Los Vilos & Valparaiso

The brilliant World Kite And Windsurfing Guide, which is now also available online, proclaims the cosy little Los Vilos to be the windiest Pacific kitesurfing spot in Chile. In front of the long, flat sandy beach, two metre waves break beautifully and at good intervals in powerful barrels.

Only the wind is missing. But that’s not important. Still flattened by the Embalse Puclaro, I spend two days lying down at my dear couchsurfing host and dentist Cristian’s place. Los Vilos was hit hard by a fish kill caused by mines in the nearby mountains. Many inhabitants are fighting for survival in gambling casinos – or stand in front of them smoking and begging. The rest simply drink themselves to death lying quietly in the park.

Chile loves its laws. Compulsory seatbelts on buses are rigorously enforced. Even the drug-sniffing dogs in the occasional checkpoints sniff much more closely if you’re not wearing a seatbelt.

There is a strict ban on alcohol on election days. Not only drinking, but even looking at alcohol is prohibited. A paper bag is placed on the tap, the spirits go behind Christmas wrapping paper (Father Christmas with a mulled wine nose?), and the supermarket proudly conceals 30 linear metres behind purple tulle.

Unlike in Bolivia, voting is not compulsory in Chile. In the past, Chile had to choose between red wine, white wine and voting. Today, it’s only between black and brown. The perfect system for political contemplation.

Valparaiso was severely devastated by an earthquake in 1906. The subsequent opening of the Panama Canal finished off the harbour city. Poets love leftovers. They use them to build new beginnings. Pablo Neruda’s house on a steep hill is today once again an architecturally very interesting Art Deco remnant.

I wander through remote cerros in search of Valparaiso’s groove. Just as I think I’ve found it behind the last cog railway between the slums clinging to the hillsides in the form of a half-slipped wooden house behind some Morning Glory blossoms, a completely wrecked minibus pulls up next to me.

Pedro the baker thinks my search for a groove here with my SLR is extremely dangerous. He drives a load of bread into what he calls the “favelas” and fervently asks me to get in. He takes me through the danger zone, with all its – for the inhabitants of a 2,000-year-old city that has also been renovated to death – wonderfully fucked-up corpses of houses, to areas that are probably safe but also deadly boring.

I sneak across the market towards the hostel check-in. In the ten metres between cherries, olives and pickled onions, it happens. I don’t have my wallet in my front breast pocket for a minute, but open at the side. It’s gone at the second market stall.

After ten years of travelling, it’s the first time that something important has been stolen: €250, paragliding licence, diving licence, kite licence, two credit cards, and worst of all: my driving licence. Bye bye road trip to Patagonia in a hire car!

I thought about it briefly before the tour: Lock my wallet in the hostel? – and then set off with everything, because nothing ever happens to me on any trip anyway. But it did today. I could be annoyed. But I’m even happier that the passport and my third credit card are in the hostel locker.

I get new exit documents from the PDI. Then a dozen Chileans send me from pillar to post for two hours in search of the only (Scotia!) bank that doesn’t charge seven euros. In the end, my shoes have 40 blocks and four buses in their profile – plus seven euros in bank charges.

I’ve lost a lot today. That’s something to celebrate. I throw four litres of wine on the hostel table and pour myself a good glass of irrelevant non-travellers.

Today I don’t care that hardly any friends read my good stories. Even the dead stars to the right of the text can go fuck themselves.

The slow supermarket checkout bitches may wrap every turd in five plastic bags! The world should just choke on its rubbish really slowly today, as if Michael Hutchence were shaking the last palm tree. These night bus toot toot click click party mobile phone flat track wankers! I don’t give a shit. And that’s a good thing.