Does anyone reading this have an opinion on the kindle? As a world traveler- wouldn't it be easier to carry around a kindle than lug books with me? Ok, your opinions in the comments section please. Christmas is near at hand and I'd like to get my letter swiftly off to Santa.
Yesterday was Chile's version of the 4th of July, and they celebrate it by clearing the streets of any pedestrian traffic, locking their doors and staying out of sight. Sylvain and I had been planning a trip to the big neighboring gringo city of Vina del Mar and with his classes canceled we planned our 7 minute by bus getaway. Turns out the people of Vina celebrate their national day in the same way they were celebrating it in Valpo- closing shop and disappearing from sight. So as a ghost town it looked like a lot of commercial interest without a lot of commercial traffic- well that is if you're into pharmacies, optical stores (as in reading glasses) and money changing offices/banks. We walked around, and got an ice cream at the boardwalk beach which was overly tourist and gross. There was a guy playing a keyboard at the boardwalk cafe, but he seemed only to know one song and we put our annoyance into imagining the sort of revenge he was enacting on the customers and staff at the cafe. Everything at these boardwalk tourist destination cafes are sticky and sweet with layers of whip cream and blech- it's why I'm so satisfied living in Valpo- Valpo has character- a lot of American's will tell you it's not safe- I am afraid after living in Harlem, Bushwick and Bed Stuy and working in the Bronx, its about as unsafe as camping out in your grandma's backyard. I'm not saying you won't get your fancy camera nicked, but you definitely won't get gang rapped in some back alley or be held up by knife point. Maybe what they meant was, you won't find a Gap store. Vina has nice houses and lots of tourist restaurants in addition to McDonald's, Pizza Hut, and Domino's so it's also really vapid and sad, or at least where we spent the afternoon strolling it was- there are a million hotels vs the quaint and charming B and B's and cute hostels in Valpo- and a hotel casino. Put it this way, it's easy to see where the money goes. If you're looking for a beach resort with an opportunity to gamble your money away- I bet you could find better options somewhere closer to home.
We ended up deferring a night out at Playa Ancha- a ten minute bus ride away where all the "festivities" were happening for a night in with a discount 40. You can buy 6 packs here but it doesn't seem like anyone drinks beer unless its from a 40. It seems less like the American youth culture of getting your of-age older siblings to buy you and your friends 40's where you'll go find some park somewhere and drink your high school weekends away making fuzzy memories with big bottles in brown bags, and more the culture where you drink beer out of glasses so a 40 is sort of like family size- similar to a bottle of wine. Sylvain had finance studying to do and I was happy to worry about my money holding out (that recent post about living like a poor- well I've decided poverty need not be a requirement for living consciously) and watching Californiacation on my laptop with Japanese subtitles.
By whatever time it had gotten dark some local band and by local I mean traditional accordion music with a thumping bass was playing in yet again what seemed to be our backyard- this carried on through the wee hours of the night except for two songs around midnight that were 60's American pop reminiscent of Elvis, but not. I woke up at some wee hour to pee and they were still at it; like a birthday, the Chilean National Holiday on my watch, had expired.
No comments:
Post a Comment