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We got to see two countries. Both were pretty cool! But which should I go back to (or, maybe, go back to first)? Let’s figure this out for once and for all with this one-on-one deathmatch between these two South American countries.
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_=|Factor|Chile|Brazil|Winner|Comment|
^|Beverage (Alcoholic)|Pisco Sour |Caipirinha |!/images/prime/brazil.gif! |Pisco sours taste like lemonade and include raw eggs; Caipirinhas include all sorts of fruit (although bad ones can taste like industrial solvent) |
^|Beverage (Non-Alcoholic)|None |Guaraná |!/images/prime/brazil.gif! |By default; Guaraná is also awfully tasty |
^|Beggars |Speak pretty good English |Mostly scam artists instead (also speak pretty good English) |!/images/prime/chile.gif! |Beggars are good for conversation |
^|Buses |Dirty; will run you over if you cross the street in front of their right turn |Known for armed robberies on the buses |!/images/prime/chile.gif! |Depends if you’re walking or riding|
^|Cabs |Aggressive drivers |Ultra-aggressive drivers |!/images/prime/brazil.gif! |As long as you’re taking your life in your hands, it might as well be exciting! |
^|Coffee |Absolutely awful; mostly Nescafé |Strong, thick, deep, slightly burnt-tasting |!/images/prime/brazil.gif! |Mmm strong, deep coffee served in small cups |
^|Crime |None notable |Torture/murder/dismemberment; gun battles on freeway |!/images/prime/chile.gif! |Boring but safer |
^|Food (Fast) |None |Habib’s |!/images/prime/chile.gif! |Gave all of us intestinal distress; anything is better (R$0.35 Bib’sFihas are a great deal, tho…) |
^|Food (Gourmet) |Thoroughly-grilled meat; thoroughly-grilled fish; thoroughly-fried fish |Various properly-grilled meats and sausages; highly-spiced fish dishes; pizzas; carne seca |!/images/prime/brazil.gif! |Carne seca alone wins it; incredible sausage is a strong back-up |
^|Juices |Good fresh juices |Açai and Acerola and Maracuja, oh my! |!/images/prime/brazil.gif! |Açai alone wins it |
^|Maids |Enter room at 7:15 am to check on mini-bar; when told “later”, return in 15 minutes; enter at 7:40am the next day despite the “Do Not Disturb” sign |Smile and seem to appreciate my five words of Portuguese |!/images/prime/brazil.gif! |Easy winner |
^|Restrooms (Public) |Pay, but well-maintained |Very few public, mostly at tourist destinations; free and clean, but often stall door locks are broken, rarely have hot water in sinks |!/images/prime/chile.gif! |150 pesos, at an exchange rate of 650/$1, is a very fair price for a clean restroom (but remember to take a handful of toilet paper when you enter!) |
^|Restrooms (Private) |Clean, often have seat protectors; no toilet paper, grab a handful as you enter |Clean, equipped with toilet paper, rarely have hot water in sinks |!/images/prime/brazil.gif! |Shouldn’t have to remember toilet paper, but hand-washing seems somehow ineffective |
^|TV Shows (Dubbed) |Los Simpson |The Flintstones |!/images/prime/chile.gif! |Being current is a good thing! Also, the puns don’t work in Portuguese |
^|TV Shows (Native) |Novelas |Cow auctions |!/images/prime/brazil.gif! |Those are some good-looking and cheap cows! |
^|Water |Potable |Potable |Tie |Either way, surprisingly enough, beats Mexico! |
What’s the verdict? Brazil, 9-6. Take me to São Paulo and Rio, baby!

So there was this flu-like thing that was making its way slowly through the whole PRIME group; I got it two weeks ago. Fortunately it only lasted a day and a half (as compared to up to a week for other people), but, as soon as I felt better, I went out for _churrascaria_ and several caipirhinas, and that was pushing it too hard; the flu turned into a stomach thing that laid me up for most of another day. So, today I took it easy, walking down Copacabana beach to the beautiful Fort Copacabana.
Fort Copacabana dominates the Rio Harbor, so it’s easy to understand why the Brazilian government would choose that position. It’s less easy to understand exactly who the fort was supposed to protect Rio against; while Brazil had difficult relationships with many of its’ neighbors, it’s hard to believe that, say, Paraguay might send a cruiser squadron in to bombard the _cidade maravilhosa_. Instead, this fort, with its’ massive (for the WWI era) 305mm/12.2″ Krupp (they state proudly) guns, was probably designed as a statement that Brazil had arrived, that she was a power. These statements seem to appear in Brazilian governmental building every so often (Brasilia, Maracana, Municipal Cathedral, etc.), and always seem to be a bit premature.
But, anyway, enough editorializing about politics I don’t know much about. I’d rather talk about the Fort itself (pictures coming). It’s a big, turtle-shaped concrete bastion at the end of a point, topped with two yarmulke-shapped turrets. Inside, the fort is a maze of tiled corridors and wood-appointed chambers. The turret mechanisms have been preserved whole, and much of the rest of the fort is set up to show its various eras of operations — WWI, between the wars, and WWII — and to show the weapons used in these periods. In fact, displays include machineguns dating as far back as the 1880s, as well as gigantic diesel generators and hydraulic pumps coming straight out of _Metropolis_.
The views from the top of the fort are incredible, with Rio stretching behind you and the harbor to your left, right, and front. So are the views from the cafe, which serves somewhat pretentious European-style food to do with the panorama of Copacabana and Sugarloaf. An hour’s break there, with a snack, was the perfect end to the day.
One of the nice things about the Fort, whose staff is all from the ARm, is that it’s free of the beggars and scam artists who line Copacabana and are happy to offer you truly horrible folk art and entire three foot-long, fully-rigged sailing ships, and who are happy to sneak up behind you and squirt baby food on your shoes so that their friends can then offer you shoeshines to clean off the gunk, for the princely sum of 100 reals (about $40). It’s almost an argument for… well, I said this wouldn’t become an ill-informed political diatribe.
So tonight I’m feeling fine; we’ll see how long that keeps up. Certainly, the many sandwich and juice shops in Copacabana make it easy to keep fed and watered without having to walk far. Hopefully one last night in will leave me with the energy to get out on my last night in Rio.

Vacation at last. After a week of PRIME activities, a day of travel, and, admittedly, a day by myself in São Paulo, it’s finally time to
h3. Day 1: Centro
With the skies still overcast from the previous day’s rain, we decided not to hit the major sightseeing destinations and, instead, headed to Rio’s downtown, the old Centro neighborhood.
Centro is supposed to be wildly unsafe at night. However, during the daytime, it’s crawling with cops, and I felt relatively comfortable pulling out my big ol’ 35mm camera and taking some shots (to come).
Much of Rio has been knocked down in several series of attempted urban planning and rejuvenation, and it seems that each round has included uglier and uglier buildings. However, Centro has many of the oldest and most scenic buildings, and we were dropped off in a beautiful park surrounded by giant neoclassical and baroque buildings built at the end of the 19th century. Many of these were museums we were excited about seeing, but, sadly, we were greeted with big banners reading _”Trabalhadores de cultura em greve”_ — cultural workers on strike! So, no museum access.
Instead, we walked around the scenic areas, visited a pretty park, and saw a monastery, parts of which dated from the 17th century, and the new municipal cathedral — younger than me, it’s a fantastically ugly concrete pyramid from the outside and an austere, empty-feeling space inside.
I’m not complaining, because the cathedral is very Brazilian, and a site worth seeing, and the monastery included incredible tilework and painting. However, the highlights really were the little, everyday old buildings, whose matches in other parts of town had been razed and replaced with large, borg-like concrete and metal boxes. These old buildings, stained and deteriorating from the humidity and rain, still showed the art and skill with which they were made, and, painted in yellows and reds and greens, lit up the skinny, cobblestone-paved streets whose sidewalk bars were filled with whores and sick or confused old drunks. Again, with cops on many streetcorners and even more touristy-looking folk than us, I dared to take pictures on several occasions.
h3. Day 2: Sugarloaf and Corcovado
Since I was in Rio, I absolutely had to hit the famous tourist destinations of Sugarloaf (Pão de Azucar) and Corcovado. Both were deservedly famous and I shot a roll and a half at the two.
With today our first really clear morning since we arrived, we hit Sugarloaf first. The cable car gets you to the top in two rides, first to the top of the adjacent mountain and thence to Sugarloaf itself. The cable car was large and paneled with glass from ceiling to floor, making for incredible views — but, surprisingly, not too much vertigo for the scared-of-heights (the scariest part was getting on and off of the cars as they swayed at their moorings).
The better views were actually from the lower mountain, which had about a 300° field of view; construction and undisturbed natural area on Sugarloaf itself limited the view to about 270°. However, there were adorable monkeys on Sugarloaf (pictures coming, really!). Both mountains had large terraces at their peaks, providing wide-open spaces with the right camera anges.
Corcovado was an incredible trip too, on the way there, on the way back, and while at the base of the Christ. We got there by driving up a steep, verdant old route that climbed the hills behind Rio and deposited us right at the base of the famous cross-shaped statue. From there, we climbed a few flights of stairs to the feet of the statue (there were escalators and elevators too, but somehow it seemed sacreligious to take the easy way to Jesus).
At the top, we had an incredible 360° view of Rio; I shot a lot of film of that, and a lot of film of the birds (condors? some kind of raptor for sure!) flying around the statue. Of course, the statue — an incredible modernist work — made it into some pictures itself! While the sun had slipped low in the sky and behind the banks of clouds slowly encircling Rio, the light was beautiful and there were many incredible views. We drove down through the old, tram track-lined streets of a part of town that had once been fashionable but had slipped since the building of the Christ of Corcovado — more gorgeous architecture and views.
Between these two sites, I got very used to being high up, right next to vertiginous drops and equally breathtaking views. I may get my nerve up to go hang-gliding after all!

With fortune on our side, some members of my little group in Rio made friends with some locals, and said locals invited us out for dinner and dancing at a Samba club. And I have discovered why Brazillians are so skinny: Samba!
Honestly, I just wanted to sleep in after staying up too late my last night in São Paulo and then getting up too early for the flight to Rio. But, of course, the party vibes of the city prevented that, so I fell in with my compadres and got the front-seat view of a cab ride to the “Severyna Samba club”:http://www.severyna.com.br in the Laranjeiras section of town.
First we started out with some food from the northeast of Brazil, and it was incredible. A friend and I shared two kinds of beef, one shredded, and one dried, then moistened again, both sauteed with onions. On the side were potatoes and manioc. I paired this with the incredible Açai juice, which is smokey and buttery and yet reminiscent of blackberries (and, later, with a kiwi-flavored caipirhina). The enormous plate, for just about $10, filled me and my friend up, although I probably could have eaten such incredible food until I exploded. In a fun local trick, this food, and all the drinks I ordered as I danced the night away, were marked on a paper that I held and that I turned in to the register at the end of the night, paying off all at once (with credit! how convenient).
Then the Samba. I once took, with the Wonderful Girlfriend, a Samba class, and I remembered a little of it, so I got up and started to shake my thing just a little bit. Then I discovered that the guy at the table next to me was a professional Samba dancer from New York, and he gave me some quick lessons. In a few, I was shaking it like I knew what I was doing — or, at least, I was feeling confident enough to believe I was, despite evidence otherwise.
Four and a half hours later, the musicians finally called it a night. That was four and half hours of sweat, exertion, exercise, and, most of all, fun. I danced with friends, I danced with Brazillians, I danced with the Brazillian friend who took us to the club. The rhythm was addictive and I just couldn’t help myself — and that’s a statement that many who know me would never think I would say. But now I love Samba! I can’t wait to go dancing again.

I’ve been a bad blogger! But I’ve been a busy traveler. So here’s the update for the last three days of São Paulo, including one day of PRIME class; one day of walking around the city; and, of course, travelling to Rio de Janeiro, from whence I am posting.
h3. Being “That Guy”
Usually I’m pretty reliable and responsible. Every once in a while, however, I seem to make a small error in judgement. A fun error in judgement. Thursday night was one of those.
I started out by making a very responsible choice — rather than going out with the party group, I decided to join some Brazilian alums who lived in São Paulo, and the professors, and go out for some northern Brazilian food. After all, it was a once-in-a-lifetime chance to network and learn about Brazil, and what kind of trouble could I get into with the professors and PRIME staff around?
We started out with incredible food — all kinds of grilled, spiced shellfish and crustaceans for starters, followed by gigantic bowls of fish and shellfish soup, thickened with coconut and manioc, covered with _farofa_, and with a tangy sauce on the side. And, to drink, caipirhinas — Brazil’s national drink, made from lime and sugar and cachaça, a sugarcane liquor (order them _pinga_ at a touristy restaurant, or you get a caipirhosca, which the lighter, easier-to-drink, and less-interesting vodka as a base). Definitely food I wouldn’t have found myself, and definitely worth the trip.
One of the professors I ate with, Dasu, had been pretty disrespectiful to me to that point in the trip. I learned later that this was because he thought that the initial draft of our presentation didn’t show that we’d done any real work, so he figured I was a slacker. But our final presentation clearly showed that we knew what we were doing, and so Dasu started being very nice to me; I also gained a lot of points from the caipirhinas. See, Dasu and I ordered caipirhinas at the same time, and started drinking them at the same time, but Dasu couldn’t get through his. He poured half of it into another glass and diluted it and couldn’t even finish that! Meanwhile, fortified by my practice with tequila and the WG’s family, I went through three or four and barely even felt them. “I have a whole new respect for you,” said Dasu as I ordered my fourth, and what’s funny is that he’s a fun guy and he wasn’t kidding!
So my irresponsibility began as the alums encouraged my caipirhinas. Then the alums took us out to a bar and fed us more caipirhinas, and I drank even more. Without the alums taking me out and encouraging me to try the Brazilian national drink, and then taking me out to a bar, I probably would have succumbed to my fatigue and had a sandwich and turned in at about 10pm. Instead, I didn’t get to sleep until 4am — and on the next day, Friday, we had to be on the bus at 7:15!
I somehow made it through the bus trip, and through the presentations on the aerospace industry at Friday’s visit, Embraer, the Brazilian aerospace company. Our tour of Embraer’s production floor, including the chance to see airplanes in various states of construction and to check out some finished planes, was energizing. But, throughout the morning, I was “that guy” — the guy who was walking slowly, who was quiet, who had big rings under his eyes, and, if you got close enough, I’m sure the guy whose sweat smelled like booze. Fortunately, there were about four more of “that guy” on Friday, and one of them was a PRIME staffer!
h3. Chicken Hearts
What really got me through the afternoon was our trip, with a Marshall alum at Embraer, to a nearby _churrascaria_, or all-you-can-eat barbecue joint. Yes, we were followed there by the security “minders” who followed us through the whole factory tour and made sure that we didn’t steal anything, but it was still great. We got great, heaping plates of first-course veggies and fish, and then came the waiters with skewers of various kinds of meat. The waiter would walk up next to you, offer the skewer, and then carve off a big hunk of meat that you took with tongs. I had two kinds of beef, an incredible pork, a so-so chicken, an incredible sausage, two kinds of ribs, and, to top it off little, grilled chicken hearts. Slightly crunchy, with a good crust from the grill, a little bit of spice, and a firm but not strange texture, these bite-sized treats were the highlight of the meal. I was a little surprised when the waiter gave me not one but seven, but I gave away two and wished I could have eaten them when I finished the others quickly! If you go for churrsaco, get the chicken hearts.
Yes, there will be pictures of this.
h3. Pinacoteca
São Paulo is the high culture center of Brazil (Rio is the popular culture center), and, while I was there, they had a supposedly-incredible Rodin exhibit. But I figured, I’m in Brazil, I should see Brazilian art, so I went to the Pinacoteca Museum. After picking my way past the unexpected Henry Miller exhibit, I got to see an incredible selection of Brazilian painting, sculpture, and photography, from the late 1700s to the present. At first, the art was clearly imitative of European trends, if well-executed. Trends of color and space began to appear, however, that ultimately led to todays very distinctive Brazilian art. I don’t have the vocabulary to describe it, but, as with Brazilian architecrue, Brazilian art uses different physical forms and vivid colors, with a unique use of space and a strong focus on modern materials, to create sights you wouldn’t see elsewhere.
Beyond the art, the Pinacoteca is a wonderful venue. A very old building, they’ve torn out the inside walls and replaced them with glass, and torn off the roof and replaced it with translucent paneling. The effect is a lot of natural light, open spaces, and a strong focus on the artwork, not on the surrounding geography (although the use of space, internally, is itself artistic). Again, yes, there will be pictures of this.
Behind the Pinacoteca are the Jardins de Luz. These classically-landscaped gardens are filled with sculpture that compliments the Pinacoteca’s collection. There are also a few tricks — some traditional Brazilian art, with its Indian influences, and, in contrast with the almost-French design of the gardens themselves, the native tree and bush species are a surprise everywhere you look. Sadly, I was rained out pretty quickly and had to flee to the local Metro station and head home to escape the downpour.
h3. Traveling to Rio
The trip to Rio was mostly notable because we flew “Gol”:http://www.volgol.com.br airlines, Brazil’s Southwest-equivalent. Unlike Southwest, which is pretty vigorous about being on-time with everything, Gol seems to be designed around running late. Our tour guide got us to the airport at the last minute, but Gol staff were well-prepared to whisk all late arrivals to the front of the line. We were well-treated checking in — in English! — and got to the gate about 10 minutes after boarding was to start. Of course, it hadn’t started yet, and didn’t start to start until departure time, when they let us through a locked door and into our gate, where we waited more. Finally we boarded, and squeezed into our tin can — the seat pitch was far less than what would be acceptable in the US, and, based on my last three flights, all Latins seem to be vigorous about fully occupying all armrests next to them. However, we did get beverage and snack service on the only 35-minute flight, including a selection of two of three snacks.
The Rio airport was unexceptional, if suffering from the deterioration that naturally seems to come at tropical latitudes. We somehow made it out through security, which checked that we owned every bag, even after the one person with all of our bag checks left us behind. Then we exited into the pouring tropical rain, and caught our bus to the hotel. The bus, naturally, broke down about halfway to our destination (we’ve only had this bus for five days! protested the driver), but, after a bit, a new one came — this one with air conditioning. The rain and the heat reminded me of Baltimore — a hot, stormy summer day, with too much water in the air for your sweat to evaporate and rain too warm to cool. Except, in Rio, it’s winter!

“I have no questions. I have nothing to add.” That’s what you want to hear from the CEO of a major cable TV company after you’ve presented to him, and that’s what my PRIME consulting team got from the president of Brazillian cable leader NET Serviços. Two days in Brazil, four fun and interesting site visits, some good food, and a funny tour guide — plus that positive response — how can you do better?
My PRIME team researched implementations of “VoIP”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voip internationally and recommended some best practices to roll out VoIP over cable broadband in Brazil. Apparently, the NET CEO had prepared a presentation on VoIP in case he didn’t like what we came up with — but he didn’t give it; instead, he said that he was impressed, and that we’d come up with pretty much what NET was thinking about implementing. He even asked us for our presentation to pass around his office. So far, I think this means that Marshall teams are batting 1.000 — we’ve impressed all of our consulting projects with solid presentations and solid analysis and conclusions.
The rest of the Brazil part of the trip has been awfully cool too. First of all, there’s finally free internet with which to blog (for the previous two entries, we know the answer to the question “how much will Wade pay to blog?” is “$10″). Second, whereas Chile is all about fish and empañadas, Brazi’s food is pretty much everything, but different and interesting. So I’m loving the food — even though it all seems to be either all-you-can-eat or buffets sold by the kilo, and I’m likely to put on about ten pounds here.
The site visits have been great too. We’ve seen ATM and cell phone factories, driven in circles around São Paulo, and been hosted at lunch by the American Chamber of Commerce. And my Portuguese is coming in handy — I’ve figured out where to buy water, where the bathroom is, how to get out of a confusing mall, gotten my food without cream sauce, gotten my juice without ice, and more, all with moderately complete sentences.
This stuff is fun.

Today I made a mistake. We went to the Vinos Concha y Toro vineyard, and I thought we’d be there just for meetings and speeches; instead, we got a tour of the whole complex. And me not with my camera! So there will be no photos of Concha y Toro. Nor will there be — and I doubt you’ll be unhappy about this — any photos of the teams presenting to Bice Bank or Banco Santander Santiago. (Yes, we are here to give real actual consulting presentations!)
So, first, the presentations. Basically, each team had to research a specific business question put to it by the client, and come back with a presentation (in English). The Bice presentation was good, the Santander team really raised the bar for all of us. The bank employees were not as strong presenters, I think, as we were — or, otherwise, what makes a good presenter in Chile is different than what makes a good presenter in the US (a reasonable assertion since a competent speaker in French will say _”euh”_ or _”donc”_ a lot, and be respected for it, but an American needs to learn not to say “uh”). In both cases, we learned a lot about banking, a lot about the domestic market in Chile, and we got to see downtown during a bustling Monday morning!
Following the presentations, we drove out of the city, towards the Andes, to visit Concha y Toro. Views of a typical mid-European city changed into a dry, high Alps-type maze of small valleys among steadily rising hills. Along the way we stopped at a pretty restaurant overlooking a bubbling stream, that served horribly overcooked meat and really tasty onion, olive, and egg empañadas.
Concha y Toro was something special, and I wish I’d had the foresight to buy more film and bring my camera. The location looked a lot like northern Italy, with mountains, a generally dry climate, hardy trees with leaves turning orange for the fall, local coniferous trees, and even Great Egrets swooping by a pond. The buildings on the winery were made in the Northern Italian or, maybe, Northwest Spanish, style, with stucco and stone walls and heavy timber and arched windows and fountains and statues. The grounds were green — plants had been imported to stay green year-round — and well-landscaped, although not in the ornate French manner.
We got to taste three wines:
* A very young Sauvignon Blanc, with a strong smell and flavor of apple and a very salty aftertaste (because its _terroir_ was coastal, apparently).
* A young Cabernet Sauvignon, with an incredible peppery smell but no spice in its taste, just prunes and oak.
* A Carmenera, a treat in itself. The Carmenera grapes had been though killed by a pest in France, and the wine was throught to be lost, until some vines that had been though to be another varietal in Chile were found to be Carmenera. I can say that, had that wine been extinct, it would have been a true loss to the world. While hte Carmenera was also young (apparently Chileans like their wine young), it had a flavor beyond its years and was very suitable for serving with meats. The nose was of chocolate and the taste a smooth, round chocolate and oak that would overpower nothing but compliment much.
All three wines were of Concha y Toro’s _Casillera Del Diablo_, or Devil’s Cellar, marque. We actually got to see this _casillera_, under the winery’s original building. The legend is that Sr. Concha y Toro found that the locals were stealing some of his wine from his cellar as the vintage aged, so, to end this theft, he spread the rumor that the Devil lived in the cellar. And the cellar was spooky enough, dark and long, with vaulted celings made of brick joined with _cal y canto_, a mortar made of limestone, sand, and egg whites. Truly, a frightening waste of food.
After a nap on the long bus ride home, the evening ended with a lovely meal of conger eel with fries, and the completion of our presentation, due Thursday am. And now, in common with the PRIME policy of fire and motion, I’m to pack up my clothes so that we can get the hell out of Santiago after a day and a half of business and fly over to São Paulo, where, we can only assume, it doesn’t suck so much.

Santiago is very European town; it could pass for a French or Spanish city, with parts of historical beauty and parts of awful ’80s architecture and parts of deteriorating ’50s concrete buildings. The people are also very European, with only, apparently, the road workers and cooks showing much Indian ethnic background. This makes for a very different feel than most of Latin America — especially Mexico, to which I’m somewhat used — and it means that Santiago mostly lacks the “exotic” women I typically go for. Also, it’s not that I’m all that, but I’m kind of used to the Mexican women checking me out. In fact, I’ve been hit on even in front of the Wonderful Girlfriend. Maybe it’s the camera around my neck, or the little memo pad in which I take notes, or the not-in-style clothes, but the women in Santiago won’t even make eye contact. Apart from that, this town is a ton of fun.
Today’s fun came in two flavors, split by a simple but tasty lunch, and bookended by a dinner adventure. The earlier portion of the day took place at the “Museum of Pre-Columbian Art”:http://www.precolombino.cl/, which was absolutely incredible. Some lucky people will be receiving postcards, and it’s too bad I can’t send all you all postcards because it’s difficult to explain how stunning some of the pieces there were.
The tour started with these pounded gold and copper masks and nosepieces (!) worn by shamans in the region that is now Colombia (that would make them Pre-Columbian Pre-Colombians). Apparently, metals were believed to hold particular power, so, by combining precious metals into the right alloys, and then making these alloys into masks that looked like various animals, shamans could enter the parallel worlds inhabited by these animals.
Apart from dressing up like animals, shamans were known for sitting down; being seated was a sign of authority. Shamans also had the often-exclusive right to chew coca leaves, and smoke various hallucinogens; by becoming intoxicated in these ways, the shamans would be able to enter the aforementioned parallel worlds. One of the hallucinogens was _teonanácatal_, a mushroom that, according to the display, “produce[d] hallucinations of little men who resolve difficulties.” We could all use to be shamans in a religion that lets us sit down, get high, and see little men who do all our dirty work.
The museum featured a large number of half-person, half-animal figures, made in both precious metal and in clay. These charms, bowls, and other adornments are believed to represent individuals who have been able to live in both the animal and human planes of existence, something only possible for very powerful shamans and leaders.
There were also more disturbing objects. There were many ceremonial axes, used by shamans who were described as “covered in blood”. Display cases were filled with sculptures of, and freizes depicted, warriors executing other warriors, from some cultures that were almost incessantly at war. There were pots that were filled with the intermingled bones of the dead of a village and animal bones, and then buried, to signify how all life merged into one group. Mummies of children whose “soft tissues” had been replaced with “dirt and bark” predated the first Egyptian mummies by 2000 years. There were bowls from human sacrifices — and from the sacrifices of parrots, who had been taught to speak and who thus were considerd humans (sorry, Junior). And there was the statue of the god Xipe Totec, which translates as “Our Flayed Lord”. Xipe was a god who wore the flayed skin of humans, and the statue showed that very clearly, with hands hanging off the sleeves, extra genitals, and a stretched set of lips providing a cut-out for the god’s lips.
Obviously, I really loved the museum of Pre-Columbian art, and I’d highly recommend that anyone who visits Santiago makes a stop there. After that appetizing stop, I ran into some friends and ate at a little cafe serving typical foods near the Plaza de Armas, the square I visited yesterday. There I had a great lunch of _Ave Chorrillano_, fries covered with onions sauteed in egg and topped with cubed chicken breast. It was tasty and filling, although the fresh orange-banana juice that I had with it was no better than I’d expect from a carton in the refrigerator case in your typical American supermarket.
The afternoon was filled with the _Cerro Santa Lucia_. Originally an eyesore in the middle of Santiago, this “pile of rocks” was, in 1875, made into a park with paths up and down it, beautiful trees and plants, and battlements and a church terraced into the rock; a truly beautiful, and surprisingly quiet, park in the middle of the city. I walked from the base to the top of the several-hundred meter-high _cerro_ on several shallow paths, lined with trees, and steep staircases, stopping at flat terraces with small castles and chateaux, statues, pools, fountains and fruit standes on them. At the top of the _cerro_ I stood on some battlements that gave a 360° view of the city stretching around me (and of the taller _Cerro San Cristóbal_). I also got great views of what must be the main hobby of the younger inhabitants of Santiago, making out in public. This was a great place to tramp around alone, and I took more than two rolls of shots of it, coming when I get home, I promise.
Dinner was a long trip into downtown, followed by the discovery that the restaurant we had been recommended (by people including the concierge, no less!) was closed. We chose a tiny place down the alley from our initial target and got a great fish meal; unfortunately, the kitchen was totally overwhelmed when ten people just showed up, and we were served in a somewhat chaotic manner. To make up for it, we served the first bottle of wine only to people who hadn’t gotten their dinners yet, and that substantially improved spirits. The owner/maitre’d made valiant efforts with his limited, but surprisingly unaccented, English (actually, I haven’t heard a Chilean with a strong accent yet), and the three of us who spoke Spanish managed to make ourselves collectively understood. I had a great grilled bluefish, others had grilled or fried bluefish or cod. Make sure to order yours _”sin mantequilla”_, or without butter, which the Chileans seem to like to use everywhere. Walking back, and catching one of Santiago’s frightening _minibuses_ — the only things I’ve seen in the city so far that are broken down and covered with graffiti — at midnight was an adventure too. Especially with the midget who begged for money with the story that her mother needed a surgery and was haunted by spirits, too (she did a pretty good imitation of the awful sounds the spirits made).
I did learn a few more things about Chile today, too:
* The Coke is sweetened with sugar, which means that I can drink it (otherwise the corn syrup sweetener is a problem for my allergies)
* There are TVs in the subway stations
* They use the same subway cars here and in Paris
* I look like a sucker to the high-class beggars who have mimeographed fundraising petitions and who run up to me at top speed
* Normal people seem to speak to me in Spanish, but people in the tourist trade can apparently tell and speak to me in English even when I speak Spanish back
* Streetwalkers come out after midnight
* The reverse of the “Do Not Disturb” sign is not also “Do Not Disturb”, it’s “Please Clean Room”
* Women walk alone after midnight (and not just the streetwalkers mentioned above)
So that’s it for Santiago, Day 2. Tomorrow: actual school work!

Welcome to day #1 of my “PRIME trip”:http://www.marshall.usc.edu/web/Prime.cfm?doc_id=3217. It’s 8:30pm and it’s almost time for dinner in Santiago, Chile.
It’s been a busy couple of days. Flying here was good, although the form that LAN Chile passed out before the flight asking for the contact info of my next-of-kin did not inspire confidence. The flight itself was good, the planes had personal entertainment LCD displays featuring games and movies for every seat, even in steerage, and I got to see “Ocean’s Twelve”:http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0349903/ (miss it, very weak script) and some of “Spanglish”:http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0371246/ (see it, great!). The food was also tasty, thus proving yet again that everyone out there should ask for kosher or milk-free meals. There was a fun little break in the middle of the flight when we stopped at the Lima airport and we got to leave the airplane for 15 minutes — just about long enough to walk from the plane, into the terminal, and through security to get back to the gate.
We got to Santiago at 6am (having left LAX at 2:10pm the previous day — a 16-hour flight, 2 hours shorter than our classmates’ going to Europe), and got quickly to the hotel, where most everyone checked into their rooms and slept for a couple of hours. I guaranteed the room with my own credit card, which should be fine because my fun and cool roommate is Mormon so I’m pretty sure the minibar is safe.
After said nap, it was time to see the city. I learned that six is probably about the right size for a tour group, we tried it with fourteen and it was a mess. But I got to see a lot of cool places, like:
* The Plaza de Armas, the old downtown of the city, surrounded by great old colonial and Beaux-Arts buildings. This historic spot is a pedestrian mall, with tons of shopping, and features Inca-inspired sculptures, students who are doing something between protesting and begging, and Chileans of native descent playing drums they mount on their back.
* The historic cathedtral in the Plaza, a great colonial building with colorful murals inside and a general feel that’s quite different from traditional European cathedrals
* The famous fish market, filled with fascinating fish. The fishmongers are clearly familiar with tourists; they suggested better camera angles to me. We also had a tasty lunch of fresh fish; my grilled salmon and fries was great, and the soup of mixed shellfish was another standout.
* Chile’s famous “pisco sour”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pisco_sour (both Chile and Peru claim ownership of this drink) was a perfect, if surprisingly strong, companion for my dinner.
Expect photos of all of these upon my return.
I did learn a few things as well:
* For future Marshall students, I can’t overemphasize how much I think you’ll value it if you try to learn the language in the place you’re going to. My ability to speak and understand Spanish came in handy at least a half-dozen times today, and someone with even better Spanish became, essentially, our tour guide; people who couldn’t speak Spanish ran into trouble with doing various common tasks. It’s one of those things it’s hard to find time to do, but I think speaking even a very small amount of the language really adds value to the trip.
* It’s dangerous to get all of your Chilean money from ATMs — ATMs have a tendency to give out 10,000 peso notes, while little things, like the entry fee to public restrooms, tend to cost about 150 pesos. And nobody will give you 9,850 pesos in change, so you’d better have already broken that 10,000 peso note by the time you need to pee (although I did manage to get a 1 peso, or $0.002, coin in change earlier today).
* Chileans put butter on most anything.
* Chilean bus drivers do not drive delicately. Be prepared to have an upper-body workout as you hold on to that strap for dear life while the bus driver challenges the commonly-held belief, rooted in basic physics, that only two objects can occupy the same space at the same time.
* Mussels, in Chile, apparently have black flesh.
* Chilean restaurants may not have restrooms.
* The Hooters restaurant is referred to as “coffee with legs”. Not that I would know.
Chile is fun! More tomorrow.