Iquique

Festival Danza America Iquique/Chilean Folklorico- Polynesian Dance

Seven hours to La Serena, twelve to Antofagasta, and another eight to Iquique, all through exquisitely stark desert. In Copiapo, a large town which is a base for mining, I stepped off the bus to ask how long we'd be there. Standing with people who were waiting to retrieve their bags, someone bumped me. Back on the bus, I found that all of my zippers on my backpack had been opened. I had nothing of worth in it and so hadn't been careful. If they wanted my chapstick or tissues they were welcome to them, but it reinforced the need for constant vigilance of bags and purses and pockets.

Quantum of Solace, except for the trash. Some Chileans protested as the James Bond film was being made because the film claimed the desert was in Bolivia.

Strolling down Calle Banquedano in Iquique during our last evening, we saw there was going to be a perfomance which would feature dance troupes from all over South America. The picture above is of the Chilean performers doing one of the most erotic dances I've ever seen. Chile includes parts of Polynesia: the Isla de Pasquas (Easter Islan or Rapa Nui), Isla de Juan Fernandez and Isla Robinson Crusoe, named for the same Robinson Crusue Daniel Defoe wrote about. By the way, Friday never lived there.

Another of this group's perfomances honored the city of Valparaiso which had a section featuring a sailor and his pareja that made me want to smoke a cigarette afterwards. Videos of some of the dances can be found at the end of this blog, however we didn't catch the two I've just describe. I know, darn.

Iquique is morphing into a major beach resort. There are expensive hotels and a casino at the south end of town. Gambling doesn't interest us, so we didn't check these out. On Banquedano, there are beautifully restored Georgian buildings, wooden sidewalks, and restaurants that serve excellent food. We found that you can get real salads in restaurants! It's confusing to us that in a country with such a wealth of fruits and vegetables, where they come cheap in the outdoor ferias, the salads usually consists of finely chopped iceberg lettuce, a slice of tomato and maybe a beet. Even the bread in our hotel had a crusty crust like good French breads. The fact we were hundreds of kilometers from any place made this abundance especially pleasing, but shipping the food is probably not that great for global warming.

The first night we didn't venture off Banquedano. I kept asking Bill, Are we still in Chile? We peeked through a window of the Casino Espanol (not to be confused with the modern one to the south of town) and it looked like what I imagine the Alhambra might be like, intricate mosiacs covering every inch of wall space, but also with elegant tables with candles, fine linen, and stuffy waiters in tuxes.

When Iquique was a boom town in the 19th century, it was said that more Champaign was consumed here than in any other place on Earth. The rich, most whom were English, lived in luxury, while the local population of Indians and Meztizos endured miserable short lives working in the mines, a historical lesson that is too familiar, no?

Above, the clock tower memorial to Arturo Pratt, hero and Chile's most revered martyr of the Battle of Iquique against Peru.

The next day as we walked around the rest of the town, the answer to my question was yes, we were in Chile. Only a block away, Iquique bustled with commerce admist a hodgepodge of shops with their metal doors rolled up, the honking of buses and taxis, car alarms screaming and vendors selling their wares on blankets or in small carts that dotted the streets. I've gotten used to this now and feeling more comfortable with chaos, but in the middle of the hussle we found a pretty courtyard just off the street with benches and shade trees. Crimson bouganvillas hung along the walls, and we rested for quite awhile from the heat and the noise.

Earlier in the day, we took a colectivo through the town to the Mercado Central to find lunch. It was a wild lurching ride. I'm cautious by nature and always look for seat belts. Usually there are none, so rides are exercises in letting go, enjoying the experience and not obsessing on being thrown through the windshield. We wove through the streets, skimmed by micros and squeezed into narrow spaces in the traffic. The next day headline news was about a collision with a collectivo and a micro. We lucked out once again.

I snapped pictures from the back seat.

The butt shot below is a common sight in Chile. There seems to be an obsession with young women's potitos. All summer long there have been news updates about each of the beach resorts from Renaca, near where I live, all the way north to "conditions" in Arica. There are multiple close-ups of the bottoms of young women on each playa, with new ones featured every night. Our friend Norm, the Canuck, said that he saw more cleavage here in six months than in the rest of his life. Well . . . I suppose being from Saskatchewan might be a reason, but he's right. There is a lot. Cleavage and buns here don't rival Brazil but they're definitely a commodity and a national past time.

When we got to the Mercado Central, a barker for an upstairs restaurant attached himself to us and we were whisked to the second level, urged on through another busy restaurant to his smaller one in the back. He was so persistant that I was turned off and didn't want to go. A perky young waitress showed us the menu for the Restaurant Shalom at the same time he was pointing to his tables. Charm won over desperation. Also, almost every table at Restaurant Shalom was full and there was no one in the smaller place. I asked, Gente saben su restaurant es mejor? And she answered, Si, gente saben. (I hope someday to go over my blog when I have access to a Spanish keyboard. Si, I know, needs an accent). My pollo asado was the best I've had here in Chile; afterwards, though, both Bill and I felt bad for not going to the other place. After my initial response, I realized that the franticness of the man had to do with the fact he needed to survive.

Chileans of all social classes love to shop. Flea markets and malls buzz no matter where you go. This mall in Iquique is a tourist mecca, a duty free zone filled with things that didn't interest Bill nor I much. If we wanted a new camera, it would have been the place to go, but all we needed was air conditioning. We hung out just to cool off for an hour or so.

As we walked to the mall, we found some of the worst slums we've seen, rivaling Valparaiso's hillside shacks, just across the street. Corregated tin and cardboard are flung helter skelter and these miniscule houses barely hang on the hillside. I wanted a picture to contrast with the one above, but the taxi ride didn't turn up toward them. I took the photo below on our way out of Iquique, and it gives somewhat of an idea, except imagine two or three hundred crunched together.

Chile has the highest standard of living in South America and is considered a median income country for the world. There is a big middle class here and it's slowly growing. There are government programs to help the best students in the poorest schools go to college. However, the poorest schools lack resources, no lab equipment, for example, so these students still don't compete well with those who go to private schools. Even with good things happening, the gap between the richest and poorests is one of the biggest in the world.

Our bus chugged up a steep ascent as we left Iquique for Arica. We climbed above sand dunes has high as some mountains on the Eastern Seaboard of the U.S. Hang gliders frolicked above us as we made our way to Arica, another five hours to the north.

So, back to the dance concert. I've never been an aficionada of dance. When my husband suggested we go I said, It sounds better than going back to the hotel and watching TV. He hasn't let me live that down. From ten p.m. to one in the morning, groups from Argentina, Chile, Columbia, Peru and Bolivia entertained the audience with an amazing display of athleticism, drama, proud displays of cultural heritage and down right alegre, complete with a TV announcer who could roll his rrrrrrs longer than anyone I've ever heard. I understood him!!! It was wonderful to finally know exactly what was going on. The comments he made impressed me, as similar ones have done during our time here, in that the people in Chile feel they are Americans too. The United States doesn't have a monopoly on the word.

Before closing this section, I need to say that the generosity of Chilians to foreigners is heartfelt and wonderful to receive. The tickets we got wouldn't let Bill and I sit together. The woman who was in charge of the front of the "house" must have seen the bewilderment on our faces while we were still figuring out if the number on the tickets matched the number on the seats. She took us to the front row where we sat with the managers of the ballet companies AND the alcadesa de Iquique herself.

There are videos below of Bolivian and Argentinian (tango!) dancers.

Ballet Bolivia:




Gauchos from Cordoba, Argentina:

The Chilean dancers doing a traditional cueca:

Tango from Buenas Aires:




This last clip was filmed sideways, but I had to include it. This little boy danced for two hours until he got tired and started to pull on his ears. He fell asleep in his mother's arms for the last half an hour or so. He wins the prize of what I'd most like to take home with me to remember Chile: