There always lurks a problem

Viña Del Mar, Chile

Being dive bombed by a pelican was not something I expected but dive bombed I was this morning. I am on the outskirts of Viña Del Mar, one of Chile’s upmarket seaside resorts, and a hair’s breadth from historic Valparaiso. It takes forever to reach this land if you happen to be a Brit but, when you reach it you realise our two countries have so much in common. Not pelicans, for sure, nor driving - they drive right, we drive left - but definitely we are both maritime nations.

In fact, I worry about Chileans as they appear to have an obsession with water and love, yes love, being soaked to the skin. I am not certain there is very much landmass west of Chile other than a zillion miles of Pacific Ocean but the huge expanse of sea makes for fairly serious waves. Forget the sea wall. These breakers are so big, they leap over, through and between anything that stands in their way. Chile has seen some mega oceans over the past six months, and the waves show no sign of subsiding. I understand the scientists blame the moon, which seems as fair an explanation as any. Chile had the biggest moon since 1948 only a few days ago.

Yet whatever the cause of the endless surf, you can be sure a Chilean is standing there, waiting for it, camera in hand, until he, or she - there are plenty of ladies - is soaked right through and their technology rendered useless. The moment the wave leaps the sea wall, landing with a loud crump the far side, my side, just beneath my fourth floor window, the crump is replaced by giggling as a dozen fully-clothed locals show off their now waterlogged mobiles. So no surprises I was dive bombed by a pelican. Chile is that sort of place.

And just in case you were insufficiently soaked by a mini tidal wave - these things are over five metres high - the parks are scattered with sprinklers that fire off automatically and seemingly in any direction other than towards a plant, grass or tree. Walk through a park in Chile, at least the wide gardens of Viña Del Mar, and an automated sprinkler will get you for certain. I sense they are programmed to frighten unsuspecting tourists, and certainly ones from UK.

Yet even the automated sprinklers are insufficient. Should you have escaped the tsunami and the sprinkler took a fancy to a Frenchman rather than you, there is always the sleepy gardener, Chile’s final defence. There are plenty of them, gardeners, each with a hosepipe, each munching a sandwich, and each aiming their pipe this way and that but definitely towards any passing tourist. An umbrella is de rigueur out here and not only because of rainfall. Brollies are held horizontally in Chile.

So what with war-like pelicans, tidal waves and erratic gardeners, it was no surprise to find a shrunken head in this otherwise scenic coastal location. Actually I found three. No wonder some say the derivation of Chile comes from the language of the Mapuche people, folk who lived in central Chile and Argentina, where Chile means the end of the earth. Each shrunken head was as morbid as its neighbour. And oh boy, do they look unhappy in their display cabinet at the Museo Fonck.

Shrunken heads are hugely spooky, especially when you learn how they got there. Well not into the display cabinet, that part is easy, but onto the end of a spiky pole deep inside the Amazon jungle, put there to warn off intruders. Shrinking a head is an apparent artform in itself - some artist - and involves removing the skull, replacing it with a wooden ball, and then boiling the flesh. The lips are cobbled together with palm pins and the whole thing is then coated with ash. Charcoal ash keeps the avenging soul from seeping out. You can be sure, if my head was shrunk, I would be first in the queue as an avenger. But they do look sad, the expressions on these tiny heads. Having your cranium shrunk to a pole-sized fit was clearly not a happy process.

Yet shrunken heads apart, Chile is an arty nation and nowhere more so than the city of Valparaiso, Valpo if you are a local. I can see it from where I am sat. Valpo’s graffiti is in a different league; the place is an artist’s Mecca. Street art is illegal in the rest of the land but Valpo? Graffiti is welcomed. Some street artists have even been paid to live and work there. The locals actively encourage paintwork, chalkwork, rough sketches on their house walls in ways that would be outlawed in other localities. There are street bananas and bodies, arms and legs, pianos, sceptres and tridents; there is modern, trendy and has-been. There are birds a-plenty, monsters to boot, and colours that require sunglasses at night. Whole sides of building are covered in colour and even the occasional roof. Valpo is where it is at for street artists. They had best work fast, before the next tidal wave washes off their labours and back to the beginning they must head.

You see, even if a tidal wave does not hit them, an earthquake surely will. Chile is a seismologist’s dreamland. Where else on the planet has up to two quakes every single day? There have been 12 in the past week, 630 in the past year and Chileans are expecting the big one. The belief that every 25 years, mayhem and destruction will reign and half the population rendered homeless. Three tectonic plates, Nazca, South American and Antarctic, meet at the Chilean coastline. Should one plate move, everything moves, and that includes Valpo’s artwork. No wonder the nation consumes so much booze.

And that’s another problem. In Chile, one of the longest, thinnest countries in the world, a frightening million souls are alcoholic. They are even developing an anti-alcoholism vaccine. A shot once a month, drink what you like, while your addiction fades into history. It works for rats, but humans? The science has yet to be tested. Behind all fine wine, and there is plenty of that in Chile, there always lurks a problem.