban casa, where the big wood-fired grill burned outside the backdoor under the shelter of the covered patio, and the TWO volcanoes, Calbuco and Osorno, showed their lower slopes in the sunny weather, but maintained their mystery caps of cloud until the very end of the day. Chiri-pan ... a hot pork sausage stuffed into a fat bread roll; flank steak grilled in thin strips and cut into bite-sized pieces; and other steak chunks expertly grilled by Australian Frank ... plus salads, red wine, and Richard and I brought a dessert from the Jumbo bakery: raspberry cake with toasted almond slices and a green tea filling.
Australian Chris worked for many years as a family planning social worker, so we talked education; his wife, Margi, is a psychotherapist who still enjoys, on occasion, taking a job in one country or another. Both have been retired and sailing around the world for some 11 years now. They're heading south from here, but might just spend a good long time island hopping before they ever attempt the Straits of Magellan and the path to Antarctica.
Frank and Jann are heading north to Peru and might hang there for some sightseeing, inland travel, before they venture across the Pacific toward New Zealand.
Julia,  a young-looking grandmother from SW England, is aiming to find a way to Antarctica. She'll try to crew w. someone to Puerto Williams, Chile, and maybe across the Beagle Channel to Ushuaia, Argentina, but then she'll be looking for a ride, or a job, or a berth of some kind to the Antarctic wonderland. She'd been here in Puerto Montt back in March of this year, having answered Faraway John's call for crew. But his boat wasn't ready to go yet; an Argentine boat was leaving for Peru, so she jumped aboard with them and spent the last six months exploring Ecuador, Uruguay, the Amazon and a whole lot of other territory before returning here to find a crewing post.

These people have a lot more gusto than I do!

The other guest at David & Katta's asado was their neighbor, MariaLina (I think), a dynamic young mother whose two young kids played w. Simon, while her husband grilled the thin steak strips. She is Chilean, of Croatian descent, and studied for several years at the University in Tubingen, Germany. When she asked Richard where he was from, she definitely knew the territory between Seattle and Bellingham. She told him that the wealthy side of her family had moved to Anacortes, WA some time ago ... where they'd changed their name from Bestovich (or close to that)to Best. She spoke some German, spoke Spanish w. Katta, and English with the rest of us, including a fine little dissertation on the slangy, sleazy nature of Chilean spanish. I liked her immensely. While I was cutting the raspberry cake for dessert, she uncorked a bottle of Chilean champagne and poured for all. She gave us the "Chilean toast": Arriba, abajo, a centro, a dentro! After which she took a piece of cake across the yard to the neighbor on the other side of Katta's house, and returned to tell us that that woman is the teacher at the school where MariaLina's daughter goes, so it's important to keep her happy.

We rode back to Puerto Montt in the sunshine of late afternoon,over the Alerce Road, which crosses beautiful farm country, dotted with patches of bluebells and lilac in bloom. The volcano Calbuco held firm to it's cap of cloud, but Osorno bared it's perfect snow-covered cone against the blue sky.
The outer fringes of Puerto Montt, approached from that high plain are poverty-stricken and devastated; concrete-covered lots thick with trash and plastic bags ... I don't know what the story is there ... the destruction that precedes some new creation, maybe? The streets get clean and prosperous, closer to the edge where the road turns down over the ridge to curve on O'Higgins with its lovely view of the water to the next bench down, where our edificio sits.

I'll post some photos soon, I promise. Meanwhile, on Sunday we hiked down to the Mall to watch "Gravedad" ... the kind of movie that blasts your mind with images that echo for days. Hope you get to see it soon.

Chirimoya

October 25, Friday
You know how the avocado has it's momentito of perfection, when the black skin gives just enough to let you know the green flesh inside is ripe ... but not too ripe.

Same with the chirimoya. You let it rest on top of your refrigerator with the bananas, checking it every day to see if the flesh has begun to give. The first one we bought was a green-skinned baseball when we brought it home from the market. After about four days, when we skinned it and ate the tender, white, custard-textured, piña colada-flavored flesh, it was delicious perfection. Mmmmm. We bought another one the next day.
Not such good luck with the second chirimoya. By the time it felt soft enough to open, more than half the inner fruit was dark brown and sour. Ai, so many skills to learn. (P.S. the photo is borrowed from the web)

Our newspaper, El Llanquihue, carried a review of a new, local book called Araña Gris, a collection of stories and essays from over twenty years of a literary journal published in Chacabuco, near here. I'll find it, and read it; but now, how am I supposed to know whether the meaning of "Araña" in this case is spider or chandelier, the translations so generously offered by my dictionary? Richard says, what difference does it make? The spider is the same shape as the chandelier. One wears it's legs down, the other up.

Here's another observation about the newspaper: the other night, when a friend came for dinner, I bragged to him & Richard that I had completely read that first newspaper we'd purchased last week. Including the classified ads. I wanted to talk about the real estate ads I'd seen, since our friend says he's looking for property in this area.
Oh, no! Both capitans asked me at once: Did you read the Otro Servicios ads? Well, yes. I'd read them. They all seemed to be offering, in coded language, sex of one kind or another. I'd interpreted one of these ads to indicate that the women to be provided were at least over the age of 20. "Newly arrived" and "anything allowed" were some of my translations made with the help of el dictionario. Nothing amusing about these ads, as far as I'm concerned; and I shifted the topic immediately to the Ms. magazine article I've been reading (an old issue, Summer 2010) about a new law in New York that attempts to change the story. Instead of arresting 12 yr. old girls for prostitution, the police are supposed to get those girls to services that will help them into a more humane life. Ai! What a world, huh? Richard says that when he first encountered these Otro Servicios ads, he asked his amigo if prostitution was legal in Chile. Not on the streets, he was told.
According to the Ms article, Atlanta, GA tried to pass a similar law but was not successful. Here's the 2010 mayor's effort in Atlanta: