The main stage shows were very loud, very well attended, and comprised of about 90% cueca. I was pleasantly surprised by how enjoyable it is to watch people dance cueca. The best shows pulled random people from the audience for impromptu cueca competitions in various styles. Each region, each person really, dances their own peculiar version of cueca built from a few basic pasos or movements. The worst show was a magic show. It was terrible. Really, wholly and unrepentantly awful. I didn't know whether to laugh or cringe.
The traditional foods for the fiestas patrias are extremely well liked. Number one on the list is the empanada, a doughy sort of pasty filled with any of a variety of ingredients (almost always onions for some reason though) and then baked or fried. Second is straight up meat: beef, pork, sausages and mutton seasoned with salt and ají (hot pepper) and grilled over a wood fire. Also, Camilo told me that "the women usually make lots of salads that end up in the trash." The latter part of this statement did not hold true in my experience, as Ceci's spicy onion salad was quite a hit.
The alcohol of choice for fiestas patrias seems to be chicha, a mellow sort of hard cider. Another favorite is the terremoto (earthquake), a sweet wine topped off with pineapple icecream. Very alcoholic, very sweet.
On the second day at the fonda, we saw a crowd gathering on the soccer pitch, so, on the principle that anything is better than another godawful magic show, we went to see what was going on. It turned out that we had arrived just in time to lay down bets on a hotly contested round of musical chairs (my kid won, but Jessie never payed up). This was followed by tug of war and several variations of sack races. Another important sporting event was horse racing or carrera a la chilena. This is the drag racing of the equestrian world: two horses side by side on a 500m straightaway. It was very exciting to watch when the horses were actually running, but in between each 20 second race was about ten minutes of trying to get the horses to stand still facing in the right direction. Two or three false starts per race also appear to be traditional.
The fiestas patrias are also regarded as a fine time to dress your children in traditional (read silly looking) costumes. The boys are dressed as huasos with broad-brimmed hats, square ponchos, boots and, if you have a really good costume, gigantic spurs. The girls are dressed as chinas, with floral pattern dresses and ribbons in their hair. It's cute.
The other big activity at the fonda was, unexpectedly, flying kites. From a distance of two blocks, every street leading to the park (all two of them) was filled with kite merchants, selling their flimsy, plastic wares for one luca (1000 pesos) to kids of all ages. All day long, the soccer pitches were filled with huasitos and chinas tossing kites into the air with abandon. By the end of the weekend the trees were filled the less fortunate of them (kites, not kids). Don Oscar, my host uncle (tio-uncle- is a general term for a friend of ones parents, an elderly neighbor or what have you), told me about flying kites in his childhood. It was a lot more interesting back then. They would grind up glass bottles and use the powdered glass to treat their kitestrings. Then they would use the treated line to try to slice the kitestrings of other kids. The last kid with an intact kite won. He also told me that this sort of kite fighting is illegal now because kids would get their throats cut by accident with the strings.
The midway featured a collection of small rides that looked like they were built in the 1960s and last serviced or maintained in the 1960s. Jessie and I decided to try our luck with the tagada, a large, horizontal wheel that you sit inside of. We thought it was like a giant centrifuge, with the fun and excitement being derived from the centripetal forces pressing you against the wall. Boy were we wrong. It turns out that the tagada also incorporates a pneumatic apparatus for slowly tilting the wheel while it spins. Its clever operators had discovered that by violently jogging the controls you can make the machine buck and lurch wildly as it gyrates, much to the excitement of its occupants. We had blithely tush-tushed the sign reading "maquina de alto riesgo" and payed no heed to the fervent manner in which the other passengers were gripping the side railings (there were, of course, no restraints of any kind). Thus we were caught totally unawares when, with a resounding kachunk, the machine started giving its best efforts to liberate us from our mortal coils. I lost my cell phone and camera in the first couple of seconds and almost went tumbling across the middle of the wheel. At some point I think Jessie did start to fall because I remember hauling her back onto the bench by the waist. We finally got a good grip on the railing and averted disaster; Jessie cut her hand from gripping so hard. It was a wild ride. I couldn't stop laughing through the whole thing and quite a long while afterwards.
I would have liked to post a bunch of pictures, but my second camera is now out of commission as well. Instead I would direct anyone interested in good pictures from the event to Jessie's blog (which has the additional advantage of actually being updated regularly): http://www.jessieinvaldivia.blogspot.com/.
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