Welcome. The first rule of Fitz's blog is that you do not talk about Fitz's blog. The second rule of Fitz's blog is that you DO NOT talk about Fitz's blog. I think we all know what kind of people write blogs, and I just don't want to go there. If you don't already know what kind of people write blogs, ask Duncan and he'll make a gagging face that should give you a pretty good idea.

Flew to Chile at the beginning of the month, and was met by this (lazy man's) view of the Andes. I spent several days in Santiago getting oriented, brushing up on my Spanish, and staying with a rather eccentric Chilean family-- the German grandmother who lived in apartheid-era South Africa until Mandela was freed from Robben Island; the Lolita-esque young teenage daughter who was inexplicably naked every other time I saw her (lounging in the pool, sure, but also while talking on the phone, or making a sandwich); an older daughter who asked me if I studied history, then gave me an article entitled "How Allende destroyed democracy in Chile."

Santiago is a modern city that feels distinctly European. It's easy to get around, and quite safe in most parts; the subway is as efficient as in New York or Paris, and only half as dirty.

And maybe that's why several days in Santiago were more than enough. Soon it was too clean, too modern, too efficient. Santiago is a city with all the infrastructure of Paris without, well, Paris. It's a city so easy to live in that I can't imagine why anyone inclined to live in a city would ever want to live there.

Enter Valparaiso. Stray dogs on every street, piles of shit to step in, sea salt smell off the port, beggars, crumbling, colorful houses built precariously up the sides of muraled, graffiti-strewn, potholed cobblestoned hillsides climbed by creaky, century-old ascensores, short cuts, back alleys, switchbacks. Imagine a hilly Havana, or San Francisco struck by an earthquake and then carelessly reassembled. I've never been in a better place for getting lost. Which is all to say that I fell quick, and hard.

I decided to stay for most of my time in Chile there, content to try to get a feel for life in one place instead of racing from tip to tip of that impossibly long country trying to see everything without seeing anything. I met a couple of great English travelers and spent a few days with each of them, but most of the time I was on my own in Valparaiso, walking around, taking photographs and talking to locals.

I spent an afternoon at La Sebastiana, as Pablo Neruda's Valparaiso house is known (I eventually visited his other two-- Isla Negra, right on the coast about an hour and a half from Valparaiso, and La Chascona in Santiago next to the zoo). They are all whimsical, enchanting places, infused with his love and fear of the sea. Most rooms are built like ships (too-low doorways and curved, wood-planked ceilings) and they brim with collections of colored glass, shells, African masks, flea market-bought still lifes, engraved metal horse-riding stirrups, carved wooden bowspirits, pinned butterflies and a large lion stuffed animal Neruda bought to guard the sleep of his lover and later, third wife, Matilde.

(For all you kids out there, Neruda's favorite drink was the coquetelon: equal parts cognac and champagne, with a few drops of cointreau and orange juice. Salud.)

Another Sunday morning found me at a very Valparaiso Catholic mass at the oldest church in the city, where a mother came in half-way through the service, trailing six, soccer jersey-clad kids like a school of fish. A wino interrupted the service at one point and had to be subdued. The priest, no doubt aware of his audience, took particular care to note that when the water was converted into wine, it wasn't bottom-shelf wine but real primo shit. Outside the church after the mass, a homeless man came up to me and claimed to be Jesucristo.

But my favorite place in Valparaiso was the Mercado Central, mostly passed over by tourists since the surrounding area has a reputation for petty theft. The Mercado is a gloriously crumbling three-story gallery with winding staircases around its perimeter, entirely unlit except by the natural light that streams through the glass-domed roof.

The first floor has a fish market where you can buy everything from conger eel to seaweed to shark. There is a butcher with a big red scale, and people hawking fruits and vegetables from piles on the floor that are occasionally scaled by tiny stray kittens who nestle themselves among the lettuce leaves. On the right afternoon, there is a boyscout troup passing through and the policeman directing them.

The second floor is all seafood restaurants, which are always deserted except for a couple hours at lunch when locals come by for paila marina and chupe stew. There is a group of boys who play here all day while their mothers work in the restaurants. They have a bike and a toy truck, and if you stay with them for long enough they'll take you to the cardboard box stashed around the corner, pull off its plywood cover, and show you the stray cat and her six kittens inside.

Officially you're not allowed to climb to the rooftop terrace, but it's easy enough to do and you're rewarded with a 360 degree view of Valparaiso--hills, port, coast. There is laundry drying from the windows across the street, a radio blaring from the kitchen, and on some days, an easel and an art student studying the hills from a corner of the roof.

The third floor is locked off by chain and padlock, but through a hole in the gauzy netting that blocks off part of it you can see the inside is dusty and debris-strewn, with old white-washed columns and light streaming in everywhere from glassless windows floor-to-ceiling onto the street.

It's a hole, come to think of it, that would be easy enough to climb through and jump down to have a bit of a look around. Next thing you know you've made friends with the building guard. A couple days later: "Is it possible to look around the third floor?" "No, no, that's impossible." "Right ... I mean but if I can do it is it possible?" "No it's not possible ... Es decir, I'm the guard here and I haven't seen anything." He gave me a hand down.

Almost all of the photographs are from Valparaiso, most from inside the Mercado.

I had to go back to Santiago for a couple days in order to catch my onward flight to Argentina. I stayed at a hostel in a grittier area than before, and Santiago grew on me a little. Even so, my original impression more or less holds. One of you wrote me recently telling me to enjoy my traveling, and to "leave a small piece of yourself behind." Santiago was fine, but there's no doubt that I left that piece in Valparaiso.

I've been in Buenos Aires since Sunday, and I'm having a great time. I'll do my best to update this from time to time, but photographs might be few and far between because computers are mad slow.

I love you guys, and I think about you all the time. Let me know how you're doing.

Fitz