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Published: September 2nd 2007
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Yes.It.Is.
probably my favourite piece of stencil graffitititi ever. Via Sin Dios cabron! Santiago is well good. the 3 flights to get here were not very fun as we were nursing some hangoverism from having left the nightclub 2 hours before our flight, very sad goodbyes from some very cool people.its crazy how you meet randoms and become really good mates and then one of you minces off to some other country far far away and then one day you bump into them somewhere else until someone goes home.Luckily im super cool so i dont even care or anything.
But santiago. day one, got off plane, ripped off on way to hostel (first thing to happen in every country, how do we never learn?) then as it was about midday we took a wander aboot the city. oh my days, everything we saw was either cool or pretty. the air smells like what i imagined air smells like from reading books set in like forever ago.fresh, crisp clean.the andes surround teh city and are all snow capped and awesome. went to this municipal park hill thing (Santa Lucia) where literally every square inch was cool, be it a statue, fountain, church, some rocks, LOADS of militant graffiti or the view from the top
which was sick. then walked to San Cristobal which is this massive hill/small mountain with loadsa stuff on it and a huge statue of the virgin mary on top. there was a zoo on the way so we got the cable car to that.it was a pretty sad zoo and reminded me why i havent been to one since i was very young.every animal was either asleep/dead or had gone insane and paced around in circles incesantly.they had a white tiger which was neat and the ugliest nastiest camel ever but the only really cool animals were the condors and teh falcons. condors are huge, standing they reach my chest and their wingspan is at least 2 meters. a very grand animal used to gliding around the peaks of the andes, with its wings clipped looking ill.falcons look super noble and falcon chicks are super cute. The statue was massive and neat and the view was even better. then we ate and went out, the night life is excellent and goes on until work the next day it seems.A quid for a litre of beer in a bar.many have been drunk and weve met alot of really cool locals, they
Santiago
how is ronald mc donald chasing kids with a knife not funny?AND TRUE. love it.
Deciding that we should do some more sight seeing and not just drinking we visited loadsa big important buildings, including a cathedral and went to a museum for a run down of chilean history. Pretty standard colonial escapade but still interesting. after the museum we walked home and on the way we walked into the middle of a MASSIVE RIOT! yay! boo to neoliberalism and so on.plenty of people runnign around shouting and throwing rocks and paint at the cops and the protesters were an unusually varied group of people, everyone was there, not just the anarkids, although they rocked out.
A word on the police here.they mean business. they are basically the army and every single one of them has at least a handcannon and a massive truncheon but its their vehicles that do it. we saw at least 3 types, the massive armoured busses which ferried cops in and protesters out, the armoured 4x4s which race along the avenues chucking tear gas grenades at everyone and then the evil armoured trucks. they have 3 to 4 nozzles on each side constantly spraying out tear gas, 2 high powered water cannons on top which
Santiago, Santa Lucia
there was alot more but you get the picture.very nice, pleasant. had diluted tear gas in as well and cannons which fired tear gas granades.A more obviously mental, industrial expression of social control i have not yet seen.they moved around like robots on a production like, blasting people out of the streets with an acrid cloud surrounding it constantly.Cops everywhere either on horses with long steel whips or fully decked out in riot armour.everything is army green and faceless and dispenses pain arbitrarily. the crowd are young,old,of every station in life and ethnicity, garbed in all sorts of clothes, chucking vials of paint at these machines of the state. quite the juxtaposition. quite fun. it was headline news, big stuff in chile and the papers ran photos of the leader of the opposition party getting clubbed over the head by some cop, which was well funny. so that day was culturaly informative to say the least.
after this we did some more rocking out in santiago, its a pretty sweet city, alot of good street art and graffiti,politicaly active population, nice stuff to look at and places to be and the people are fun. i recommend it. ha yeah and theres loads of emo kids here, they are well into
Santiago,Santa Lucia
the place was covered in high brow expressionism such as this. it, we went to a big mall which was 90%!e(MISSING)mo shops.its silly, how did this come to be? this is the true cost of a globalised world and it is
steep.
Took the bus to this seaside town Viña del mar, its alot like hastings or brighton except the sea isnt full of crap. theres big rocks and waves and sand and big pelicans and we even saw a sealion right on the shore!! they have loads apparently, it was all swimming aboot doing its thing, it was neat. saw a cool castle called castillo Wulff. thats rad. went to Valparaiso today which is the sister town and also on the sea. its a big port city and mainly run down and kinda boring. everything is on these big hills and houses n bars are built so sketchily in the sides of hills or hanging over cliffs. we got the most rubbish funicular up some hill and the boxcar was made of mdf and plywood!it squeeked and warped like a mouse on acid.not cool.
guna head north soon, see some scenery and get away from cities.cant wait. ive probably forgot alot but there you go, im sure
Zoo at San Cristobal, Santiago
the only animals which werent visibly insane or ill.apparently flamingos grow naturaly in chile.in pools of acid.no lie. nobody even read this far anyway.
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bro
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highly humorous
and also well l. more pics of you plx