Sí, po!: Valparaiso

Here, the city buses are called micros. We had ridden one almost twenty minutes past our stop, past the port and up into next cluster of hills, until the driver realized we were lost and flagged a micro going in the other direction. Now we were backtracking, flying down the narrow winding roads while the new bus driver talked and talked, turning back to look at us and wave his hands so that we understood that his daughter really did live in New York City, and his niece and nephew too, and he laughed at the story he was telling while we barreled around another blind curve at a speed that could not have been legal (but seemed to be the standard for micros in Valparaiso, in the same way that the micros in Santiago can’t help but tailgate each other), somehow sliding past the car speeding up in the other direction without hitting it. Since the bus driver didn’t seem to be doing it, I kept my eyes on the road, trying to ignore his gesturing hands and the bouncing Chilean flags attached my springs to the dashboard.

Up in the hills, we didn’t see a single bus stop; just people waiting on the side of the dusty roads, holding out an arm as if they were hailing a cab. At the sight of their hands the bus driver would pull to a sudden stop, nearly throwing us from our seats. The doors would pop open and the potential passengers would tell him where they were going, and he would yell yes or no, he didn’t go there, and the ones who had found the right micro would step on as the bus started moving again, and half the time the doors would still be open while we bounced around the next curve at full speed, the new additions to our bus standing at the front counting their monedas while I held onto the seat in front of me and tried to stop myself from sliding out into the aisle.

When I wasn’t falling out of my seat or wishing I could warn the driver that another sharper, steeper curve was coming, the hills were beautiful. The roads were dusty but the hills themselves covered in green and bursting with yellow flowers, mixing with the brightly colored houses that were everywhere, pink and blue and orange, pale and bright, on the top of the hills and down in the narrow valleys, colorful houses with colorful laundry hanging from the windows, jeans and t-shirts blowing in the breeze. When we rolled over the crest of a hill or barreled past a wide viewpoint I could see the ocean, dark blue and sparkling in the sunlight.

After we finally found our stop and checked into our hostel, we spent the first day wandering around the city, following the narrow curving roads down to the flatter, busier part of the city and then back up into the hills, admiring the murals and graffiti on the walls and the paintings that were sold everywhere you could see the ocean.

The second day we boarded a crowded micro that took us out to the beach where one of the parades for the festival of mil tambores (a thousand drums) was being assembled. On the rocky beach the drummers were gathering, small groups circling and beating out a rhythm.

Closer to the water there was body painting, and men and woman stood topless while painters covered their bare skin in color, sometimes using sponges to make bold strokes but often using brushes to create careful designs. Some of the paintings were abstract patterns that crawled up legs and twisted out over backs, but I saw other canvases holding pictures in their hands for the painter to copy, and we watched in amazement as faces and landscapes that had once been flat changed, curving with the shape of a body, so that a tree which had been just a tree now rolled up a woman’s stomach and between her breasts, coming to life as its leaves grabbed at her collarbones.

Hannah and sat on the rocks in the sun watching all of this happen, spreading sunscreen over our arms and faces as if it were paint that just wouldn’t stick. Now, thinking back, I realize that although we were only a few feet from the ocean, I never heard the waves. Only the sound of the drums getting louder and louder and louder, as more drummers came down to the beach and their circles grew larger, until the rhythms being pounded out by the different groups began to merge together, a beat that I could feel in my skin, drumming in my fingers and my feet, my head and my hips, telling me that if my life was nothing but drums and paint and the sun on the ocean, I would be happy.

The drumming grew faster, and louder, and faster again as the painters finished up their final strokes, encircling wrists or smearing color up necks, until finally, although no announcement was made or bell rung, they all began to move up from the beach, climbing the stairs into the wide street. The parade began.