IN, OUT, AND ABOUT IN PROVIDENCIA

We are staying in an area of Santiago called Providencia. It was supposedly quite posh in bygone years but now the money and modernity have moved north to a place called Las Condes. This is actually a good thing, I think. In parts of Las Condes they have gated and guarded complexes from which tourists can emerge to dine at American chain restaurants like Friday's, Hooters (!?) and Starbucks. Granted there is also some very nice and expensive Chilean fare available. Las Condes also boasts a couple of huge indoor malls that are virtually indistinguishable from something you'd find in L.A. or Miami. If you'd rather not see Santiago at all you could pass your entire stay behind the enclosing walls of the Hyatt or the Marriott, which seem to have adopted the medieval citadel model of self-containment.

Our apart-hotel in Providencia is a bit different. We are in a comfortable 2-bedroom apartment on the 9th floor of a somewhat aged Apart-Hotel. Rather than the restrained quiet of Las Condes, we seem to have landed in the middle of a 24-hour circus. Instead of the Mega-mall model, commerce here works more like the traditional "Feria" or bazaar. We are a block away from the Metro, department stores, supermarkets, bistros and several shopping areas - one underground near the Metro, one in the bottom two floors of an office building and one my two daughters adoringly call "The Spiral Mall". Most of the shops are single owner establishments with 100-200 square feet of floor space. There is an amazing range in the type and quality of goods for sale but most of the prices are reasonable and the salespeople pleasantly and aggressively try to convince you that their bright orange top looks smashing with your blue skirt. Providencia also has American chain restaurants...of course ours are McDonalds and Pizza Hut. People are in the streets day and night and the noise, car-alarms, and barking dogs go on 'round the clock. We seem to have a regular group of rowdys who arrive on our street at 4 am and a fellow who rides his muffler-less motorcycle at 5 am. Whether he is coming from or going to work I don't know. The other night was especially loud with alarms and sirens and we woke to find the 24-hour internet shop across the street closed with no explanation. James thinks they were raided for pirated versions of Diablo and who knows, he might be right. Stores do seem to go in and out of business very fast and I am sure they operate on a slim margin. Street vendors seem to have a 6th sense of when the carabineros are coming - I saw a mat of CD's folded and popped into an empty baby stroller in under 5 seconds followed by a similar ripple-effect that cascaded down the street in advance of the approaching authorities. The carabineros are probably well aware of the game they are playing with these enterprising salesmen, but it passes the time of day. The only street members with a relaxed pace of life in Providencia are the abundant stray dogs who sleep off last nights ramblings unmolested and wherever they choose - we even met a german sheperd mix as high as my thigh taking in the statuary in the Santiago Cathedral.

Back to our apartment....
A serviced apartment like ours means that we get new towels daily, the beds are remade (even though we make them), and the floor is vacuumed. We have an ever increasing supply of breakfast food in the fridge...we get 12 pieces of bread, many little containers of butter, cream cheese and jam, 6 yogurts, 6 cereal bars and 6 boxes of juice (or "Yuz"). Now this is a very nice gesture. We have found it easy to use the bread (See Sophie's journal about our adopted pigeon "Essuave"). After about a week the kids decided to freeze the yogurt as a dessert and they no longer turned their noses up at "Yuz". The rest of the supplies, however, seem to be accumulating at an alarming rate and no matter what variety of broken Spanish I try with our housekeeper, Cecilia, nothing seems to dissuade her from her mission of supplying us with yet more cereal bars and condiments. I managed to build a little wall with them on the side of the fridge but I'm afraid it's in danger of collapse if we get any new influx of cream cheese.

We, like the folks in upscale Las Condes, have a building supervisor who sits at a desk in the entryway. There are actually 3 or so whom trade shifts and they are business-like and helpful; buzzing open the front door if you don't have your key and letting you know that the elevator is out of service. I was even able to communicate the other night that the circuit breaker had cut the power to our apartment when a bathroom light blew out (I had already reset the breakers in the apartment but we were still in the dark and James was gleefully getting out the matches). After receiving instructions on what to do, of which I understood not a word, I went back to the apartment and hoped for the best. The lights came back on in 10 minutes and I've since found the main breaker panel in the stairwell in case one of the kids sticks a fork in the toaster. With the super it seems that if you don't bother him, he won't bother you. This probably explains why no one questioned our friend Brian camping at our apartment for a week or the aroma of cannabis on floor 7 or the fact that the other day there was a shopping cart with a potted plant filling-up the elevator (so we opted for the stairs again).

The kitchen is well lit and the gas stove, fridge and appliances have held up to our heavy use. It has been fun and challenging to stock-up and cook with a new set of ingredients. Since it is summer we have all the summer fruits and vegetables from which to choose and after some adaptations in market etiquette (you need to get produce weighed in the produce department, not at the checkpoint) we have been eating quite well. The kids have shifted from milk (which is sterilized in cartons) to yoghurt which is flavored and fills the refrigerated section of the grocery.

Besides the elevator and electrical incidents, there has only been one main challenge at our apartment and that would be the water heater. It's an "on demand" type of device which means that when someone turns on a hot water faucet the burner starts up and heats the water as it goes down the pipe. Now this is a good idea, but I recall that Ed's parents had a similar heater in Fairbanks, Alaska and it was very persnickety. This one does actually work, with two conditions: you have to have the hot water cranked fully open and then it has decided that about 1 minute is about as long as anyone needs to receive a blast of scalding hot water so it shuts itself off after that time and snoozes for about 5 minutes before having another go. This has made showers exciting (and very short!) Sophie, Valerie, and Alex have adapted by deciding they only take baths and the rest of us have tried different strategies that usually end in goose bumps. The bath option is OK but, being on the 9th floor, it takes about a half an hour to get 6 inches of water in the bath. I don't even want to think about explaining this problem to the super and I doubt there's much to be done anyway.

Somehow, I do not think that we are alone in our escapades with lights and heaters since I have noticed in Providencia and throughout Santiago an extraordinary large number of "Ferreterias". No, they are not ferret shops but hardware stores. In fact a quick storefront survey of Santiago is curiously revealing. Along with the expected appearance of numerous stores selling clothes, jewelry, fast food, photo-developing and internet services, Santiago has an unusually high number of retailers of hardware, books, pastries, lingerie, and office supplies. The dispensing machines in the Metro sell books not snacks (whether this is part of some government literacy campaign I don't know). Also, there are many drugstores and shops that sell kids clothing and toys. I can imagine large numbers of Chileans, having had enough of trying to fix their water heaters, throwing down their wrenches from the hardware store and "fix-it" books and running out to forget their troubles with a cup of tea, a large slice of cake, or perhaps painkillers from the drugstore. Perhaps instead they go back to the bookstore to learn an office profession where they can make enough money to hire someone to fix the water heater (explaining the need for office supplies). There must also be a certain percentage who opt instead for some sexy lingerie and the ensuing need for kid's clothes (especially amusing since the two stores are often next to each other in a strange "one-stop" shopping experience.)There does seem to be quite a bit of effort made in Santiago to provide for kids in the city. Not only in terms of toy stores, but most public parks have playgrounds and both children and pregnant women abound throughout the city (no doubt all the lingerie is working). Strollers and baby carriers abound and I'm sure that most are not filled with illegally sold goods.

One thing one cannot find in Santiago is a self-service laundry (or at least I haven't been able to do so). I have, much to Ed's consternation, done my own laundry just about everywhere we've traveled, from cities to National Parks to cruise ships. Some of the laundromats have not been in the best part of town but a washer is a washer and so long as it works I'd rather visit the 'hood than hand six sets of adults and kids clothes out to be laundered. If you've seen the volumes of clothes 4 children wear in a day, you too might object to paying 3 bucks to wash a tiny pair of socks even if they are starched, ironed, and folded in triplicate.

For two weeks I tried to find a washer and dryer to no avail. This contradicts the "Rule of 2" that we observed applies to most critical activities in an unknown city: usually it takes 2 trips to actually achieve what you set out to do. The first trip is usually to find out where a place is (e.g. the cell phone store), what you need to bring the next time (the code for the phone) or to totally mess up on the first try (buy 20 minutes time on a phone you don't have). The next trip usually gets the job done (buy and install correct SIM chip for phone). Ed's story about filming the changing of the guard at la Moneda is a good example of the Rule of 2. I could give about 20 others but laundromats would not be on the list. In the case of doing one's own laundry it seems to be the Rule of 47 and I've run out of patience. We have devised an alternative however. We have a bathtub which, given a half an hour will fill with tolerably warm water. We have a deck with plenty of hot smoggy sunshine and a small drying rack (no doubt left by someone equally as stingy as me) and I have at least 3 children who think it great fun to stomp up and down on piles of sudsy clothes in the tub. Washing clothes has become quite an event. I even used it the other day as a "recess" from our morning school session. The neighbors in the surrounding buildings may think we've opened a laundry but the kids are happy (and clean), my stingy side is happy, and Ed is amused.

In general, the kids have reacted to this first stop on our trip by trying to duplicate their home life as much as possible. This includes their rainy Seattle tendency to stay inside and play video games and watch TV. If a trip out of the apartment is not compulsory, they won't take it and they don't yet seem to understand the idea of wasted opportunity. The main exception is that Sophie and Alex are ready to go shopping anytime especially at the "bouncy ball mall" where they have routinely pumped 100 peso coins into a large colorful dispensing machine. It will be interesting to see if this attitude shifts in the coming months but I do understand their wish to stay where things are familiar and predictable.