South America 2005 - Santiago
From Worldtraveller
The train to Santiago was incredibly uncomfortable. I'd been tight and bought the cheapest ticket, which was for a non-reclining seat. It seemed to be designed so there was no realistic way of lying down or doing anything but sitting bolt upright, so I didn't manage to get a huge amount of sleep. I quite liked the restaurant car though, where my ongoing efforts to become a vegetarian were again spectacularly thwarted. There was an extensive menu, and I asked for various likely things which proved to be unavailable, before the server said to me "Look, in fact all we have is steak, and you can have a large one or a small one". Knowing about how South Americans describe steak, I ordered the small one, which when it came was spilling off the sides of the plate. It turned out to be horribly tasty.
Having failed to sleep, I was in a bit of a daze when we arrived at Santiago's Estacion Central at 7am the next morning. There were not many people in the huge airy station building, and it didn't feel anything like as dodgy as big city train stations often do. I liked Santiago straight away when I found a cafe on the station serving real, delicious coffee and good cakes as well. Suitably caffeinated I set off to work out the metro system, get into some accommodation and then explore.
After a pleasant afternoon ambling around the pedestrianised streets of central Santiago and sitting under the palm trees in the Plaza de Armas eating ice cream, I walked later on to Cerro San Cristóbal, an Andean foothill rising high over the city to its north. A funicular railway runs to the top and I headed up there, staying to watch the sun set. It was a beautiful warm evening, and I found it difficult to get my head around the fact that it was early December, a time of year I associate with cold weather, short days and the general melancholy of approaching winter.
I spent two more days in Santiago, and I didn't really do very much. The next day was a Sunday, and the centre of town was tranquil and quiet. There was a market along the pedestrianised streets, where I found some english-language paperbacks. I had long since read all the books I'd brought with me at least twice so I was glad to find something new to read, even if the least trashy book I could find was by Michael Crichton. And on the Monday I managed to buy a whole Saturday Guardian, for a very reasonable 3,000 pesos (about three pounds).
While I was in Chile, political activity was intensifying in advance of upcoming presidential elections, and Santiago was humming with demonstrations, leafleting, campaign stands and speeches. Having failed to stand up for the late Salvador Allende against Carlito in Chaitén, I was pleased to find a Communist Party campaign stand doing vibrant business in Santiago. I bought a Communist Party mug, made a small donation, and felt that my conscience had been assuaged slightly. But it took another blow when I got into a lengthy conversation with a dapper old gent in the Plaza de Armas, who was if anything more pro-Pinochet than Carlito had been. "Just another few years of the dictatorship would really have sorted this country out", he said. His view was that socialism had failed because the people hadn't really believed in it, and that most people were relieved when the military took over. But he was without any doubt from the wealthy classes, and I wondered if the majority of people really had been relieved when the air force bombed the presidential palace and Allende died in the ruins.
Before I headed towards northern Chile I spent a day in Valparaíso, Chile's premier port city. On a blazing hot morning I got the bus there from Santiago and spent a fantastic day wandering around its colourful streets. I've rarely been to a city so atmospheric as this one, and I felt that the air was somehow heavy with history. The city sprawls over cliffs which rise incredibly steeply from the wide blue Pacific Ocean, so steeply in fact that roads are often impossible and the only way to ascend is via clanking ascensores, miniature funicular railways a hundred years old that feel like they might crash back down to sea level at any moment as they laboriously climb to the heights. I wound my way from one end of the city to the other, alternately ascending and descending. Up high there was a rarefied, serene atmosphere; down low it was non-stop bustle and activity, with just a hint of hostility.
At the top of Ascensor Espiritu Santo I found Cerro Bellavista, where the houses reached new heights of colourfulness, and bright murals covered many walls. I found a cafe with a terrace, and enjoyed a long slow coffee looking out over the finest city views I'd found so far. I wished I was spending longer here, but I had to get back to Santiago for a night bus heading north, and so I slowly headed back to sea level, along the tree-lined Avenida Brasil and through a slightly run-down part of town to the bus station. As we climbed out of town the sun was setting out to sea and the town was basking in the deep red evening light.
