Cosmopolitan
It was an abrupt shift back to relative stability after months of hyper-nomadic behavior. I stay in places for more than a few days now. I can actually stock my refrigerator with food. At any given time, it’s very likely that I’ve showered within the last 24 hours. My shirts occasional have collars on them. All good stuff, honestly.
This stability is necessitated by my return to work, I’m once again a full-time logic factory for pay. I’ve been big city living to avoid contending with spotty internet.
Last Days of Freedom
I had a few more days in Pichilemu before I had to go back to work. The swell backed off a little and swung more northerly, hitting the left points more squarely. These were the best days of surf I had in Chile.
I was slowly driving the point checking the surf when suddenly the bottom dropped out and my car screeched to a stop. I got out and realized my undercarriage was teetering on this concrete slab. Someone walked up to me and asked ‘Is it a rental?’ Usually people speak Spanish to me but I guess dry-docking your sedan is akin to revealing your gringo card. Within 30 seconds, he assembled over 10 people to help push the Versa back off of the concrete. Muchas gracias.
Back to Work in Santiago
I returned to Santiago and got back to work. I had a nice apartment in Las Condes for a couple weeks.
View from the window.
View from the roof.
Las Condes is a great area, I recommend staying there if you come to Santiago.
It was good to get back to work and feel like a productive person again. At first, it was even refreshing to have a little break from surfing, but I started to miss it pretty quickly.
The weather in Santiago was so nice, everyday was dry and sunny with pleasant breezy afternoons and evenings. It made me smile every time I stepped outside.
Mi amiga.
It was a struggle to track down decent coffee beans as Chileans seem to be much more into tea. I gave a bag of yerba mate a try. I didn’t have the stylish mate gourd and straw, so I improvised a brewing technique creating a sort of gringo mate. It took me about half the bag to develop a taste for it, but I was starting to dig it at the end.
Pretty sure this setup would be considered sacrilegious in Argentina.
The protests are still ongoing in Santiago, and I was advised to avoid several areas of the city. It’s surprising to me how little coverage the protests have gotten in the US media, even before every single story was about Coronavirus. Most people I talked to were fairly pessimistic about a favorable resolution coming anytime in the foreseeable future. There was also an interesting theory getting kicked around about Venezuela and/or Cuba being responsible for the initial subway station burnings. I won’t pretend to be qualified to weigh in on that, but one thing not up for debate is that the people really don’t like their president, Piñera. His approval rating is in the single digits, and there’s grafiti on every corner calling for something bad to happen to him.
Peaceful uptown protest.
Graffiti starts to coat everything as you get closer to the city center.
Chile is a cool place. The people are great, really friendly and caring. I hope the political situation improves for them. I’ll have to come back to see the north and the far south of the country.
Lima
I’ve been in Lima for a couple weeks and have a spot here until mid-March. I’m staying in Barranco, a neighborhood along a section of the city’s cliffs. The cliffs elevate the city above the shoreline and give it a grandiose facade from the perspective of the water. It’s an amazing setup for a city.
Lima feels hectic compared to Santiago, or at least to Las Condes. The traffic is crazy throughout most of the city, making driving stressful. It’s also really humid in comparison to the dry air back in Santiago.
The waves in the city are tame but can get fun. There’s always some swell running and the water is warm enough for trunks, at least in combination with the midday sun.
Barranco is considered the bohemian part of the city. I’ve actually never heard ‘bohemian’ be so consistently applied to the description of an area, but here I am perpetuating it. It does have an artsy vibe to it.
This blog is basically 60% pictures of waves, 20% pictures of street art, and 20% formulaic writing.
Peruvian food absolutely slaps. I’ve been trying to sample all the essential dishes but it’s hard for me not to get ceviche every time. I’m a ceviche fan in general, but the ceviche here is several levels above anything else I’ve ever had. I haven’t taken any food pictures because I usually devour it as soon as I get it. I’ll try to get some pictures for the next post.
I’ve got a month membership at a co-working space about a block and a half away from my apartment, giving me a pleasant 5 minute walking commute to ‘work.’ It’s a nice little setup for the month.
View from my apartment.
There’s definitely a Peruvian/Chilean rivalry. One thing they both stake claim to is having superior pisco. I’m not a very qualified judge, but I’d give a slight nod to Peru on this front.
While it’s obviously not breaking here, this left is supposed to be one of the best in Peru. I’m hoping for a big enough swell to get a crack at it.
It’s been really hard to find yogurt that isn’t runny dannon-style (or worse) in South America, but this is the good shit. Possibly the best yogurt I’ve ever had.
Punta Hermosa
A friend from Lima advised me to go to Punta Hermosa for better quality waves, so I drove down last weekend. Physically, it’s only about 30 kilometers south of Lima, but practically it’s an hour and a half long hell-ride through some dense and particularly aggressive traffic.
I met another American surfer/remote developer down there. He showed me the spots and we went for a surf. He has a place overlooking the water with solid internet and a glorious looking office chair. He gave me a good run down of other spots in Peru that are workable, although he admitted it’s fairly limited. He’s been all over the country and is now settled in Punta Hermosa, the rare combination of usable internet and quality surf.
There are a bunch of spots packed into a small little zone. The waves were fun and even on a weekend in the summer the crowds were manageable.
This area is a proper desert, hardly any vegetation in sight.
What’s Next
I’m not exactly sure what’s next. I’d like to check out some different parts of Peru and possibly Ecuador. I’d also like to spend a more substantial block of time somewhere, maybe in Portugal or France if I can swing the time zone difference. The pace of my life has drastically slowed now that I’m back at work, which isn’t a bad thing, but it does makes a month seem much shorter. We’ll see.