Exploring Santiago

So, it’s 3:00 in the morning. I’ve just gotten off the phone with Amazon and Charles Schwab; this morning it was Capital One. (Broken kindle, missing replacement ATM card, and canceled credit card due to fraudulent charges.)  My overland truck adventure begins tomorrow morning at 8:00. Before that time I need to figure out how I’m going to fit my new windproof jacket into my suitcase that was already overloaded from all of the alpaca fashion I purchased in Peru. (I’ll be ready to finish with the cold weather for a while!) And, I need to catch up on my blog!

I arrived in Santiago last Thursday. The travel was pretty unmemorable (which is how you want bus travel to be, I think) with the exception of the police stops. Evidently they’ve really started cracking down on seatbelt use here in Chile, and we were stopped for a seatbelt check a couple hours into our ride. The police got on the bus and went up and down the aisle making sure we were all buckled in. Of course I was buckled in, but the poor guy in front of me was asleep without his. I imagine he was a little startled to be awakened from his sleep by an officer. Fortunately for him, he was just told to buckle up.

The next time we were stopped the police had dogs. (Presumably they were looking for things other than seatbelt violations.) It was silent on the bus as the dogs sniffed around our things. One dog spent a lot of time with our travel mate Sven and his things, but I think it just liked Sven’s scent. That, or Sven did a really good job hiding his drugs.

(As a sidebar, stray dogs are everywhere here. We had eight dogs following us by the time we finished out tour of La Serena, and Santiago is the same way. People feed them and play with them in the streets. “You’ll see them in their fur coats in the winter,” a local told me.)

Singing Beatles songs during dinner

Sig, Zoe, Lucille, and me at
dinner our first night in Santiago.

Chocolate dessert!!!

On Friday, we took a day trip to Valparaiso. It’s a colorful portside town. Twenty years ago they moved the congress building there to try to decentralize some of the power in the country, but it didn’t really work as planned. Nowadays politicians still live in Santiago; they just have an hour and a half commute to and from work each day. One highlight of this trip for our tour leader was the giant hotdogs you can get at this hole in the wall restaurant there. There were definitely a lot of guys outside eating hotdogs who must have shared the same opinion. For me, there wasn’t much to sell the actual hotdog, but the guacamole on top was delicious. And it was large.

Congress building. The center's missing
to preserve the view of the  people on the hill,
but they got the angles wrong. Umm...

Painting in the hotdog place.

Hotdog Italiana (It's red, white,
and green) and a diet soda. 

Streets of Valparaiso

The port

Hills of Valparaiso

Street art

Street artists

Tram down the hill

My time in Santiago has been spent mostly exploring on my own. I’ve managed to get lost several times, but generally it’s okay because I don’t have anywhere else to be and it’s a good way to see the city. (Wandering for over two hours trying to find a hotel that was five blocks from my origination after dinner one night, however, was less than ideal. The city seems a little less friendly at 1:00 in the morning and when you have no idea in which direction you should be walking.)

But I’ve seen some interesting places. A very kind older man working his fruit stand “gifted” me an orange and then an apple the size of my head when he learned I was a teacher. (His daughter also teaches.) I took a walking tour led by a part time actor and learned where to get jalapeno orange ice cream, how to navigate using the cell phone building (It’s really a building shaped like a cell phone!), and that books in Chile cost around $50! In my hostel I met a Stanford grad student with whom I attended a University of Chile soccer game. (They won 5-3—fantastic game with a dynamic audience, but security confiscated my pen before allowing me to enter.)  I made a Chilean friend who suffered through my Spanish, broadened my musical horizons, and highlighted the differences between North and South American men. And today I went to the fish market with my new roommate and had a “crab cake” unlike anything I’ve tried before. 

Fans stood for the entire game--we
found seats for the second half.

I suppose there are worse
things to have tattooed across your back.

The whole section was covered in a
flag after the third U Chile goal.

There are even dogs on the pitch!
A player ended up picking up the dog
and carrying it off the field.

Andes behind the stadium

Abby, Vanessa, and me after the game

 

Part of the walking tour group

Cell phone tower helpful for navigation.
But apparently not helpful enough for me.

My Chilean friend Cristian and me

Apple the size of a small baby

Fish market

Ummm, crab cake?

My new roommate Helen and me
 at the fish market for lunch.

Cat guarding the pet food at the central market

Tomorrow morning the travels with my new tour group begin. We range in age from early 20’s to mid-60’s, and every seat in the 22-seater truck in full, so I’m sure there are many adventures ahead. It’s a participation camping tour, which means I’ll be spending most nights in a tent. I don’t know what my internet access will be, but I’ll try to keep good records so I can at least update the blog when I arrive in Buenos Aires in December.

Hopefully by that time I’ll have a credit card, ATM card, and a working Kindle!