Friday, February 29, 2008

Linares Chile by Night


Night time hits in Linares, Chile where Carolina and I were stranded due to what we now (almost a week alter the fact) know was probably due to a bad batch of oil. So part of the engine nearly caught on fire and the whole car shut down while we were going about 120 Km/hr.

Luckily Carolina has one of these roadside assistance insurance plans. They came to the rescue and put us up in a (crappy) hotel with a view of the center of town, La plaza de armas de Linares…imagínate!

It’s a lot like many small Chilean towns that I’ve had the chance to see. For some reason I thought of Salamanca, where I stayed over the course of 20 weeks while teaching English at a copper mine a little less than three years ago. For some reason though the place was pretty lively, not in a New York sort of way, but rather in a lets get ice cream or pizza or beer kind of way. Plus every single teenager was in one side of the plaza, while the older youth of Linares gathered around the perimeter of the place listening to music in their cars. But no one was doing the time honored activity of “crusin the loop,” despite the fact that this plaza, well actually any of them for that matter, seems built to do circles round.

So we saw it for a second, and then returned to the fourth floor of the crappy hotel (where I should say the clerk had a porn movie going on in a small TV below the counter. We couldn’t see it, but we could hear it, real classy place, but free) and I watched the flow of people and cars pass by the strange wolf or dog statues they had in each corner of the plaza. Why they were there?...A mystery.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Well I guess the dogs are not dogs, didn't you take a better look? they are lions...and they are the animal symbol of Linares, maybe instead of going back to the fourth floor of your crappy hotel, you should had gone to the museum and feed of some knowledge.

niloc said...

a lion? a bit skinny don't you think? I'm sticking with dogs.