Overseas Briefing

Author: Laura Budzyna

CHILE - Three times a week, I hop off the micro bus, maneuver through the fruit sellers and street artists in the Plaza Anibal Pinto and begin the steep and winding trudge up to Cerro Concepción. Before the street takes its first curve, I pass Bar Cinzano and Café Ritual on my right - two locales that will be brimming with young artist-types and the smoke from their cigarettes by nightfall. A rooms-for-rent sign and a clothesline dangle out of the window of a battered old building on my left. In front of the building, two television sets are stacked with a message scrawled across their screens in white paint: Apaga la tele - Vive tu vida: "Turn off the TV - live your life."

The street twists to the right, and I run my hand along the brightly-colored mural on the wall. As the hill gets steeper, the sidewalk buckles into steps - some painted, some inlayed with stones, some splattered with graffiti of Che Guevara. A shopkeeper knits a funky green poncho in the open doorway of her shop, spilling color out into the street, and I count the pesos in my wallet to see if I have enough to snag the fringy scarf I've had my eye on. Next time, I tell myself, as I step aside to let a dreadlocked twenty-something carrying a canvas pass by. As I round the final curve of the hill, I spy the old man in his pastel-plaid cap, sitting on a bench and feeding the pigeons, as usual.

It's always warmer on top of the hill, I decide, although I could just be flush from the ascent. I look at my watch. Ten minutes before my chorus class begins, and although I can hear voices and violins ribboning out the windows of the Instituto de Música, I tell myself that I have time.

I amble by Color Café, a curious little place whose walls are collages of kites and keys and sheet music and shells and playing cards and dream catchers. As I pass, resisting the urge to go in and order a kiwi juice, the gruff man with the eye patch who once helped me blow up balloons for a birthday party gives me a nod. I plink by a row of pastel-colored houses lined up like piano keys - pink, orange, green, yellow, blue - until I reach the fence overlooking the port of Valparaíso and the Pacific Ocean.

I lean against the fence, brushing my hair out of my eyes to get a better look. To me, the city of Valparaíso looks like a giant puzzle with a mosaic of colorful houses elbowing each other on the hillsides and trying not to fall into the sea. And in all of its twists and corners, it hides secrets - painted steps and stray dogs and old women selling art and empanadas. And places like this, I think, watching the red funicular elevator rise up the hill from the street below.

I snap out of my thoughts for a moment, realizing that class started five minutes ago. I hurry back up to the music building, only to find all the kids in my class sitting in the doorway, three playing their guitars. The strumming melts into the cigarette smoke and Chilean slang, dotted with the "po"s and "¿cachai?"s that no Spanish class will teach you. I make the rounds, kissing each friend on the cheek before asking nervously whether we should go in for class. "Ahh, n'importa," answers one, leaning back onto the steps and smiling. It doesn't matter. So I sit down on the steps, content to hide a little longer in one of the colorful secrets of Valparaíso.