Saturday, June 4, 2011

The Crazies of San Cristóbal

There’s a large hill about fifteen minutes from my house called San Cristóbal.  It has, as the name might very well hint, a gigantic statue of Jesus Christ at the top of it.  It’s something of a tourist destination and I’ve heard that there are pools, cable cars, and even a zoo on the hill somewhere.  I’ve yet to do the tourist trek of the mountain; I sometimes see the big buses parking, but that’s not the part of the mountain I visit.
A few times a week I go running up San Cristóbal.  If you stay away from the stairs near the entrance and instead keep to the windy road up the mountain, it’s a pretty isolated run.  You will see a few hikers, the occasional cyclist, and other crazy people slowing jogging up beside the cacti.  After about fifteen minutes one can look down on the city and feel distanced from Santiago in this calm escape.  At the weekend, however, it is a very different place.
If you’re walking you can reach the first picnic area in about twenty minutes.  During the week it’s the home of a few dogs and a park ranger, but on the weekend it is full of BBQs, drinking, and music (the dogs are, of course, still there—happier, I’m sure, for the bones and scraps).  The other day I went up to this picnic area with some friends who were celebrating their engagement.  We brought champagne, strawberries, and sandwiches.  Being fairly drunk before we had even started, the trip up to the picnic area seemed arduous but it was worth the effort.
We cut up the strawberries and poured the champagne on top of them.  The bubbles and booze went straight to our heads and watching the two lovers together I felt light as a feather.  Peeing in the woods and looking down at the distant skyscrapers I felt I might float away.  When I returned from this relieving journey, the group next to us had begun singing and playing the guitar.  A young Columbian man by the name of Julian introduced himself and we started to talk with him.  Before long another from the group, a thirty something year old woman with a leather jacket, came over and had myself and my recently engaged buddy kiss her on the mouth.  She then dragged me by the arm over to the music.
Before long I was talking to an eye doctor about insurance in Santiago.  My Spanish is pretty horrible but we got by for awhile.  Many of their group, including my friend the eye doctor, were Columbian, the rest were Chilean.  They sang folk songs and at one point, on wooden flutes, played Mozart calling it the music of the world.  We drank heavily and danced on tables while the sun set. 
Inhibitions were lifted and at one point the thirty year old woman who had joined the two groups together started arm wrestling people.  She was fun and friendly but she looked like a bruiser, no one wanted to be on her bad side.  She defeated my wife and my friend.  Her tactics changed when facing the man: she pulled down her shirt to distract him.  He said he’d been simultaneously frightened of offending her by not seeming distracted and being thrashed by a possible husband/boyfriend.
The park ranger kept making the same joke about us being there too late and that he was going to call the police.  This, always, before opening a new drink.  The dancing started to get ugly and the locals restless.  My group decided to flee before anything got messy.  We made our way down in the dark.  I was drinking vodka out of a plastic water bottle and wishing I didn’t have to work in the morning.  The next day did prove to be painful.  Strange thing though…Mozart was stuck in my head all day.

1 comment:

  1. Hello Nathan,


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