Tag Archives: chile

February 6, 2012 · 9:00 am

It’s Getting Chile

The rest of my time in Chile kind of went by in a blur.

Chile's ridiculous shape gives it a great tolerance for idiosyncracy

And Santiago violently radiates the feeling that people cooler than you are living there.

I woke up zombie-apocalypse early every morning,

and tried to see everything,

As if it was about to disappear.

Like every vacation, you look back and realize you missed more than you saw.

Chile is a great country for brooding. There's so much great stuff to look at while you hold still in dramatic lighting.

See? Even the buildings look contemplative.

And in the mornings full of purpose, ready to be jogged under.

Or hidden from, under an umbrella.

The lefternmost building is where we were staying. Chile has more nice backgrounds than Windows 95.

We took a trip to wine country, where I discovered that riding a horse is basically the same experience as biking drunk.

That pond down there is where boxwine comes from.

We also went to a private beach to get a tan and participate in income inequality.

Chile's per capita GDP is $14,700, about one-third of the United States's.

In gated communities, the skin tone gets is 4 shades lighter, the heels 4 inches higher and the lips 4 milligrams Botoxier.

These seagulls have their own show on Bravo.

We left after an hour and an espresso that cost 6 times the minimum wage, feeling complicit.

I spent three days in Pucon, a city in the Andes Lake District.

Other than climbing the volcano, I took a bunch of long, bumpy bike rides through the countryside.

This waterfall wasn't remotely where I wanted to end up, but the nice thing about Chile is that even getting lost ends up photogenic.

The volcano is visible from pretty much everywhere, so it appears like a watermark in all my pictures from Pucon.

It's shocking how bad my sense of direction is. This lake is just 20km from Pucon, but I went there via Peru.

Getting the bee in the shot was accidental, obviously, but didn't prevent me from feeling like Werner Herzog for the rest of the day.

Trees shot with backlighting look amazingly like fractals, it turns out.

Tourists, less so.

Instead of waiting for the sunset, I'm sure I could have achieved this same effect by just holding a pink hanky in front of the lens.

This is what Wes Anderson's vacation photos look like.

On my last day in Chile, I took the car and went to check out the Andes. I drove until the paved road ended, then turned around.

This is an unavoidable metaphor for my trip. The best parts of Chile, I have a feeling, begin after the paved road ends. Next time I'll keep going til I get there.

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February 2, 2012 · 4:50 pm

Other People Are Better Photographers Than Me

My friend Paloma took a bunch of photos when I was visiting her in Chile.

Not only does she have a better camera than me, but she is a significantly better photographer. Hence why these look like actual Chile, rather than Sandusky, Ohio, like mine do.

We took this from the top of the W hotel. They charged us $3 for those palm trees to be in our view.

Contemplating the design of a life fully lived. Or, wait, I’m peeing. Yep, I’m peeing here.

If the figure on top of the cupola is gay, is it technically a ‘weather vain’?

Valparaiso, feloniously pastel.

Escher gets an iPad

You can tell I took this one because BACKLIGHTING

I was seriously phobic about getting tangled in one of these. Hella of them were at like shoulder height.

Texture!

We actually took this by accident because we didn’t know what F-stop was. But it turned out ok!

I don’t know how she got this photo to look like mid-’50s Johannesburg, but I wish my camera had that setting.

An apparently famous Paris graffiti artist was doing a huge piece in Valparaiso. We shouted and waved, but he couldn’t hear us under all his dreadlocks.

It’s better that you can’t see the look of sheer terror on my face.

I was so excited for local produce when I was there, but it was mostly imported from Ecuador.

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January 30, 2012 · 9:20 am

The Accidental Tourist

The nice thing about visiting someone in their exotic home country is that you see lots of things you wouldn't otherwise.

This always ends up a bit surreal, however, since you outsource the planning to someone who knows what they're doing.

You see their best places, but since you didn't do any research or logistics to get there, you don't know what you're looking at.

This is basically how I ended up in Valparaiso, Chile.

My Chilean friend put me in the car, drove, parked and told me to get out.

'We're here,' she said.

'Where?' I said.

We wandered around, the native leading the interloper.

People stopped us and told us to put our cameras away.

'Chileans will steal them!' they said.

'Damn,' I told my friend. 'Chileans are hella racist against Chileans.'

She started introducing me as 'this gringo', possibly as punishment for this remark.

Neither of us knew anything about the city, so we recklessly speculated about all the buildings. This is where Spanish colonialists watched professional wrestling, we decided.