Sightseeking in Santiago

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There are so many possible titles for today (or two days really) but I suppose this one will do. I considered Snowbirds Seek Santiago or Stalled in Santiago or even Speaking Spanish in Santiago. Today’s blog journey really began yesterday when we were picked up by our limo driver and driven to the airport. Sharon was concerned that only one hour was allowed to get to the airport during evening rush hour with our arrival just one hour before our flight to Atlanta connecting to Santiago. Needless to say, our journey to Chile was uneventful.



Getting Sharon’s boarding pass the night before however did not go as smoothly. Her name on the ticket lumped her former last name (current middle name) with current last name. Needless to say Homeland Security wasn’t having any of that. The morning of our flight I spent about 40 minutes on the phone with a very nice lady who grasped the problem and found a solution: re-issuing the ticket under the correct name matching the passport. Finding the Delta number on their revamped wed site in the first place was not as easy as it used to be. Nowhere to be found is there a “Contact Us’ link. In a hidden sub-menu there is, at the top of the submenu list in type larger than the other items in the list so you might not even bother to read it, the magical words ‘Talk to use’. Please, just give me in small font in the front of every screen a ‘Contact Us’ link. (Sharon’s note - John used to do some human factors on software).



Of the flight I will say that the dinner was probably as good as any domestic airlines are serving on their international routes. The egg sandwich breakfast was dreadful. How do you make an English muffin and a scrambled egg center and something else that might have been butter or cheese sauce… How do you make that go poof in your mouth so it seems like you have a mouthful of saw dust. I don’t know but evidently Delta has found the answer.



I managed to sleep between the times Sharon couldn’t find her purse, or needed to go to the lavatory or needed a drink of water and even just before dinner. By the time we arrived in Santiago we had been through a little discomfort after a nine and one-half hour flight landing two zones east of our Eastern Standard Time origin. Who would have thought that you fly south-east from the east coast to get to the Pacific Ocean and Chile?



We were warned about needing to pay the $160 per person reciprocity7 fee for US citizens entering Chile, and we had our fee in crisp new $20 bills. Don’t try to pass a $100 to them, or old bills, dog eared bills or ones with anything more than a single center fold from being in a wallet; and definitely not bills with any hand-writing on them. The credit card machines were working, so that was an option for some today, but they can be flakey. It was a bit of wait to clear this line waiting for people ahead of us to deal with unacceptable bills. We then went downstairs to wait in line for immigration. To the side there was a whole other line for reciprocity fees, and I was glad we took care of it upstairs. If anyone ever asks me what citizens of the USA, Canada, Australia, Mexico and Albania have in common, I will now know that they are the only ones that need to pay a reciprocity fee to Chile, though none pay as much as Americans.



I thought I hadn’t seen a line like the one we had for immigration since I had waited 3 hours in line to see “It’s a Small World” at the New York World’s Fair. At least this one did move. Then it was on to find our bags on belt 6. We walked past belts 1 through 4. In the next room was belt 5. We were looking for belt 6, when a man called out “Bags from Delta”. He had two of our bags and when we said we had a third it magically appeared. After being on a plane for 9 ½ hours it doesn’t take much for you to believe in magic. The man helped us get our bags to customs, and I guess at this point I realized that we had just hired a porter. We had declared breath mints and mosquito patches on our entry form. Chile is very strict about declaring everything food-like, of commercial value or affecting fauna/flora. It doesn’t hurt to declare something (it may get confiscated, but at least there are no fines or hours in interrogation explaining why you didn’t declare it). They looked at the patches, and not being an insecticide, they were okay. I guess it’s okay to annoy their mosquitos… just not kill them.



We found our driver at customs and got our bags loaded into the van. We arrived at the Eurotel, checked in a very nice room/suite, showered, changed clothing and went for lunch. Sharon’s decision to pay the extra $20 for early check-in was well worth it by how much better we felt. This euphoria was short-lived as we immediately became acutely aware of how debilitating it can be to be Spanish-challenged in a Latin country. If we knew what we learned later from our tour guide, we might have known better what to expect in our quest for food. We were having trouble deciphering the checker-board menu on the wall. Items were listed across the top as column headings, cross-hatched with row headings and prices in the intersections. An elderly waiter appreciating our dilemma helped us with his limited English. Wherever you are limited English trumps no Spanish; or, as they say, in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king. The first column, it turns out is for hot dogs. As we learned from our tour guide, the hot dog is the working man’s lunch in Santiago, but they embellish theirs with things like avocado, tomato, and mayonnaise. We ordered from what we told was the “Pork and Meat” column, but judging from what we got I suppose it was the “Pork or Meat” column, with the meat being grilled beef, similar to what we might get in a grilled sub in the states. The waiter understood that Sharon wanted meat and bread only for her sandwich… that’s what she got. He didn’t understand I wanted a sandwich also with meat, avocado, tomato and mayonnaise. I got grilled beef, guacamole, sliced tomato and mayonnaise sans bread. Nonetheless, the meal was satisfying but incidental… the big hit was the Coke. As it seems to be everywhere but in the USA, Coke is made with sugar in Chile! Why can’t Americans get that one right? Are you listening Coca-Cola, or do you even care? I joked with Sharon, I wonder which of the selections would have gotten us “Penguin Rolls”. This reflects on our previous cruise where my initial attempt to get a lobster roll didn’t work out so well. Sharon’s favorite aunt (Flo) was concerned reading our blog about whether I had gotten a decent lobster roll, and I had. Now I have a new quest, but Sharon doesn’t think much of it.



It was back to the Eurotel for a very brief siesta before we started our 4-hour city tour of Santiago. Sharon had found South Excursions online, and they offered a very affordable package including one night in Santiago, one night in Vina Del Mar and a city-tour of Santiago, travel to Valparaiso, a side trip for wine-tasting at a winery, a tour of Valparaiso plus pick-up at the airport and drop-off at the ship. Our tour guide picked us up promptly at two. His name was Yosthon (sounds like Justin). He had graduated from the Catholic University in Valparaiso and is a translator who moonlights as a tour guide. We found him very pleasant, knowledgeable and accommodating to our needs. He informed us that Santiago is a city of about 9 million people. 70% of the country’s 17 million population live in Santiago and surrounding suburbs, and encompasses an area six times the size of New York City. The Malachi River flows through Santiago, named for the native people of the region. On the river banks the poor live in shanties. Sharon recalls a vast improvement since she was here five years earlier, with there being fewer such buildings today.

The downtown financial district is called Sanhattan. The tallest building in Latin America is here, over 300 meters tall. We drove up the cobble stoned drive to the top of the Santa Lucia hill, now a park and excellent vantage for viewing downtown Santiago. Santa Lucia was initially a place of sacrifice for the Malachi people. The Spanish made it a fortress, but also used it as an observatory and cemetery. In the mid-nineteenth century the mayor undertook a beautification project introducing trees to Santa Lucia. Today his efforts have borne fruit and may still be enjoyed with the greenery, large trees and plant life that adorn Santa Lucia.



We next embarked on an ambitious one and one-half hour foot trek through some historic neighborhoods. There was the central Spanish square bordered by governmental, mayoral and market place buildings. Several brass plaques remember the city at various points in history, including the city map of the day and dating back to the 1580’s. Yosthon noted that one section of the park was where chess players congregate.



The Franciscans played an important role during the early growth of Santiago. Their enclave formed some of the most quaint and beautiful parts of the old city. We visited the old Franciscan church/cathedral with beams in the foyer dating back to the 1580’s. Earlier we had visited the St Augustus church. One wall in this cathedral is dedicated to a sculpture of Jesus with the ring of thorns down around his neck. The story of this statues and wall goes back to Katerina Rios, unusual because with Spanish Conquistadors and such, Chile was such a manly place to be, that for a woman to have the wealth and power that she had, well, it was unusual. Not that she was beloved or benevolent… she kept her wealth and power by being more ruthless than any SOB that might come along. As far as those who might try to control her wealth and power through passion, lets just say she was the first black widow of Chile. In her palatial house there was a wall with a statue of Jesus. There came one day the only force that could make Katerina Rios bend… and that was an earthquake. All that was left standing of her house was that one wall, and the Statue of Jesus was left with the crown of thorns down around his neck. It is said, if the crown of thorns is ever raised above Jesus’ head, another great earthquake will come to Chile. Katerina willed her fortune and estate to the Franciscans and it can be seen today in St. Augustus Cathedra with the condition they had a mass honoring her regularly. With their wealth and holdings it’s not surprising that the Franciscans were eventually expelled, leaving behind their prime real estate holdings in Santiago.



We decided to see the view atop a hill accessed by a funicular. We disembarked the van, feeling the toll of too much sun. The funicular was closed and we were not inclined to hoof it to the top. Our guide called for our van to return. Sharon and I took comfort in an ice cold bottle of water from a street vendor, and he asked “Gas… No Gas” reminding me that water often combs carbonated, which Sharon detests saying it tastes too salty. So I chose the No Gas option. This gave us additional energy, for we both subjected our bodies to too much sun… again. You’d think we would learn to be careful on the first day of our vacations!



Yosthon explained how in Chile the really wealthy chose to live in high places, and with the Andes as a backdrop and an Incan heritage, it is easy to see where this mindset comes from. He noted in Brazil it is the ppor who live in the mountains while the rich prefer the low places. We were entering Santiago’s poshest, and still growing neighborhood wit the nickname “Nest of Condors”. Houses here go for upwards of one million dollars… In the USA they would easily be upwards of ten million each. Tying in with San Francisco and the Californian equivalent… this is their Nob Hill. From near the top we found a view of Santiago that takes one’s breath away for its size and the extent of the urban sprawl is just amazing. The houses on this scenic perch were all built like fortresses with tall walls and crowned by high voltage electric fencing.



Below, the City of Santiago is a rambling maze of streets that take one back to the mid-twentieth century Europeans cities. For the most part Santiago is untainted by the blight of corporate American commercialism. During the day, I saw one Starbucks in the financial district. I saw billboards or posters for a KFC and McD. I later saw one Taco Bell and I finally did see a McD with its popular McCafe. By and large though, the business lining streets in Santiago are local, and it was refreshing stepping back in time. Oh, we had seen one other US export franchise… more on that in a bit.



We returned to the Eurotel ready for a quick dinner and a good night’s sleep. Now, I’m almost embarrassed to admit we chose to visit the Ruby’s Tuesday we saw during our lunch time excursion. We had found the restaurant recommended by our hotel clerk… alas, they were closed on Tuesdays. On the way back from lunch we spotted the Ruby Tuesday’s. Feeling too tired to succumb to our Spanish Deficit Syndrome, we settled for the English titles to dishes in the Ruby’s Tuesday menu and we really didn’t need the Spanish description that followed. This really is the limit of what our Spanish challenged minds could handle. Sharon got a sirloin steak and almost got a baked potato. I got the pot stickers and Cajun Jambalaya Pasta. The pot sticker sauce was thicker, creamier with more sesame and less soy sauce than you would see in the states, it was certainly less salty, and I’m not sure but that I like the Chilean version better. The noodles had just a hint of sauce on them, and they were good as well. Of course we had Coke.



On the way back to our hotel we stopped in a Pharmicia to get several bottles of water. As I’m looking at one I notice it says “Agua Con Gas” and too tired to think of Anglicized terms such as chili con carne I might have deduced this wasn’t the negative I was attributing to “con”. Yup, I should have gotten the “Agua Sin Gas”… Oh well. For some reason Sharon thinks this is funny. We were both thirsty so we drank the “with gas”.



We returned to the hotel and had to figure out how to turn on the A/C… we were borderline sweltering. I had already taken 3 showers since arriving. There were no visible or hidden controls on either A/C unit (one in the bedroom, one in the living room). I finally spotted a remote control device on the wall (Sharon thought it was for the TV, but that wouldn’t explain what the thing next to the TV was). A couple of button pushes later and we had cool air for the night.

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Photos

Famous House
Don't remember why

Comments

[Janet]

Santiago
Hi guys, I finally found your blogs. If you get my e-mail you will understand why I'm just now reading. I will get caught up. I have enjoyed what I have read so far. I guess I should explain Dale and I both have been sick, he has bronchitits and I have had a very bad cold which I can't get rid of. Enjoyed the pictures, remember we want to see in the pics. Now on to the rest of your blogs. Janet