Santiago, Chile, Mile 334
Greetings from Chile´s capital city, where I arrived today via bus from Viña del Mar. My time in Viña was peaceful and economic. I returned several times to the store that sold me the prepared lasagna, and bought, among other things, more lasagna, raviolis, cooked beef and rice (which I just had to microwave) and cookies. I doubt I spent more than ten Dollars a day on food, and I ate well. Yesterday morning, I rode the bike a dozen miles or so up the coast, past Concon, and along some very beautiful shoreline. Passing Concon, the road crossed a bridge and continued, but it was all under construction, so I did not go any farther. Frequently, the coastal range of mountains (They are beyond hills.) comes right down the the sea, so I saw a lot of condos built terraced into the hills. It makes one wonder what would happen in a really heavy rainstorm. Following my return, I took all my (very) dirty clothes to a laundromat where for 5,000 Pesos they were washed up and ready this morhing. I then took an Uber to the curiously named Valparaiso Sporting Club, which is nowhere near Valparaiso; it is in Viña. and spent some time playing the horses. I counted 130,000 Pesos in my wallet when I left the condo, and paid for a program and a 7,000 Peso meal in the cafeteria. I came home with 131,000 Pesos, meaning the day was a success. (ANY day at the track where one does not lose money is a success.) Most of my success came in the last race, where I hit a trifecta and came a nose away from hitting the superfecta (Which would have made it a REALLY profitable day, probably several hundred thousand Pesos profit.) The track is at least a mile and a half around; 6 furlong races were starting at the beginning of the far turn, and basically ran around the turn, and then up a long stretch to the finish line which was just before the start of the near turn. Curiously, the turf course is OUTSIDE the dirt course, something I have never seen in an American track. Being alone, I was not drinking beer, which was a shame because beer was so cheap that...it would have been very easy to consume a lot of it.
This morning, I cleaned up the condo I had rented in Viña, retrieved my clothes, then packed everything back into my saddlebags, loaded them onto the bike and rode exactly a mile to the Viña del Mar bus terminal. There, I paid 2,000 Pesos for a ticket, 3,000 Pesos "overweight" fees to transport the bicycle and a 2,000 Peso tip to the two baggage handlers who loaded my bike into the bowels of the bus. Basically ten Dollars for an 80 mile ride in a first class bus, which was not bad at all. Riding out of Viña. we did some incredible climbing, and rode through two long and dark tunnels. An hour and a half later, I was in downtown Santiago, where I rode a further 4 miles to my latest AirBnb, which is a "loft" condo on the 12th floor of a building in downtown Santiago about a mile from where I was when I arrived here. It is a very nice place, with a kitchen and living room "downstairs" and a bedroom and bath "upstairs", all of which look out of one huge window over the city. Not bad for $40 a day.
Once installed, I went out walking and eventually discovered Calle los Huerfanos, which is a long pedestrian-only street similar to Calle Florida in Buenos Aires, only without the pickpockets and money changers. I walked the length of it and discovered the official bookstore of the Feria Internacional del Libro Chileno, which I spent some time in and ended up spending 16,000 Pesos purchasing one book. 25 years ago, long before I discovered the joys of teaching and doing taxes, I sold books for Mexican publishing house Fondo de Cultura Economica. The prices we were running were insane, often English translations of our authors would be available for half, or less, our price. The reason is simple, in the US print runs are in the hundreds of thousands or even millions of copies, meaning the unit price can be brought very low. In the Spanish language world, print runs are frequently 5,000 copies or less, meaning the individual price is very high. As a result, books are too expensive, and nobody buys them, meaning that there is no way to justify a larger print run. It is a vicious, and unfortunate, circle. (The exact same thing happens in Portuguese; I have paid, in Brazil, TRIPLE for a Jorge Amado book in the original Portuguese over what the American translated edition costs.) Anyway, I laid out the equivalent of $24.00 on a piece of historical fiction about a German cruiser (the Dresden) sunk by the Royal Navy in Chilean waters in 1915 while supposedly carrying "treasure". Hopefully it was worth the money. If nothing else, I will learn something; I had never heard of this incident and I like to pride myself on knowing a thing or two about military history.
That out of the way, I walked back past my condo towards a pizza joint I had found earlier and on the way I encountered an actual internet joint for the first time on the trip. For 3,000 Pesos an hour, I dropped in to write this; it is much easier than tapping it out on the tablet.
More adventures will surely be coming tomorrow.
This morning, I cleaned up the condo I had rented in Viña, retrieved my clothes, then packed everything back into my saddlebags, loaded them onto the bike and rode exactly a mile to the Viña del Mar bus terminal. There, I paid 2,000 Pesos for a ticket, 3,000 Pesos "overweight" fees to transport the bicycle and a 2,000 Peso tip to the two baggage handlers who loaded my bike into the bowels of the bus. Basically ten Dollars for an 80 mile ride in a first class bus, which was not bad at all. Riding out of Viña. we did some incredible climbing, and rode through two long and dark tunnels. An hour and a half later, I was in downtown Santiago, where I rode a further 4 miles to my latest AirBnb, which is a "loft" condo on the 12th floor of a building in downtown Santiago about a mile from where I was when I arrived here. It is a very nice place, with a kitchen and living room "downstairs" and a bedroom and bath "upstairs", all of which look out of one huge window over the city. Not bad for $40 a day.
Once installed, I went out walking and eventually discovered Calle los Huerfanos, which is a long pedestrian-only street similar to Calle Florida in Buenos Aires, only without the pickpockets and money changers. I walked the length of it and discovered the official bookstore of the Feria Internacional del Libro Chileno, which I spent some time in and ended up spending 16,000 Pesos purchasing one book. 25 years ago, long before I discovered the joys of teaching and doing taxes, I sold books for Mexican publishing house Fondo de Cultura Economica. The prices we were running were insane, often English translations of our authors would be available for half, or less, our price. The reason is simple, in the US print runs are in the hundreds of thousands or even millions of copies, meaning the unit price can be brought very low. In the Spanish language world, print runs are frequently 5,000 copies or less, meaning the individual price is very high. As a result, books are too expensive, and nobody buys them, meaning that there is no way to justify a larger print run. It is a vicious, and unfortunate, circle. (The exact same thing happens in Portuguese; I have paid, in Brazil, TRIPLE for a Jorge Amado book in the original Portuguese over what the American translated edition costs.) Anyway, I laid out the equivalent of $24.00 on a piece of historical fiction about a German cruiser (the Dresden) sunk by the Royal Navy in Chilean waters in 1915 while supposedly carrying "treasure". Hopefully it was worth the money. If nothing else, I will learn something; I had never heard of this incident and I like to pride myself on knowing a thing or two about military history.
That out of the way, I walked back past my condo towards a pizza joint I had found earlier and on the way I encountered an actual internet joint for the first time on the trip. For 3,000 Pesos an hour, I dropped in to write this; it is much easier than tapping it out on the tablet.
More adventures will surely be coming tomorrow.
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