Antofa

Antofagasta... this place is gritty, peppered with sad dogs, industrial beach lined, with a sterile lysoled casino at the edge where I spend most of my time. The good news it that the conference that is taking place within the casino is turning out to be fun. There are many other students here to enjoy it with as well.

The town is a strange mix of affluence and 3rd world. There are typical little shops and vendors, and cute restaurants (I had an amazing seafood salad the other night, so much shellfish!) but everything is about the same price as we'd pay in Canada. There are bars and clubs and from what I can tell, chileans like to party on tuesday nights.

Tonight the local students (who are on strike from their uni) are organizing an event at the yacht club. It should be another success, but I'll post a recap soon. Until then...

Ceviche

Hola,

I have to recount an unbelievable meal experience. I arrived in Antofa after a 6:30am flight from Santiago. Everything went smoothly, I even managed to find myself a cute and fairly inexpensive hotel room almost straight off the bat. I took a walk around town, bought myself an empanada, checked out the beach where I saw a massive sea lion and a bunch of pelicans and then took a nap.

I was hungry when I woke up, so I went to a restaurant I saw earlier in the day. They seemed to have well priced lunch and many specials, which suits me since I haven't tried much chilean food yet. I accidentally tried ordering desayunos even though it was 3pm, and the waitress directed me to the lunch menu. I picked the second thing on the menu, the ceviche mixte. I didn't really know what to expect, since I was still a little tired and a million new spanish words were still breezing through my head. Everyone else was eating some type of curry or soup with small biscuits, so I figured I was getting that.

The meal took a very long time, and I started getting nervous. Free Willy was on TV in spanish, so that calmed me down a little. Finally, the waitress came to my table with a tower of fruitas-del-mare. There was raw fish, octopus, squid with red onions and red pepper in a lime sauce. Hidden underneath were 3 small vegetables, a potato, sweet potato and a slice of corn on the cob. It came with some dried corn kernels and a creamy hot sauce. The seafood was incredible. It was rich and fresh, not too fishy or chewy (although the diced octopus was a little rubbery). I dug in and after 10 minutes or so I had hardly made a dent.

It is fairly naive of me not to know what ceviche was, I've even had it once before in Thailand. Regardless, it was a nice surprise. I think I'll have to go through that menu plate by plate to see what other surprises are waiting for me! The icebreaker for my conference starts soon, and I have my talk tomorrow, so I'm pretty busy for the next day or so!

Ode to empanadas

I sit in the most pleasing climate under a straw umbrella bearing table drinking kiwi juice and killing an empanada. Unfortunately for me, the DJ at this hostel has no tallent, and I can hear clashing music in the distance. But the setting and cool breeze more than makes up for that.

Empanadas provide me with comfort. I would have a tough time calling them comfort food, as I never turn to them for comfort at home. But, since that term is reserved for foods which you had a lot in your childhood and bring back memories of your caring mother, perhaps there is another connection. They have a resemblance to mccains pizza pockets. Pizza pockets, their disturbingly perfect round shape and paradoxical lack of seams, were a hallmark of my childhood. I think they were a treat to break up my monotonous bean and cheese burrito after-school snack days.

Empanadas do have seams, they must therefore have been handcrafted. They are so cheap, even here in Santiago de Chile, where they typically retail for the equivalent of 1CAD (I bought 2 today at the supermarket for only $750, or 1.50CAD). So while most things are exceedingly expensive here (or at least the same as in Canada), I can eat for $3 a day on empanadas. There is a thin veneer of some type of meat and onion, which make them sweet. All of my Chilean empanadas so far have had a single olive inside, unpitted. So, in a sense, the empanada itself has a pit. In proximity to the pit there is typically a whole egg, apparently added already hardboiled. Sometimes the egg is scrambled, either way it makes for a nutritious surprise part way through.

The music has returned to acceptable status and there is no longer any clashing. I should get back to work! I just bought myself a 6:30am flight tomorrow morning to Antofagasta...

In which this blog goes south

Here I sit. Mexico city airport bar, called... Taba bar. Don't make this place a destination, the bar I mean. It is an order of magnitude more expensive than what you get even downtown.

What a day. I'm glad I had time to check the city out. Where to start? I lucked out and met a couple locals who were sitting next to me on the plane coming down. They informed me there was a metro, and that it linked to the airport. Also they gave me all the lines an stops I needed to know to see the best of the city. That is not trivial with no map or Spanish skills.

It took an hour and a half to get to my stop, bellas artes. I got out and was thrust into a park hosted Market. I bought some burned corn on the cob immediately an chewed on it. A squeegee kid asked me for money nearby at a ridiculously busy intersection. I said I didn't have any but offered him my half a corn on the cob. Poor guy took it straight up.

I continue walking with my goal of finding delicious Mexican food, which didn't take long. After walking down some amazing colonial pedestrian streets that any north American city should be jealous of, I found the whole in the wall I was looking for. I got 3 flautas, not knowing what I was in for. They werent what the plastic flauta out front suggested, but were tasty as he'll, so no complaints. Got a negro modello (I'm at #3 now) to boot.

I continued on my way, with a metro stop in mind (the downtown that my neighbour had suggested, zacalo). The street life is unbelievable. Every possible square inch of ground level is retail with a peppering of taquerias. And they're all filled to the brim with the slight variations of the same crap. It took me a while to realise that like shops occurred together, all the fabric shops, the balsam wood box shops, the tacky miniature statue shops etc... There were even a few guitar shops (my other goal) within a few blocks of eachother.

One instrument I am particularly interested in is a charango. I did find some, but they were made with armadillo shells for backs and would probably be tough to get back into Canada. I met a shop owner/cheap guitar pusher who brought me two a shop where I found a mini 5 stringed 5 fretted fat body guitar. Thats the name until someone figures that out for me.

It was getting late and I had walk for ours admiring churches and streets and just the hustle bustle of the place in general. I decided to play it safe and head home before dark. Shops were all closing, and the crowd was changing a bit. Many more young people... I couldn't help but walk into a couple of way over the top ornate churches, some treed parks, the city is stunning. The sun was hitting a distant hill, but it's just impossible to get up off street level to get a view.

I took a massive loop back to zacalo, then decided I'd walk back to where I started since there was still some light. Back in the metro it was rush hour times 30 million. The trains were jammed, and the stations were hot. There were guard or cops everywhere, who were setting up areas just for women (great idea, makes so much sense, I definitely didn't want to ride in the cars I was in!). Even some escalators were just for women, although I hopped on anyways... The truth is that I didn't register the word damas until I was half way down an escalator with only women... I eventually made it to the airport stop ( which despite the surge of humans took less than half the time). Funny thing, the stops in Mexico city are poorly marked and the lines have very small writing for the their names on line maps, but they all have little symbols. It is really convenient!

The airport metro stop, unlike any other airport metro stop I've been to, drops you off on the side of a freeway on ramp with absolutely no signage indicating how to get to the terminal. I asked about a dozen mexicans how to get to terminal 2, and they each helped me along my convoluted path. I crossed a mega freeway (by walkway), walked the extent of the domestic terminal and took a monorail.

And that is how I ended up at the airport bar. Now on to chile, where I can look forward to more of the same!

Other things that struck me: walk light for pedestrians is an animate green stick man (who is all hunched over running in fact), the layout was like other Mexican towns I've been to with a strip of shops, just super dense, there aren't shop hours, they just start closing around dark, all washing downed their floors with soapy water and brooms.