15 hours in Santiago

My seatmate on the red-eye flight from Miami to Santiago appointed himself my tour guide/body guard during my 15-hour layover in Chile’s capital city. We stowed my bags at the airport and his bags in a hostel across the street from the Tur Bus station downtown and set out to see the city — me, for the first time ever, and him, for the first time in a year. Mauricio is a 35-year-old native of Santiago who had been at sea for the last 12 months, working the bar on a Disney cruise ship. He was back for a two-month vacation before heading to the Caribbean in December for another year of work. He speaks five languages — English included — and is used to interacting with foreigners.

The marked difference between the rich and poor in Santiago makes for a good deal of petty crime — pickpockets, mainly — Mauricio said. The city is safe during daylight hours, when police are abundant, but he advised me to hide my digital camera in the poorer parts of town, keep my hand in my pocket if I carried anything of value inside and always watch my back.

We walked through the courtyard of the Palacio de la Moneda, the presidential palace, and stopped into the Catedral Metropolitana, a neoclassical church overlooking the Plaza de Armas, on our way to el Mercado Central for lunch. We chose Galeon, a mid-priced restaurant on the second floor of the fish market, where each marble-topped table holds a plate of four lemons to complement the cuisine. The mixed seafood plate we shared featured nine types of pescado caught off Chile’s outrageously long coast. All of the dishes were very tasty —not nearly as scary as they could have been (by that, I mean no fish heads watched us eat).

Afterward, we took a cab to the Cerro de San Cristobal, the hill of Saint Christopher, a vertically-oriented park capped by a 14-meter marble statue of the Virgin Mary. Many choose to walk or cycle the curvy road leading up to the statue, but we went by funicular.

And fun it was. The train creeps 485 meters up a track, much like Chattanooga’s Incline Railway to the top of Lookout Mountain, and stops at an overlook of sprawling Santiago and the snow-capped Alps beyond it. It’s the view is the best around, though it’s clouded by a bit of smog.

Later, we rode the teleferico , a gondula-style operation, along a wire to a station near the north end of Pedro de Valdivia Norte Avenue 200 meters away. Dangling hundreds of feet over the city, we got a view of a different part of town, where the skyscrapers were taller and the homes had backyard pools.

The day was punctuated by drink stops in parks, cafes and restaurants. In some cases, I had what you’d expect of me — water (sin gas), coffee, Sprite. I also tried some Chilean specialties, though, most notably mote con huesillo, a sweet mixture of peaches, peach syrup and boiled corn kernels, of all things. It was good, but so sugary I could feel my teeth decaying after half a cup.

Later, I had a Corona on the patio of La Casa en El Aire Libre, an international café in the funky Bellavista neighborhood, which I’d highly recommend. Then, it was off to El Romano, our final stop, a hole-in-the-wall bar Mauricio remembered from his younger days. In a room lit by a single bulb, we sipped a couple of cheap but good Chilean beers. Mauricio requested Toto’s “Africa” on the jukebox and sang along. And then Juan, Mauricio’s best friend, arrived to drive me to the airport for the last leg of my journey to Punta Arenas.

While I’m sure I could have managed Santiago alone, I would not have felt so at ease or welcome to the country without the company someone as eager to share as my companion for the day. Gracias, Mauricio!

From me, a resounding 'No sé'

The most common response I give when people ask me the specifics of what I’ll be doing in Chile is, “Ummm, I’m not really sure about that.” Sometimes, I try to piece together the things I do know into a short paragraph:“I’ll be living in staff housing, and I’ll be able to put my valuables in furniture with a key.” (That’s the English translation of “mueble con llave,” right? I’m thinking a trunk.)

Or, “I’ll be leading visitors on trips in the park… How long? Ummm. One day. Or maybe three, or four. I’m not really sure.”

“A work Visa? I shouldn't have problems getting one… The Chilean consulate says I need an FBI background check, an HIV test and to be pre-approved, but my employers tell me I don’t need any official documents, and I get it once I’m in Chile. I'm going with the latter.”

So, that’s how it goes, me describing my future. Basically, yo no sé.

I got as many answers as I could when I talked with my future employer over the phone that one time (in Spanish, which perhaps explains some of the black holes). In subsequent e-mails, I asked many questions, usually organized in bullet points, but I usually had to satisfy myself with an answer like, “It’ll all work out. No te preocupes.”

I’m not used to operating on so little information and such blind faith, but I hate to let a few unanswered questions hold me back from the chance to live and work in Chile.

As I sit at gate E11 in the Miami airport, behind newlyweds returning from their honeymoon, I wonder if I’m putting too much trust in people I only vaguely know. Once my plane lands in Punta Arenas 29 hours from now, I’ll begin to find out.

Adios Chattanooga, hola Chile!

After more than two years of writing for the Chattanooga Times Free Press, I quit my job. No longer will I write about what the children of Hamilton County are learning in their classrooms and whether the school board thinks seatbelts on buses improve safety. I am moving to Chile, to the Torres del Paine National Park way down at the Southern tip of the country. Someone I met there two years ago when helping repair the park’s most damaged trails offered me a job — actually, two — last month. I start on Monday.

I will be marketing for Fantástico Sur, a Chilean company that arranges treks for hikers and naturalists. As part of it, they have asked me to start a bi-lingual magazine, which I have happily agreed to. I’ll also be guiding for AMA, a company that educates visitors about the park’s environment and helps them complete projects that conserve it.

In addition, I hope to publish some travel articles on my own… and soak up the language and lifestyle.

Deciding to leave Chattanooga was incredibly tough, and I went back and forth with it for weeks. I loved my full-time writing job at the paper, which allowed me to interview, for example, the governor and a first-grade teacher in the same day. I enjoyed hiking, cycling and paddling in and around Chattanooga, and I knew I’d miss lounging around my sunny apartment on Saturday mornings and listening to my friend’s bluegrass band practice on her porch. Plus, I couldn’t bear the thought of leaving my friends and boyfriend. But I decided to take the leap, to find out what I don’t know and to let the experience take me where it will.

I found this passage in the 2001 Best American Travel Writing, which I picked up at McKay’s Used Books in Chattanooga the other night:

We travel, initially, to lose ourselves; and we travel, next, to find ourselves. We travel to open our hearts and eyes and learn more about the world than our newspapers will accommodate. We travel to bring ourselves what little we can, in our ignorance and knowledge, to those parts of the globe whose riches are differently dispersed. And we travel, in essence, to become young fools again — to slow time down and get taken in, and to fall in love once more.

Pico Iyer, from “Why We Travel” in Salon Travel

I may encounter frustration and loneliness in the far Southern reaches of the world, but I may also have experiences that change how I see the world and live my life. I just don’t know, and that’s the fun part.

And now, for some fun facts about my destination, for my sake as much as anyone’s: * Chile is tall and slender, stretching along the southwestern coast of South America. It’s as long as San Francisco is from New York, but only 150 miles wide at its widest point. * The northern part of the country is desert, the mid-section is a fertile river valley, and the southern landscape is made up of a string of rivers and volcanoes that dissolve into a labyrinth of fjords, inlets, canals, peninsulas and islands. The Andes Mountains border the country to the east. * Chile is a republic. Michelle Bachelet is Chile’s first woman president, elected in 2006. * About 85 percent of Chile's population lives in urban areas. About 40 percent live in greater Santiago. Most have Spanish ancestry. * The local currency is the Chilean peso. * About 89 percent of the population is Roman Catholic, about 11 percent is Protestant. * The average Chilean expects to live about 76 years. * Chileans are required to attend 12 years of school, and 96 percent of adults can read.

I have three short days before my plane departs for Santiago. Time for the business of shuffling boxes and realizing exactly how much stuff I have accumulated.

When the crows fly

Ok, so they're starlings. But the convention was tonight, in the parking lot outside the Chattanooga Times Free Press.

Is that a catfish on your arm?

Jeff Leigh makes sure all of his customers read the sign mounted on the counter before he sets to work with any needles."The tattoo you choose to get will be with you for the rest of your life," the placard reads. "So before asking how much, ask first about the skill and talent of the artist. You are getting tattooed, not buying groceries." It’s a warning that has been passed down through the tattooing community for the past 30 years, he said. Leigh opened Hillbilly Mother Fucker Tattoo — known as HMF Tattoo to the children — on Cloud Springs Road last January, after a friend’s unfortunate encounter with a train provided him enough money to fund the start-up. He had worked at five or six shops and was glad to get his own place. The 36-year-old specializes in free-hand, custom artwork, while his employee, Scott Anschuetz, 29, takes care of piercings and "flash" art, or tattoos based on pre-drawn designs. Leigh said the demand for tattoos in Fort Oglethorpe is high. He estimates that he produces 15 to 20 tattoos a week and spends an average of two to three hours on each session. He charges $100 an hour and requires a $60 shop minimum. He said the most original tattoos he’s produced recently (that he can mention) have been a chicken drumstick and a catfish. "Fourteen years and I’ve never done a catfish," he said. He noted that he has done a few bass. When people come into the shop with ideas, Leigh starts by sketching the design onto their skin with a permanent marker. Once both he and the client are pleased with the look, he sets to work with the needles. Leigh describes his style as "traditional new school," or his own twist on the traditional tattooing aesthetic. Allen Tate, 32, who hangs around the shop and sometimes volunteers to take out the trash, said that when people see Leigh’s trademark skull drawing, they know it’s his work. "Everyone is well pleased," he said. Leigh got his first tattoo, a dream catcher on his left upper arm, in 1991. Since then, he has gotten more than 20 tattoos, which have blended together to form solid masses of design on his forearms. His favorite is the mohawk on his head, a strip composed of a skull with question marks and exclamation points streaming from its forehead. Leigh said that like himself, most people he knows are "in progress." They periodically drop by the shop to add a new portion to the design spreading across their skin. "You don’t see people with just one most of the time," he said. He said he enjoys creating artwork that has the ability to hold memory. Every tattoo on a person’s body marks a spot in time, he said. "And it’s going to be here a lot longer than I will." Published in the Chattanooga Times Free Press, April 3, 2006

Party in the street? That's a capital idea.

The party moved outside last Sunday in Washington D.C.’s Adams Morgan neighborhood. Washingtonians block partied international style at the annual Adams Morgan Day Festival, established 29 years ago to celebrate the neighborhood’s cultural diversity. And it was loud.

I strolled the neighborhood with my college roommate, who now lives there, and a friend of hers visiting from Kentucky. Our first stop: A section of Euclid Street where flamenco dancers in traditional polka-dotted dresses swished their hips and stomped their feet to the rhythm of a flamenco guitar and drum. Our second: The intersection of 18th and Columbia, where 20 musicians rocked their trombones and tubas back and forth in unison as they played upbeat New Orleans' style jazz. Further down the road, we sat beneath the hoops on the basketball court at Marie H. Reed Community Center, where West African dancers jumped and gyrated to live drum music, then invited the least inhibited of the crowd to join them. We strolled between the tents selling jewelry, African masks, alpaca skins and chicken on a stick, passed a trio of girls crooning a Third Eye Blind song outside Peyotes Karaoke Café, then decided maybe it was time to head home.

Finish your beer, there are sober kids in India

You don't have to know anything about roving gypsies or Queen's head-banging rock opera to hang out at JJ’s Bohemia — though it could help you score big at the bar’s trivia night. The Chattanooga watering hole opened about a year ago on Martin Luther King Blvd. and has quickly become a central hangout for the city’s hipsters.The barroom has exposed brick walls, dim lighting and utilitarian décor: two red couches at the front, two round tables at the back and a row of cushion-covered kegs along the bar. On Thursday night, one-man-band Scotty Karate took the stage around 11 p.m., wearing a Willie Nelson T-shirt and buffalo wig with antlers. His left foot clapped a cymbal, his right foot pounded a drum, his fingers wailed into an electric guitar and he warbled about super cuties and digging holes. He was likely chewing gum too.

JJ’s regular patrons shout greetings to people who enter, and, for the most part, abide by a sign on the counter that advises, "Finish your beer, there are sober kids in India." If you’re thinking of stopping by the neighborhood hot spot, here’s a tentative schedule of events: Monday: Pub quiz with Eddie Tuesday: $2 Guinness Wednesday: Open mic night Sunday: Movie Night

Be a party pooper

The bean burrito you ate last night will appear again today, no matter how many blocks of cheese you devour in hopes of convincing nature otherwise. As a backpacker fifteen miles by foot from any porcelain, you might be tempted to send off smoke signals for rescue at the thought of defecating amongst the trees. But once you acclimate yourself to the process, rediscovering last night’s dinner will become a pleasurable, if not an anticipated, experience.

In order to enjoy excreting in the wilderness, you must stay one step ahead of your burrito. Before urgency clouds your judgment, know your strategy. When you first rouse yourself from the tent in the morning, consider your food’s position in your digestive tract in relation to your day’s schedule. Plan to liberate it at a time that will appease your body rhythms without disrupting the day’s events, so that you don’t find yourself bursting three minutes into the morning’s hike or as you reach the middle of an empty field. If you are expecting some action, you will be able to respond calmly when your bowels begin to bellow. To appease their cries, you might prefer to slink away from the group, clutching the trowel under your shirt to conceal the purpose of your departure. Or you might feel most comfortable soliciting a trusted partner to join you in the dirty deed. Alternatively, you might skip flamboyantly away, whirling the trowel over your head and whooping with excitement. After you bid your group farewell, the search begins. If you have chosen to forgo the conventionality of toilet paper, gather substitutes such as leaves, pinecones, and smooth rocks or sticks as you ramble through the woods, so that once you find a hideaway, you can get to work immediately. In choosing wiping materials, remember that squirrels bite, poison oak and ivy make for future misery, and rare plants or wildflowers should be admired, not desecrated. Travel a substantial distance from the campsite and trail, because pooping in populated areas not only shocks onlookers, but nauseates those who will pass through after you leave. Avoid streams, rivers, and lakes by at least seventy steps so that your excretion does not slip into the drinking water after the first heavy rain. Seek boulders, thickets, and groves of trees that will partition you from the rest of your environment. You will soon make yourself vulnerable and will find escape difficult with your pants around your ankles, so choose a location in which you feel secure. But consider also the aesthetic appeal of your site. Pursue a place that overlooks an intricate spider web, a blooming rhododendron, a cloud, a sunset, or a series of mountain ranges that fade into the horizon. Once you select your haven, brush aside the leaves or pine needles atop the soil, and scoop a hole with your trowel the depth of your open palm and the width of your outspread fingers (measure before you begin to eliminate). Place all gear, clothing, and materials in front of you so that you can monitor exactly what touches them and what does not. Drop your pants and squat, carefully positioning your rear over the hole. For the next five minutes or so, keep your balance, but relax. Enjoy yourself. Admire your surroundings. Listen to the wind rustling the branches. Smell the fragrance of the honeysuckle beside you. Watch ants lug bits of food through the leaves. Then wipe. Seal soiled toilet paper in a trash bag to pack out, and drop wiped-with leaves, sticks, and rocks into your toilet hole. Shovel soil back over the hole, cover it with leaves or pine needles, and top it off with a rock or small log to ensure that the area looks as pristine as you found it. Meander back to your fellow campers, relishing the relief. You can slip among them as if you never left, march up triumphantly hand-in-hand with your partner, or burst through the group in a full gallop. After you wash your hands, reward yourself with a scoop of trail mix, a bowl of Ramen noodles, or a plate of rice and beans. Then eagerly await the twists and grumbles that will send you in search of another haven amongst the trees.

Fleeing to the falls

When you break a sweat picking the newspaper from the front yard at 7 a.m., it’s time to visit Foster Falls, a 60-foot waterfall in Marion County, Tennessee, about 40 miles northwest of Chattanooga. That’s exactly what I did today, in the company of four friends, who, like me, craved the sweet relief of something cold. We panted and sweated down a boulder-strewn trail to the edge of a large pool — and gazed skyward to behold… a tiny trickle of water, splattering down from the top of a sandstone cliff. Ok, so the drought has not been kind to Foster Falls. But that didn’t make the water at the bottom any less refreshing. Foster Falls is in the Tennessee Valley Authority Natural Area and is the ending point of the 12.5-mile Fiery Gizzard Trail, known for its exceptional views, spring wildflowers and winter ice formations. The cliffs along the trails in the Foster Falls area draw rock climbers from all over who like sport climbing and the challenge of overhangs. This afternoon, we treaded water in the deep part of the pool and watched, sometimes cringingly, as climbers ascended the rock face behind the waterfall and released, kawoosh, hitting the water. Around the banks of the pool, some sunned on the rocks and others threw sticks for their dogs to fetch. After a while, we wrapped ourselves in beach towels and climbed the trail back to the parking lot. We hit the Dairy Queen in Jasper about 15 minutes down the road back to Chattanooga, just in time to buy an ice cream Blizzard before we dried off completely.

100 miles — If I don't die first

Rain dripped off the front edge of my helmet Saturday morning as I pedaled with about 2,500 riders down Chestnut Street in Chattanooga on the first stretch of the annual 3-State, 3-Mountain Challenge. The 100-mile bicycle ride would take me through three states and up three mountains by the end of the day — if I didn’t die first.I participated in the 62-mile version of the ride last year, but decided to pedal the full century this year just to see if I could. Fueled by Pisa Pizza’s chicken ziti from the night before and prepared with the energy bars in the back pocket of my jersey, I pushed off at the soggy, 8 a.m. start feeling slightly nervous, but ready.

SUCK CREEK MOUNTAIN, TENNESSEE I hit Suck Creek Mountain about six miles into the ride, just as it stopped raining. The five-mile climb and five-mile descent were gradual enough that I felt warmed up, but not exhausted by the end. I came across the first food and drink stop at the base of the mountain in Powell’s Crossroads, where bikes lay strewn across the lawn and riders clicked around the pavement in their cycling shoes. I refilled my barely-emptied water bottles, ate a piece of a banana, and then headed toward mountain No. 2.

SAND MOUNTAIN, ALABAMA The dogs who usually chase cyclists along the roads leading to Sand Mountain stood complacently in their yards as we passed, rather than snapping at our ankles. The riders before us, I’m sure, had already worn them out. After a while, I settled into a pace line, a single-file group of riders who took turns cutting the wind for each other. Except for when I was in front, the distance passed much more easily with the help of other riders. We hit Sand Mountain after 52 miles. My legs strained as I pumped up the mountain that was slightly steeper than Suck Creek, but nothing in comparison to what would follow.

LOOKOUT MOUNTAIN, GEORGIA Throughout the ride, I had been dreading the final climb up Lookout Mountain on Burkhalter Gap Road. The climb, which started at mile 80, has a reputation among cyclists for being especially brutal. I was worried my legs would shut down midway up the mountain, and, being clipped in to the pedals of my bike, I would crash to the pavement. I crept up the mountain among a loose group of riders, who seemed as daunted by the climb as I. During the last quarter-mile, when the road took on a 17 percent grade, I had to stand up on my pedals and lean over the handlebars to keep any kind of forward momentum. I couldn’t think of much more than the pain. Once I crested the mountain, my mood drastically improved. Though I felt relatively strong through most of the race, the climb up Lookout Mountain and the 10 miles following depleted every bit of my energy. I pulled into the finish line at Finley Stadium just over 6 hours after I started. I was thrilled to have finished, but couldn’t get off the bike soon enough. Published in The Chattanooga Times Free Press, May 6, 2007