Neruda in Santiago . . .

We just have two more days in Santiago, and we’re falling in love with this beautiful city. Today we took the Metro to the Bellavista neighborhood to visit Pablo Neruda’s house, La Chascona, so named for the unruly red hair of Matilde Urrutia, his longtime mistress and later his third wife. When the house was first built on the hills overlooking Bellavista, it was a poor neighborhood; today, upscale shops and restaurants line the streets (including a Mexican restaurant called Para Augua Por Chocolate). Even the streets near La Chascona are filled with graffiti honoring Neruda.


As we walked through this multi-level house built around an inner garden and filled with colorful glass, Chinese and Indian art, a surprising amount of pop art, Bauhaus furniture, a breathtaking wooden sculpture of two mermaids taken from the prow of a ship, and rough drafts of his poems under glass – the many artifacts of Neruda’s life, our guide told stories, which somewhat made up for the fact no photos were allowed (except in the gardens).

Apparently at one point, Diego Rivera visited La Chascona and did a quick sketch of Matilde, later painting a formal painting in Mexico and sending it to Neruda. As you can see, Diego painted Matilde with two heads. Ironically, Rivera didn’t like Matilde, for he considered her a seductive woman who broke up marriages, thus painting her “two-faced”. Notice the profile of Neruda buried in the scrolls of Matilde’s red hair (right side).


NOTE: Images of La Chacasona are online at the Pablo Neruda Foundation. You can view any image here in a larger format by clicking on it.

After a delicious soup (think a rich chicken soup with yam, corn, cilantro and great pieces of chicken) at an outdoor café (La Venezia), we headed up to the monumental statue of the Virgin of Conception via a breath-stopping ride on a Funicular that rose 485 meters (1,500 feet) to the top of Cerro San Cristobal. We strolled around the gardens at the very top where Pope John Paul II once blessed the multitudes and visited a small but inspiring chapel to the Virgin. Then we dropped back down to the valley floor via a bubble-shaped air-tram for two in a 2,000 meter (6,500 feet) ride , admiring the snow covered Andes on the way down.


We're almost ready for the 30 hour bus ride to San Pedro de Atacama.

Valparaiso farewell . . .

Now that we’ve left Valparaiso, Chile, for Vina del Mar, the weather has turned to pure autumn. We’re sleeping under feather comforters at Casa Genross, a lovely old bed and breakfast run by Canadian-Chileans Brian and Lea, just fifteen blocks from the sea. Their home is decorated with oriental art and Navajo weavings, the mellow parquet floor shines next to wooden book cases, and I’m listening to German opera on this quiet afternoon. Our friends have left for home, one couple to the east coast and another to the west, and we are once again vagabonding, just the two of us. Though already I miss their sweet company, the next month beckons, an open road.

We stayed in Valparaiso for three days at the Casa Hostal 199, with a sweeping view of the bay here and right next door to the Artilleria ascensor, those wobbly tin can cars that rise up impossibly on cables, from the valley floor.


Valparaiso spreads out along the docks and over forty-six hills. At night, lights twinkle as far as we can see, and the moon rose, a deep orange harvest moon.

Just yesterday, we visited Pablo Neruda’s home (sadness, no pictures allowed), but what a thrill. We wandered through his hillside four-story home, one of three here in Chile, now administered by the Pablo Neruda Foundation. From the entry, we were struck by the creativity Neruda brought to every detail of La Sebastiana. Each floor looked to the sea, and each room retained its original furnishings, artworks, and personal effects. Occasionally, we’d spot a poem. At the very top of the house, we found his workroom, books lining the shelves, including mysteries which he loved to read. We saw a door-sized photograph of Walt Whitman in full beard. Apparently, a workman asked Neruda if that photo was of his father. Neruda paused and then said, “Yes, he is my father.”

Everywhere Neruda's house shows a love of color with stained glass doors and windows, and a sense of whimsy in, for example, a tiny bar where only Neruda would go to mix drinks for his friends. Here I saw a painting of a Victorian mermaid, the muse, resplendent in orange scales, playing a violin.

We also went on a fabulous walking tour with Michael, the German Pirate. Our all-day ramble took us throughout Valparaiso, inside the Stock Exchange and to lunch at the Fire Station, run by volunteers, inside a few old Baroque buildings, with marble and wood brought from Europe, past the Sotomayor monument, and up the Concepcion asensor (in service since 1883), to crooked streets, many decorated with the most amazing art graffiti, including, of course, a mermaid or two (click on any image to see a larger version).



Most of the buildings in Valparaiso are made of a mix of corrugated iron for walls and roofs (once ballast from ships coming around the horn), adobe (a mix of mud and straw), and with what I would call lathes, small, narrow boards, for wood is rare and termites are a problem everywhere. The resulting housing on hillsides looks precarious, but no earthquakes have struck, at least no major ones since 1906. So we ate at several restaurants, Allen’s favorite – paella, perched out over ravines that seemed bottomless as we peered out our scenic windows.

We’ve been told that internet will be sketchy as we travel to northern Chile, our next stop San Pedro de Atacama. So I wish you well where you are, north of the equator, spring comes; here, I can smell winter.

Ouro Preto this week . . .

This week is passing too quickly. We're staying at Pouso do Chico Rei, a small 18th Century colonial inn where Pablo Neruda once slept, in a small town, once a gold mining center, now a tourist destination and national treasure. The first days here, I could hardly believe we truly were in the same place, the same room. I hear echoes of Neruda's poems and dream.



We've wandered these cobblestoned streets, up and down hills, visiting churches and museums. Today we visited an Oratorio Museum full of Baroque religious art and sculpture by Aleijadinho, nicknamed "the little cripple" because he couldn't use his hands to sculpt in stone and so asked his assistants to tie on his mallet and hammers. He taught himself how to paint and sculpt, studying pictures by Michelangelo. We'll go tomorrow to see his famous prophets in the nearby town of Congongas, about 14 kilometers away. It turns out there's controversy about whether Aleijadinho really lived at all; he may have been a myth, yet these fabulous sculptures remain.

I hope this slide show gives you a sense of some of what we've seen, much like the red ribbon hanging down from a saint's statue that connects you directly!



Brazil

Ouro Preto is also a college town about the size of Corvallis. Its 8,000 students live in dormitories called republicas, some public and some private. As they ready for Carnival, we can hear their clubs practicing for the great processions. Think samba music, drums beating complex rhythms, and crowds singing all under a warm starry night.

Yes, we also found a laundry, and I've drunk sweet Brazilian coffee with scoops of homemade vanilla ice cream mixed in. Someone told me sugar is added when the coffee is made, but I don't believe it. The coffee beans are simply fresher here. And I do feel guilty, waking up and seeing this vista out of our two large windows, another sunny day, no reason to work except on writing; it begins to feel like a honeymoon, an interlude, an exploration, an adventure, a beginning.