Wierd Haircuts, Elegant Dresses
It still amazes me how much central Chile resembles Israel. The roads are surprisingly good, the weather is perfectly mediterrenian, and the cities just resemble parts of Israeli cities: Valparaiso, for example, has a scent of the southern, weak parts, of Tel-Aviv. With its wonderful urban mess between slums that should have been destroyed years ago and old-style beautiful buildings (Neve-Tzedek), with its paved roads, and with the one big difference - the ascensors, the lifts.
Valparaiso, and its close suburb viña-del-mar, are located on the coast of the pacific. The scenery on the way (1.5 hour drive on a perfect road in an airconditioned bus) is of small hills - probably the slopes of the Andes - that fall from Santiago towards the sea. Valparaiso itself is spread over several of these hills, and besides its seemingly undesigned alleys that curve along the slopes, it has a narrow coastline and a big harbour. The steep climb to the hills was solved in an original way: a set of public lifts, spread all over town, allows you to do the climbing very easily. They also provide excellent views of the downtown city, the harbour and the ocean.
We went to Valparaiso yesterday, after sleeping at viña-del-mar, a close suburb with nothing to do in it, besides a beautiful beach - much nicer than the one in town. In viña we met Derek, a canadian guy who was volunteering for 3 weeks in Chile building houses; we went together to Valparaiso, and generally stayed together all the day.
Chile had elections yesterday. For us this meant a few things: first, the streets were full of carabineros, the local police. Second, all the sites were closed - not that there are too many sites at Valparaiso: we went to Pablo Neruda’s house (but couldn’t enter. We did see, though, that it is adjacent to a primary school. With all the noise, no wander that Neruda built a second house elsewere, where he could work), to a museum of caricatures (also closed due to elections), and then we realized all will be closed so we just strolled on the streets.
The streets are full of people. All of them dress a bit more elegant than you would expect: the man, especially the old ones, wear jackets and suits; the women wear colourful dresses. The haircuts are also different - I now understand why the barber at Santiago refused to cut my hair short: it is very uncommon here. Most common is the Shvil style, and it is evident Chileans take great care about the way they dress and look.
In the evening we met at the hostel four Israelies, travelling just after the army. One of them was actually at the same batallion with Shlomi and Gilaad from New-Zealand (regards to princessa Shushinka from T. Barda) and it was funny to hear his stories about them after hearing their stories… small world!
We went out together and found out the third, perhaps most problematic, implication of the elections: it was forbidden by law to sell alcohol until midnight. Out of beer, we went to the local casino - where we met a bunch of jewish Chilean kids, who study at the jewish school of Santiago and speak Hebrew. We talked with them a bit (they were last year for 3 weeks in Israel, out of which they stayed one week at a GADNA and proudly told us they got to shoot 11 bullets each. They also told us many other things.) and later, around midnight, when it became legal again to sell beers, we left the casino and went to a pub.
On the way Roberto and Derek, who felt a bit out of place, left us and went to sleep; we continued to the pub, where we set until half past three drinking beers and telling stories. The most remarkable thing was the way beers are served here: the standard bottle has the volume of one liter. It costs around 1000 pesos (a bit less than 2$U.S.), and we had quite a few between the five of us. We tried some local and imported beers (until now, the best SA beer I had is the Brazilian Brahma, which Roberto introduced to me in Santiago), and had good time.
Today I am going to return to Santiago, and find out about the flight to Easter-Island. I really hope there will be one available soon. If I can’t book one soon, I will first go to Mendoza, on the Argentine side, but it all depends on the flights - so cross your fingers for me.
February 14th, 2006 at 19:40
one thing which still amazes me is how you go somewhere and ‘just happen’ to meet people. I got some of that in thailand (both times) and in france, but not at the quantity and quality you appear so easily to achieve. How do you “go to a casino and meet a group of jewish kids” ?
On another note - its very important to remember, in a mixed group which has mostly Israelis, to continue to speak only English. And I mean only English. Its very easy for the other nationals to get offended that the group is not including them in its dynamics, and even feel that they are being unjustly ignored or put upon.
Young people, and especially the Israeli brand of young people tend to forget or ignore that fact and then are “surprised” that the other nationals don’t want to have anything to do with Israelis..