Chile

It was a cool blue sky like you see in the Alps when skiing at Easter, but with a warm gentle breeze, chasing its way up into the foothills of the Andes as I stepped out of the terminal of Chile’s Santiago airport, heading for the capital a few miles away.

 

It was early December 1994 and I remember standing for a few moments before I made my way to the taxi rank, thinking, ’’Mike? What the hell are you doing? You’re  8,000 miles from home, with no phone, no car, no friends, no one you know, you can speak about six words of Spanish and six of those are ‘’ una cerveza por favore’’ ( a beer) and ‘’izquierda and derecha’’ (left and right), what on earth possessed you to volunteer to do this and just before Christmas as well!

 

I had a fairly loose idea of what I was supposed to be doing; meeting our supplier Roberto Verdugo who had sold us about twenty tonnes of Chilean Sea Bass Disostichus eligonoides earlier in the year.

 

We had secured a contract to Supply British Airways (BA) for their First and Business Class meals on Long haul. Everything seemed to be going well, BA had very cleverly introduced this new species by ‘pairing’ it with a piece of salmon, on the basis that at 36,000 feet you had little choice in terms of dining out and therefore you didn’t want to risk being disappointed with your meal They had figured that the only way to get someone to try something new was to put it with something they were familiar with, that way if you didn’t like the new species at least you would be satisfied with ‘half’ of the dish!

 

Unfortunately, I had taken a call from the Exec Head Chef at BA a few days earlier where he agitatedly explained to me that he had put around 300 portions into the steamer but when after cooking them for 15 minutes he had opened the door, they had all disappeared!

 

‘What do you mean, disappeared?’ I said.

 

They have all gone! they have ‘melted into a ‘goo’ at the bottom of the steamer!’

 

It took me countless phone calls and research (this was before the internet!) to discover that at certain times of the year and in certain fisheries this species attracted a parasite known as ‘Kudoa thyrsites’ which basically softened the flesh…and in severe cases…made it disappear on cooking!

 

I took a deep breath and The old Chinese proverb ‘’Even  a journey of a thousand miles begins with the first footstep’’ echoing in my head  I dragged my bag to the taxi and calmed myself in the knowledge that Marco Polo, Genghis Khan and  Neil Armstrong had probably all had the same un-nerving sensation of being  alone and in a strange land with very little knowledge of the language ( apart from Neil that is…he didn’t find any signs of life on the moon!), but no doubt would have been fuelled by the adrenalin  that the unexplored and unknown emits. I was in good company!

 

I dumped my bag in the hotel room and headed for a quick recce of the immediate vicinity, a habit that was to form as the years went by. The hotel was uptown about one and a half miles from the bustling city center,  which would make it a quiet resting place at night but not so far out of town that I couldn’t enjoy its nightlife.

 

In the early eighties my parents had bought my wife (Adele) and I a flat in the downtown part of Villa Joyosa a working town of waiters, chambermaids and chefs about six miles south of Benidorm and ‘downtown’ it certainly was. A thousand dogs yapping, a myriad number of cats fighting and bonking (some simultaneously), TV’s blaring (the only way they could watch them was to sit in the road in a semicircle and peer through the front door into the dark of the minuscule living rooms), market vans loading up and starting up at about four in the morning and the ubiquitous conversation that was ‘yelled’ from tenement to tenement in much the same way that shepherds whistle from mountain to mountain in Tenerife…. I definitely preferred ‘uptown‘!

 

I sat myself conspicuously in the foyer of the hotel so that I could see my adversary when he arrived. I was trying to figure out how I would know him as I had never met him before when suddenly, a BMW convertible drew to an almost handbrake stop in front of the reception and a middle-aged, bronzed, sunglass touting South American bounded out of the car almost without opening the door… that was my man!

 

Roberto flashed an immaculate set of teeth at me, a knowing glance and then an almost pirate-like ’’Hah Hah! You mast be meester Mike..no?’’  I knew it was good to meet someone, anyone whom I could profess to know in this far off the neck of the world but I also knew that I had come to deliver one almighty bollocking for the ten tonnes of ‘’fish jelly’’ that we had in cold storage back in the UK.

 

Roberto very kindly suggested that we have dinner at his local ‘club‘, which turned out to be the prestigious Santiago Tennis Club. As soon as we had ordered and the crisply dressed waiter had delivered two ice cold beers, I began to tear into him like a man possessed. Jeff Archer, the co-founder along with his wife Marion of M&J Seafoods, taught me during subsequent years to ‘mellow’’ and to develop an ‘’appropriate degree of tact’’ when dealing with confrontational situations, some of it has stuck but probably not as much as he and ’’others’’ would have liked.

 

I had about done by the time we were served coffee and was pretty sure that Roberto would not be sending anymore ‘’jelly meat’’ to us, or at the very least not be inviting me to the quiet surroundings of his ‘’club’’ next time I was in town. We shook hands and parted company like two boxers in the ring where a ‘’ draw’’ had just been declared, just dying to throw one last punch!

 

The following day I had arranged to meet the Chilean Governments Commercial Department followed by three potential ’new’ suppliers. I went to the Government buildings in the heart of Santiago, a prosperous-looking main square that beguiled the onlooker from the poverty that existed behind it.

 

‘’Ai em so sorry but ze person you have arranged to zee is on ‘oliday’’ was the answer I received from the charming young lady at reception. ’’No problem’’ I said. ’’Can I see someone else instead, perhaps his assistant’’?

 

‘’Ai em so sorry but hees assistant is much busy all the day, I am so sorry.’’

 

‘’I’m not sure you understand, I have traveled thousands of miles to be here for this meeting today, there must be someone I can speak too to find out more about your Fishing Industry and Supply base?’’

 

‘’Ai em so sorry,’’ she said with slow shakes of her head and an indication that she wouldn’t be continuing this conversation.

 

I had to slowly get used to the ‘Manyana-manyana’ type attitude that prevailed at that time. Imagine traveling 800 miles to the UK for a meeting with a government official and he didn’t turn up…you’d be bloody furious! Not in Chile….just chill!

 

Later that day I met with another potential supplier. At the end of our meeting, he asked which other suppliers I was seeing or had seen. I told him of my session with Roberto the previous day.

 

‘’Did you know he was the Fisheries Minister in the old Pinochet government’’?

 

‘’Yes,’’ I said. I knew he was alluding to the notorious Government that had held power from the ’coup’ in 1973 to 88 with the ‘help’ of DINA the Secret Police who had been responsible for the many thousands who had ‘’disappeared’’.

 

‘’Did you also know that his surname ‘Verdugo’ is Spanish for ‘’Executioner’’?

 

‘’Oh bugger’’! I gasped.

 

I spent an hour before dinner visiting the Main Market in the heart of Santiago. As I approached, there were quite a few beggars and invalids sat or crouched in filthy clothes at many of the entrances to Santiago’s equivalent of Harrods Food Hall. Some with plastic cups for you to put your loose change into and others with gnarled and blackened hands stretched out like sinuous limbs from dead trees, beckoning you forward. An almost primate fear kept me from venturing too close in case one of the ‘’limbs‘’ grabbed me.. I made my way into the thick of the market, experiencing the roller coaster ride of smells;  one moment a giant melon expertly split in a single swipe (I wonder if he was an ex DINA employee?) to reveal that delicious heady vapour that always reminds me of summer lunches dining ‘’al fresco‘’; and then around the next corner the stench of rotting fish and meat that has been ground into the cobbles over decades and only ever ‘cleaned‘’ in the dead of night in a torrential downpour.

 

I began to take photos of some of the scenes and the characters. Every time I took a picture I felt obliged to buy something. A few sweet corn, a clove of giant garlic, some apples and of course melon. I avoided buying the live chickens, ducklings, and rabbits and just made a small contribution to their feed! There were barrels of freshly pickled vegetables, stalls full with every type of pasta and pulses and every so often a small ’’kitchen’’ offering all sorts of local dishes and all this with the ubiquitous ’cries and shouts’ that you always get in a thriving ’’living’’ market.

 

I have always been fascinated with Markets, especially the food part of them. Not just for their smells but the colour and variety of the local produce and the battered and deeply grooved faces of the old traders, always looking as if they have lived a thousand lifetimes! I hurried from the market to make it back to the hotel where I was meeting another potential supplier over dinner. I hurried that is, except for the half dozen bags of fruit, potatoes and other vegetables  (I knew I shouldn’t have bought a whole water melon!) that were slowing me down. I looked desperately for one of ‘’the beggars’’ but couldn’t see one. I looked for anyone who looked ’’poor’’ but I couldn’t see anyone. Eventually, I took a cab back to the Hotel and once there gave the bursting bags to the receptionist with the instruction ’’Give these to the kitchen porter with my compliments and tell him the dishes at breakfast looked absolutely sparkling’’!

 

Thus soundly preserving the unique reputation that ‘All English men are quite mad’!