Santiago

Our trip down to Chile was fairly uneventful. The only interesting thing that happened in the process of our entering Chile was that at the airport in Santiago we got in trouble for not declaring the dried fruit we has with us. We were stopped and asked to empty out our bags because they didn’t want us bringing the fruit and raisins into the country. The customs lady was very nice about it. She started out by scolding us for not declaring that we had fruit, but then was very understanding when we explained that we thought we only had to declare fresh fruit. (It was weird, because the visa forms do only mention fresh fruit.) She patiently explained that dehydrated fruit was ok, but our packages said dried fruit. We started to explain, but halfway through the first sentence Kenneth saw how the conversation was going to go: broken Spanish to broken English. So we stopped, and smiled and nodded and handed over the fruit.

The raisins were a big no-no though. Even if they had said “dehydrated” they wouldn’t have been allowed. I guess that is because they have so many vineyards here and don’t want to risk any American grape diseases. No Grapes. The customs lady shook her finger at us sternly.

After the airport we went straight to our hostel. It was a really nice place, with killer views of the “Plaza de Armas” (central square.) Every town here has a Plaza de Armas.

We had one or two little snags with the hostel. The hostel itself was nice, and the staff was great, we had access to the kitchen, the location was perfect, but the door to our room didn’t lock. And it is nice to trust people, but not that nice. So they called a locksmith for us. Then the door locked, but as we were leaving the room, we noticed that one wall had been a window out to the main area but it had had the glass removed and had had a reed blind put in instead. So it really didn’t matter if you could lock the door, because anyone could walk right in through the one wall. So our belongings were safe from any thieves who have a deep, irrational fear of reed mats, but not really anyone else. Oh well. We didn’t feel like complaining again, so we just hoped that only reed fearing thieves were about. Luckily, this proved to be the case. Nothing got stolen.

Then we went out to explore. Santiago is a very pretty city. It has a lot of European architecture, mixed with lots of sunshine and palm trees and people with black hair. Kenneth and I stayed there for a day longer than we had originally planned, because we liked it so much. We saw the city’s big park, visited the indigenous art museum, sat at cafes and just generally wandered around.

The first day we took a walking tour around the city. Unfortunately though, that first day Santiago was the “City of No.” The tour took us around a bunch of museums and sites downtown, and then we planned to hit a vegetarian restaurant at the end. However, not a single museum or “building of interest” was open, throughout the whole walk. The only things we could go in and see were the churches. We were pissed. I mean, churches are great and all that, interesting to see, but there were a bunch of things on the tour that looked interesting, and it was Saturday and our guide book said that they were all supposed to be open. About half way through the walk Kenneth started talking up the veg restaurant to cheer me up, at least we have that to look forward to at the end, even if we can’t see the museums, right? Let’s keep going, because even though all this stuff is closed, we can still go to a veg restaurant. Not surprisingly, however, the vegetarian restaurant at the end of our walk was closed. Apparently it and the museums had gone on strike for the day. We couldn’t figure out what was going on, I mean, even the library was closed. How is the library closed on a Saturday? In what sort of city can you not return your books on the weekend? Don’t Chileans do any reading? Don’t they need to check out books on the weekend? Do research? And what about the homeless? Where do they bathe on the weekends if the libraries are closed?

We stomped into a public courtyard so sulk and eat a peanut butter sandwich. We were trying to figure out what to do next when the security guard came and kicked us out because they were closing. What? But the sign says open until 6! He shook his head and pointed to the holiday hours. Oooh, so that is what is going on. It is a holiday. That explains why nothing is working today. But what holiday is Dec 8?

We checked at the hostel, apparently it was Immaculate Conception Day, which was why all the churches were open but nothing else was in this Catholic country that we are in. I had no idea that these people believe that Jesus had a, what would that be?, 17 day gestation period? I don’t think that Mary’s skin could adjust to such a rapid pregnancy. Gross. But whatever, no one was going to open their museums for us, regardless of my issue with the dates.

We looked in the guidebook for something that was open on holidays, turned out the park was open. So we went over there and rode the funicular up the side of the hill.

A funicular, I learned when I went to the park, is a little car that goes up the side of a very steep hill, and then back down. There are two tracks carved into the side of a hill, and cables attach two cars to the tracks. One car is at the top, and one is at the bottom, and they are counterbalanced so that when one goes up the other goes down. They are fun. Funicular.

So we went to the park and went up the funicular. Then at the top, we saw a huge sculpture of the Virgin. We couldn’t go up to see it very closely though, because it was Immaculate Conception Day, and we weren’t the only people to think of taking the funicular up the hill to visit the Virgin. About a third of Santiago had thought of it too. So we took a few pictures from the bottom of the area, and listened to some of the singing for a little while, then walked around to the other side of the hill where there were little cars hanging from a cable that you could ride to the next mini mountain, over the top and down the side. So we did that and took some great pictures.

Then we went to a bar that the guidebook recommends. We were getting worried that we might not be able to get into the bar because by the time we got down to the right neighborhood, it was closing in on 7pm. We hurried down the street, looking for the bar. Finally Kenneth spotted it, and it was completely empty. Closed for IC Day? No, just dead. Oh, right. The guidebook mentioned that, how if you want to see a club when it is busy in Santiago, don’t bother going out until midnight. Ah, ok. So we went into the deserted bar and had a drink. We decided to try some pisco, a liquor of some sort that is made down here. It was ok, not great, so we won’t be bringing any home with us. The bar was cool though, great ambiance and fabulous music. They had up a screen and were projecting this pbs produced-looking music program of some Brazilian singer.

After the good bar, we went to a shitty restaurant that charged us 7 times what it should have for supper.

Then we went home on the train. We were super lucky, because the train was basically closed, all the ticket sellers were shut down and most of the doors were locked. The last train for the night was about to run. We looked around for some machine to buy tickets from, but they haven’t heard of that technology in Santiago yet. We went over to a guard to ask where we could buy tickets for the train, and we must have looked really sad/stupid/desperate, because –much to our relief- instead of shaking his head and telling us that we were out of luck, he nodded at our unintelligible Spanish and waved us through. So we made it home. That guard has some good karma coming his way.

The next day in Santiago we went to the indigenous art museum. It was a quality museum, lots of really good native art. We liked the pottery and sculptures, and there was a decent amount of English translation around the displays.

There was also a nonpermanent exhibition of the art of the Moche people, illustrating some of their religious practices. I don’t know how much Kenneth said about this, but it was, to say the least, disturbing. Little pottery sculptures of anal rape, and people with their eyelids, noses and lips cut off, beastiality. Not so much coffee table art, although I bet having something like that sitting around would start some conversations. I was a little traumatized after that, and it took the whole rest of the pretty pottery and wooden sculpture collection to make me feel better. Our feeling afterwards was “At least we weren’t part of that society. Our society isn’t perfect, but at least we aren’t part of that society.”

One thing at the museum that was cool were these tiny little mummies. Apparently the people in this obscure little Chilean fishing village a couple hundred years ago hit upon a way to preserve, or mummify, their dead, by stuffing them with some leaf dirt rock mixture. We couldn’t really figure out what they did, because our Spanish isn’t good enough (Kenneth’s Spanish, anyway), but the mummies were really small. So either the process made the bodies really little, or they only mummified children, or these people were super tiny.

After that we went to a craft thing outside the city. We broke up like 3 times trying to figure out how to get there, then we finally decided to take a cab, and we got back together. Then we almost broke up again when Kenneth started talking about how we should have been able to figure out how to get there by bus. Then he shut up.

The craft shops had some nice stuff, but it was pricey and felt too rich touristy for us. We want cheap, poorly made junk. So we didn’t buy anything.

While wandering around Santiago we saw some other fun stuff. On Conception day, I saw teenagers dressed like boy George, and it was funny to see people dressed like eighties counterculture in a church doing the Catholic shoulder shoulder forehead chest touch thing.

We saw tarot readers near the main square set up along park benches doing readings for people walking home from work.

We had kids try to sell up roses as we sat in a restaurant, which I have only ever seen in the movies.

The restaurants all had displays out in glass counters by their front doors of the plates of food available. Rows and rows of plates of plastic food, so you could see exactly what you might want to order. Mmm, appetizing. Shiny, glazed, plastic food glued to a plate. The steak/eggs/french-fries combo was particularly popular. I started to wonder if there were little plastic people around who liked to order the little plastic plates of food.

The big fashion statement in the city appears to be wearing a see through black shirt around. We saw several women showing way too much. Some were also, . . . hmm. Well, I don’t want to tell anyone how to dress, and if you feel twenty on the inside, then that is really great. But if you are 55 on the outside, mmm, maybe the no bra/really thin shirt look is no longer for you. I mean, I don’t really think it looks so fabulous on a twenty year old, but you can at least get away with it. At middle age, maybe not so much.

Another thing I thought was weird in Santiago was the number of bottle fed four year olds I saw. A few times we saw kids being cradled on a bench or walking down the street holding someone’s hand and drinking from a bottle. But they weren’t babies, they were kids who could walk around and talk, and looked well beyond the age where they should be drinking out of a bottle. I am not exaggerating when I say they were four year olds. Time to put the bottle down. Learn to drink out of a glass, kid. Develop that life skill.

People don’t run for the train here. Or, not many do. There were several times we were on the train and it had another minute or so, if you had just run down the stairs you would have made it, or moved a little faster across the platform, but -no. No need to hurry. Another train will come. I guess I just thought the whole “run for the train/bus/ whatever” thing was universal. I thought it was wired in that when you see a mode of public transportation about to take off, you rush to get it if you possibly can. But people here would continue casually walking down the ramp, looking at the train, and if they make it, great. If not, well, another will be along soon. There was a very studied, relaxed attitude about it. Why run so that I get to work earlier than I have to? -Don’t get me wrong, some people definitely ran for trains, and would jump on at the very last second. It just surprised me that not everyone did.

We encountered a lot of Beatles muzak in various places across the city. So I guess Chileans like the Beatles? We just kept running into it. Or they really like muzak and only the Beatles were available.

You can get “coffee with legs” here. We saw a few cafes where there were very few seats and waitresses with very short skirts and wondered what was going on. Because they weren’t bars, they were definitely cafés. Then we read in the guide book that these are cafes where men go to read the newspaper and hang out, where they get served coffee by women who aren’t wearing a whole lot. The Chilean men take it in stride, but the book warned that as an American you might feel a little weird going in. There are a range of them, some of them where the waitresses are dressed enough that women feel ok going in, but I told Kenneth that we wouldn’t be exploring them. He said that was ok.

Next: Valparaiso! and a couple of pictures.