La Ruta de Vina

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  Santa Cruz, Chile
Saturday, January 21, 2006

It has been a busy few days for your faithful correspondents. We have further expored the capital city, navigated a fiendish bureaucracy to retrieve our Jeep, travelled through miles of farmlands and are now safely ensconced in a hotel in the heart of wine country.

Let me start with a few observations on the Chilean economic and political life. (I fully recognize that I will be making wild exaggerations from a limited set of anectdotes, but what the hell, its my blog.) We were forced to spend an extra day in Santiago due to various machinations from the Chilean customs organization (more on this later) and spent the day touring Santiago on foot. We continued to be very impressed by the cleanliness of the city and the contentedness of its citizens. The city streets are cleaner than most people's homes (well maybe this person's home...) The city also feels very safe. While our fellow tourists would warn us about lurking danger ('There be dragons'), we frequently saw single Santiagans cutting across unlighted parks at odd hours of the night. I trust the natives' judgement on this topic.

The natives' also appear to be quite optimistic with their economic prospects. The statistics I found state that Chile and Argentina have about the same per capita GDP (A little more than 25% of the US), but because Chile iis coming from behind, the average Chilean seems quite excited. (I sense that Chileans and Argentinians are similar to Red Sox and Yankees fans. It is pretty cool to win, but it is far more important to beat the other guy.)

Despite the new Socialist president, the country has strong capitalist roots.

1 - Reunited... And it feels so Good

For example, taxi fares are unregulated. Each driver has a sign in his window telling what he will charge. This contrasts with the US where taxi fares are usually fixed at a high level which either results in most of the value going to whomever inherited the license (NYC) or spectactularly poor service (SF). Each driver we spoke with was optimistic about the economy and his personal outlook (and the fares were cheap).

One of the uniquely latin american customs is juggling in traffic. When cars stop at a light, a young man may step to the front of traffic and commence juggling or some other form of acrobatics. Most of them are quite good. Before the light turns he will solicit donations from the drivers. Those of you who visited NYC pre-Guiliani will immediately recognize this as the next evolutionary step from SqueegeeMen. Fortunately, juggling in traffic requires substantially more sobriety than operating a dirty-water squeegee and the drivers, therefore, tend to feel much less threatened.

On the political front, I learned two interesting tidbits. First, the conservative candidate, Pinera, outpolled the Socialist, Bachelet, in downtown Santiago. Rural voters were comfortable with Bachelet's unconventional past (divorce, out of wedlock child, etc.) but were quite troubled with Pinera's status as a wealthy capitalist. This, of course, is the exact opposite of how US rural voters trend. Does this bode well for Hilary?

The second observation regards the end of Pinochet's regime.

2 - Escape from Customs

He assumed power in a coup in 1973 and ruled with an iron fist. Chileans were jailed, tortured and killed. On the other hand, the economy did quite well. In the late 1980's Pinochet agreed to a referendum on whether the country should switch to democracy. The referendum won by only 55-45%. This means that 45% of the population preferred a military dictatorship with no opportunity to vote for, likely, decades. This staggers my mind... I am not sure, however, that this result is uniquely Chilean. Far too frequently, voters seem willing to trade personal freedoms for security and economic growth. Does this explain why the Democrats are making no headway by complaining about Bush's aggressive wiretapping?

One Chilean habit we have had difficulty dealing with is their late hours. Restaurants do not open for dinner until 8 and become busy until 10 or 11. When we eagerly arrrived at 8PM, the only other customers were a couple of american senior citizens. We asked for the Early Bird Special, but, evidently, the concept does not translate.

We spent the better part of Friday retrieving our Jeep from customs. The process seemed needlessly complex but, remarkably free from corruption. (One customs agent spent an hour typing into the computer every imaginable piece of data on me and my Jeep. He hit 'print', retrieved the output and then used the printout to type a lengthy form on a manual typewriter. Hmm... I have to believe there is a way to use the internet to streamline this process...) By 1PM we were happily reunited with our Jeep and by 3PM we were repacked and headed south to wine country.

The countryside reminds us very much of California with less traffic and fewer tourists. We haven't seen a cloud since we landed (other than low-lying brownish ones in Santiago - smog.) We spent today cycling past wineries on a dirt road. Generally a delightful time.

I have heard that the stock market has been declining rapidly since our departure. Please assure investors that the economy can continue strongly even without our active participation for a few months.

I have been trying to get Kia to write on this blog. Are you interested in her observations? If so, please email her some encouragement.

Headed south tomw.

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3 - Where does it fit?	4 - Ready to Roll	5 - Welcome to Wine Country	6 - How Long til Dinner?
7 - Don't Try this at Home	8 - Cycling in the Vineyards

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