Pichilemu

I haven´t really been writing lately, I guess I fell out of the habit. It´s just that with being back by the surf I have been spending so much time either in the water or near it. I pulled 5 two a days in the last week and a half, which pretty much eats into my internet time. By the time I get to the internet café (seeing as my laptop died tragically in a freak shampoo drowning accident) I just check my email, sports section of the LA times (check in on my dodgers) and then to check my fantasy baseball team. After that, whatever I might have wanted to write, seems to slide out the window because I´m thinking of sports. Well today is a bit different, it´s my last day here in Pichilemu (at least until September) and I felt like there should be some closure to the situation.

So I guess I should just start with the most noteworthy news. I´m engaged...or so I´ve been told. My chilean host mom has just betrothed me to her thirteen year old daughter. I haven´t really been too sure how to react to this, but I´m going to take it as a good sign. I mean it´s definitely a bit weird when the older sister told this to me. Yeah that´s right the older sister. So the mom just straight out skips the older one to give me her youngest daughter (although to be fair the older one is only fourteen). I wonder what the dowry is going to be, I mean I´m not sure how much a teenaged girl goes for. I´m guessing, at minimum, a cow, three chickens and a new television. It seems like that would be fair. I´m hoping though I can maybe throw in another cow or two and get the rights to the house (a ridiculously cool fixer upper, a small European mansion with views to the ocean but in terribly run down condition). Maybe I´ve been focusing too hard on fantasy baseball, I´m just stuck in trade mode.

Pichilemu is a strange place because there are a lot of places like the house I´m living in, old beautiful houses/casinos/buildings that are just in terrible shape. The thing is that no one wants to sell their places but they also have no problem just leaving things the way they are. I mean this area that I´m staying in (a two minute walk out of the town towards the point) is overloaded with potential, but everyone seems to be perfectly content just getting enough to live comfortably. I completely understand that, but at the same time I think they should have a sense of debt to the area that they are in and feel that they owe it to keep it in the best possible shape. I mean the Hotel and Casino Ross is just completely rundown. The casino definitely has it the worst, it went from being the epicenter of town, a palace of luxury to the birdhouse. All the pidgeons just hang out all day on the roof (which, like the morros at Punta de Lobos, has turned into a spattering white and green of bird shit). The inside houses the local ruffian cats, with broken windows in all areas. I´d have to imagine that it does not smell good inside.

One of the main reasons I don´t understand this is that all the Pichileminos are so proud of the fact that they were once the hottest place to come to when the Casino was working. Now it has the typical surf town appeal, not that it´s bad, but it is a complete departure from what Pichilemu once was. Cheap run down hospedajes, little restaurants, an internet café or two, a couple empanada/french fry shops, the empanada man (who has this voice that´s a mix between Will Ferrel´s Voice Immodulation man and a Texas Auctioneer...in spanish), these are the things that are here, hardly the hip vacation spot is was 50 years ago.

I think one of the problems is that they are all worried about keeping the integrity of the town and if they sell the buildings (which would probably go to somebody out of town) then a monstrosity might pop up. That I guess would be a way worse thing to have happen. But there has to be somebody that has a bit of money AND integrity.