Living in the Now
I’ve been completely living in the now in Chile. Not because I’ve become enlightened or tapped into some inner whimsy, but because the present tense verb conjugation is the only tense I have a shot at remembering. I can hack together a future tense by chucking in a ‘voy a …,’ but I strictly avoid mentioning things that have already happened. The past might as well have never occurred.
Santiago
I only spent a day and a half in Santiago. I saw a woman walking with a delicious looking iced coffee. Iced coffee is pretty hard to come by in a lot of countries so I was excited to track some down. On my first ordering attempt, I ended up with essentially a coffee float with vanilla ice cream, tasty but not what I was after. My second try, I got an americano with exactly one ice cube in it, which promptly melted leaving me with a lukewarm americano. I’ve since abandoned my iced coffee dreams and have stuck to good old double espressos.
I go back to work next week. I’ll be working remotely, so while traveling through Chile I’ve been looking for a place with solid internet and good waves where I can eventually work from. Viña del Mar seemed like a decent candidate, so I went there for a few days to scope it out.
Viña del Mar
Apparently Viña and the neighboring Valparaíso are summertime holiday hotspots, because both cities were absolutely slammed with people. It kinda felt like Chile’s take on Atlantic City. Fun for sure, but not somewhere I wanted to stay very long.
The waves in the area totally sucked, I didn’t even take a single picture of them. There was plenty of swell, but most spots didn’t approach surfable or show any promise. After a couple days and many hours spent battling traffic and scouring for parking while checking spots, I eventually gave up trying to surf and embraced other aspects of beach city life.
Check out the one man conga line, probably my favorite stoplight hustler. Definitely better than the guy just doing a fucking handstand.
The haziness in this picture was around for a few days. It was said to be from the Australian fires. There was a similar haze in New Zealand which was also attributed to the fires.
My Chilean friend Benja, who I met in Australia years back, invited me to his friend’s birthday party. The party started at his friend’s apartment and eventually migrated to a dance party at a nearby club. Benja’s friend was somehow connected to the place, and we all got VIP stamps which evidently granted us access to the DJ based on this picture I took:
It was a wild night. I got back to my airbnb a little after 6 in the morning and promptly slept until 2pm. I guess the rest of the party reconvened at the birthday boy’s place for an afterparty that ran until 10am. Chileans do not mess around when they party.
Viña clearly wasn’t the spot I was going to post up at, so I gathered up my stuff and headed south to Pichilemu.
Pichilemu
Pichilemu is a surf town with a cool vibe. I was thrilled to pull into town and quickly see the first surfable wave I’d witnessed in Chile.
Pichilemu has its own summertime Chilean tourism pulse, apparently the area has developed a lot in recent years.
Someone must’ve sold a fitness initiative to the government, these outdoor gyms are all over the place in Chile.
Pichilemu has some great surf, but it does suffer from a lack of variety. There are three main waves, all of them left points facing the same direction and requiring the same basic set of conditions. At any given time it’s either good or bad everywhere.
Pichilemu definitely fulfilled my surf requirement, but the internet was shaky at best, even at the modest coworking space in town. I heard of a wave-rich region between Constitución and Concepción, so I pointed the red Nissan Versa south once again.
Driving South
The roads were pretty sketchy at points with several long stretches of hilly dirt/rock roads. I was worried about the Versa’s tires, but they took the bumpy trip in stride.
Almost every town in Chile seems to have a miniramp. There might not be a gas station or any chicken in the market, but there will probably be a mini somewhere.
Salt farms
Delicious roadside strawberries. They were only selling huge boxes so I asked for just a handful, the lady wouldn’t accept any money. Moments after taking this picture I got pulled over and had to awkwardly shovel the berries out of my crotch before getting out of the car to retrieve my passport from the trunk.
I thought Maui and Sons was a long forgotten brand from the 90s, but it is absolutely thriving in coastal Chile. It is probably the most popular brand I’ve seen here.
Almost every place that sells food has a menu comprised of some combination of empanadas, completos (hot dogs with tons of shit on them), papas fritas, and churros. Chile seems to be on the 1990s American culinary program where the ethos is “fuck vegetables, let’s just fry everything and drink soda.” Pollo asado, ceviche, and sushi are the rare reprieves from the deep-fried diet.
I stayed at an airbnb at a small town on the coast. My host ended up being a surfer who spoke some English. He gave me a pretty good run down of surfing in Chile which was super valuable. He also took me to his friend’s birthday party, which was a proper Chilean asado with a group of local surfers. The small community of disparate personalities felt just like a New England surf crew.
I was once again reminded that Chileans know how to party. The food was ridiculously tasty and the pisco was flowing like water. Chileans love drinking pisco, but they really love watching gringos drink pisco. It was another late night for me.
This was taken late at night after many rounds of grilling and it doesn’t do the asado justice. At the peak, the grill was mounded with chicken, steak, ribs, fish, mussels, etc.
This part of Chile is the land of left points. The coastline is littered with setups, some are accessible but the majority are not. I stumbled across a lot of waves that I’m sure have their days, but nothing was truly doing. It also got much windier the further south I got.
This wave got really fun a few days later on my drive back north, for some reason I didn’t take any pictures.
I made it down to Concepción and spent a day there scoping both the internet and wave potential. The internet was actually blazingly fast, but yet again the surrounding areas didn’t show much surf potential. Also the city didn’t seem all that fun to stay in, so I abandoned the idea of staying there and made my way back up north to Pichilemu.
Back to Pichilemu
I was greeted in Pichilemu by a proper swell. The top of the main point ended up being too much for the fatum and me to handle, so I was relegated to surfing the more protected middle of the point. The local boys were geared up and charging.
What’s Next?
I never found the mythical surf/work sweet spot in Chile. I think some of the cities in the northern part of the country might fit the bill but they’re 15+ hours away and I don’t really have the time or energy to check them out right now. My current plan is to go to back to Santiago for a few weeks to get back into the swing of working, then head to Peru.
These past three months have been absolutely incredible, and it’s not lost on me how lucky I’ve been. I haven’t had to worry about money or commitments or much of anything. I’ve been able to do whatever I want, whenever I want, wherever I want. If that’s not the pinnacle of privilege then I don’t know what is.
But I’m actually pretty excited to get back to work. After all, I’m still an American and there’s only so long I can step off of the capitalistic treadmill before the almighty dollar calls me back. And I’ve spent enough time drifting around like a pyscho, a little routine will be nice.
This isn’t the end for the blog even if the ‘sabbatical’ portion of the name is about to become even less true. I’m going to keep posting while I travel around working, albeit probably at a reduced clip. Stay tuned…