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Published: February 21st 2007
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Pretty Street
One of the colourful back streets of Santiago. The primary goal this morning was to make it to the long distance bus station and scope out ticket prices and availability for our onward travel to Valparaiso next week. We hopped on the great value and very efficient metro (subway), climbed a couple of steps at the station exit and hey-presto, we were there. In my broken Spanish I managed to find out that buses run every 20 minutes to Valparaiso - something that came as a positive surprise. We're used to there only being a couple of buses per day for our chosen destination so this was a welcome change. It also meant we didn't have to buy our tickets today so we headed back to the metro station and made our way across town to check out the funicular railway, one of Santiago's few real tourist attractions.
By the time we arrived in the right area, the sun had kicked its heat rays up a gear and it was just lovely to be outside. We took our time walking along the many tired looking streets simply taking in daily life in this Chilean city. We passed a little market area where we found loads of wonderful hand-made
Writing on the Wall
Another one of Santiago's curiously good murals. arts and crafts for sale. I could easily have gone shopping mad there and then, buying up all sorts of unusual bits and pieces but having no idea yet what things are really worth here in Chile, it seemed prudent to wait until I knew whether I was likely to be paying over the odds for anything.
The first stand we checked out was full of leather boots of the New Rock variety. For those of you not in the know, these are the types of big bad leather boots worn by all self-respecting metalheads and goths everywhere. It was tempting to buy a pair because they were different to and so much cheaper than New Rocks; the only problem on my mind was how to get them home. Whilst I was mulling over this dilemma, one of the Chilean guys at the stand struck up a conversation with us. His name was Claudio and he was a handsome, well-built 20 year old rock dude with his heart set on starting a new life in New Zealand. His English, although broken, was far better than my Spanish and we were particularly touched when he invited us over to his
Taxi!
Double decker bus, Chilean style! place for some chow and a few beers later that evening. We left with his phone number and address, wishing we felt more confident to be out on the streets of Santiago at night so that we could take him up on his excellent offer. After all, how cool would it be to hang out with some proper locals who like the same music as us?
As we made our way towards the entrance of the funicular railway, we were tickled to see a whole host of tacky gift stands in the small plaza just outside. You could buy everything from giant woolly ponchos to Spiderman masks that had writing across the front stating 'needs more colour'. Could this perhaps have been a knock-off? We had to laugh at the idea of a bunch of kids knocking about the neighbourhood trying to look cool, unaware of what the English writing meant!
We couldn't quite work out where the funicular entrance was as it wasn't signposted and so we ended up going the wrong way at first. This was no bad thing as we suddenly found ourselves down a residential street with bags of character. Houses were painted bright
Boots with Attitude
Jude and Claudio in a leather fetish daydream ;-P colours, geraniums spilled over flowerboxes on the upper window ledges and Latino music wafted across the air enticing us to get our feet moving to the sultry salsa beats. If this isn't a Spanish influenced country, then I don't know what is! We followed the road up a flight of steps that led us to one of Pablo Neruda's houses - he's a famous Chilean poet, you know (no, I didn't either). We took a peek inside and it looked like a museum worth a visit but the entrance fee put us off (3,100 pesos each or 1,000 for students). As we didn't have our fake ID cards with us, we opted to come back another day. Before we left though, I checked for directions with the security guard who pointed us back the way we came. Hey ho.
We eventually found the ticket office for the funicular but were once again put off by the price. It wasn't that it was in any way expensive, it was just that Glynn and I have turned into utter tightwads since travelling in NZ so instead we decided to walk up. We found the path we needed which led right underneath
City View
Glynn shows Jish the way to San Hose (shouldn't that be Santiago?) the funicular railway and past the zoo. The road slowly fell away leaving us to climb up the ever-increasingly steep and dusty slope in the hot, hot sun. Glynn had been a bit poorly yesterday with a nice case of traveller's bad tummy and the long trek up the hill was probably not the best idea we've ever had. Every time we came to a shady spot, we hunted down a bench to have a rest only to find tiny evil ants crawling all over the place so we actually didn't get to stop the whole way up the damn mountain.
Nearer the top, the path forked and we had to choose between a lookout point or a path leading to a 'Virgen', which sounded intriguing. We picked the latter and continued our tiring ascent. On reaching the summit, we were well rewarded with views all the way down the mountain and out across the entire length and breadth of Santiago. It was hazy but nothing like the kind of smoggy haze we have encountered in places like China and we had a pretty decent view. We also found ourselves suddenly surrounded by a bus-load of tourists consisting mainly
Urban Sprawl
Jude checks out the latest jungle on her travels - the urban jubgle that is. of retired pot-bellied Americans with big cameras, loud voices, a lack of consideration for anyone else and harbouring not one word of Spanish between them. Needless to say that the nice guy at the ice cream stand was inclined to serve me first as I played an amusing game of guess the flavour with him in our mutually bad foreign tongues.
From this point we noticed that we could get a cable car across to the other summit but decided to venture on and see what the deal was with the 'virgen'. As it turns out, she's a rather lovely large white statue of the Virgin Mary perched on top of one of the mountain peaks and acting like a guardian for the entire city of Santiago. With her hands extended and floodlights mounted on long metal poles before her, it actually looked like she was an opera diva about to perform her finest piece to the 6-million strong population below. It was certainly a great pace to get a panoramic vista of Chile's capital but also inspired us to take a moment to reflect on how lucky we are to be doing this whole travelling thing.
We
Like a Virgin
Is that the Macarena we can hear playing in the background? were both pretty exhausted from the long trek up so cheated and took the funicular railway back down. It was just like the ones in Wellington and Hong Kong in all honesty, the only difference being the facial characteristics and native language of our fellow passengers. We made it down for just 700 pesos each (about £1.40 in total) and were very gald of the easy ride. Back on the metro, we made our way to the hostel and settled down for a couple of well-earned cervecas (beers). It's thristy work climbing up mounatins, you know!
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james st. james
non-member comment
art, food and booze
if you're into murals and street art, just wait till you get to valparaiso. the lower part of the city isn't all that great but the hills are fabulous (especially cerro alegre and cerro concepcion, cerro=hill). in santiago, i really recommend a bar call "la liguria", (address: providencia 1373, about 30-50m from metro station manuel montt, line 1). they have great pitchers of wine with fruit (ponche, or punch, is white wine with peaches or chirimoya, a south american fruit; or else borgoña, red wine with strawberries). again, there's nothing wrong with santiago at night in the areas you will be going, especially in providencia just west of downtown. more in your neck of the woods near barrio brasil, if you go west just a half mile or so from plaza brasil you can find cumming street, which also has some interesting bars and restaurants (between the alameda and catedral streets, metro stop republica on line 1). barrio bellavista, where you were near cerro san cristoba (the big hill you climbed) has good nightlife, especially weekends. a common and tastey snack in santiago are completos (hot dogs with avocados, tomatoes, and mayonaise) and of course empanadas (turnovers). pisco sours are a tastey and intoxicating chilean mixed drink made with pisco, chile's (and peru's) national liquor, sort of like brandy.