I am not excited

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I am in Santiago, Chile. I have never before been to Santiago, Chile. I feel faintly nervous, but not actually excited. That's a strange thing, surely? Perhaps because all I have done so far is endure the 30-something hour transit from Perth-Sydney-Auckland-Santiago, check into the hostel, crash, sleep fitfully due to my body thinking it is the middle of the day, wake up this morning and bum around the hostel. I haven't actually set foot into Santiago, Chile, except walking to a taxi and then walking from the taxi to the hostel. So I suppose it's not surprising that I'm not yet excited about being in Santiago, Chile.

All the flights were delayed, for various reasons (cleaners didn't show up on time. Plane showed up late). By the time we got to Auckland I thought they just enjoyed messing with us. Arrived in Santiago, Chile around 4:30pm, took a shared taxi to the hostel - Hostal de Sammy. The hostel is run by Charles, a Californian who lived here for a year and rented rooms in his apartment before buying the building and setting up the hostel (having never stayed in one, let alone worked in or owned one). He named it after his dog, Sammy, who has now passed away - there is a photo of him on the wall opposite the entrance, and a painted mural covers one wall of the terrace. He has been succeeded by a small, cute black dog called Sausage (not actually a sausage dog) and a vaguely-defined cat (name, breed and ownership status uncertain), of whom Charles does not appear to be overly fond.

In the TransVIP on the way from the airport we passed by some slums... Santiago, Chile is surrounded by mountains and high hills which are visible from pretty much everywhere in the city. One of the hills has a large, plain cross on the top. That's strange coming from Perth, which lacks universal landmarks on the horizon to distract one from the immediate surroundings. In Perth, the identity and character of each place comes through strongly, but in Santiago, Chile, as we drove past slums and more wealthy neighbourhoods, my eyes kept straying to the mountains and the differences between the places through which we drove lost their significance.

Probably just me, to whom mountains are not a common sight. Certainly the sight of the slums destroyed these vague musings of mine on the sense of community and commonality that such omnipresent mountains must create in the psychology of citizens. Socio-economic factors have shown me the folly of such thoughts. Rudimentary dwellings, narrow streets. Graffiti everywhere - though that seems to cover Santiago, Chile like something organic, some weed of a vine that grows on walls throughout the city, immune to pesticides and garden shears. A couple of square kites, simple and colourful, floated above the dirty streets like fragile, quivering hopes and dreams, free in the smoggy air yet shackled to the earth.

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