Valparaiso & Viña del Mar

Went to Val Paraiso and Viña del Mar on a day trip last Sunday. These two cities are situated on the coast (Pacific Ocean) about 1.5 hours from Santiago. Valparaiso used to be an important stop on the route to the US West Coast back in the days before the Panama Canal, needless to say that is a while ago and thus the city is a bit run down these days, albeit full of very charming old houses painted in bright colors, a true camera feast...

View towards Viña from the hills in Valparaiso.

The harbor.

Faded but colorful local beauties (enlarge to see green eye shadow....)

Casas coloradas...

Carlos, Gema & modern art...

Contrast everywhere.

¡Hola Chile!

The time has come to introduce you all to my new temporary home: Santiago de Chile. Founded in 1541, Santiago is situated in Chile's central valley, surrounded by mountains over 5,000 meters tall (-- that's over 16,000 feet) Santiago is about 120KM from the coast on one side and 50KM from the border to Argentina on the other (yes, Chile is that long, narrow country...). Santiago is home to roughly 6 million people (out of a total Chilean population of 15million) and is know for having some of worst smog in the world during fall and winter (aka now).

I am in Chile to complete my MBA summer internship. I was sent here by a not-for-profit organzation called Endeavor, whose goal it is to support high impact entrepreneurs in emerging markets, in order to help of grow/boost local economies. My job is helping an IT resource company named Kibernum develop a new business strategy that will help them "grow to the next level".

Since I arrived about 10 days ago, so many things have happened that recounting them all would be impossible, but here are the highlights of what I have learned about Santiago, Chile, the Chileans etc. so far:

Chile
Is at the end of the world. It is strange but it someways it is really noticeable that there is "nowhere else to go from here". The streets of Santiago this past Sunday were showered in an eerie hazy blue light, as the sun was trying to get through the smog and I wandered through several neighbourhoods, that though mentioned in all tourist guides were devoid of people. Coming from tourist mecca SF, it is a bit odd to visit "city highlights" and run into, say, three other people... I speculate that this may be different in the summer but who knows: over lunch I met "Gavin" -- the gay trinidad-tobagan son of an indian engineer & a british homemaker, who comes here regularly for the happening gay district (& with whom I had a log discussing about how bad the smog is for your complexion...) and he claims that it is always like this. While eerie, there is also a certain beauty to it, the same way that Scotland or Vancouver Island are quietly beautiful...


Santiago
Was beamed here from nothern Italy. The guide books all say it, and they don't lie: Santiago is a lot like cities in nothern Italy. I sometimes feel like I am in Florence on a December day. But the very best comparison I think is Innsbruck (Austrian Alps) which has a similar mountain setting. That said, Santiago is of course entirely its own, which my next point attests to:












"La Contaminacion"


















Smog! Is a serious problem here - seriously - just look at the big yellow blanket hanging over the city in this picture. Asked some people last week what the city/country was planning to do about the problem, and the reply was "well, sometimes we take the bus.... Or when it gets really bad, certain cars aren't allowed to drive." Still trying to find out if there is any kind of long term plan to solve the problem, as it really doesn't do much for Santiago's general level of attractiveness, nor for the health of its population which afterall counts 6 of Chile's 15 million people.

Weather
Chilly! 'tis the winter here after all, that said I think my Danish genes are finally coming to my rescue, I actually don't think it is that cold (it fluctuates between 2-10C/35-50F) despite the fact that several Chileans have explained to me how the Chilean cold is the worst in the world... IMHO, the only reason that they could possibly think that, is because they have never experienced wind-chill. Wind-chill is the Chuck Noris of cold -- all you Scandinavians and Canadians know what I am talking about....

Food
The Chilean kitchen is not well known around the world. There might be a reason for that. I am eating my way through the local specialties and have so far, for my personal taste, encountered more misses than hits. I will note however that I haven't exactly visited any gourmet establishments or eaten seafood yet, so this opinion is subject to change. There is no imminent risk of starvation however, they have wonderful breads, cakes and ice-cream (to be had everywhere even now in the midst of winter - the mall close to my work has no less than 7 largish ice cream parlors...) and there are plenty of US chains.

Update: since originally writing this I have discovered what I so far believe to be the best thing about the Chilean kitchen: Italian food. I have to say that that have extraordinarily fine Italian cooking here, which should most certainly tide me over the next 8 weeks...

Drinks!
Wine is sublime, cheap and available in large quantities are variety everywhere - yeah!! I confess to not having had a Pisco Sour yet, which probably makes me a looser, but there is something about going out on your own, in a foreign place, to consume a kind of hard liquor you've never had before that just hasn't seemed like a great idea. Thursday however, is our first Endeavor intern happy hour aka Pisco Sour time for me...

Update: as obvious from picture to the right, the Pisco Sour enigma has been solved...

Muzak
Long time readers of my blog might remember my entry on "jingles in Tokyo" from last year. No jingles in Santiago, but muzak is omnipresent. In case you ever wondered how artists like Pet Shop Boys or Phil Collins are surving these days, I suspect that their main source of income might be Chilean muzak royalties. The all time winner in this category so far was the pan flute rendition of Bruce Springsteen's "Touger than the rest" that I heard in the metro the other night...

Friends


















Are few and far between. One of the downsides of doing an internship far from home is that, well, you don't really know anyone... Luckily there are two other Endeavor interns in Santiago, a spanish couple from MIT, Gema and Carlos, who have turned out to be darling and fun people. And of course there are people like "Gavin" who provide random short term entertainment...

Sights
It is almost time to wrap up for today, so without much further ado, I'll leave you with the random Santiago tourist shot. By now I have actually managed to see quite a bit in a few marathon weekend days, such as:

















Santiago from above - this time with slightly less smog...

Nobel Prize Winner Pablo Neruda's Santiago House.

The odd shot from the San Francisco church garden - this is where the city was founded.

The presidential palace at La Moneda and with its Salvador Allende statue (Allende was the Chilean president before the Pinochet coup on Sept. 11 (no joke) 1973.)

Que Frio! Santiago, Chile, 5:48AM, 3º Celcius, 37º Fahrenheit

Touched down in Santiago this morning at 5:48AM - it was early, dark and cold, making it seem a bit like landing on another planet after having left Berkeley on a beatiful summer day yesterday. My employer had kindly offered to be there to chauffeur me to where I am now: an "apart hotel" downtown which will be my home for the next 10 weeks. He was also kind enough to suggest that I take the entire day off, to rest and settle in, which I of course (wanting to be "eager beaver intern") have declined.; In a few hours I will be heading to the office for an afternoon meet and greet, first however I am about to venture out under the yellow Santiago sky to locate my nearest Starbucks. Yellow, you may ask, to which I can only say: the smog is real - if you've been to Shanghai, multiple that by 2-3. It adds a nice Blade Runner-ish touch, keeping up the other-world sensation...

Riding Off Into the Sunset...

We're done. Our project for the Mamiraua Institute has been completed with what was meant to be a final presentation of our results this afternoon. In sad reality the meeting we had scheduled in order to present to the four key directors of the institute, ended up being canceled last minute, as only one of them was able to attend in the end. We decided to post-pone rather than spend two hours presenting 90 pages of writing and 50 power point slides, in english, to the one person on the management team who speaks only portuguese...

Not that I am really all that sad about not being able to present - we were crunching up until the last minute and it is sort of nice to just get to hand over the DVD roms with the final product and relax. Of course it would also be great to get feedback from our clients, since however our expectations for what it will look like are somewhat low (we are not telling them what they want to hear) I don't really mind waiting until later in the year for that part.

Feels GREAT to be done and in a few minutes we will head out for a little barbecue/birthday/goodbye celebration that our new-found best friend Cesar (who was our guide when we went to the reserve) has organized for us.

This might be the end of our internet access in Brazil -- tomorrow we head back to Manaus (capital of Amazonas state) in order to be able to catch our Saturday flight back to SFO via Miami. [The local Tefe-Manaus flight only operates twice a week which is why we are leaving so early]. Hopefully we'll get to do some last cool sightseeing stuff in/from Manaus, personally I wouldn't mind another river tour as I feel that just haven't gotten to enjoy it quite enough. I know we keep repeating this but it really is AMAZING!

Oh well, almost time for the next adventure, I am starting to get mentally prepared for the fact that by this time next week i will be in Santiago, Chile working at my summer internship company Kibernum. Crazy!

Nano vs. Beetle

Everyday while we've been here I have gone on two-three daily walks around the (beautiful) compound that surrounds the offices that we have been working in here, in order to get a minimal bit of exercise, as it is not possible to run/walk here otherwise due to the a. the heat and b. the freak show-factor/danger of being a blond foreign woman running around Tefe.

The walks have been a great way to observe the abundant local flora and fauna [small aside at this point: one of the coolest thing about this place is how everything just grows everywhere. Out on the river we saw a huge island that had "grown in" over the last few years, the water is that rich with sediments and this gives me quite high hopes that a lot of the deforested Amazon rain forest can and will grow back given the chance to do so.]-- in particular i have developed a keen interest* in this one species that I have lovingly dubbed "the largest beetle I have ever seen"... So when my slacker team mates (no walks for them) refused to believe me, I had to bring back photo evidence, which led to the shot below. See for yourself, it's Nano vs. Beetle!!


* In case you are wondering "why the beetle"? The sad answer is that there happened to be a large number of formerly-live ones around - whereas the extraordinarily beautiful blue butterflies for example are extremely hard to get a closer look at due to their fleeting habits...

Cold Showers

The little joys of being in Tefe: one of them is the challenge of the ice cold morning shower. Cold showers may sound like a good idea considering the tropical climate, but due to the fact that the air conditioner actually does work (80% of the time at least) our rooms are mostly cold in the morning, which makes jumping from the cold room into the cold shower rather grueling. As it turns out everyone of us has been working on developing the perfect technique for dealing with this problem over the last two weeks. In the video below (which unfortunately is rather dark, so it is really mostly a sound file) shot at Steve's birthday celebration yesterday night, Steve explains, after a few beers, how he developed the perfect approach...

Never let Women Cook...

This weekend has been a bit on the dull side as we are essentially just working like crazy, cranking out what is on track to become a 60-100 page report with analysis and recommendations for our clients. We've come up with some good results and are now just trying to survive the tedious typing part - But since this is much too boring to talk about I figured I'd post some more photos from last weekend's reserve adventure instead.More specifically the results of the little cooking adventure Moriah and I went on after the five of us (team course + our guide and new best friend Cesar) had throughly tested (and approved of) the EcoLodge's Caipirinha making abilities. After coming back to our little floating research station (no - we did not get to stay in the fancy lodge) we realized that we were practically out of food and decided to try to make an american classic: Grilled Cheese Sandwiches.Easy enough, right? Let's just say that i think there is something different about how toast reacts to butter under certain levels of humidity, cleaness of the air, sei la. The boys were not impressed and as a result they have sworn to never let us cook again. Hooray!!!