Greetings from Santiago! Well, we're back in the big smoke again after being in one of the most desolate and uninhabited regions of the world for the past three weeks. It's a little strange to be back in a big city again, but we're adjusting fast!
MORNING AT THE MUSEUM
From where we left off last time, we were leaving Pucon for Santiago on a night bus, which was a little cramped and provided us with a restless nights sleep, but got us to our goal cheaply and in one piece! For Santiago, we had decided to leave hostelling while we could, and try our luck at couch surfing, which had been so kind to us in the States. We were successful in our quest for refuge and kindly got a response from Daniel, allowing us to crash in his apartment in the middle of the city for the duration of our stay. Our problem on arriving in Santiago however, was that Daniel was unable to meet us until early afternoon, and our bus had arrived super early, at around 7am! So, with that in mind, we scoured our trusty Lonely Planet map of Santiago to see if there was anything nearby to our bus terminal which could entertain us for the morning. After depositing our hefty backpacks at a luggage room at the bus station, we decided to get academic, heading outside and across the busy road to the impressive Universidad de Santiago de Chile. We trundled through the grounds of the university, which was comprised of many buildings and faculties, some old, some new, weighed down by the ridiculous contents of my duffle bag. Our ultimate goal was actually on the other side of the campus, a very large looking park, in the grounds of which lay Santiago's Museum of Natural History. I swear, we must have taken the most absolutely indirect route to get to the park, zig-zagging through buildings and along roads within the university. Along the way, we couldn't help but notice the area's rather menacing addition to the traditional high walled, barbed wire concrete fence. In something rather evocative of the Berlin Wall, a nice additional touch of hundreds of pieces of broken glass, embedded into and pointing up out of the tops of the high concrete walls. Thanks Pinochet! Anyways, after eventually finding our way out of the university grounds, we headed into the adjacent park, and towards the museum. We spent a little over an hour wandering through the building, which was explicitly focused on Chile's history throughout the ages, with lots of fossils, stuffed animals and even a replica of a boy sacrifice/mummy found on one of the high mountains around Santiago. For me however, one of the most interesting things in the museum was in fact at the very beginning of the exhibit; there, was a plaque given to Chile by the Nixon Administration in the 70's, in the name and ideal of world peace. Mounted on the plaque was a piece of moon rock and a small Chilean flag, the latter taken from the Apollo spacecraft that had conducted the 'excavation' mission. Interestingly, I had by chance read about these plaques (which had been donated by the American government, to the governments of a few select countries of the world - I'm guessing Russia and Cuba didn't get one!) a few weeks before hand, and was very surprised to see one in front of me! After leaving the museum, we chilled out in the park for a little bit, and then began to make our way back to the bus terminal for some lunch (the vendors flogging spring rolls on the side of the street were surprisingly tempting - but we resisted!) at a cheap take out place, and then proceeded to call our host Daniel, and arranged to catch a train and meet at a metro station close to his house.

PICKLEWORLD
After a quick introduction, we made our way up to Daniel's apartment, situated in the middle of downtown Santiago. We met his brother and mother, who live with Daniel for a few days in the week, and then proceeded to head out and explore the local area. Daniel had suggested that we go and check out the local market, which was only a few blocks away. So we set out, heading along one of the area's main pedestrian streets, where we saw a guy with a small drum kit on his back (and string for the hi-hat attached to his shoe!) drumming up a storm and dancing/spinning around in circles like a whirling dervish as he played - very impressive. Later we also saw a Hare Krishna drum circle! After this little diversion, we soon found ourselves at the small indoor market, filled with a plethora of seafood, fruits and vegies, and some restaurants. With it's very charming atmosphere (albeit a little touristy) we had concluded that this was perhaps Santiago's answer to the Queen Vic Market, if perhaps a slightly smaller version. We did however, spy some goings on just over the nearby river, and so decided to investigate. We crossed over, and there we found the real market. Wandering through block after block after block of warehouse type buildings, absolutely filled with alleys made up of countless stores, this was clearly where the locals did all their shopping. There were butchers touting just about every cut of meat available, queserias/fiambrerias (delicatessens), greengrocers, stretching for blocks. Also to be found were numerous clothes stalls, hardware supplies, food stalls selling all the classic local dishes, like ceviche, fish soups, choripans, all madly hawking their cuisine as we pushed past their carts - such a crazy atmosphere! Aside from that, we also found pet food stalls (along with numerous cats wandering through the market!), stalls selling dried fruits and nuts and even a ridiculously well stocked place called 'Picklemundo' (or Pickleworld), selling just about everything that you could imagine in pickle form! In short, probably the best market we have ever seen, and a must do attraction to visit when in Santiago, especially if you're in dire need of a sling shot, light switch, custard fruit or a nice cut of cows stomach lining. You may even want to have a flutter- we spied a few pokies in amongst the stalls! However, we kept things simple and bought about 2kgs of fruit for about $2, made our way back across the river, and returned to Daniels apartment.
Later, we had decided to go for dinner, so Daniel led us through a few streets until we got about 10mins away from his apartment. There, he took us to the prettiest little area, hidden down a little side street, with a number of fancy restaurants and bars along the way. Here Daniel left us as he had to meet up with a friend, where we had the most amazing dinner of wild mushroom risotto and crab filled sorentinos. After a very full day, we had already began to feel that Santiago was a city with many, many different faces - all within a few kilometers of one another. Our next few days of exploration turned out to prove this to be even more true.
HOT PIES
The next day we headed for Cerro Santa Lucia, one of two big hills in Santiago. This one has in the past been used as a hermitage, a nunnery and a fortress at various times in the city's history. Now it's a municipal park with beautiful decorative gardens, paths and stairways. We climbed towards the top past palm trees, cactus and eucalypts and arrived at the view point. Unfortunately the city was partially covered by a cloud of smog! Santiago is honestly the most smoggy city I've encountered and that includes LA! You can see it every where. Even in Buenos Aires I can only remember one instance where I could actually see the smog hanging in the air, but that's a constant in Santiago- not very healthy. After a nice relaxing walk (marred only by seeing a guy WEARING A COLLINGWOOD JUMPER AND FOOTY SHORTS! In the middle of Santiago! When Collingwood had lost the day before! Crazy! The only good thing is we also saw him slip over on some stairs. He he he) we headed for the Museo de Bellas Artes and saw a great photography exhibition of images of Chile at the turn of the century. We then returned to the middle of the city and the Plaza de Armas for a visit to another museum with many ancient artifacts, including the Chinchorro mummies. These are so cool cause they're in fact 3000 years older than Egyptian mummies and are the remains of fisherman who were mummified in various ways over the years and often buried with various valuables from across the country. Fascinating!
PANTS
Soon after, we returned home, spending some time doing chores and administration (we picked up this term from an English guy we met in Bariloche!). There are always still tasks to be done, even on holidays! The most outstanding event from this otherwise boring afternoon - in terms of amusement and general funniness - was our clothes washing incident, or maybe I should say Hayley's clothes washing incident. The actual washing part went without a hitch, however it was the drying process which caused us some grief. As Daniel's clothes dryer was not working, we had to resort to that great South American tradition of hanging our laundry out of the apartment windows - the challenge here being that the apartment was on the sixth floor and below the washing lines, there was a six story drop onto some inaccessible construction site behind the building. So… we began our task without much ado, with Hayley pegging up clothes from the living room window and me from the bedroom window… until we were both almost done, at which point I heard from the next room something along the lines of "$#@!" (insert expletive of your choice here). Fearing the worst, I returned to the living room to discover that Hayley had somehow managed to drop her most expensive piece of clothing - her hiking pants - from the window. Sticking our heads out the window, both fearful of what we might see, we spied the errant trousers caught on some railing in between two apartments a couple of stories below. With both of us simultaneously pondering the translation of "dropped my pants", Daniel soon came to Hayley's rescue, disappearing for about 10 minutes, and later returning triumphantly with pants in hand, receiving congratulations all round. (He had told us that he decided to go to the lower apartment and reach up for them, as the lady in the closest apartment was apparently very mean!) With a great deal of relief, Hayley very gladly received her pants (this time deciding to hang them up inside) and offered Daniel the reward of a home cooked-dinner of pasta and to buy him a drink later that night. What fun!
COMO SE LLAMA
Later that night, after Hayley's cheeks had returned to their normal colour, we decided to go out for the aforementioned drink. Daniel took us on a walk to an area about 15 minutes away called Barrio Bellavista. This is basically the nightlife barrio in Santiago, where tourists and locals alike go to clubs, bars, restaurants etc. Daniel briefly took us into a fancy looking courtyard area - the type of which you would find in any city - lined with posh restaurants and bars, and finished off with one or two water features and lighting embedded intermittently in the pavement. Daniel described the overly touristy area as "posh, and three more times expensive than the 'normal' places in the street" soon followed by "now we go back to the real world!". He led us a couple of blocks away, to a more normal looking joint - where the choice of drink is "beer, beer or beer" - with outside tables occupied by locals. We sat for an hour or two, chatting about various things from Santiago's business of Universities, to Chilean futbol. There did however seem to be a certain something in the air, and well, there is just no denying that it must have been love. Before too long, we had noticed one of the waiters had taken a shine to Hayley - noting that she was wearing her Converse All-Stars shirt, he exclaimed "All-Stars… te gusta (you like)?" and lifted up his leg to show, that, yes he was in fact wearing a pair of Converse All-Stars. He later returned with a gift of about five french-fries on a toothpick for Hayley, simply asking "Condiments?" to which a rather red faced Hayley replied "No, gracias". (Little did Hayley know at the time, that upon accepting the man's chips, she had at that very second accepted an informal contract to become his bride - an ancient, yet little known Chilean custom). Moments later, she received the advances of another admirer, a gap-toothed man in at least his late 50's, who began to ask persistently "What's your name? What's your name? Como se llama?" followed by "Bonita, bonita." when he received no response. This was a touch creepy; suffice to say his was a tone reminiscent of someone missing their voice box. Some girls have all the luck! After a few more laughs from myself and Daniel, and some more general embarrassment from Hayley, we finished up and returned home, filled with the indescribable warmness of knowing that, yes, romance is in fact alive in Chile.
WE'RE NOT DEAD YET
The next day, we had decided to head to famous Chilean poet, Pablo Neruda's old Santiago home, now converted into a museum… unfortunately, when we had got there, we discovered that it was closed on Mondays. So instead, we made our way to another of the city's hills, Cerro San Crisobal. This cerro was a little bigger than the one we had visited the previous day, and so we decided to catch a funicular to the top. This itself was quite a novelty (each of us on our maiden voyage) and quite interestingly, a plaque inside our carriage stated that Juan Pablo II (or John Paul II in English) had been ferried up the mountain in the very same compartment we were standing in! It took about 5 minutes to get to the top (a little under 1000 meters high) and we disembarked and began our little wander around the top of the mountain. At the very peak, there was an enormous white statue of the Virgin Mary, with great banks of candles and pits for the melted wax to fall into, along with numerous personal effects, prayer cards and simple words of thanks offered to the monolithic Mary. We spent a bit of time here, again gazing into the smog, sure that somewhere beyond the hazy vista was the city we had left behind that morning. We ate some lunch, and bought (from one of several kiosks at the top of the mount) a Chilean specialty, called Mote con huesillos, which is essentially a refreshment, which consists of a cup, quarter filled with grain (mote), a stewed peach (or huesillo), and the rest, syrupy water - muy rico! I'm sure Anthony Bourdain would be proud of us! After our refreshment, we headed to the side of the cerro, where we were to catch a telerifico or cable car across to another mountain… and then ANOTHER one across to ANOTHER mountain. Eventually, this got us to a park or reserve, which we wandered around for a bit, but then we decided to head out into the adjacent suburb where the telerifico had whizzed us. As it turned out, we had been whizzed quite a long way! Exploring the streets in the rather affluent area, we were admired property after property that we passed. We were definitely in the high income part of town - as we walked along the length of a particular avenue, Hayley said it could have easily been any wealthy street in Beverly Hills. Eventually, after a few minutes, we had arrived in the main street and discovered that we were in fact in Provedencia, a part of Santiago where we had planned to catch a train later that day! Here, our ultimate destination was an English language bookstore (Hayley has been getting a bit twitchy over the past few days, with nothing to read) and we each found a book to sustain us for just a little longer. Later , we headed back to Daniel's, dumped all our stuff, and went out for a movie (Slumdog Millionaire) and a dinner of rather hard to find sushi - we're not dead yet!
ISLA NEGRA
For our last full day in Santiago, we decided to get on a bus to go about an hour and a half out of town! Our goal was the small town of Isla Negra, home to the aforementioned Pablo Neruda's favourite house, La Isla Negra. We arrived mid-afternoon and had a lovely seafood lunch (Isla Negra is situated right beside the ocean), Hayley's dish was Caldillo de Congrio (a soup made with conger eel), which Pablo Neruda had loved so much, he wrote a poem about it! After lunch, we made our way to the museo, which was quite busy despite being a weekday. Neruda is something of a proud figure in Chilean history, a one time ambassador and Nobel prize winner, his famous and eccentric houses are a big draw card for Chilean tourism. Shortly after arriving, we began an English spoken tour of the poet's once favourite home, and were both amazed at the magnificent collections within the museum. Looking through the house, you really get a sense that you are looking into the artist's mind, with all numerous objects and quirks, adhering to common and recurrent themes. For example, the most obvious theme, was Neruda's love of the sea - La Isla Negra sports a vast collection of wooden figureheads from old ships, nautical instruments - compasses, sextants etc. There is one room, which is devoted entirely to his collection of seashells. Aside from this, there were collections of different colored glassware (according to Neruda, water always tasted better when it was drank from a colored glass), insects and butterflies, tobacco pipes, and even a full size model horse (it's a long story)! There was definitely an air of the neurotic about the way the collections were arranged, our guide adding light and emphasis to some with quirky tales and anecdotes about the poet's possessions. I think that our equal favourite was the story of how Neruda obtained his work desk. He kept next to his bed a telescope, which he used to look out onto the horizon daily (two walls of his bedroom were taken up entirely by windows looking out to the sea) . One morning, he exclaimed to his wife Mathilde, that he thought he had found his desk, and said it would be here soon. They ran down to the beach, where they waited for some hours before the waves finally brought the driftwood ashore. At times, you couldn't help but smile at the eccentricity of the man, and we both left the house feeling a certain intimacy towards Neruda and this part of his life.
SUPER MARKET
With our final day in Santiago, we couldn't resist heading back to the enormous market we had mentioned earlier, to go and do a little shopping with the locals! We wandered all the way through to the end this time, still amazed at the great exotic range of goods. We picked up a few fruits and vegies (including a 1kg punnet of strawberries) which all told cost us the equivalent of about $5 to $10. We also picked up a few essential items, including some super glue for some inevitable travel repair jobs. After we did our shopping, we stopped for a dirt cheap lunch which included a massive piece of fried fish, a seafood stew and soups and a litre of beer (see pics!). Possibly our first real foray into street food, and all delicious! Not much more to say about the market, but check out the pics, there are some good ones in there.
Later we headed back to Daniel's, said goodbye, and headed to the bus station for yet another new destination, the port city of Valparaiso, with which we will continue in our next chapter of blogging!
PICTURES
Keep your eyes peeled for a couple of different albums of new pictures as we haven't uploaded in a while - as well as a few videos from the past weeks. There will be THREE new photo albums titled San Martin, Pucon and Santiago. You can access these individually by clicking on the tab marked photos. Our photos and blog for Valparaiso will be coming very soon, we promise!
SWINE FLU
We have been keeping an extremely close eye on the situation with swine flu at the moment, and are also following advice from the DFAT website. No cases of the flu in Chile or Argentina so far. In addition Argentina (our next stop) has banned all flights to and from Mexico and Chile (our current location) has extremely strict border control measures. In general, try not to be too concerned, we are quite safe at the moment and we will be monitoring how the situation develops over the next few weeks.
Once again, thanks to everyone who has left messages, and keep them coming!
Much Love,
Hayley and Ryan