Sunday Afternoon in Peurto Montt, Chile

Not much happening in Peurto Montt today as it is a Sunday and everything is closed up, iron doors drawn tightly over shop windows.
We had to walk to the bus station to book our tickets for Tuesday for Beriloche and find something to eat. We get breakfast in our hotel but then must find lunch before 3:00 when most things close down.

We have heard it is too dangerous to be out after dark so we heed the advice and have food in our room we snack on at night. This is not a problem as both breakfast and lunch are a good size.


We are going to Beriloche on Tuesday morning and staying in this scenic location for 5 nights. It is even smaller than Peurto Montt is (population about 150,000 people). The bus trip will be 6 to 7 hours inland and we cross the border into Argentina.

Whilst in Peurto Montt the only bookshop I have seen was a table of books and magazines laid out in the bus station, all of them in Spanish, mostly with romance type covers on them.

Fortunately, after hemming and hawing for a bit before this holiday began, we decided to buy a Kindle each and load it up with books, mostly free ones or disks of books bought on eBay and that has provided us with more than enough books to enjoy during our days of non English and pouring rain.

On the way to the bus station we found a large supermarket and loaded up on snacks for our evenings and bus trip.   As such profound dog lovers we also bought a box of dog bone treats of a large size and I emptied the box, stuffing the bones into my pockets.  Both of us find the homeless dog situation confronting and sad. So today as we walked and talked, we tossed dog food bones to probably more than 20 dogs. Most of them cope but a few of the younger ones really tug at our heart strings. I know it is not even a drop in the bucket but it helped us deal with it a bit. The locals also feed them and they are quite adept at knowing where the tourists are to get food from them.
The rest of this post today has the photos from our walk to the bus station. I hope you find them interesting. There isn't really a lot here but we are enjoying the differences. The waterfront and view of the large hills leading up to it are very interesting with a large assortment of home styles and colours. Hasta luego.

The view from our hotel window towards the hills.

The hotel owner's dog. It made us happy to see a dog
with a good home.

Our hotel and the steep road we walk up and down to go to the city centre.
Our room is the one on the top right hand side.

This is the main street we walk down to the water front.  No idea what the blue building is but liked the colour.

The water front. It is winter now so definitely off season but supposedly in December/January it is very busy with tourists.

The view across the water front area.

The only street art we have seen outside of graffiti and this is also covered in graffiti.

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Pablo Neruda's Home in Valparaiso, Chile- Fascinating

Pablo Neruda was Chile's most infamous poet. He appears to be lauded whereever we go and he has homes one can visit both in Santiago and in Valparaiso, a coastal community about 150 kms to the northwest of Santiago. He also had a home on La Isla Negra which is on the Pacific coast northwest of here. He and his third wife are buried in the garden there.

The other day we went to Valparaiso on the bus with the sole intention of not only visiting this UNESCO world heritage city but to see his home high on the hilltop to learn a bit more about him.




We have decided that we enjoy visiting the residences of well known writers ever since we visited Franz Kafka's home in Prague a couple of years ago.
I also look forward to visiting John Steinbeck's home in Salinas California next time I visit my sister who lives just north of there.

We managed to find someone who told us what bus to take up the incredibly high neighbourhood that is littered with homes of all walks of life , sizes and colours.
The bus ride up the hill took about 10 or 15 minutes and dropped us off directly out front of his residence. His house is four stories high, looking not unlike a house of cards as different parts of the house were added on at different times.


When we walked up to the residence we went through a gate into the front yard area which houses a small building that is a cafe to our left. Walking forward we entered another small building which had beautiful art work, pottery and glass, some engraved with Neruda's poetry. They also sold posters (of which we bought one) and T shirts which I had to have.






We happily purchased our ticket, camera in hand and went back out to the front yard area. Walking into the ground floor of the house we encountered the rules. All places such as this have rules. No photography inside. That is always a disappointment and I never understand why that rule exisits.  Then we received gadgets that looked like TV remote controls with a map of the house with various numbers to press along with the play button in order to hear the narrative. That was easy enough to learn and upon exiting the premises one turns in the remote but gets to keep the map.

The tour begins on the first floor so up the winding staircase we began. His living room, dining room and bar are on the first floor.  

He enjoyed collecting antiquities and art and was often given gifts by friends that he decorated his house with. His living room is shaped as half a circle and on the edge of the circle he has a beautiful old horse from a Paris carousel. HE placed it specifically in a position so the horse continues to look as though he is going forward on the carousel.
The front wall is a complete window that looks out over the absolutely stunning vista of the city below and the Pacific Ocean in the distance.  



Evidently Neruda enjoyed naming things in his home and the beautiful comfy lounge chair that sets in front of the window is called The Cloud. Evidently sitting on the cloud with a book was his favourite past time when he wasn't writing. I would have killed to have sent all the people out and relax on the cloud with a book of my own. It just looked like heaven.
The next floor up was his bedroom. He used to sit up in bed in the morning, again with the glass wall allowing the same heavenly view, have his breakfast served to him in bed while he turned on the radio and caught up with the latest news headlines.  Once up his pattern was to take a short walk and then close himself up in his studio on the fourth floor and begin his days writing and reading for several hours.

We followed the circular staircase to the very top floor to see his study. His desk, a very old typewriter, his magazines and periodicals (many political) lined the book shelves and yet again the front wall window made us feel as though we had walked out of an airplane. 
No wonder the man was such an amazing poet. Who wouldn't be with his lifestyle.
Pablo Neruda wrote incessantly of politics of the day. He was a strong Communist and believed in the Communist party whole heartedly. He also aligned himself closely with Allende who was latern chased out by the savage Pinochet.  Once, Neruda was being arrested but he managed to escape over the Andes mountain on the back of a donkey.  
He was married 3 times in his life and his house in Valparaiso was named after his third wife. 
He led an amazing life, connected to politics around the world and wives and mistresses at home.


In his study he had a very large portrait of Walt Whitman, the American poet who Neruda idolized as a mentor. HE also idolized Ernest Hemingway as a writer.
We stayed in each room for quite some time, studying every little nook and cranny because  all of it was so incredibly fascinating. We are now extremely interested to know more about his life and to read his poetry and continue to enjoy the life of this most interesting man. 
The first thing I did when I got back to the apartment last night was to get online and order his biography from book depository knowing it should beat me home and we can enjoy it once settled again into our normal routines.

It will always be beyond my comprehension as to why people would rather drive past the ridiculously extravagant houses of movie stars and celebrities when there are exceptionally interesting lives awaiting our visits to the author's homes of the world.  
Having only visited two of them I am now quite anxious to compile a list of homes I should try to visit on future travels.  I would look forward to any suggestions from anyone who may come across this post.

Books and Hillsides in Valparaiso Chile

Valparaiso Chile is a UNESCO
World Heritage Area

This morning (14 August) we got up and headed for the underground Metro. It is our 41st wedding anniversary and we thought visiting a place with world heritage listing by UNESCO would be worthy of that.
Valparaiso was also the home of Pablo Neruda, an iconic Chilean poet who was highly lauded by the people of Chile.

We found the bus station after 8 or 9 stops on the underground. Walked up the stairs and looked across a busy highway and there it was.
The drive to Valparaiso was close to 2 hours.

Dog food sold large bulk containers. The dry dog food tossed onto the ground and gobbled up. Our dogs would
love to eat like this.

As we always do in a new location we started walking to get a feel for the city we were in. Valparaiso has enormous hillsides on the Pacific coast, with hundreds of homes scattered amongst the hills like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. I have no idea how they do land allotments there.

Also all of the homes vary from excellent beautiful structures to complete dilapidation. We marvelled how we found a place that has the best views in the world on steep hillsides and they are not reserved only for the rich.

After walking through the markets of the neighbourhoods which were very busy and nosing around the shops a bit we headed back to the bus station to find a way to get to Pablo Neruda's house.

On the way we found a little book shop. It was very interesting and although I knew all the books would be in Spanish I thought I'd do a bit of Penguin hunting (just in case).  I may yet find El Penguino.
The shop owner was lovely and told me to go ahead and take photos as I liked.  He asked us if we liked books and I began taking a few photos while Tom was telling him about my 3000 books he has to live with.

 We asked if he had any books in English and he pointed to one very small shelf, not much more than half a metre long and I dutifully thumbed through it. There weren't any Penguins but I did find a very old copy of Tales of Uncle Remus (will post more on that later) by Joel Chandler Harris.  As I love those tales as much as any folklore I have ever come across I could not leave this old, cracked hardcover published in London on that unappreciated shelf in Chile. The price was exceptionally low, about $4.00 Australian so into the bag it went. Poor Tom, he carries the backpack and each time I purchase something it goes onto his back.

We found an information area near the bus station and received directions for catching the bus up the steep hillsides to Pablo Nerudo's house.  As Valparaiso is such an incredibly interesting place I will do a separate post about our visit to his house as Part II.

For today I have simply included some interesting street scenes from our walk.

At the end of the day we found our bus back to Santiago (about 90 minutes in a comfy seat) where we stopped at the shops, picked up some pasta, antipasto and a lovely large bottle of wine to take back to our apartment to toast yet another wedding anniversary.  Each year we tend to do something different but it will be hard to beat this year's celebrations.

When we arrived in Santiago the other afternoon we had an hour to wait before our apartment was ready. We walked down the street, had a cold drink and then walked around a few small market stalls that were set up  nearby.  There were several tables of second hand paperback books and of course that is always a red flag to my then very exhausted jet lagged brain.

I glanced down at a small row of books and saw the Penguin logo and just below it the number: 2441. A quick flick to the inside pages told me it was indeed a first published and No, I do not have this one in my collection so less than a cat's whisker flick it became mine.   It is funny how fast one can figure out currency conversion when needed.

Journey to the End of the Night by Louis-Ferdinand Celine, originally published by Penguin as a Penguin Modern Classic, translated from the French by John H.P. Marks.

It is quite serendipitous that this was the first book, much less a Penguin that I would find on the first day of an extended trip. When I opened it to the first page I noticed on the left page there is a short prologue.

"Travel is a good thing; it stimulates the imagination. Everything else is a snare and a delusion. Our own journey is entirely imaginative. Therein lies the strength.
It leads from life to death. Men, beasts, cities, everything in it is imaginary. It's a novel, only a made up story. The dictionary says so and it's never wrong.
Besides, everyone can go and do likewise. Shut your eyes, that's all that is necessary. There you have life seen from the other side."

"Notre vie est un voyage
Dans l'Hiver et dans la Nuit,
Nous cherchons notre passage
Dans le Ciel ou rien ne luit." 
                                      (Chanson des Gardes Suisses 1793)

I think the cover of this book makes a potential reader want to dive into it as a train station at night always appears so mysterious. It opens the imagination as to where people are going, where are they coming from and I question what their individual stories may be.

I think this little book might contain a most interesting tale. 

From the back cover- About the cover.".Louis-Ferdinand Celine was one of the major European writers of the 1930's. Only the fact that he collaborated with the Vichy government in France during the Second World War, and his consequent public denigration by free French governments have made him a post-war "forgotten man."
His works are epics of adamant pessimism, of the belief- common to writers living in the between-the-wars shadow- that man is fundamentally ignoble.
The story itself is advertised as: "the first of two autobiographical novels. It is the story of Ferdinand Bardamu, and his search for personal fulfilment in war, the lower depths of Paris, through African jungles, and finally in the slums of the USA and the factories of Detroit. It is a violent, exciting odyssey, told with distinctive vividness and sensitivity."


Has anyone read this book? or know anything more about this author? 

The Book of Tea by Kakuzo Okakura 1863-1913

"Tea began as a medicine and grew into a beverage. In China, in the eigth century, it entered the realm of poetry as one of the polite amusements. The fifteenth century saw Japan ennoble it into a religion of aestheticism--Teaism.

Teaism is a cult founded on the adoration of the beautiful among the sordid facts of everyday existence. It inculcates purity and harmony, the mystery of mutual charity, the romanticism of the social order. It is essentially a worship of the imperfect, as it is a tender attempt to accomplish something possible in this impossible thing we know as life."

Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen. We are currently cruising at 30,000 feet with a flight time of 11 1/2 hours to Santiago Chile from Auckland, New Zealand.

I have never written a blog post at this height before. I hope it comes close to living up to it.  We have just spent a couple of hours walking around the Auckland, New Zealand airport which is very nice.

So far everything is on track for arriving in Chile on time.  Once airborne and having permission to turn on electronic devices I fired up the kindle and proceeded to read The Book of Tea written by Kakuzo Okakura who lived from 1863 to 1913.

I wasn't sure what to expect from this book as I was not too familiar with it or the author.  It is a very interesting historical look at tea.  Tea as it relates to literature, politics, religion, traditions and cultures. I am finding this short book to be interesting reading. 





Upon researching the author a bit more it is interesting to note that though he was a Japanese man, he learned English at a young age and proceeded to write and publish this book in English rather than Japanese.

He discussed tea as it relates to humanity around the world, the history of tea in literature as far back as 800 AD when it is thought to have been written of for the first time, and discovering information about it from the far eastern countries.  

He discussed that although tea originally began as a medicine and then went on to become a popular drink, that tea is more than a drink.  He believed it can create harmony with nature, discipline the mind, quiet the heart, and attain the purity of enlightenment.  He developed the art of tea known as "teaism."  

He then continued to discuss its use in various religious and spiritual practices starting with Taoism and Zennism.  He goes into a bit more detail than I would like about these practices mainly because it took a great deal of concentration on my part and I find the vast number of interruptions on an overseas flight quite distracting. Not to mention the crying baby in the cabin area ahead of us.











The book is quite a short book but I found it a very soothing read during quite a hectic day.

Go to this link to read an interesting article from the Guardian magazine about this book if you would like more information.

(Photos are stock photos from the web as I read this book on a Kindle and who wants to see countless photos of Kindles? I thought there was a pleasant assortment of covers on line.)

"Ahhh- lovely"