A Passenger Van, a Mountain Pass, and a Room Full of Mattresses

We finally mustered the strength to leave Valparaiso though it was not easy. We made some fantastic connections there if any of you ever find yourself heading in that direction. I know that the three of us would all love to return someday, but the open road was calling and we have a lot of ground to cover.
On Sunday, we did a morning of stoplighting and earned our bus fare to Santiago where we spent two days running errands. These included buying 9 torches, some new books in English, and picking up the new lenses for my glasses. My old ones were so scratched that everything I saw was in dreamy vision like in some 1940´s movie when someone is waking from a deep sleep or seeing the love of there life. It was fun sometimes, but mostly it gave me a headache. You can´t walk around in a dream world all the time.
On Tuesday we boarded a small passenger can for what was supposed to be a 6-hour trip back to Argentina to the town of Mendoza, but the elements where against us. We encountered some bad weather in the pass, snow and rain and fog, and they closed the road due to a rock slide. We backtracked a little to a small mountain town to try and find some lodging for the night but found the whole town booked. We, along with the driver and other passengers, decided to crash in the van and get an early start the next day. We hung out in a lodge for a while, drinking cheap bottles of wine to aid our sleeping comfort, and feasted on the leftovers of the many people dining at the lodge that evening. We got a little giggly after our third bottle, and decided to try and find a place to sleep in the lodge and stumbled upon a godsend, a storage space in the attic at the top of a small spiral staircase full of blankets and mattresses! At closing time, we snuck up, one at a time, and nestled in, but we were so pleased with our discovery and so full of wine that our laughter (however much we attempted to muffle it) disturbed one of the live-in workers and he discovered us. Lebn interacted with him, so we can´t be certain about exactly what he said, but he must have been too tired to care, because he left us alone and we slept in comfort.
The next morning, however, we discovered that all of the doors to the outside were locked and we were trapped, though not for long. After a daring escape through the window in the ladies´room (my personal favorite detail to the entire adventure) we made it back to the van just in time to make our way to Mendoza. It was slow going, but after 20 hours, we finally made it to our destination. We headed straight to the central plaza and within 5 minutes of pulling out our clubs, were greeted by local jugglers bearing gifts and recommendations for cheap accomodations. We even bumped into some artesans that we´d met in other towns. Mendoza is lovely and the people are friendly and I have no idea how long we´ll stay, but we have to start heading North sometime.

Pictures, part II

Yes, there are more pictures. I have decided not to post them here with captions because I don´t want to, but I think I´ve convinced the boys to do it in Flickr so that all of you lovely people can know what it is that you´re looking at.
The pictures can be found on the site from before:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/lebnjay
and a new one to boot:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/samalabares

Enjoy!

Our First Show

We were invited to take place in a circus/variety show on Friday, by our friends "occupying" the large and no longer abandoned building that we´ve been frequenting for a practice space. The building is owned by a nearby church that apparently knows their building is being inhabited, but has yet to make any moves toward removing them. So for now, it is a free place to stay for anyone interested in the circus arts that is also willing to help with renovation (squat laws here seem to be favorable to inhabitants that make the building better).
The building has many entrances and was, at one time, sectioned off so that there different spaces for different businesses, but now these sections are all connected by large, rectangular holes in various walls. The main entrance opens up to a large staircase to the second floor with a hole in the wall on the right to enter the main floor. The second floor is the one that has been occupied the longest and is, naturally, the most inhabitable one, full of bedrooms, a kitchen and a living room. The main floor looks like its being remodeled, the supplies of a multitude of projects in each room. There are bedrooms popping up on this floor now too, but it is mainly used as the practise space. The middle of the building is all open to allow for a giant skylight that sheds light on both of these floors. There is a wall down the middle of the space separating it into an open floor space for practice, and a huge hole that a previous inhabitant had put in to allow easy access or light to the basement. Not sure about that one, its kind of a strange sight. Each floor has ceilings about 15-20 feet high, so juggling is possible anywhere and with the ceiling in the open middle spot being as high as two floors, it was easy to string up a trapeze and some silks.
The show was in the basement. Most of it took place below where the floor had been ripped out (the silks and trapeze moved for the occasion) though some of it took place in the many corners, the audience moving in darkness, among the concrete pillars, to where lights indicated the next act would appear. And the acts were amazing.
Some clowns hosted the show and started with an act about finding the lights which became a nice glow-club routine by a Venezuelan girl who does some incredible contact and swing moves. She has a lot of stuff I´ve never seen before. Next came a contact routine that was okay and then came the gringos. We called ourselves the 3 Gringo Circus (Tres Gringo Circo) for lack of a better name, and while we dropped a fair amount (crazy stage lights, you know), we were very well received. The crowd was mostly circus kids though, which helped. Of the 75+ people that were there (not including performers), at least half of them had juggling props or unicycles with them, so they were all very accepting and every drop was met with a chant of, "Otra, otra, otra..." which, for the non-Spanish speakers, means "try it again." Lebn opened walking on the slack-line, then juggling these Skilsaw blades that he had Willy weld to some handles. We followed with 2-high passing (where I pass to Sam who´s standing on Lebn´s shoulders), then the round-a-about (a juggler favorite), which lead into the drink-a-bout and and empty bottle of booze. The crowd loved that one. And we ended with (thank you Juggling Jollies) The Human Platform of Death which the crowd also loved. I was glad we finished early because it made relaxing and enjoying the rest of the show that much easier.
There were so many acts, I don´t know if I´ll be able to recount them all, but here goes anyway.
There was a diabolo routine done in the dark with a black-light and a string above him that he would sometimes sling the diabolo against. There was a flaming devil-stick to a Nine Inch Nails song, a hanging trapeze act, a very dramatic (but really original and great) silks routine to a Braveheart song, and some clowns. One was incredible. He used a lot of mime work and acted out a story about a guy with bad luck. He was so expressive and had incredible control over his every movement. The other clowns were just dirty. Pollo and his girlfriend Negra did a killer routine with 5-clubs, and they were dressed like they were ready for Vegas. Make-up, sparkly clothes, and lots of teeth. Pollo also did a routine on a vertical pole which included feats such as flipping on and off of it, and, with hands extended past his head, held himself perpendicular to the ground. We saw a video of this guy in the middle of a 3-high. He´s super-circus. My favorite act though, was this strange avant-garde, Brechtian kind of a mini-play that started in a set built in one corner of the basement, but which had the audience following it all over the space, sometimes scurrying backward suddenly, as one of the masked performers came charging toward their next mark. It ended on the silks with a decent, though not exceptional routine.
It was a great night. The lights and music were all very professionally done, there was cheap and delicious food and drinks, and a wonderful vibe permeated through the whole building.
Its nights like these that are making it very difficult to leave Valparaiso.

Valparaiso - Go to Paradise

So some juggler/clowns that we met in Santiago on Sunday told us about a place we could stay in Valparaiso and wrote down a series of words that we assumed was some kind of address, and a phone number that we were told to call at the bus station so he (Pollo) could come and escort us there. We had been planning on visiting this particular town anyway, but the free place to stay in circus-friendly surroundings, was a strong enough lure to pull us away even from the charm and sophistication of Hotel Saturno. We took the 1.5 hour bus ride, and upon arrival, promptly proceeded to the nearest pay phone to make the call. In the 60 seconds that our 100 peso coin bought us, we learned that Pollo left his cell phone in Santiago. Luckily, the series of words turned out to be street names. Directions! We followed them to the end, but were left without an address. As soon as the question of how to decide which house was uttered, we saw, spray-painted graffiti-style on a large, metal gate,¨Taller el Litre¨, the last and most mysterious set of words in the list. We´d found it, but before I describe what we found... I´d like to describe the city of Valparaiso a bit.

The city starts on the back side of the mountains, and seems to tumble over the top, down the other side and right into the sea. The mountains are steep, but that hasn´t stopped anyone from slapping some stilts to the bottom of a house and hanging it off a cliff. From a distance, it looks more like a huge pile of colorful, makeshift homes stacked carelessly upon each other, craning for a view of the sea. Once you start exploring the streets, you quickly realize that its not too far from the truth. The mountains are so steep in many places throughout the city, that they use large, gondola-like contraptions to get people to the top. They´re basically small boxes attached to train tracks that run up the side of a cliff. But if you, like I, are more inclined (teehee) to tackle such an exploration by foot, I highly recommend finding one of the hundreds of Escher-esque stairways that snake their way throughout the labyrinth of homes that people have built and rebuilt over years and years. Every new ascent is a new view, every turned corner a peek into the way someone else lives their life.
The city does flatten out as it approaches the water though. And the architecture changes from the ramshackle, found-objects style, to a hodge-podge of 19th century architecture brought over from the variety of Europeans that settled here during that time. But the real life of the city is not in the buildings, but on the sidewalks. Most of the major streets are lined on both sides by vendors selling anything and everything you can imagine. Clothing to hardware to fishing lures to shoe strings. All new or used. And food. Lots of food. The food is all new. I don´t see anybody getting rich, but they make it to the next day, and the day after that, and more often than not, they do it with a smile on their face. The whole city has the feeling of a neighborhood, though its really a large collection of them. Which brings me to my neighborhood.
We entered the large metal gate and were instantly overwhelmed by the collection of stuff. It is an outdoor space, with scrap metal, and old bicycles and circus props everywhere, though it was difficult to process the details right away, because there was so much of it. Pollo was sitting around a table with 5 or 6 other guys and, after the confusion was cleared up about who these strange looking gringos with backpacks were, we were warmly received and everyone went about clearing some space for us. First a place for our tents, and then a large juggling area. There wasn´t much room, and I wondered where all of these people slept, but my question was soon answered as our focus was soon directed to the large house that was practically hanging over us. If it was on the same level we were on it would probably be about 20 feet away from where we were standing, but as it was, it was about 60 feet up, atop the cliff that the ¨garage¨ we were in backed up against. Willy, the guy who runs the joint, shares the house with what seems to be his whole family, except the brother that lives across the street. And a forever cycling group of circus performers share the space below, which Willy also works out of during the day. He´s a freelance welder, and a good one, and when he´s not making a buck, he´s making circus props. The space has an outdoor kitchen, a working bathroom, and a large van that´s been converted to a sleeping area. People from the neighborhood are always stopping by to hang out or borrow a bicycle or something and we´ve been welcomed by one and all.
I want to go more into detail about some of these characters that we´ve met, but I´m tired of looking at this computer screen. I´m not sure how much longer we´re be here though, so I may get in another post before we split. There´s a circus show this weekend at an occupied house that is shared by a bunch of jugglers this weekend. I call it an occupied house, but I swear the building is like a city block. It´s the largest squat I´ve ever seen. So we´ll probably stay for that and keep working the stoplights here (as they are quite good and profitable) and then... away. Or not. Lebn has talked of buying property, but he talks about that almost everywhere.

Santiago: City of Jugglers

After a few glorious days spent relaxing at the beach and exploring some coastline, we splurged on a luxury overnight bus and woke up in Santiago. We immediately set off to find a place to stay and checked out some recommendations that we got from a hostel webpage and our tattered Lonely Planet guide to South America. They were nicer than many hotels I´ve stayed at, more like a backpackers club house, than a truly no-frills place to stay. 3 had pool tables and one had a pool. With a swim-up bar. They were all a little out of our price-range, though they assured us they were the cheapest places to stay in town. Soon enough though, we found that to be entirely untrue. There was a small, quaint alley near one of them, with a cobbled street and buildings of a classic European style of architecture, clothes drying and hanging plants from several balconies, and a neon sign that read ¨Hotel Saturno.¨ We decided to check it out and I think I fell in love the moment I saw that their lobby was illuminated with a black light. Sexy. Dead sexy. There was smooth love songs piping in, and incense burning, and the short, stout, and gregarious man that runs the place offered us a price we couldn´t refuse. We ended up paying half what we would have at the cheapest hostel and we got our own room with a private bath and balcony. And what a room it was. Carpet on the walls (though none on the floor), plenty of mirrors, and three light switches. One was for the regular light, one for the mood light, and the third turned on the speaker that played the same music we heard in the lobby. Sexy, sexy, sexy! It was all Sam and Lebn could do to keep their hands off of each other. Heehee
We dropped our things and immediately hit the streets to find the jugglers. Folks we´d met along the road had been telling us over and over again that the best jugglers in South America could be found in Santiago, and that they all generally meet at Parque Forestal on Sundays. Coincidentally, it was Sunday, and we soon found out that folks were not exaggerating. Before our evening there was through we´d probably seen over 50 incredible jugglers (6 and 7 club, devil stick, hat tricks, etc.) and the atmosphere was like that of a giant block party. There was music, and drinks, and crowds of non-jugglers hanging-out and perusing the many vendors, Chilean hipster kids selling used clothes. It was strange. All you could by was used clothes, juggling props, and food. And judging from the smell in the air, plenty of marijuana. It was like the best juggling convention I´ve ever been to (no, 2nd best after Lopez), and it happens every Sunday. It was a great introduction to the city. We taught some clowns we´d seen do a show the Round-a-bout and they taught us too many things to remember. They found out that we were interested in going to a town on the coast called Valparaiso, and they invited us to stay at a circus friendly joint they knew of and were heading to the next day. We´d made plans to spend the day doing some touristy things with a native of the city, a friend of ours named Max, that we met in El Bolson, so we said we´d meet them there the day after.
The day with Max was great as Santiago is a wonderful, beautiful city. And its so nice to see a city with a local that shares your interests and sensibilities. As much as I like discovering a city through exploration, its great to be taken to all the best spots that a local has spent their lifetime discovering, without all the trial and error. We saw an old Spanish fort, the mint where they make most South American money, a beautiful cathedral, and lots of sprawling markets with cheap everything. We ended the day climbing a mountain with a big Virgin Mary statue at its apex to get a view of the city and the sunrise. Pictures of these things should be coming soon. The next day we caught a bus to Valparaiso, where I now sit, and it has proven to be my favorite experience on the trip thusfar, but as I long to get back to it, I´m going to have to relate it later. Ooooo... a cliffhanger...