Santiago
Okay, so about this holiday I'm on...
When I flew over the outskirts of Santiago, it looked dry and smoggy, even more so than Los Angeles. Sure enough, the air pollution has been somewhat of a challenge for my system. Still, there was something welcoming about the view. I certainly knew it would be interesting; we flew over a donkey cart on a highway.
Upon arrival, U.S. Citizens need to pay US$100 for a visa. Many people expressed surprise and dismay about this-mate, don't you check visa requirements when you fly into a country?! I did; I only had to pay US$56 because I used my Australian passport. I love being a dual citizen! The stamp they give you is good for the life of the passport, so the second and subsequent time you visit, you don't need to pay again. (The people in the queue in front of me didn't seem to understand that, either.) Everything else about my arrival was pretty easy, although customs originally told me I couldn't bring my hat into the country because of the croc teeth. I asked the agent to double-check that this was the case, and he came back and said his boss told him it was okay. Phew!
This was my first time anywhere in South America so I didn't know what to expect. Nothing seemed all that uniquely South American to me on the way into town; everything reminded me of something from somewhere else in the world.
The standard of living felt like Malaysia's, only a bit more varied. There are dusty slums in some neighbourhoods, equally depressing cookie-cutter suburban houses on the edges of town, and trendy art decor apartment buildings downtown. The roads and traffic also felt Malaysian: the traffic lights, the 120km/h urban freeway speed limit, the traffic behaviour... the only difference is that they drive on the right here. Oh, and traffic signs are a bit strange in that a red circle around something means it's compulsory, instead of it being prohibited, as it would in Europe and Asia-that must be confusing for people form that part of the world! I didn't do any driving in Santiago, but I did in Iquique and its surrounds; I'll write about that in a different post.
Toilets are American: when you flush them water swirls around (I have no idea in which direction-that whole thing is such bullshit) and they have those huge gaps under the cubicle doors. They even call them 'bathrooms' like the Americans do: el baño. Unfortunately, while the baths are nice and large, they do have those annoying holes near the top like in the U.S, which are designed to prevent overflow but in practice they prevent enough water to be in a bath for somebody my size. Also, they count floors the American way: the ground floor is called the first floor, and when you go up one flight of stairs, it's called the second floor. I'm used to that of course, and the good news is that they also adopt the clever U.S. method of addressing: the number rounds up to the next 100 at the beginning of every block.
Santiago's inner city feels very Parisian, with twists of Melbourne and Sydney. The Melbournian features are the long, leafy boulevards with multiple carriageways...
... and the Sydney twist is the underground freeways, and the pedestrian bridge that looks modeled on the Anzac Bridge:
That bridge, BTW, goes over a highway 5, which in my guidebook uses the same shield as an American interstate. I like to think of it as being the same highway 5 as the one much further north in the U.S. and Canada-this is the west coast, after all. On the ground it actually uses the U.S. Highway shield, only with a green background, but even this is being replaced by a similar alphanumeric system that Australia is slowly adopting. In any case, here in Santiago, the 5 has a metro line going down the middle:
Speaking of the Metro, that's the first place I went after I left the airport, at least after checking in for my Iquique flight. I had about eight hours to wander around town, get acclimatised, and run a couple of errands. I needed to exchange some money, buy a Chilean SIM chip and book a coach trip to Buenos Aires. I only managed to do one of those things: the currency exchange. You get roughly 500 Chilean pesos for a U.S. dollar, so conversions are pretty easy to do in your head. The currency is a bit drab like Asian and U.S. currency, but unlike the U.S, at least the colours are fairly distinctive and the notes are different sizes.
I struck out on the SIM chip; the mobile system here is also American in the way that it's not all GSM. A helpful fellow passenger on my flight to Iquique told me which mobile company is GSM and where in Iquique their office is, and I did eventually get one. Unfortunately, neither SMS nor data seems to work on it. The good news is that I received a call from nisaa last night, and spoke with her and caesia. It was sooooo good to hear from friendly loved ones, even in the middle of the night. stevefava, karenbynight, sarahh, princeofwands, deyo and mactavish were also there apparently-I hope you had a fun party. As for the coach ticket, the coach company didn't accept credit cards and none of the ATMs in the area liked my card. This worried me-would I be stuck without cash for most of my trip?-but it's worked everywhere else. paisleychick's told me a lot about coaches that I didn't know anyhow; apparently you can get 'suite' seats that fold completely flat! I want one of those!
Anyhow, back to Santiago... I experienced my first language barrier issues when I arrived at the metro, but muddled my way through buying a ticket and getting on the right train. It's an easy system and much more comprehensive than greater San Francisco's BART, even though this is a smaller city. I picked a station to alight at by virtue of its central locality and that multiple lines go thorough it.
Surfacing, some wandering and photo taking lead me to Cerro Santa Lucía, a park that had been made by landscaping a rocky hill in the 19th century. This is where the European culture of public displays of affection really came out: there were snogging couples everywhere, some pretty much on top of each other on the grass. It was certainly a nice setting for it:
It also had some quite impressive views, which I'll post once I've stitched a couple of panoramics together.
From there I apparently wandered into the neighbourhood where locals try to scam gringos like myself. A couple of blokes were giving away poetry in exchange for donations; I'd read about these guys: the poetry is never theirs and they're not raising money for studying or whatever their claim is. Still, I enjoyed their liveliness so I played along and only parted with a couple of hundred pesos, which is less than a dollar. They acted all disappointed, but years of living in the United States has taught me how to deal with poverty and be firm but polite when refusing to give more money than I want to. A few minutes later a cute gypsy offered to read my palm. Again, a scam, but having a pretty woman touch my hand and speak in a romance language is worth a buck or two. They say gypsies frequently try to rob you, and perhaps that's true, but the way I deal with it is keeping aware of my belongings but still give people the benefit of the doubt. Besides, my backpack was strapped to me at three points, my wallet and phone were deep in my pockets, my camera was chained to my belt, and we were on a main drag-I felt pretty safe. Some might say she ripped me off by only speaking Spanish, but I'll just presume that she told me that I'll have a long life with many beautiful girlfriends, an enjoyable and successful career and much travel, which is all already true anyhow.
Oh yeah, then there were these blokes banging away:
I always have money for buskers, but that didn't seem to be what these guys wanted, despite the cocked hat... they seemed to just enjoy contributing to the atmosphere. Yay.
One thing I found strange is that advertisements featured almost exclusively white people, even though the population had mainly Latinos. Here's a photo of the billboard over one of the universities, taken from Cerro Santa Lucía again:
Then there's this unfortunately gaudy advertising by Coca Cola at Plaza de Armas. I'll throw in the other photo I took there; it's the greenest square I saw:
So that's pretty much my experience of Santiago thus far. I'm flying back there right now, and I'm sure to add more photos-I realise that I haven't really taken any photos of the Europe-like side streets. Oh, and speaking of photos, as always, there are more on my flickr site than I post here, and I always geotag them to within a decametre or so... just click on any of these photos to take you there, where you can see them in their full-sized glory. (flickr's starting to become a really good site-thanks for getting me onto them, funcrunch!)
My plan today is to check into the hotel and have a nap. I didn't sleep well last night, probably because it was too quiet-the previous nights had parties going on over my head-and I had to get up early to catch this morning's flight. I'm also going to finally book a coach to paisleychick and kragen's home in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and see if I can get this SIM card to support SMS. (I don't really expect there to be a data connection on a prepaid plan.) Then I'm off to Valparaíso, to check out what's supposed to be a picturesque seaside town and the place in South America for New Year celebrations.
As this flight's attendants say, I 'wish you a good happy new years', everyone!
Update
So apparently you just can{t send SMSes overseas in Chile. Sheesh, I thought it was bad enough in the U.S, where they charge different rates for overseas SMSes! Oh well, the SIM was worth it for nisaa{s call... ugh... and Chilean keyboards are a bit hard to get used to... ¨*]``°