Getting What You Asked For

Whose big talk was that about wanting to live large? "My concerns are too small. My scope is too limited."

No longer!

We haven't fished in the Pacific Ocean yet, but we've survived day-long delays (twice), bed bugs, and a strange confrontation by an angry man whose only English words were, "I will kill you."

Let me dwell on that one for a minute. Plaza de Armas is the main public square in Santiago, and by some crazy luck our "hotel" was just two blocks away. (I say "hotel" in yuppie quotes because yes, it was a place to stay, and so may technically qualify as a hotel. Beyond that, I'm not sure the term holds.) It's winter here so the the weather is chilly and we're wearing our winter gear even though it's July and the Plaza is surrounded by

palm trees. We spent quite a bit of time there, where Idris loved the raunchy wolf puppet who pretended to pee on the crowd and Io liked the portrait artists.

On the second day, we walked up to find a military band playing a song that seemed to me to have a decidedly Latin dancy beat that I'm going to have to investigate to be able to name. The conductor was dancing to communicate his instructions with moves one might not expect to see a Chilean military guy display, so I started snapping pictures to try to capture the scene. As I had my camera up, a small man came right up to my face and yelled something at me. Ignorant of Spanish, I didn't know what he was saying and I just stepped back, surprised. Within one second, Ken placed his body in between mine and the man's and glared at him. It seems like this would have ended the confrontation. Instead, the man yelled more and louder, at Ken now. I couldn't figure out if it had something to do with the band--like he didn't want us supporting the military or didn't want us disrespecting the military with photos during the

song--or if it was something else altogether. Ken suspected he just wanted money, and he thought he could sort of shock us into giving him some. A security guard on a segue-kind-of-thing saw the whole thing happen and rode in, attempting to further separate the guy from us. But this man was relentless. He just kept yelling at us, and the security guard seemed to have limits on how much he could intervene. The kids were a little bit freaked out, and Idris said, "Rough him up, Dad." But we just tried to walk away. He followed us. "I will kill you," he said a couple times. The only other word I could understand was the Spanish word for Black: "negro." I have no idea what he wanted. People around us stopped and stared as we kept trying to walk away and he kept following us, although no one really stepped in to help. Ken finally just stopped and yelled, "Go away! Go away!" He didn't. So when the light turned green on the closest street we just ran across the street and away from the Plaza. He stayed behind.

Obviously we're all okay and no real harm was done.

But maybe this was a way to remind us (i.e., me, who tends to be oblivious to danger) to be a little careful. It also "reminds" us to learn some more doggone Spanish so we can (1) understand better what people are saying, and (2) order drinks more effectively after altercations like this.

Other than this weirdness, our time in Santiago really has been mostly terrific. I also have to mention--and I swear this is simply an anthropological observation and not just a moment of immodesty--that people seriously stop on the street to look at Io and say how pretty she is. "Lindo! Muy lindo!" They touch her hair and stare at her eyes and point at her to show their friends. We went into a yarn shop (they have TONS of yarn shops here!) and the clerk gathered all the other clerks around (yarn shops with many, many clerks because they're overrun with customers!) just to gawk at Io. It's bizarre.

The bus ride to Valdivia will finally commence today, so we'll have much more to report. Did I mention there are mountains here? :)