Newly energised by our Spanish experience the day before, we go to the Pre Columbian museum, which informs us about the habits, arts and artefacts of the pre Columbian dwellers, prior to the somewhat violent invasion of the Spanish, and attempt to read all the information in Spanish.
We actually do quite well, it is not so difficult to read another language as it is to try to speak it, particularly when there are helpful translations for each sign, which allows us to check what we think we have just read.
As a consequence though, I find I retain less of the particular habits and stone and clay carving attributes of the various Pre Columbian peoples than I do that 'nevertheless' is 'sin embargo', and 'developed' is 'desarrollado' in Spanish.
One thing that really strikes me though, is the concept of God that some of the Pre Columbian people had. Gods, when images of them were made out of clay, were often depicted as sitting down in a chair. The idea was that the Gods were so huge and so powerful and connected to the universe that they could maintain its balance, simply by remaining still and calm in their chair. At any point though, there was always the danger that a God might decide to get up out of his chair and walk around, sending the universe spinning out of control.
I rather like this idea. It's easy, in a Christian culture at least, to think of God so much as a benevolent, cuddly sort of being, which I'd perfectly fine, but sometimes it means you cease to appreciate the power of a God. That a God could be so powerful that he or she had to sit perfectly still for fear of wreaking havoc on the universe is quite a striking idea. And the added concept that, depending perhaps, on your behaviour as human beings, or on his or her whim, he or she could just decide to get up and stride about, destroying the world in the process, certainly gives that sense of power. Perhaps, in this concept, an earthquake or a flood is simply a twitch of God's finger. Whether accident, judgement or opposing force, quelled by the God just in time, I suppose depends on your characterisation of God. It goes some way towards providing some explanation to the age old question, if there is a just God, why so much undeserved tragedy in the world. It's one answer among many that have been proffered over the ages, none of them, in my mind, really satisfactory. I suspect such mysteries are not for our lifetime.
As for the other problem, the problem of conceiving a God figure in a human mind, and the struggle to unite a sense of kindness with justice, and of power with gentleness - presumably the fact that the God has not, thus far, moved him or herself off that critical perch, is a way to understand that. God is merciful in his lack of action, a refreshing alternative in a world where we presume mercy to be an act of intervention, and become bitter in the face of a perceived lack of miracles.
Anyway - this rather knotty philosophy is soon knocked out of me by a large bottle of red wine. Well, a few glasses of it anyway.
We have been invited to the barbecue organised by the language school on the terrace. We turn up, shyly, wondering if our language skills will hold up. I take a glass and hesitate near the mammoth bottle of red wine.
"You can drink it," says a tall guy on shorts, holding up his own glass, "it's actually quite good."
I fill my glass.
"Brilliant." He says, "now I feel justified in having more, I felt weird when I was the only one drinking it."
We practice some mutually hesitant Spanish. The guy in shorts turns out to be called Seb (pseudonym). He's been at the school for one week. He introduces us to Dirk and Mary, who have also been there a week. We lapse into English for the sake of attempting a more interesting conversation.
Mary is in her sixties and is travelling against the advice and much to the horror of most of her friends. She has always wanted to visit South America and, in her words, 'just did it'. She is afraid a lot of the time but takes the approach that fear is OK as long as it doesn't prevent her having a good experience. Refer to pretty much any of these blogs and you will know that I am afraid most of the time too, and, as she states, 'grit my teeth and do it anyway.' And then enjoy it. I have a lot in common with Mary, but am sad her friends are unsupportive.
"I really want to go home and say 'nothing bad happened so there'" she says, and I have a renewed rush of gratitude for my supportive friends and family to whom I will have no need to say anything to other than 'hello again, that was amazing, I can't wait to tell you about it and I am so glad to see you again.'
"But what," continues Mary, "if I do get mugged or something. Then I will have to go back and they have won."
"Absolutely not," I tell her, "you will be all the more brave to have had it happen and dealt with it, so you can be even more proud of yourself and you'll have an exciting story to tell."
Someone very wise and very much loved said something similar to me not so long ago, when going to South America had suddenly seemed daunting. The way, of course, that driving a camper van in New Zealand had suddenly seemed daunting. The way that each change of country suddenly seems daunting, and perhaps it would be better to simply stay in the first one, where everything is settled. And each time it is absolutely fine, more than fine. It is amazing. The ghosts of muggers, food poisoning, drownings and bus crashes fade away, until they are simply a vague clamouring at the back of my mind, buried beneath new, colourful and fantastic landscapes, people and experiences.
Dirk and Jordan don't seem to have encountered fear.
"The best way to get over jet lag," says Dirk, "is to do what I did. I flew for 13 hours and then landed and partied for 24 hours. I was too drunk to care what the time was and then I went to bed finally and woke up, and I was fine."
"Are you going to Valparaiso?" Says Seb, "I stayed in a really weird hostel there. No one ever went to bed and everyone was just permanently plastered, and there were, like, people just having sex in the corridors. It was fantastic."
Dirk and Seb are thoughtful 25 to 30 year olds who are intelligent and friendly and not simply the 'Brad' like caricatures I make them out to be. Dirk travelled because he just had reached a point in his life where he felt restless and tied down. He came to the realisation that what he needed was to travel some time after everybody else who knew him. When he approached his boss to hand his notice in she simply said, "I thought so. So where are you going?"
And she meant 'country', not 'company'.
Seb had been working as a qualified dental practitioner for years when he realised he was miserable and that the money he was earning was not really very important to him. That being, at that stage, the only good thing about his job, he packed it in and packed his bags.
"I'm sort of emigrating to Canada," says Seb, "but I have to fill out the visa application and it's really complicated so....urgh..."
He shrugs and stretches himself further down in his chair so that he is all long limbs and resignation.
"I'll do it eventually." he says.
Seb manages to give an impression of not caring about anything and being utterly disinclined to do anything involving effort. As I later discover in class he is actually working very hard to learn Spanish, an interesting thing to do when your ultimate plan to go somewhere that speaks English. He, of all of us is the only one who I see at Pisco Sours nights or Terramoto nights which happen to be held in the hostal he stays at, with his Spanish books under his arm having been doing homework. It's just he and Dirk happen to also take drinking, and smoking marijuana (legal in Chile as long as it's for personal use - though I am not sure how people get it if no one can sell...) just as seriously.
"The lessons are really intense," says Dirk, "but I am always hungover."
We leave the barbecue when the alcohol runs out. Other than Dirk, Seb and Mary I have managed to talk a little in Spanish to some of the other people there.
Dirk and Seb are going on somewhere, they don't invite us but I think that's OK. I think they might party harder and faster than I know how - or have ever known how.
We fall into bed. The Gods are in their chairs, all is good with the world. At least the tiny part of it we sleep in.
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