Loose End In LatAm

Haircuts, hangovers and a dictator checking out.

Before I left the lake district I took the opportunity to get probably the worst haircut I have ever had, (somehow the sides were left long and the top short giving a strangely tonsured effect), by someone I'm not entirely convinced had ever cut hair before, and was probably just minding the place... any way all was rectified when I reached Valparaiso. The guy had certainly cut hair before, just always for the navy, but that's what you get if you go to a barber just next to the port I guess. It's a pity Carrie and I didn't manage to meet up in this part of the trip as hoped, as doubtless she would have a suitably pitiless comment.

Any way, after 11 months of getting up and either "doing" something or moving on every day I have reached saturation point, so I abandoned all plans to do anything more than move up the coast and shuttle between a couple of my favourite cities: Valparaiso and Santiago in Chile and beautiful Mendoza over the Andes.

Mendoza is just a place I find it all to easy to do absolutely nothing and consequently have nothing much to report other than I have been feeding myself on fat steaks, guzzling the local plonk, and throwing sticks for Astor, the dog in the hostel.

Valparaiso on the other hand always has something to keep me busy. Mainly it's just wandering around and seeing something new every day. There is so much public art to see (both official and unauthorised), and fantastic views over the port - it's very easy to spend time watching the port life while sipping a pisco sour. And there's always a dilapidated asensor (funicular cable car thing, that are all over the city) to trundle up a hill on, or an ancient trolley bus to ride - the trolley buses are all different having been acquired from various places in Germany and Switzerland, and one or two still have the original destinations on the front.

However, I think Valparaiso must be utterly different from any other town in the world. It may be dirty and smelly but it has so much character, not in the least by the packs of dogs that run around the place, or the gangs of sea-lions I watched sink a small boat in the harbour. And it has a particularly high number of bars you would never go into, which appear to have been named and decorated in the 70's, including the International Pink Flamingo Bar and, my favourite, Club Kenny's Disco Bar. The latter I think would make a fabulous title for some novel or concept album, but I've decide that it would be best as some sort of art-house documentary film, in which show business celebs from the 70's are filmed drying and dying in front of pitifully small, non-plussed audiences, followed by interviews of their reactions and reminiscences, spilling the beans on the heady life of being an "all round entertainer".
Interviewer: "So Brucie, not a great night. Have a drink mate"
Brucie: "Thanks, I need it after that."
Interviewer: "Well, it must happen once in a while. After all it's not the first time you been up staged, is it? Top up?"
Brucie: "W-wadaya mean?"
Interviewer: "Have another gin, and tell me in your own words, what was it like to see a camp twat like Larry Graceson beat you in the ratings on the Generation Game."
Brucie: "Sickening. What more can I say? Somehow it would have been different if it was one of my old muckers, like Tarby or Kenny [Lynch]. Or even Bobby [Monkhouse], despite the fake tan and a reputation for a back hander. But Larry... he was always...different."

...I really have got too much time on my hands.


Valparaiso is also where the Chilean Congress sits, in a building Pinochet erected on the site of one of his childhood homes...only fitting then that when the bugger died someone burnt his effigy on its steps. I'll admit, as I wandered through town on my last day in the city, I thought the noise was all about a home win for the local team, but when I saw the hammer and sickle flags out I realised what must be going on. Within a very short time the main street had been closed to traffic and a march progressed up and down it, with flags and banners, and many pictures of people with the caption "Donde Estan" (where are they?). Pinochet was responsible for the disappearance and deaths of 3000, and the torture of a further 30,000, of his own countrymen, and of course was never punished, (so nice then, that our own ex-Prime Minister Thatcher is "greatly saddened" by his death). In Santiago crowds were dispersed with tear gas, but in Valparaiso it appeared the officers and sailors were confined to their ships, and a with light police presence, the demonstrations passed off peacefully.


But now I've really only got just a few more days to wander back and forth for between the plains and the coast, and frankly doing very little...except having the odd drink here or there.