Chile, Day 4
Hips don’t lie. Mine don’t speak.
Every day starts out the same way. From the shower I can see a little patch of sky through a window tinted in light blue with light pink clouds on most days. When there are more clouds I know I have to dress more warmly. I watch the last 15 minutes of the news show Teletrece which finishes at 8am while having scrambled eggs on toast and coffee. My host mum sits next to me, occasionally commenting on the latest happenings. With both the headings on the bottom of the screen and her comments, I make sense of most stories and pick up a few new words for my notebook. My phone that is. Since my arrival in Chile and the beginning of the Spanish Project, my phone has been one of my most important allies, serving as both notebook and dictionary. When I finish breakfast, I have to rush the seven minutes walk to the nearest bus stop to take the bus to Valparaíso.
I enter the minibus with the 500 pesos coin in my hand that I give to the driver to cover the 450 pesos fare. That translates to roughly 60 pence, a bit more than before the Brexit referendum. Even though I don’t live in the same city than my university, the bus ride only takes 15 minutes. They are twin cities, grown and merged into one over the years. You can tell by the graveyards, our tour guide told us yesterday, which they located extramural, but now are in the hearts of the two cities. While I’m on the bus I can watch the driver trying to attract as many passengers as possible as his pay partly depends on commissions. At most stations, there is a man with a clipboard standing outside showing people into the right buses. Clipboard Man and Driver have a ritual where Clipboard Man would leap onto the accelerating bus and extend his arm towards Driver so he could give him a coin – probably his pay for his promotional work outside.
At the university two flights of stairs lead up to the gorgeous historic stone building. It reminds me of the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. From up there the view over the Ocean is breathtaking. On the right you can see Con Con which looks like the emerged Atlantis in the morning mist. I always check which of the huge container ships has moved or disappeared. They seem to be waiting a few days before they enter Valparaíso’s harbour to receive their cargo. It’s not a very big harbour nor very busy, but nonetheless it’s Latin America’s most important one. An indication for the difference in development and trade between Europe and Latin America.
This is story 2/5 of my Chile short stories. Read Chile, Day 7 now.
