A Trip to Chile - Part 1 - Geography

“Chile, that remote land that few people can locate on the map because it’s as far as you can go without falling off the planet.  No one passes by casually, however lost he may be, although many visitors decide to stay forever, enamored of the land and the people.”

Isabel Allende – “My Invented Country”

“Where exactly is Viña del Mar?” If you had asked me that question about a year ago I would not have been able to answer, notwithstanding that it has been Sausalito’s sister city since 1960 and the plaza in the middle of Sausalito is named after Viña. However, through an unexpected set of circumstances, at the beginning of last year I became involved with an effort to revitalize that relationship. That led first to a visit to Sausalito in July by a delegation from Viña led by their dynamic mayor, Virginia Reginato (which coincided with a visit to San Francisco by the Chilean Navy’s training ship, La Esmeralda), and then, at the beginning of November, to my own trip to Chile together with Sausalito’s mayor, Herb Weiner – the first time for either of us to travel to South America.  

July 2010 - Viña Comes to Sausalito

November 2010 - Sausalito Goes to Viña    

Continue Reading »

Sausalito/Viña del Mar - Celebrating a 50 Year Relationship

As indicated in a post last year, I only recently learned that Sausalito, the town where I live, has had a sister city relationship for the past 50 years with the Chilean coastal city of Viña del Mar. Through the efforts of Alex Geiger-Soffia, Chile’s Consul General in San Francisco, a bronze plaque to honor that significant anniversary was produced and was to be affixed to one of the elephant statues at the entrance to Viña del Mar Plaza in downtown Sausalito.

The ceremony to dedicate the plaque was originally scheduled for March 5. However, with the massive earthquake in Chile on February 27, the ceremony was understandable postponed.

Happily, while there is much work still to be done, the post-quake situation in Chile is continuing to improve and Consul General Geiger’s office and the Sausalito city administration decided to proceed with the dedication ceremony this past Saturday. It turned out to be a sunny and warm on Saturday – a perfect day for the event. Booths and tables were set up and there was a festive atmosphere in the Plaza.

The ceremony kicked off with comments by Sausalito’s Mayor, Jonathan Leone, and by Consul General Geiger. Then they moved to the statue for the unveiling.


After that, we were entertained with Cueca songs and dancing by a Bay Area-based Chilean dance troupe named the Araucaria Dancers.

Beverages (including, of course, Chilean wine) and food (some excellent empanadas from Café Valparaíso in Berkeley) followed.

One of the people I met at the event was Eugenio Ovalle, the General Manager of a travel service named Alta Tours which arranges tours to Chile and elsewhere in South American, Spain and Portugal. Eugenio is originally from Chile and, by way of historic coincidence, his father was Chile's Consul General to San Francisco in 1960 when the Sausalito/Viña del Mar relationship was established and the plaque celebrating that event, which is attached to the northern elephant statue in the Plaza, was dedicated. Below is a photo of Eugenio next to the plaque his father helped to dedicate, together with one he kindly took of me next to the new plaque.

It was a very nice ceremony. In addition to everyone else, special thanks should go both to Erin Stroud, the Event Coordinator at the Sausalito Parks & Recreation Department, and Jacqueline Jorquera at the Chilean Consulate, who both helped organize much of the event.

So now we have celebrated the 50th anniversary of this relationship with Viña del Mar. What’s next? Hopefully we will be able to find concrete ways to expand the relationship in the near future.

Continue Reading »

More Friendship from Chile

Earlier today I stopped by the Sausalito's Civic Center to say hello to Mike Langford, the head of our Parks & Recreation Department who is taking the lead to look into the revitalization of our sister city relationship with Viña del Mar in Chile. As I was leaving his office, Mike asked me if I had seen the Hermandad statue in Gabrielson Park in downtown Sausalito that had been donated several years ago by Sergio Castillo Mandiola, a Chilean sculptor. I had to admit that I had not, but after leaving the meeting I drove down to take a look.

In 1968 Sr. Castillo was a visiting professor at UC Berkeley. Learning of the sister city relationship between Sausalito and Viña del Mar, he kindly offered to create a steel sculpture as a gift to Sausalito to reflect the goodwill between the cities. He gave the sculpture the title of "Hermandad" -- "sisterhood.”

At the time of the sculpture’s dedication in 1969, the sculpture was located in an open area in Sausalito near the Bay and the city’s Viña del Mar Plaza.


Soon thereafter, small trees were planted around the sculpture to provide some landscaping. However, as the trees grew to full size over the years, they gradually crowded in on Hermandad and largely obscured the work from public view.

In 1989 the Loma Prieta earthquake toppled Hermandad from its base. An initial effort was made to reattach and strenghten it, but elements of the sculpture were lost as a result and the integrity of the original work was compromised.

Finally, in September 2008, on the 40th anniversary of its original dedication, as a result of several years of efforts led by the Sausalito Arts Commission and with the support and guidance of Sr. Castillo and the work of local artist, Archie Held, the restored Hermandad was erected on a elevated pedestal at the entrance to Gabrielson Park in downtown Sausalito. It sits there today, just next to the ferry terminal where it once again welcomes visitors to the city.

I am sure Sr. Castillo would approve.

Continue Reading »

Sausalito and Viña del Mar - Dos Ciudades Hermanas

Our family has lived in Sausalito for over 30 years, but I am sorry to say that it was only recently that I looked into our sister city relationship with the Chilean city of Viña del Mar ("Vineyard of the Sea"), just north of the port of Valparíaso on the Pacific Coast and about one and a half hours by car from Santiago.

The sister city relationship was established in 1960, but apart from being remembered by our Viña del Mar Plaza in downtown Sausalito next to the ferry pier, it does not seem that it has been active in the recent past. I recently had a chance to meet Chile’s new Consul General in San Francisco, Alex Geiger-Soffia, who hopes to organize an event to celebrate the upcoming 50th anniversary of the relationship. That sounds like a wonderful idea, especially given the long-term, special relationship that exists between California and Chile as reflected by our Chile-California Partnership (see the links here and here).

Although I have never been to Chile, I have become very interested in the country and would like to learn more about the background of the sister city relationship. There are some obvious similarities between the cities - for example, both are seaside tourist destinations close to important ports and both, as the following photo collages reflect, are blessed by considerable natural beauty.

Both cities are also close to important wine production areas, including, in the case of Viña del Mar, Casablanca Valley (through which one passes on the drive to the coast from Santiago) which is itself a sister city of Napa, California, less than an hour north of Sausalito. Viña del Mar is considerably larger than Sausalito - its population of around 300,000 (compared to around 8,000 for Sausalito) makes it the fourth largest city in Chile. It also hosts two important annual festivals – a music festival, now in its 50th year, each February (“Festival Internacional de la Canción de Viña del Mar”), and a film festival, now in its 21st year, each November ("Festival Internacional de Cine de Viña del Mar”).

Viña del Mar also has a top division soccer team named CD Everton (nicknamed the "Ruleteros" (“the roulette players”), a reference to the city’s status as a gambling resort). The team plays at a 18,000 seat stadium named Estadio Sausalito.

The stadium was named after the small lake – Laguna Sausalito – next to which it is located.

I am not sure if the Lagoon was named in honor of the sister city relationship or if that may just be a coincidence due to the possible presence of the same willow trees after which Sausalito (“"small willow grove” in Spanish) was originally named.

Returning to California, as can be seen by this video, the Viña del Mar Plaza has always been a peaceful oasis in downtown Sausalito.

The elephant statues, which flank the entrance to the park, and the fountain in the middle of the park, are the key decorative elements.

The statues have plaques – one in English and one in Spanish - affixed to their bases which reflect the sister city relationship.

The elephant sculptures and fountain were originally designed for the 1915 Panama Pacific Exposition in San Francisco by Sausalito architect William Faville.

After the Exposition, Faville acquired the elephants and the fountain and in 1916 they were placed in their current location in Sausalito, then known as Depot Park, where residents dubbed them Jumbo and Pee Wee. The original statues eroded over time, so castings were made of Pee Wee so that concrete replacements could be placed in to the Park. In 1960 the name of the Park was changed to commemorate the new sister city relationship with Viña del Mar.

_________________________

"I have been a lucky man. To feel the intimacy of brothers is a marvelous thing in life. To feel the love of people whom we love is a fire that feeds our life. But to feel the affection that comes from those whom we do not know, from those unknown to us, who are watching over our sleep and solitude, over our dangers and our weaknesses – that is something still greater and more beautiful because it widens out the boundaries of our being, and unites all living things."

Pablo Neruda, Chile’s Nobel Prize-winning poet who maintained a home, “La Sebastiana,” in Valparíaso, near Viña del Mar.

Continue Reading »