Chi-Chi-Chi! Le-Le-Le! Viva Chile!

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November 12th 2015

Published: December 8th 2015

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Delek Delek

Palacio de la Moneda

Chile's presidential office that was originally the official mint, this its name "the palace of the coin". Also the scene of one of the most dramatic episodes in Chile's history, where President Salvador Allende died.

The ride from Mendoza to Santiago was spectacular if a bit uncomfortable. My journey through wine country towards the snow-capped Andes was accompanied by a rumbling stomach as a result of the previous day’s 12-hour bender through said wine country. Once in the mountains, the landscape was rather barren and rocky and I have probably seen prettier. On the narrow and winding cliff-edge roads, there were a few hair-raising moments before we hit a three hour wait to get through the border - three hours in the snow, in my shorts, although it looked like it should’ve been colder than it was.
In the form of Teo and Nicola however, at least I had company to ease the boredom.

Passing some slums similar to the ones I had seen in South Africa earlier in the year, we made it into Santiago around 8pm where we grabbed a taxi to the hostel before seeking to banish our hunger at the Mexican restaurant nearby. It was here that I tried the renello chileano – which was a corn, cheese, eggplant and cream stew I was able to make delicious tacos out of.
I had a bit of trouble deciphering the Chilean Spanish menu

Cementerio General

Santiago's general cemetery is comparable to Buenos Aires's Recoleta.

– Chilean Spanish well and truly fell off the wagon with its slurry accent and copious amount of slang – and I have had trouble understanding the people here, just as I was getting used to the Argentinian accent. Chilean Spanish is (in)famous for having drifted far from its roots – root Spanish, which was what I had learned in Spain.

After a good night’s sleep, we were joined by Brit Bianca, who we had met at the hostel in Mendoza, for a walking tour of Santiago the next morning.
The tour we were doing was “Tour 4 Tips” – essentially a free walking tour with a free cocktail at the end of it in exchange for a voluntary donation. It was similar in concept to the walking tour that I did in Ljubljana – and I have to say that it was similar in quality too.
Our guide introduced us to some fundamental Chilean concepts along the way, the first of which was terremoto, which means “earthquake” – something that has physically and culturally shaped the Chilean landscape and Chilean society respectively. There is an average of three earthquakes in Chile every day thanks to its location on

La Vega

Mercado Central may be the fancy market - this is the 'real' one, selling just about anything that could possibly be grown in Chile and beyond.

the border of the Nazca and South American tectonic plates. There has been many a building and city destroyed and rebuilt over the course of Chile’s history – earthquakes are now just part of daily life for Chileans. It is also a sweet local cocktail made of white wine, pineapple juice or ice cream, and depending on personal taste, fernet, grenadine, rum or cognac. We would be enjoying one after the tour.

The second concept that our guide introduced to us was that of an animita which is like a saint. Animitas are not officially recognised saints, but are usually people who have died a tragic and often violent death after leading an innocent life. Such deaths and the stories behind them have then touched the people enough so that memorials have been created; these memorials then quickly escalate into becoming shrines as the story gets spread further and further to the point where these animitas gain a semi-deity status. This was explained to us on our visit to the Cementario General with the story of Romualdito.
Romualdito was a disabled kid who always hung around Santiago’s central train station in the 1930s who garnered much affection from the

Museo de la Memoria

Excellent museum chronicling the dark days of the Pinochet Dictatorship with many a poignant exhibit.

locals. One night, Romualdito was violently murdered. Locals left flowers and tributes at the station and this site soon became a shrine as word about Romualdito’s story spread further and further – to the point where people from outside of Santiago would come to leave tributes. When the council wanted to remove the now-gigantic shrine in order to renovate the station, there was protest – and in the act to trying to tear the shrine down, a policeman was killed in an accident. This then served to cement Romualdito’s as a animita – and the shrine has stayed intact at the station ever since, as no-one would now dare try to take it down. Romualdito also has another shrine of sorts at his grave in the Cementerio General.
The cemetery itself is also pretty impressive – perhaps more impressive than Recoleta in Buenos Aires. Santiago’s Cementario General had mausoleums that were bigger than anything in Buenos Aires’s Recoleta but in general weren’t as well-kept – but the whole place itself was just massive. Particularly striking are the huge ‘blocks of flats’ that are full of graves.

The third concept introduced to us was the concept of chimba, which means division – a

Plaza de Armas & Cathedral

The heart of Santiago.

characteristic that has always existed in Chilean society and still exists now.
Much of this chimba was down to arguably the most dramatic episode in Chilean history back in 1973, when the ruling socialist president Salvador Allende’s controversial policies on taxation, education, health and land, polarised the country. Opposition to his government took on the form of a media campaign, truck strikes and trade embargoes with the involvement of powerful Chilean families and the anti-socialist American government.
This eventually led to a military coup by Agustin Pinochet. Arriving at the Palacio de la Moneda on the morning of September 11, 1973, to rumours of the coup, Allende was told by radio that he was no longer the president of Chile and that he had the choice of safe passage out of the country or elimination at the hands of the new military dictatorship. A man of principle, Allende chose the latter option – but not before he gave one last impassioned speech to his people, saying that Chile would be about to go through a dark period in its history, but that he had faith that democracy would once again return. After some bombings of the presidential palace and the

Mercado Central

The beautiful central market in Santiago and its fancy restaurants inside of it.

execution outside of the palace of eleven of Allende’s aides, Pinochet’s men stormed the palace to find Allende dead. Whether he took his own life or if he was murdered remains unclear; recently it has been declared officially that Allende took his own life – although the Chilean public remain divided over this fact and thus exists another form of chimba.
The kidnapping, torture and execution of many suspected leftists and leftist sympathisers was a massive stain of the Pinochet dictatorship – but ironically, the swinging of Chile from the left to the right and the economic policies implemented from 1973 to 1989 has helped make Chile’s economy become one of the strongest in South America. With economic success however, has come gaping inequality; whether the sacrifice of lives and the atrocities committed during Pinochet’s rule and the resulting inequality was worth the economic success attained is yet another line of division in Chilean society – along socio-economic lines rather unsurprisingly – and another example of the chimba that exists in Chile. When Pinochet finally died in 2006, half the people were mourning while the other half were celebrating – his legacy remains controversial to this day.

Chimba wasn’t

Pastel de Jeiba

Clam chowder on acid. Clams cooked with bread, soup and cheese. So much cheese.

obvious at all at the markets that we visited on the tour however. In particular, the La Vega market had a unifying and friendly feel to it – people from all backgrounds are welcome to shop here and there is a real sense of community among the shopkeepers and their customers. Loyalty to one shopkeeper often results in discounts and a friendly chat but fidelity is important – ‘cheating’ on your greengrocer will result in the revocation of your discounts and no-eye-contact service forever more.
Overall it was a great tour that provided fantastic insight and understanding of Chile and its people.

After the tour we stopped by at one of the markets for a local lunch – I ordered the machas de la parmesana which were clams cooked in parmesan followed by a pastel de jeiba. Both dishes were nice but it was all a bit too heavy and was just too much cheese, especially after the meal I had the previous night. I was lucky I ate all that cheese though – it lined the stomach nicely for the super-strong complimentary honey shot that was given to us after our meal.

Our tour in the morning

Grave Blocks Of Flats

Resembling council flats in London, these are rows of tombs at the Cementerio General.

was so good that we decided to do another one in the afternoon.
We learned about why there were so many stray dogs around – when rural workers migrated to the city, they brought random dogs that hung around on the farm with them and they have become pets of the public. A council program to remove them from the streets was met with fierce opposition and so they have remained. Having not got a rabies shot before arriving in South America, I was freaking out a bit seeing all of these dogs on the street – but thankfully they’re harmless.
We also learnt about the strip club coffee shops in Santiago complete with topless waitresses that are somewhat of a tradition here, and the betrayal of the Mapuche tribes that lived in Chile before the arrival of the Spanish. In a shameful chapter of Chile’s history, after helping liberate Chile from Spain, the Mapuche were then effectively subject to genocide in the 19th century.
I think I enjoyed the first tour more than the second although the unsettled stomach and hayfever I suffered made the afternoon a bit of a struggle.
Santiago’s metro system was also a bit of

Sopaipilla

Trying the local street food. Sopapilla is a fried pastry that can be eaten savoury or sweet - in this case I ate it with a delicious chill sauce. Yum!

a struggle – otherwise efficient, dealing with having to buy different tickets for different times of the day and working out which trains are express trains that miss your stop were a bit of a hassle. The trains can get pretty rammed too – more so than in London – with dedicated ‘pushers’ on the platform whose job it is to push everyone on to the train Japanese-style.

We then met up with a couple of Bianca’s friends Amy and Harriet that night who were living and studying in Santiago. We went to a pub/restaurant where my prawns in leek broth were delicious but small, and then to a bar that wasn’t technically a bar but was a bar where I had a “Torres del Plaine” cocktail that was really sweet and creamy – not ideal for my stomach. Seemed that the bar had a restaurant licence which must be cheaper than a bar licence, and had to serve food in order to serve drinks – resulting in us having to order fries we didn’t really want.

The next day we went up the Cerro San Cristobal which had good views across the city. There is a big

Cerro San Cristobal

A diet-Christ The Redeemer.

statue of the Virgin Mary up there which makes it a kind-of Diet Christ The Redeemer and comes complete with a wailing crooner (there was also one at lunch the previous day – something of a national curiosity?) and too many cables to take a decent picture of it.
La Chascona however – Nobel Prize winning Chilean poet Pablo Neruda’s old house – was really funky. Made up of three separate buildings and built to resemble a ship, this was one house I’d like to live in.
For lunch we had another Chilean speciality, albeit a more working-class one – a completo italiano. We ate at a really local bar/diner with really friendly staff – and the completo was outstanding. Normally a hot dog with guacamole, tomato and mayonnaise, we had ours with grilled garlic steak which was delicious.
Perhaps the highlight of Santiago was our visit to the Museo de la Memoria, which details the crimes committed by the government during the Pinochet dictatorship. The building itself is an outstanding piece of architecture and inside were lots of poignant and informative displays detailing the executions, torture and kidnappings of political dissidents by the military junta. Just like the similar

La Chascona

Chilean Nobel Prize winning poet Pablo Neruda's very funky old residence. I was not meant to take these photos but how could I not.

museum I visited in Cordoba – but on a much, much bigger scale – the museum told moving stories and facts about everything that happened and told stories that I had unfortunately heard many times before in the histories of other countries. The most moving exhibit was the recorded accounts of friends and aides close to President Allende describing the events of the day Allende died – a story of sacrifice and inspiration, especially the speech he gave from the presidential palace as bombs were falling on it.
We had Mexican for dinner again that night albeit at a different restaurant – but the most memorable part about it were the ridiculously strong cocktails we ordered that knocked us right out.

On our final day we visited the Estacion Mapucho which is an old train station cum gallery and exhibition space but which wasn’t showing anything at the time, followed by the slightly disappointing National History Museum whose tower we weren’t able to go up. Also a little disappointing was Barrio Paris-Londres, a couple of blocks made to look like Paris and London, which are nice but ultimately a little fake.
We had a more traditional completo italiano for

Nicola Chows Down On A Completo

A local delicacy at a local diner - a truly local experience.

lunch before we went to the flash part of town where Santiago’s biggest shopping mall and the tallest building in Latin America reside as part of the Costanera Centre. As mentioned before, there is something familiar and reassuring about going to a shopping mall, especially a nice, clean, modern one with all the shops and brands you know. We got some pretty sweet views at the top of the Gran Torre Santiago too.

With Bianca and Nicola making their way to Valparaiso, Teo and I finished our stay in Santiago with a fun night out with the locals in Bellavista, where much of Santiago’s bars and clubs reside. Near the university, many of them are pretty grungy and the place we chose to watch the Chile vs Colombia football match was no exception. The support was passionate and regular chants of “Chi-Chi-Chi! Le-Le-Le! Viva Chile!” would ring around the huge, packed-out bar.
Beer got thrown everywhere at the scoring of each goal (particularly at the poor Colombian fans – had this had happened in most other countries it would have surely started a fight) of which there was one for each side. Mayhem ensued when Arturo Vidal put the

Vitacura

The flash part of town.

home side ahead with a header just before half time, which turned into frustration when James Rodriguez scored a deserved equaliser in a match where Colombia had the better chances despite Chile dominating possession.
Watching the game with us were Wilco and Renate, two of Teo’s friends who he’d met in Buenos Aires. After hanging out at their hostel and picking up a bit more crew from there, we then attempted to enter a techno club (£30? No, thanks) before bumping into some locals I had been talking to during the game. They invited us to a reggaeton club where the free drink that came with the £5 entry was again, ridiculously strong. It seems that the drinks get stronger in each country I visit and the pisco and coke I had was once again, no different.
It was a fun and drunken night which ended with a series of embarrassing events for Teo – I won’t detail what they were however, as I wouldn’t want to further embarrass the poor lad…

Overall I had a great time in Santiago. There is a lot to see, do and learn, and it is a pleasant place to be. It has

Barrio Brasil

Where our hostel was. Rough and ready neighbourhood home to a lot of cool street art.

some really nice buildings although parts of it look like any other city, where I could’ve been in New York, Sydney or Barcelona. I like the vibe here too, where the Chileans seem much warmer and friendlier than their Argentine counterparts – although I reckon that Uruguayans are still the friendliest people I have met so far in South America. There also seems to be more English here than in Argentina in terms of both signs and people who speak the language.
Santiago isn’t a relaxing place however and we were very busy every day – therefore I am looking forward to relaxing a bit in our next destination; Valparaiso.

Hasta luego,
Derek

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