Out and about in Santiago

I had a good day of wandering and wondering about daily life in Santiago, an easy city to stroll around and of course, as a visitor, a source of surprises and challenges. I’m pleased I decided to spend long enough here to relax and not have to hurry from one attraction to another.

My day started with buying some bus tickets for the next legs of my journey in a few days’ time. I was pleased to find an automatic ticketing system, which was very good, at the large bus station; the machines were almost my height, too. Long-distance buses are very prominent here, and a good deal more affordable than air travel, if a lot longer. But I am in no hurry. I was very pleased with my self to be able to navigate my way right through ticket purchases (without even using my dictionary), but annoyed that the machine failed at the last step, refusing to accept my credit card! The joys of travelling … so I had to then repeat everything with a human operator, where the language barriers are more trying, and there is a queue of people waiting behind. [My card is fine, as I verified later … it was just the machine.]

My AirBnB host (who has been absolutely delightful, despite our large language differences) told me that I could get into the museum for free before midday. Never one to pass up such a bargain, I checked it out and found an Andy Warhol exhibition showing. Most captions were in Spanish, but I can get by reading captions fairly well, so was pleased I had taken her advice. Hopefully you too can read the (very famous) quote below as well as recognise the two ladies.

As it was a sort of getting organised day, I wandered to nearby Teatro Municipal, which houses the opera company, to see if I could get some cheap opera tickets while here. It’s a lovely building from the outside, reminding me a bit of the opera house in Budapest, but again I struck linguistic problems. The chap at the ticket desk seemed to be trying to tell me something about not coming to the opera tomorrow, but I didn’t understand it. We eventually (well, I eventually) decided to abandon the ticketing attempt temporarily.

But I was interested in going, even if it was Shostakovich, partly because the opera was called Lady Macbeth del District Mtsensk, which I assumed was about a problematic Russian women with Lady Macbeth type symptoms – the usual cheery stuff of an opera! I did not expect it to be Shakespearean. So I returned and tried again, this time with my Google Translate app (which is brilliant), and was then passed to an English speaking person! Success! It turns out that the chap had been trying to tell me that the opera was being performed without sets or costumes, because there was a strike taking place! (That was too hard for the him and me to navigate linguistically when I am restricted to tourist Spanish). While disappointed – as the staging is part of the joy of opera – I got my ticket anyway and look forward to the event tomorrow, but now with a few misgivings.

Here are a few quick street snaps of things that caught my eye. The traffic here is pretty clogged at times, so deliveries are often done without delivery vans. I am intrigued to have seen several deliveries of toilet paper; I’m not sure why I am intrigued, but I have seen several of these so far, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen any at all before anywhere! Happenstance, perhaps? I was impressed with the avocado delivery man, too: also my first ever spotting of this process, maybe less surprising as avocados are pretty popular here. I couldn’t determine what transgression the motor cyclist had done to fall foul of the law, but the impressive Carabinieri de Chile were on the scene. They are always very smartly groomed, including with the guns and bullet-proof vests, so I intend keeping them on my side. They clearly earn the respect of locals, too. (You may have to click on the pictures to see detail.)

I had chosen to go up Cerro San Cristobal, a large hillside park in Barrio Bellavista, and enjoyed strolling the streets to get there. The picture at the top of this blog is of one of the many colourful scenes in this neighbourhood, the centre of nightlife in Santiago. Here are a couple more snaps of streets and other things:

The entrance to the park (via funicular railway, for those like me unwilling to ascend 800 metres or so on foot!) was of course tourist central, with llamas for kids to be photographed upon and lots of souvenir things. There is a zoo part way up, swimming pools and picnic places on top, etc and so this is a favourite family place for locals, not just for tourists. The line to buy tickets was very long, and hardly moving, so I decided to return earlier tomorrow. Mañana, as we say here in Chile (often).

I also visited the Santiago home of the esteemed poet, Pablo Neruda, which was nearby. Neruda was a very accomplished poet, being Chile’s second winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, and one of only a handful of Spanish writers to achieve this fame. He had three houses (and wives, coincidentally), and built the eccentric house, La Chascona, in Santiago for his mistress, who later became his last wife for 25 years. (It’s complicated …). As well as being a poet, he was a diplomat, holding several foreign posts, so a really interesting chap. He died a few days after the military coup in 1973, perhaps precipitated by the awful events of the time. His burial service was one of the first public acts of resistance against the military regime, it seemed.

The house was a delight, helped by an English audioguide, but internal pictures were prohibited (unfortunately … it was a really quirky place and it was also my first look at a Nobel Prize, which was on display). The snaps below show one of the outside pictures of the (multi-level) house, some painters working on renovating the outside and a lovely new mosaic elsewhere in Bellavista showing a familiar portrait of the artist.

I decided to eat in Bellavista, which was overflowing with options. I chose a traditional Chilean dish called chorrillana, which would have been just fine had I brought along a few friends, as it was an enormous dish with French (or are they now Chilean?) fries, grilled meat, cheese, onion and egg. It was delicious, as was the beer, but way beyond my capacity. It is rare for me to not eat what is put in front of me – especially potatoes! – but I managed only about half. I did drink all of the beer, however. Lunch is the main meal here in Chile, although we tourists are accustomed to dinner being the main meal.

I am accustomed from previous adventures to see the large E sign for parking (standing for estacionamiento, or parking, which was close to my restaurant table on the street; this makes perfect sense as estacion means stationary and mientras means while, so the word means stationary for a while! Now try to make as much sense of the strange English term, ‘parking’ …!)

Leaving Bellavista, I crossed Santiago’s ‘river’, which would be put to shame by most other great rivers, including the Torrens, the Yarra and the mighty River Parrett in Bridgwater. As you can see, it flows very fast (making me wonder what was at the other end), but is struggling to reach its borders at the moment. certainly not Santiago’s most impressive sight. Much more interesting was the display by the two chaps shown here every time the traffic was stopped by the lights! They danced wonderfully to energetic music, attracting pennies from the stopped motorists. I loved it, even if the photo doesn’t do it justice. The other snap here is of the large Plaza Italia, which is next door to the theatre in which I am attending the ballet tonight and which gives a lovely view of the Andes.

I also popped into the large central market, where lots of fresh fish were sold, where there were also some posh restaurants (for tourists, it seemed). As I had already failed to eat my lunch, it was not time to try again – and the wrong place, anyway. In the centre of town I found lots of chess games going on – entirely a male affair, it seems, and also had my first encounters with the indigenous mapuche people, who had a small stall with some craft work. I’m expecting to se much more of them when I travel south.

I have now become accomplished at travelling the metro, which is usually pretty crowded, but seems safe enough and is a good way of getting around efficiently when it’s too far to walk. I was very surprised to notice that the trains seem to run on tires, however. The train tracks are shiny, which suggests to me that the trains have normal metallic wheels, but I cannot see them anywhere! Very strange.

It’s funny how you start to become accustomed to things after just a few days, and I am thoroughly enjoying the experience of wandering the streets of Santiago.

There are many things to do before I leave, also. Cerro San Cristobal, the opera, other parts of the city …