Bienvenido Perros

It’s the second day of my Chilean adventure, and I’ve decided to throw open the windows of my little room, letting in the fresh ocean air and the sound of the dogs.
The dogs:
There are stray dogs everywhere here. Seriously. Everywhere. And not just the average looking mutt that one might expect, but huge, glorious (albeit dirty) animals that travel in well-mannered packs. They drive the “legal” pets crazy, as those safe behind the gates defend their deserved territory, proving that segregation is not limited to animals of the two-legged sort.
At the urging of my Chilean host mother, I went for a walk around Vina. Actually, she suggested that I take a colectivo, a sort of group taxi that will take you wherever you need to go for about $1US. However, the thought to facing a car full of native Chileans (thus native Spanish-speakers) with nothing but a rudimentary knowledge of Vina del Mar scared the shit out of me, so I opted to walk.
The house that I’ll be making my home for the next few months is in El Recreo, a neighborhood right outside the center of Vina del Mar (in the direction of Valparaiso). The streets slope down towards the sea, little avenues and passages crisscrossing houses that spill down toward the Pacific. A five-minute walk down my street brings me to a busy intersection, and beyond that, the vast expanse of the ocean (I like to imagine it as the same water that hugs the shores of my birthplace, a sort of aqueous umbilical cord). Turning right from the intersection and moving away from the water, I reached what I can only assume was Vina proper, filled with bars and stores and people. The young people are more fashionable than I expected, the atmosphere is more European that I imagined, and the boys (on occasion) are cuter than I hoped for. Imagine the fading glamour of Paris, subtract the outrageous prices and clean streets, and add the Latino flavor of East LA barrios (plus the stray dogs) and you have my initial impression of Vina’s center. I never did succeed in finding the University, but I passed by Café Journal (cited in my guidebook as a hip, happening spot for Vina’s young people, SCORE), a strange sort of mall, Payless Shoes (es espanol!), and about a million kids in Catholic school uniforms.
As I headed home, leaving behind the main thoroughfare for the windy streets of El Recreo, I had a sudden, strange craving for something I almost never crave: COCA-COLA. Everywhere there are signs for Coca-Cold, trucks filled with the caffeinated paradigm of Americana cruising the crowded streets. Was the advertising have a blatant effect on my stomach? Or was it something more…a yearning for something familiar, a piece of home (Wal-Mart, McDonalds, JCPenney’s, fuck, anything!). Or maybe a residual craving considering I haven’t had any coffee or caffeine for two days now. I finally worked up the courage to go into a little store across the street from my house. The sign outside declared, “Pan! A toda hora! Bebida, Lacteos, Cecinas!” I knew bebidas meant that somewhere in that dark little store, a glorious bottle of Coke was waiting for my little gringa hands.
And now, half an hour later, my Coca is gone and the sun is setting over the ocean. The stray dogs are still hustling up and down the street, and the pampered pets are still going crazy. Ah, Chile: que rico!