Learning to walk at a Chilean pace

Morning walk in San Pedro de Atacama

I learn a lot from taking walks in different locations. I think taking a walk is the most immediate way to connect not only with a place itself, but also with its people.

Through quiet, ordinary moments on the sidewalk, I have learned a lot about that elusive thing that all travellers seem to crave experience with: culture.  Culture is such an intangiable thing that you must be immersed, over time, in a variety of activities in a myriad of settings in the host culture, and even then you’ll never really get it.

During my brief return to Montreal over the past few weeks, I have noticed that walking around the Canadian city is a staggeringly different experience than walking around the city of Antofagasta. Sure, it’s cold and icy, which certainly affects how life is conducted on the sidewalk. But there is more than just frostbite that is different.

Montreal in the snow

Slow and steady wins the race might very well be the motto in Antofagasta. I have tried “keeping up” (or should it be, “keeping down?!”), walking behind groups of people on the sidewalks, trying their relaxed pace and have somehow been physically incapable of strolling at such a drowsy rate.

If you’re a fast walker, you’re out of luck. Pedestrians in Antofagasta will never let you pass them on the sidewalk. If North Americans sense that someone is rapidly approaching behind them on the sidewalk, it’s second nature to move aside and let the other person pass. Whether this occurrence is not noticed, not anticipated or simply not tolerated in Chile, I am not sure. But from my experience, no accommodation is ever made for speedy walkers by slower pedestrians. I can’t help but wonder if this is intentionally orchestrated. Maybe it’s their way of telling me, the hare, to slow down to a more tortoise-like pace.

Almost no one walks alone. On weekends, entire families – including extended families, cousins, grandparents, great-aunts – all go out for a stroll. Antofagasta has a lovely ocean-front walk, where Children can ride their bikes or roller skate and parents can push babies in strollers. During the week, coworkers walk to work together. Parents and children walk to school. Friends walk to lunch. Couples walk, sometimes with other couples.

Walking on the beach

Walks call for frequent breaks. In all fairness, this must be a more common occurrence where the climate is nice. If you take frequent breaks during a walk in Montreal, you’re likely to get rained, snowed, hailed, or sleeted on. In Chile, under a clear, near-perfect sky, pedestrians stop to talk on their phones, to enjoy a cigarette or a piece of candy or some ice cream. They stop when they run into their friend or neighbour. They stop to enjoy a sunset. Couples of all ages stop to enjoy each other.

If you are one of those rare creatures without a walking companion, you will soon get a walking companion. The first few times I took walks I often became disconcerted when, at stop lights, someone would step up to the curb, literally almost brushing my shoulder, despite the fact there was plenty of room and no one else around in our way. The person was often another woman. As someone who was raised to know how to be street smart and safe in big American cities like Chicago or New York, I would instantly become paranoid. Yet, the other pedestrian would never be a cause for concern: usually the woman would usually be well dressed, often my age or maybe older, serious, purposeful, calm, in the middle of her daily routine. I would tuck my purse more securely under my arm.

After about 5 months of Chilean women breaching my “comfort zone” on the sidewalks, I did a little experiment. I stopped stepping away when they would step up to me at corners. I stopped walking fast to get well ahead of them as soon as the light turned green.

And I realized they wanted to walk with me. Finally surrendering to them, I discovered I was supposed to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with them at lights, walk with them along sidewalks, each of us falling into the other’s pace. We crossed the streets together, passed strange men cleaning the sidewalks or watering the flowers, until we had to finally break away and go our separate ways. Without looking at each other or saying a word, we became temporary walking partners.

It was like a secret code. If I was walking alone, and they were walking alone, we were to walk together.

It wasn’t until I returned to Montreal, expecting to be relieved to have my personal space back, when I was walking downtown one afternoon and a woman stopped near me on a corner during a red light. She kept a respectable distance from me, at least a foot or two. As soon as the light turned green, she power-walked ahead of me, disappearing far down the sidewalk.

I was left, to my surprise, feeling slightly lonely and just a touch insulted.

Walking in Quebec

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