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Travelogue: Torres del Paine, Patagonia

Category : Travel
Posted on April 30, 2011 by Nathan Lustig

My brother Jake came to visit for a week a few weeks back and we decided to go south to Patagonia since he loves hiking. My friend Tiago came along and we had a great time exploring the amazing beauty of the Magallenes Province.

tiago jake truck — Tiago, Jake and the Machine

We took a 3.5 hour flight south to Punta Arenas and then a 4 hour bus to Puerto Natales. Since we had some no planning and it was the low season, we needed up having to rent a jeep instead of taking the buses. We stayed over in Puerto Natales then set out really early to get to the park. We drove in on a wet, gray day and went past deep blue water and glacier carved landscapes. We arrived at the edge of Lago Pehoé and took the catamaran across the incredibly smooth water. The weather was warm, but rainy and the water was an amazing shade of light blue.

We arrived to the other side and checked into a refugio. It was super nice, but seemed to be expensive, about $50 per night for a bed, but the location was unreal. We walked down the path, through the rain down toward Galcier Grey. Jake and I had to turn around, as it was getting dark, so we didn’t get a close up look at the glacier, but the walk was beautiful. We got back and ate dinner in the warm lodge.

We slept in the next day and woke up to amazing weather. It was a little cooler, but sunny and clear. We took the ferry across the lake, got back in the jeep and drove across crappy roads toward the base of Torres del Paine. The water was unlike any other color I’ve seen, except maybe in the Swiss Alps.

We set off up the path at about 215pm with the goal of walking about 1.5 hours, dropping off our bags at the refugio and then going another 2.5 hours to the top, then back 2 hours down. After one hour, we realized that the refugio was closed for winter and that if we wanted to see the top, we’d have to go all the way up and down before about 8pm when it got dark. A slight hitch in the plan, so we booked it and did a fast pace up and back down. We knew we’d cut it close, but it was our last day so we were willing to push it.

The walk was beautiful. A combo of the pacific northwest and the great smokey mountains, but bigger and more colorful. It was fall, so the trees were red, orange and green. We crossed glacial mountain streams on small wooden bridges and went up and down the small hills through the forrest. We were moving fast and with our packs, so it was pretty tiring. The last hour was 300 meters up in about 1km. It was super steep. After struggling for a bit, I had to take my pack off and walk to the top.

We got to the top and saw the torres with a small glacier lake below. It was a little cloudy, so we didnt see all of it at once, but it was completely worth it. It was amazing to hear the water rushing down the mountain sides directly from the melting glaciers. We hustled back down the valley as the light was beginning to fade. We had to make sure we were mostly out off the trail by the time it got dark since we didn’t have any big lights with us. The sun was setting over the valley and we were getting close to the bottom. The moon rose and the stars were beautiful as we walked the last 20 minutes in the dark. My body ached from the pace, the pack and generally being used to living in the city.

Patagonia is a beautiful special place. I wish I had more time to explore and I would love to come back some day and see the rest of the park, Calafate, Bariloche and the rest of Chilean and Argentine Patagonia. We drove back to Natales and ate a lamb grill while waiting for the bus. The town is basically base camp with tons of coffee shops, restaurants and places to buy/rent gear. It was a cool town, but we didn’t get to see much. It was a quick trip to Patagonia, about as short as we could do it. I really enjoyed going out of season, as the weather was perfect for hiking and there were hardly any people. It would have been nice to do a full 5-6 days, but with 3 days actually in the park, it was definitely worth it. One of the most beautiful places I’ve ever been to.

The Customer is not Always Right. Sometimes He’s an Asshole.

Category : Personal Thoughts
Posted on April 26, 2011 by Nathan Lustig

I went to lunch at Domino the other day right near my office in Santiago. There is a very large, fast moving waiter who works there. He has to run from the counter, across a busy pedestrian filled street and out onto the outdoor seating area to deliver food and clear tables. The other day, he was moving quickly to clean off a table so another set of diners could sit and a man carelessly stood up from his table without looking, knocking a few plates out of the waiters hand. It was clearly the diner’s fault. The waiter’s response? Something along the lines of “fuck your mother, you should look where you are going.” The diner’s response? I’m sorry.

A few weeks earlier, I was in a bar and a guy kept demanding faster service, even though the place was super busy. After he kept complaining, the waiter came over with his boss and the boss told the guy to leave.

Both of these scenes are so completely different from what we have in the US and I love it. In the US, in the first scenario, the waiter would have apologized profusely and the diner would have likely gotten angry at the waiter, potentially complaining to his manager. In the bar, the manager might have apologized and given the demanding customer a free drink.

I’ve seen it countless times in restaurants, shops and coffee shops. I’ve seen customers go off on service employees for having the audacity to make the customer wait 5 minutes instead of 3. Or having the audacity to make a simple mistake. And the employee can’t do anything or risk being fired.

So what explains the difference in reaction? It comes down to the fact that in the US we’ve bought into the philosophy that the customer is always right. In the most of the rest of the world, if you’re being an asshole, the service worker will tell you so. I’ve seen it in the UK, Europe and now Chile. It’s one of the worst parts of our culture and it wasn’t always that way. So how did we get there?

Back when companies started to grow and the franchise/chain model started to take over from small, family owned businesses, companies needed ways to make sure to standardize operations. They started to write company policies and employee handbooks. Instead of trusting their employees to make good, smart decisions on their own, they tried to commoditize the work and wrote black and white rules. One of them was that the customer is always right.

As this policy became the norm, many in the US started to respond to the new reality. They could act like assholes and treat employees like shit and still be right! They might even get rewarded with discounts and free dessert. As employees became commodities and realized that they had to sit back and take abuse from customers, they just sort of went back into themselves and stopped really caring about their jobs.

And can you blame them? Service jobs went from where one could think and make decisions to jobs where you had to suck up to people who treated you poorly and you couldn’t respond, no matter how irrational the customer was. Customers responded to the new policies and now we have spoiled, bratty customers who treat service workers like dogs and service workers who are little more than commodities. It’s sad.

It’s now bleeding over into non service workers too. I got an email from a customer today who took it as a personal affront that we had a specific part of our site designed in a different way than he would have preferred.

Obviously, not all people in the US treat service workers poorly. I bet its only 25-30%, but its a huge number. When I’m in the US and see behavior like that, I want to say something, but many times don’t. When I get back, I am going to make it a point to do it from now on. I encourage you to do it as well.

The customer is not always right. Sometimes he’s an asshole. And he deserves to be called on it.

I Am Unitedstatesian

Category : Political Science & Economics
Posted on April 14, 2011 by Nathan Lustig

There’s one word that always creates heated debates while I’ve been in Chile. It’s offensive to some, a joke to others and completely innocuous to the rest, but it’s sure to raise a debate if you ask. So what’s this hotbutton word? American.

In the US, most of us refer to our country as America and ourselves as Americans without a second thought. Growing up, we just assumed that’s who we are. It’s used offhand every day by millions of people. Pretty much every Presidential address in my lifetime has begun with “my fellow Americans.” It’s part of our culture.

Before I arrived in Chile, I already knew that some people found it offensive that people in the US have appropriated America to only refer to the United State because I had learned about it in a Latin American studies class in college, but I assumed that it was mostly overly politically correct people. I had seen the famous Alfredo Jaar video from the 80s called This is Not America, but believed that only the far left cared about the term. I was pretty clearly wrong.

Once I got here, I realized it was more widespread than I thought. Everyone seems to have an opinion. Some Chileans don’t care at all and refer to the US as America and its citizens as Americans without a second thought. Others playfully pointed out that they too were Americans and other were actually offended. I’d say that most were in the middle. They’d prefer that the US didn’t call itself America, but weren’t really offended. Some examples:

I was at an asado and a Chilean friend of mine asked a girl where she was from. She said America. He responded with a smile, “oh yea, me too.” He told me he loves to do that, mostly as a joke, but partly to make the point to people from the US that they are not the only ones from America. Another friend cringed when I said something about America to refer to the US and corrected me. He wasn’t offended, but said it grates on his ears when someone from the US uses America that way.

The new US startup program is called Startup America, which is especially galling to some in Chile, as the program is basically a knock off of Startup Chile, but appropriates the name of the entire hemisphere. Another friend posted the Alfredo Jaar video on her Facebook wall and got 10 likes in under 5 minutes. 24 hours later, there were over 100 likes and 15 comments. She told me tons of her friends posted it on their own walls, creating a mini-viral campaign. Most of the comments did not seem to have any vitriol behind them (see graphic below).

I’ve also seen many Chileans mostly playfully turn the globe “upsidedown” so that Chile is at the top. The most southern province, Magallanes, even has their official symbol with Antarctica at the top of the map, not the bottom. From my view there are only a small group on the far left that are truly, deeply offended by the term American, but there is definitely a large group of people who would prefer that people from the US didn’t say American to describe themselves. It grates on them, but it’s not a huge deal to them.

I think it’s important to point out that we say “America” completely offhand, and don’t mean any offense. It’s just how we were raised. For example, we were in Austin for South by Southwest and a very nice, stereotypical Texan sat next to us while we were drinking some beers, waiting for our table to be ready. He struck up a conversation with our group that included two Chileans who were in town for the conference. He was incredibly nice, shared beers with us and told us places to visit. As his table was called he said “have a great time here and welcome to America.”

He, like 99.99% of other people from the States don’t mean anything by it. We just don’t have any other word to call ourselves. North American doesn’t work, the Canadians sure don’t want to be lumped in with us. In Spanish you say estadounidense, but in English there just isn’t a word other than American. I’ve pointed this out many times, and I think the best response came from one of my Chilean friends. She said something along the lines of “you guys took the name, you gotta come up with something to replace it.” So I’ve taken it on myself. I guess I’m Unitedstatesian.

Travelogue: La Serena and Valle del Elqui

Category : Travel
Posted on April 6, 2011 by Nathan Lustig

My friends Forrest and Sarah came to visit all the way from Madison, so Jesse, Forrest, Sarah and I decided to take a trip north to La Serena and Valle del Elqui. La Serena is a town of 150,000 about 4.5 hours north of Santiago. Along with it’s sister city of Coquimbo, it’s located on miles of wide, white sand beaches. It reminded me of Panama City Beach, but not during spring break. Apparently La Serena has eclipsed Viña del Mar as the top beach destination close to Santiago, but since we were there midweek, right after school started again, it was really empty and peaceful.

We stayed at an apartment on the beach that we found on AirBnB. Yanette, the owner, was incredibly nice. She’s been living in La Serena for about 25 years and also owns a wine producing property northeast of the coast. She brought us amazing grapes and raisins as a thank you for renting that were truely the best I’ve ever had. They were sweet, plump and way better than you can get in the US. The grapes we get less sweet, because they have to harvest them earlier to ship them to the US.

The drive up is on a four lane highway, mostly along the coast. It reminds me a bit of highway 1 in California, with lots of hills, twists and turns. The small towns all have goat cheese sandwiches and fruit stands along the highways, while we only have McDonalds and Taco Bell in the US. So much better here. I wish I had rented a little bit better car because it would have been great to go up the hills and around the bends in a real car.

Our first day, we walked down the beach and got lunch at a small restaurant. For $7, we got a seafood empanada FULL of every kind of seafood you could think of. Next, a seafood soup filled with oysters in a spicy cilantro broth. The main course was fried reinata with sweet tomatoes and then dessert was super ripe honeydew melon. Great value and great food.

Next, we went over to the Coquinbo fist market and bought mussels, scallops and a full dorada. The fisherman cut it up into huge filets so we could cook them on the stove top. We also got an assortment of fruit and veggies from a little stand and came back to the beach apartment to cook.

We created an amazing meal. We started with a seafood soup with dorada, assorted seafood, aji, potato, carrots and other veggies. Next, pineapple and pepper ceviche with mussels, scallops and dorada. It was great. The main course was dorada a la plancha with a salt/curry rub, curried veggies and a pineapple salsa. Dessert was vanilla ice cream with a sweet grape and white wine sauce. It was a great way to end the day.

The next day we tried to go to Punta de Chorros to sea an island full of penguins. After a beautiful 2 hour drive through the mountains and across a few dirt roads, our little car finally stopped at a restaurant where we had some fresh fish. The highlight was their home made olive oil, infused with garlic and hot peppers. We each ended up buying a half litre bottle for about $7 to take home. Amazing. Unfortunately, when we got to the fishing dock, the fishermen told us that they couldn’t take us because the sea was too choppy. I think he was just being lazy and didn’t only want to take a group of 4, but it was still a great day. We watched the waves crash on the rugged Pacific coast and then made the drive back to La Serena.

The next morning, we left early and headed into Valle del Elqui. It started out cloudy, but it soon burned off to reveal a narrow valley filled with fruit trees, pisco distilleries and vineyards. Every Chilean I had talked to had told me that I had to go to Valle del Elqui if I was going near La Serena and they were 100% right. It was beautiful.

We stopped in Vicuña, the birthplace of Gabriela Mistral and strolled around their town square. We ate lunch while listening to music in the town square and then had some fresh pecans and homemade icecream from a little shop on the square. We continued onward and finally stopped in Pisco Elqui, the hear of Chile’s pisco growing region. We toured the Mistral pisco distillery and got to see the whole process. The tasting was interesting. The really aged pisco tasted almost like a whiskey and was supposed to be served over ice or alone. I’m used to piscola, so it was quite different. After, we continued down the curvy road to Alcohuaz, doing the last 15k on a tiny dirt road. It was a beautiful drive, ending at an eco lodge called Casona Distante.

This place is amazing. It’s in the middle of nowhere, no cell reception and is beautiful. It’s on 40 acres of land in the middle of the valley and is a functioning grape growing operation. They sell their grapes to Capel to make pisco and still raise animals and other fruit. The lodge is built mostly of wood and the rooms are beautiful. They have an open kitchen where you can watch or help prepare dinner and our chef Alejandro was awesome. We got lessons on Chilean cooking and drink making and talked about food, politics and Chile. His palta (avocado) sour was amazing, especially after adding some aji.

Casona Distante also has a nice observatory and the owner helped us look at nebulae and Saturn. You really can see it’s rings! Looking up into the sky and seeing millions of stars is amazing. The night sky there was only bested by my trip to Bolivia, as we were about 2500 meters higher, so the sky was clearer. The next day, we hung around the lodge and checked out the river that runs through the valley. It was relaxing and beautiful, but unfortunately, we had to go back to Santiago at the end of the day. I would have loved to stay longer, but it wasn’t possible. I highly recommend going to Valle del Elqui for a long weekend, it was one of my favorite places I’ve been so far.