Thinking Allowed: Absorbing Neruda

Our first glimpse of Santiago was of a city shrouded in a bluish-gray haze. The surrounding mountains were dimmed by the smog, and our hearts sank a bit to enter a big dirty city ... why did we leave the beauty of the Andes?!

Our apartment was in a pretty sketchy part of town - some walls on our street had barbed wire, then razor wire, and finally an electric fence on top! But our apartment was cozy and we decided to make the most of our big-city experience. So we walked through some (admittedly grim) barrios before reaching Plaza Brasil, whose playground was obviously designed by an artist: its slides were volcanoes, giant blue monsters, rainbow spires. Then we indulged in our first Thai meal for months, and went home feeling a bit better about Santiago.

The next day Santiago charmed me through and through. We walked through the teeming Mercado de la Vega, which was an endless maze of delicious fruit and vegetable stalls (with one delicious coffee stand right in the middle, like something out of a modern-day Zelda game). We stopped in a used bookshop, browsed and bought some books ... then discovered there was a whole other one hidden behind it! So we browsed for another hour, and ended up with a backpack full of books. Then we went to Parque Bicentenario de la Infancia, which thrilled Tova with its hamster racecourse and pyramid of slides. Next we hiked up to Cerro San Cristobal in the scorching heat, where our flagging spirits were revived with a truly wicked Passionfruit Gatorade and a sickly-sweet glass of Mote Con Huesillo (it's like sugar syrup with lots of barley in it), plus empanadas. We walked home via the market, which we almost got locked into, and were thoroughly pooped.

The rest of the week was quieter. A group of businessmen took me to Miraolas, an upscale seafood restaurant, where I had salmon tartare, braised cod-cheek medallions, and a fine glass of Carmenere. We had coffee, pastries and bouldering in Barrio Italiano, which was so hipster-cute it felt like a completely different city. Otherwise I mostly worked, while Tamar and the girls went out on all kinds of adventures. Here's what Tamar wrote about Pablo Neruda and Valparaiso:

As part of the girls' schooling for our week in Santiago I created a curriculum highlighting Pablo Neruda. In doing so I fell slightly in love. I am not sure why I had not read Neruda much before. It made me realize how Euro and North American centric my education has been. Neruda's Chile is a wondrous place where all its follies are elevated by their inherent prose. His poems are really things of beauty. True, the girls got more emotional when I read them Shel Silverstein poems, but, even if they won't openly admit it, I am sure the poems I read them moved them as well. We read Neruda's Ode to Valparaiso before our visit to the town. Valparaiso was as hectic as Neruda promised. While we battled crowded sidewalks filled to bursting with used clothes on offer, tried to filter out noise and pollution, and used our thigh muscles to their lactic capacity, we could also all think to ourselves 'Ah this is what he meant.' Neruda's house afforded us slight views into his personal life but big views of the colourful muddled jumble of living and life crashing into the ocean. I might not jump at the chance of returning to Santiago but I will hold Neruda close so I can always see beauty in the grey like he did. Here is a snippet to get you motivated to go read Neruda :

If we were not so single-minded

about keeping our lives moving,

and for once could do nothing,

perhaps a huge silence

might interrupt this sadness

of never understanding ourselves

and of threatening ourselves with death.

Perhaps the earth can teach us

as when everything seems dead

and later proves to be alive.