Category: Country

Most museums are closed on Mondays, so I decided to visit two recommended places on Sunday, as well as travelling out of the city a bit to the suburbs to see how the other half live.

The Chilean Museum of Pre-Columbian art is a fantastic collection, and in my view so far the best museum in Santiago. The world changed when Christopher Columbus brought European colonialism to Latin America, but there was a lot of interesting activity before he arrived. The museum is not only about Chile but about Latin America more broadly, and I enjoyed exploring it. I knew about, but had not previously seen a quipu, the large collection of knotted pieces of string used to record extensive information, and I enjoyed lots of material on tapestries, textiles and weaving.

There were also lots of wonderful pottery examples, and I even got used to AC being the abbreviation for what we in the English-speaking world call BC. I was intrigued by the many geometrical designs and nice symmetries evident, long before the Europeans arrived, as the typical examples below suggest. I also enjoyed an interactive section of the museum (for kids), amongst which was an interesting area to explore the many different images of Chileans, to help kids see themselves in it all.

I was interested to learn, too, that early Chilean communities saw familiar objects in the sky, just as early Europeans did. But instead of going the stars up with lines to make objects, they saw the objects in between the stars! Now that’s a cultural difference!

After leaving the museum, I noticed a dog-walker, apparently necessary as there are very many dogs in Santiago. I also saw some impressive neoclassical buildings downtown, such as those below, showing the strong European influence on high architecture here, slightly ironically next door to the pre-Colombian museum.

But I was off to the suburbs, away from the centre of the city, firstly in quest of a Museum de la Moda (a museum of fashion) but then to go further afield. The museum took some finding (mostly as my Lonely Planet Guide directed me to a bus service who’s number has changed!), but I eventually managed through a mixture of helpful locals and my ever-trustworthy Ulmon app on the iPhone. I gave up on the bus and walked, which was more interesting anyway.

The museum in a well-to-do suburb has a large collection, but only a small part is ever on display. On this occasion, there was an exhibition on Princess Diana, including a replica of her wedding gown, movies of the wedding and several original versions of her outfits. I was intrigued to see this as a topic so far away from Great Britain, but I guess she was always a fashion icon.

The museum itself was beautifully laid out, in  lovely garden setting, and had many lovely things in it, apart from the Diana exhibition, including some lovely local designs shown above and some beautiful interior decorations:

It even had some interesting and stylish cars, and I discovered by accident that I was one of the few people in Santiago that did not recognise one of them as the car from Back to the Future. I couldn’t figure out why other visitors were so interested in it, which is slightly embarrassing (but only slightly), and had to ask the lady at the reception desk (who was also surprised that it was necessary for me to ask). In fairness, there was no sign attached to it (presumably because someone thought it unnecessary?).

Frankly, I preferred the other car, a wonderful old Ford, anyway!

It was clear to me, wandering in the suburbs, that there is another world out there, far removed from the world of central Santiago. It’s a middle-class (and above) world, with new apartment buildings, lovely suburban streets, lots of greenery, lovely parks and boulevards, up-market shopping, fancy cars, flash restaurants, heavy domestic security and not much graffiti. Certainly where the other half (or some other fraction) live. The metro isn’t convenient to get there (as most people have cars, I guess), so I did a fair bit of walking, all of which was quite pleasant. But I did not come to Chile to visit middle-class suburbia. There’s no shortage of that at home; indeed, I even inhabit one myself.

It all got me wondering about the divisions in Chile, as it already looks to me to be a big gap between the haves and the have nots, no doubt also between urban and rural people, and between the Indigenous people and those more European. I wonder how all this played out in the military takeover in 1973, when arch-conservative Augusto Pinochet ousted the socialist President Salvador Allende (maybe with some gentle support from the CIA?). I wonder who was on whose side? And ho did the people in these suburbs fare? Way too early for me to tell, of course, and naturally it’s all very complicated, but it was hard not to wonder about it.

I went in search of the Bicentennial Park, which was a large and lovely space, full of families enjoying a Sunday in Spring, in full view of the nearby Andes. Football, bicycles and dogs were all prominent, but the most striking thing was the family picnics. Family is clearly very important in Chile, unsurprisingly.

I especially liked this spectacular sculpture in the park, and took lots of photos of it from various angles. One of them is shown at the top of this blog, with the newer buildings in the background. here is a second version:

There were some nice flowers around, too, one of which looked to me like wattle:

I had seen a sign in my travels in suburbia (looking for the museum) regarding an exhibition of Salvador Dali photographs and determined to find the exhibition before it closed. This proved a little challenging, as I had only a little information to go on (the sign!), but not impossible; after several conversations, my trusty Ulmon app, a bus trip and a bit of walking, I found it. Getting lost is always part of the fun of travelling, I kept reminding myself.

The exhibition was very interesting, a large collection of mostly black and white photos of Dali and friends. A very quirky chap, as were some of the photos!

Finally, I decided to go to the end of the metro line in this part of Santiago, to Los Domenicos. This was slightly tricky as there was no metro station anywhere nearby, and my Ulmon was struggling to locate one, but the security guard at the exhibition helped me to locate a bus (which I would never have found by myself) that took me there. (The bip! card, as it is called, for public transport I bought a few days ago has been very useful, as it works for buses as well as metros, as in Perth.)

Los Domenicos is almost in the Andean foothills, so I enjoyed being so close to the mountains. Again, there was a large park with lots of families enjoying each others company. Not just families, but also lots of courting couples (as there is very little privacy in Chile, with people staying home until quite late in life, I gather … 30 years and beyond?).

There was a touristy area (but for locals, it seemed) with a few cafes and some caged birds and souvenir craft shops near the church you can see above. I even managed to get some snapshots of a couple of interesting birds, as well as some traditional scenes (you’ll need to click the pictures to see them properly). One of the displays came from the island of Chiloe, which I may visit when further south towards the end of my trip.

As the sun was beginning to wane (although it’s daylight saving time here, so it doesn’t set until around 730, I headed for home. Some of the metro stations here have some interesting decorations inside, as you can see below, and I saw another street juggler just near my apartment when I got home. Maybe he only does this on Sundays?

I also saw the front of the shop from which I bought a can of beer last night … through the grill! – as they were presumably concerned about security. A stunning contrast to the world I left behind a little while ago in the suburbs!

I also saw the sun setting on the Andes from just outside the same place, a stone’s throw from my apartment.

Another lovely – albeit different – day ends in Santiago.

I am very lucky, I keep reminding myself.

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 …

Cerro Santa Lucia is a small hill in the centre of Santiago that is a popular and pretty city park; it allows for good views of the city and the nearby Andes. So, even though my iPhone doesn’t register steps, I decided to climb it and see for myself. (‘Cerro’ is Spanish for hill.)

The buildings at the foot of the hill look distinctly neoclassical in style, and I even wondered if the statue of Neptune came from Rome somewhere. The palm trees gave it a tropical feel, too. I think the buildings were built a little over 100 years ago, although the hill itself was founded (if that makes sense) by city founder Pedro de Valvidia in 1541.

Although it’s only a small hill, there were lots of steps to climb, and many of them were quite slippery – a good thing it wasn’t raining or snowing. The views kept changing as I got higher, and the garden ambience was very pleasant, so it was all quite manageable.

The city buildings gradually emerged into view, some of them providing mirror-like reflections of views too. As well as buildings, I could also see Cerro San Cristobal, Santiago’s other main hill, which is a bit higher than Cerro Santa Lucia. (I’ll climb that one too before I leave.)

Near the top of the climb, there are some religious items, including a chapel and a statue of the first archbishop of Santiago. And lots of that beautiful blue sky, too!

Finally, the last set of steps appeared, leading to a small lookout on the top of the hill, with splendid views of the city and of the nearby Andes.

The photo at the top of this blog was taken from the top of the hill. Here are a few others of a similar kind, to show the spectacular nearby mountains. Still a bit of snow-capping, despite the warm spring weather (as the mountains are a good deal higher than the city).

There were lots of flowers around the park, such as these examples:

After my climb, I needed some nourishment, and so wandered nearby to nearby Barrio Lastarria, which was mostly centred around one street, but with lots of interesting walls and eating places. I saw these lovely murals, not yet graffitied, so obviously quite new (you may need to click on the photos to see them properly):

The largest of these murals was huge and is dedicated to Gabriela Mistral, the poet who was Chile’s first winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature. The other murals shown here were very cleverly done I thought, especially the one with the trolley bus – using part of the actual walls in the murals. The people in the street almost look to be part of them in fact.

I indulged in an ice-cream in Emporio La Rosa, which was described as one of the twenty five best ice-cream shops in the world. That seemed a good enough recommendation to give it a try. The ice-cream was OK, and I enjoyed it, but I did not think it was especially wonderful; maybe the other twenty four shops might be even better?

I also noticed a small movie theatre and indulged myself even more, as they were showing the recent film Loving Vincent, which is constructed entirely from hand-paintings in the style of Vincent van Gogh. We had a communication breakdown when I purchased my ticket, however, as the ticket seller was trying to get me to use the device shown below.

I thought at first that it was some kind of lucky dip, but eventually I realised that he was asking me (in fact, demanding of me) to choose my seat. Each little roll of paper had the associated seat number … a neat bit of low technology, once you understand it! Somewhere in the back of my mind I remembered the word pantalla for screen, fortunately, which was a pretty big clue to the whole thing.

And the film? It was wonderful, describing Vincent’s life (but mostly the events surrounding his untimely death). Hand-painted by a dedicated team of around 100 artists, certainly a new direction in film-making that I thoroughly enjoyed. It finished with the haunting song, Starry Starry Night, one of my favourites, too.

Another thoroughly enjoyable day in Santiago.

First impressions are always a bit risky, but having arrived in Santiago, Chile, after quite a long flight and limited sleep, I needed a stroll to stretch my legs and get a sense of where I was. So it was a pretty aimless stroll around downtown (ish), with some aimless snaps of things I don’t yet understand. But you have to start somewhere, I guess.

There’s always a few things to do when arriving somewhere new, such as finding an ATM (and checking that my cards work), getting a metro card, looking for easy landmarks to find my way home, working out which map to use, making sure the phone works, checking out food and beverage sources and local shops, getting a sense of language, etc. etc.

My very first impression was out the plane window as we descended, reminding me of how close to the Andes the city is – and indeed, all of Chile is. Even on the ground, in the bus to the city, the nearby mountains were evident.

I have had some trouble successfully arriving at places recently, so this time I was more careful with my planning and the bus I chose got me to my AirBnB without any problem. Except that I was anxious about luggage and, since nobody else seemed to put luggage under the bus, I assumed that it was insecure; when a nearby chap asked me something in Spanish I didn’t understand I kept moving in the line: in hindsight, he was probably offering to put my case underneath. So I took it on board and was embarrassed for the entry trip at being a self-indulgent tourist, taking up an extra seat for his case! I at least learned how important Spanish is going to be here!

Strolling around the block in which I am living, I took the photo at the top, which technically counts as my first impression of actually living in Santiago. Some colours, some greenery, some graffiti, some people, … Feels a little edgy for the night, but feels perfectly safe for the daytime. Phew!

I bought a metro card and went a couple of stops to make sure I could do it, and came out near a palace, with police guards and lots of flags around. In the course of my stroll, I saw many flags, so Chileans (like many others) are fond of their flag. I’ll have to find out what it symbolises. I will also find out what he palace is later. I also saw lots of traffic along the Alameda (a main road through the city, called Liberatador Avenida Bernado O’Higgins, which sounds a little odd for a Chilean patriot, but I already had heard of him.

There were many police around town, not just at the palace, all very armed and conspicuous. I’ve never quite known whether seeing lots of police makes me feel safer (because I’m protected) or less safe (because people think I need protection). We’ll see. …

I also heard lots of music as I walked around; there was even a band on my short metro trip, reminding me of New York subway. (BTW, I also noticed that Chilean pedestrians have the same view as New Yorkers regarding traffic lights, regarding them as suggestive or adviser, but not coercive. When in Rome …) The chap below was on a stage in Constitution Square, behind the palace. I’m not sure what was being celebrated.

Buildings in this part of town had a distinctly European look, with many neoclassical examples, such as those below. It was also very clear that the church is important in Chile, with some large church buildings evident.

The cathedral above is prominent in the large Plaza de Armas, the historical and cultural heart of the city, while the reddish church above (whose name I’m not yet sure of) also looked lovely. I went into each of them briefly, and found typical Spanish churches, with many decorations, statues, pictures and not a lot of light (so it takes time for the eyes to adjust). The snapshots below give you an impression.

There is clearly a level of excitement being generated with the impending visit of the (Latin American) pope early next year.

The large corner building above is a fine arts museum, which I wandered briefly into. I was very impressed, as those of you who know me would understand, to find a large statue of a potato outside the building! This is clearly a very civilised country I am going to enjoy!

Around the museum there were some lovely green spaces … and indeed I saw lots of greenery on my stroll. I’m sure I’m going to enjoy walking around these sorts of places and it certainly didn’t feel unsafe to do so.

The Plaza de Armas itself was interesting to wander through, again just getting a first impression. It was large, with many seats, most of which were occupied. I could easily imagine lots of political events happening here over the years and was not too surprised to see a couple of events going on. One chap was giving an impassioned speech about something (again, my lack of Spanish fluency is a clear problem!), without having too many listeners, while the large circle of men was listening intently to a man in the middle. I was struck by the gender composition of it all: most of the people seated and most of the people at these two events were men. That may be an important first impression; who knows?

Around nearby streets, there was a hustle and bustle of commerce, with lots of people (not obviously tourist people, as I think it’s early in the season).

The little booths selling cigarettes, magazines, sweets, etc were reminiscent of many European cities and the street stalls reminded me of Asian cities as well. I saw lots of shoe-shiners, too. I was surprised to see the large stand-up coffee parlour below, however, as well as other stand-up places. I’ve not quite seen something like this before – at least as big as this one – although this was clearly not rush hour.

One thing that was hard to miss as I wandered around was the amount of graffiti. Don’t misunderstand me: I think some graffiti is attractive and it’s a legitimate art form, but other graffiti just seems a bit senseless and damages, rather than improves, an environment. Sometimes, there’s a fine line between street art or wall art (murals) and graffiti, too. I’m expecting to see more, of course, so will reserve my judgement for now. It would also help to be more fluent in Spanish, of course.

I spotted many statues as I strolled around; the following two were along a park along the large Alameda. The statue of the heroes below is important for me, as I am living near the station called Los Heroes (which I have had to carefully re-learn how to say in Spanish, quite different from English!); I will have to find out who they are and why they are heroic, however. The Easter Island statue nearby was interesting too. I’m note sure why it is there (yet). So much to learn …

I passed the University of Chile, en route, with a large banner outside proclaiming support for a law to strengthen state universities, reminding me that the problems of Australian universities are not unique to Australia.

It also reminded me both of the importance of having your say, and also of the need I have to improve my command of Spanish! No doubt over the coming days, I will improve my understanding of the problems of Chileans having their say over recent years and the reasons they needed to do that.

I’m looking forward to the adventure, and maybe of correcting some of my first impressions!