Palegoldenrod

Hi guys! Let me fill you in (quickly) on what has been happening in the last week:

• I experienced my first tremor in the wee hours of the morning last week. It measured 3 on the Richter scale. I woke up to a bit of shaking, then went “cool” and went back to sleep. It was all good.
• I went on a small bus tour of Santiago (solo) and found some other cool places that I want to see (that I didn’t reach on foot in my last expedition). I’ll go back there soon and get some photos for you – after the photos of the poorer neighbourhoods your head will spin when I show you Providencia.
• I enrolled in a Spanish school in nearby Bellavista. I start my beginner’s course tomorrow
• I finally got bootcamp up and running on my laptop with WinXP Pro SP2 and Parallels (Parallels can mount a bootcamp drive, which is pretty handy)
• I went out for dinner to a nearby Chilean restaurant with Dane and ate a traditional Chilean dish: Pastel de Choclo. Sort of Chile’s version of a shepard’s pie, but still very different. It had more spices, the mince was more like finely chopped steak rather than fatty mince, and the top was some floury meal rather than potatoe. Oh, and the meaty part had vegetables and olives in there too. It was really nice.

I also just got back from an overnight stay at nearby Viñya del Mar – Dane and I caught a bus out to Viñya and then went for a wander around Viñya, Valparaiso and Con Cón. This area is where a lot of city-siders go to holiday (Dane likened it to New South Wales’ Coffs Harbour). Its about 2 hours bus ride from Santiago (a return bus ticket cost me about AU$15 if I got the worst exchange rate in the world) and the bus was a really nice coach with reclining seats, tvs etc.

We went through wine country and over to the coast where we had a nice reasonably warm Saturday. Valparaiso was one of the first cities settled by Spanish colonists and had a lot of historical buildings and museums relating to the first settlement and initial growth. It is also very arty – many young people sitting around drawing or painting, and the ascensors (lifts up the side of a steep hill) were tiny old wooden beasties which are pretty cool too. The architecture continues to astound me – the buildings here are so beautiful and apparently almost everything is a national monument, hahaha.

I bought 2 spanish books at a local market so I can get used to reading spanish – George Orwell’s Animal Farm, and a book of Chilean folktales for children. Nice combo, eh? Hahaha, well they should both be interesting reading!

We took a bus around to Con Cón to have what Dane declared as “the best empanadas in the world” only to find the cafe closed. We resorted to the shop next door which was cheap and very full of locals. Empanadas are fried pastries, usually with cheese inside but you can get all sorts of interesting fillings. I think they’re awesome, but I’m sure my arteries think otherwise!

Anyway, its raining now and getting very cold. We think there might be snow on the mountains in the morning – the first snow of the winter. And tomorrow I go to my first Spanish class (yay!).

I added some pictures to my flickr account. Tomorrow I’ll try to get a worpress plugin working so I can easily add Flickr photos into my posts.

Catch you later, n00bs.

On the first afternoon I arrived in Chile, while my cousin Dane and I were walking the dog, we passed two young men putting up a sign in Spanish. I tried to read it – “The freedom to decide. Protest against the dictatorship of the Constitutional Tribunal”. Dane started telling me about how common protests were in the city and that if I stayed I would almost certainly have an experience with tear gas. I thought that was interesting, especially given that Chile is improving month by month and when compared with the country under Pinochet’s rule I would have thought they’d have little to complain about such that it required a protest, let alone tear gas.

So off I went today, on my own, for a walk. I wandered from Recoleta down through Barrio Bellavista and into the city to Santa Lucia by lunch time, where I happened upon a large group of people preparing to protest. And the media. And a whole swarm of police. And some riot vans. And some armored water cannon vehicles. Not that they were required, it was very peaceful.

The story is this – more than a year ago, Chilean President Michelle Bachelet (a paediatrician and single mother) noted that the morning-after pill was expensive and was effectively unavailable to poor women (who incidentally are in most need of assistance with contraception). She authorised a move to make the morning-after pill available for free to all women over 14 years.

Since that time, the president’s right-wing opponents (read: Catholic conservatives and wealthy male business owners) have taken the matter to the tribunal declaring that the morning-after pill was not a contraceptive but an abortive, and that as such was illegal (abortion for any reason has been illegal under Chilean law since around the end of Pinochet’s rule).

The tribunal agreed and the directive from the president was overturned. Apparently there is no way to appeal a tribunal decision. This didn’t make the morning-after pill illegal, it just overturned the decision for public clinics to provide it. Which is weird… if they decided it was illegal to use it to abort, why not enforce this across the board rather than allowing those that can afford to pay for the drug (or for a doctor to prescribe it in a private clinic) to step around the law?

So a lot of women (and not a few men) gathered together to show their displeasure, as expressing oneself seems to be something highly encouraged in Chile (maybe after such restrictions as Pinochet?) and the protest, while serious, appeared to be in good spirits and peaceful.

I had a bit of a sticky beek at Santa Lucia and then went about my walk through the rest of the city, and eventually found my way to Plaza de Armas, the main plaza in the centre of the CBD. I was standing just in front of the church when a group of police (complete with helmets and bullet-proof jackets) appeared, and their favourite little riot van. Not long after this the protesters arrived as well. Just before they entered the plaza the police closed the gates to the church (kindly informed those inside that no, they would not open the gates) and then blocked off some side roads with other police.

At first I thought they were moving through the plaza on the way to the tribunal, but when they stopped it appeared that they were specifically protesting against the church on this one. As I found myself sandwiched between the church wall, a bunch of armoured cops and a large group of protesters – none of whom I could understand – as well as a few dodgey (cough – pickpocket) looking young men, I thought it prudent to promptly move on from the plaza so I am not sure if they did continue to the Tribunal building. It was only a block or two away so I’m guessing they got there unless the police stopped them.

I did see a single man with a sign standing in front of the Tribunal, but I couldn’t quite make out the message on his billboard, let alone translate it into English.

Anyway, so ends my first experience walking alone in the CBD, and my first Chilean protest. No tear gas this time, but Dane tells me that the May Day protests usually get a bit heated and occasionally end with people interfering with cables for power supply among other things, which of course pretty much guarantees a response from the police. I might stay home for that one

Other info on the protest and the reason for it (all in English):

• Reuters – Court blocks Chile move on morning-after pill
• International Herald Tribune – Dueling protests support, oppose ban on free morning-after pill in Chile
• Catholic News Agency – Bishop Goic calls for end to attempts to distribute abortion pill

Hi all.

Here is a very groggy Carly making her first video blog post evar, from Chile. Please forgive me for the badness… its just… bad. And if you’re wondering about my eyes, they are a touch irritated by the combination of dry heat and pollution

Also, my concept of distance was a bit skewed at time of recording – we are very close to Santiago the suburb, but a bit more than 10 minutes walk from the CBD itself. It took about 10-15 minutes on the metro to get there (underground train). Apologies.

Hi guys.

I have made it safely to Santiago de Chile – I arrived at lunch time today (an hour ahead of schedule) after a 15 hour flight via Auckland. The flight was easier than I expected, though my chair didn’t recline at all which made for a fun and somewhat uncomfortable night.

But here I am after having spent the afternoon with my cousin Dane, who I have discovered all over again as being all types of awesome (and in addition we like a lot of the same foods, music genres and music artists, have similar political views, etc).

We’ve been for a bit of a walk through the blocks near his place and it is still hard to feel like I am really here. It is really weird to hear the kids calling out Spanish as they play in the street tonight.

There is very, very little English is spoken here, lol. Dane has arranged for a friend to help teach me Spanish (Thanks, Dane!) and then we are going to go shopping tomorrow and probably hanging out with his partner Marcelo which should be cool.

Anyway, I’m pretty tired (read: brain is more retarded than usual) so I’ll finish up there and post again in a few days.

I heart you guys!

Carly