Por La Razón o La Fuerza

I’ve started getting conscious of the semester drawing closer and closer to its end, and with it inevitably my time in Chile. Classes end the last week of November for me, and then I’m traveling by myself around the Lakes Region until my mom joins me in Santiago on December 22nd. I’ve been feeling a bit sad about not really having many/any Chilean friends but telling myself to just try to maximize my remaining time here to meet people and make this semester a personal experience as opposed to six months of events strung together.

By the way, it is so easy to sit down with my gringo friends and have an entire conversation of intense reflection about our study abroad experiences. (El Baul Café is very conducive to this.) I was recently talking with Jess and Heather, two year long-ers about how taking the full year abroad really allows you to develop the skills and friendships you have just started to plant in the first semester. But at the same time, I am happy only to have been gone one semester. Junior year of college isn’t the only opportunity we have to live somewhere new, and there is plenty I still want to explore at Brown.

Chile, instead of states, has regiones: there are 15 plus a Región Metropolitana de Santiago (the capital), 2 of which just became operative earlier this month. Valparaíso is the capital of the V Región (Quinta, “keenta”) which is right next door to Santiago’s RM. So really, given the incredible length of the country, there is a disproportionate density of people and cities around here. But Viña/Valpo still don’t have their own major airport, for some reason.

In the spirit of maximizing our time and familiarizing ourselves with our region in Chile, Caitlin and I decided to venture to the pueblo of La Ligua to “go to the source”… of woven goods and dulces (sweets). We showed up at a bus stop on Libertad not sure what to do next but heard a man yelling, “Quillota! Calera! LA LIGUA!!” So we ran over and hopped on his bus, which turned out to be just as expensive ($2,000 pesos = $4 USD) and longer than a ride to Santiago. Anyway, it was fun, and it’s always nice to be surrounded by only Chileans (somehow that is a lot harder to come by than it should be).

2 hours later we stepped off in La Ligua and instantly saw sweaters everywhere. The town has a nice small plaza surrounded by textile shops and eateries. Especially since we arrived around lunchtime, there were dozens of vendors selling fruits and vegetables on the street, including plastic bags with all sorts of chopped veggies in what I gathered was a sweet dressing, with each bag inflated to within an inch of its life. We went to La Lihuen which was good, and I finally (after seeing the name so many times) tried camarones al pil pil, which are shrimp in an olive oil and garlic emulsion soup/salsa. According to Wikipedia (I had to “go to the source” again), the name “pil pil” for the sauce is an onomatopoeia derived from the sound made as the sauce is whirled in the pan during preparation.

We then took the waiter’s suggestion to take a colectivo to Valle Hermosa about 10 minutes away… which was basically one road flanked by sweater shops as far as the eye could see. Neither Caitlin nor I were looking for any woven goods in particular, so we kind of peeked our heads in every few shops. There were also a few artesanía handicrafts shops with prices much lower than other places (for example, San Pedro).

We had the good fortune to run into Mauricio at a bus stop to catch a micro back to La Ligua. He was a dulces vendor who explained to us that there are about 20 dulces factories around La Ligua, and they each have an army of salespeople that get huge wicker baskets full of about a dozen kinds of dulces.

“Pastelitos fresquitos! Llegaron recién! Liiiiiiiiight!!!”

He would yell, meaning “Fresh little pastries! Just arrived! Light!” I asked him how long ago they’d arrived, and he said, “shhhhhh.” He said you just have to make those kinds of statements to get people to come over to your basket, just as another salesperson walked over and set down his basket about 20 feet away upstream in the flow of people, making Mauricio anxious and yell louder. But Mauricio maintained a pretty stead flow of customers, and he would tell them that these lovely gringas were bringing him good luck and that we’d arrived “direct to La Ligua from the United States.”

Eventually we did make it back into La Ligua and headed straight for the delectable aroma we had smelled on the way to lunch earlier in the day. We traced it to La Masa de Carlos, a pastelería around the corner. In addition to small batches of all of Mauricio’s types of dulces, Carlos also had probably the most beautiful alfajores I have yet seen.

Tomorrow : Santiago
Nov 1 – 4 : La Serena
Nov 8 – 11 : Buenos Aires