Chile Day 9 - Frustration Sets In

pumalin fiddlehead fern
Originally uploaded by wolftone.

The chilean guesthouse is pretty much just someone who rents out an extra room in their house. When I read about them, I imagined long nights about the dinner table with the family, perhaps a guitar and singing, as we came to understand each other's cultures over broken language. Heh. My guesthouse has no name, so I'll call it the "Lollipop Guild Inn" for the concussion-height ceilings. My host family seems nice enough, but they spend their evenings watching loud TV which makes Sabador Gigante look dignified. Maybe they understand my culture all too well.

Today I visited Parque Pumalin, a huge privately-owned park which is almost entirely undeveloped. For all the area, there are really only 3 or 4 small trails inside. I visited with Nicholas, an American expat who now makes his living as the sole english-speaker in town.

The day started like an old car, coughing and lurching forward before stalling and starting again. I spent 3 hours talking with Nicholas' non-english-speaking secretary in order to try and make arrangements for the next few days. Tomorrow's bus is running on a special schedule for the election, so I once again had to make just-in-time change of plans which I'm not really pleased with. Also, at one point the secretary just left the office for half an hour mid-transaction with no explanation. It took us over an hour to leave town as Nicholas drove around taking care of one errand or another. Typical.

Rather than the sweeping geology that I usually seek in a hike, these were of more botanical interest. I saw many trees (including 3000 year old Alerces), ferns, moss, and some little-shop-of-horrors giant cabbage (the stalk tastes like celery/apple). I did get a few nice waterfalls in the bargain, so there was something to satisfy me.

With so much money behind the park (the owner started North Face and Esprit) and so few trails, the facilities at the park are amazing. The trails are all decked out in paths, ladders, and bridges made from salvaged alerce wood. Some high-traffic footpaths are even cobblestone paved. I was amazed at the amount of trail construction that had to have gone into the place.

Did I mention that it's raining again? Without fail, another hiking day has been cloudy and wet after a perfectly beautiful transit/hangout day. This is becoming maddening. I have heard that it's 37degrees (celsius!) in Santiago. Much as I complain about the rain, at least it's escapable with a good jacket and some nerve. That kind of heat would turn me into an inactive puddle almost immediately.

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I returned to my hospitaje to find that all of my stuff (including my oh-so-cleverly-hidden passport) had been moved to a new room. I'm not sure if my hostess needed the old room or decided that I needed more ceiling height, but now Kevin and I are sharing a room on the first floor. We had a protracted mutually incomprehensible conversation about the new arrangements which seemed to repeat itself every 10 sentences or so. So I've lost privacy and gained a bigger room. Not what I'd prefer, but I don't have the language to protest or demand a discount. I feel powerless and pushed-around.

Here's my new theory on Language Barriers: Incomprehensibility is a function of language skill and conceptual complexity. My Mandarin is even worse than my Spanish, but I got by just fine in China because things generally worked as advertised and were predictable. Check comes, you pay it. That sort of thing. Here, nothing is ever easy. Every transaction is a complex multi-stage affair with lots of questions, disclaimers, problems, and issues which need to be negotiated. Here, it goes way beyond "do you accept credit cards" and "where is the bathroom". We're talking things like "pay us a 1/4 cash retainer today to reserve your flight and go to the office at 32 Pinto tomorrow at 11:30 to find out if the plane is even leaving as scheduled." The phrasebook in Let's Go is not up to the task of this country's communication needs.

Carne for dinner. Yum.