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Published: November 14th 2008
Two Youths
Chilean kids looking to be put on a travel blog.It feels good to be back in the 21st century. In Chile, you can drink the water, you don´t have to worry about food poisoning, people use their blinkers when changing lanes, cars stop for pedestrians, restaurants take credit cards (and don´t add 5% surcharges), waiters don´t act like you aren´t there, hot water is a given, WiFi is common, and the internet works! On the 24 hour bus ride from San Pedro to Santiago we drove by a highway interchange, and I realized it was the first one Ive seen since Thailand!
Anyway, most of what I had heard about Santiago had been somewhat negative prior to showing up there. I had heard it was dirty, the air was polluted, and it simply didn´t have much to offer. Maybe I just had low expectations, but I thought it was a fantastic city and loved my time there. We stayed in the Bellavista area, which has streets lined with outdoor cafes (more appropriately called "Bars") and tons of restaurants. We spent some time walking around the city center, which is a great mix of modern architecture right next to colonial buildings. There are tons of pedestrian streets, parks and plazas
offering a great respite from the hussle of the city, and there are quite a few hills providing great vistas. The horizon line is dotted with enormous mountains on the outskirts of the city and the air was full of the feeling of Spring. This might have caused the jubliant feel in the city, it always does when Spring hits back home, but I think the absolutely obsurd number of young couples making out all over the city was just something Chilean cause that isn´t anything I´ve seen elsewhere. I´ve heard about this before I made it to Chile though. Due to a strict Catholic culture, and the repression of the previous Pinochet dictatorship, Chilean culture is going through a "sexual revolution." Sexuality is much more open, people are making out everywhere, and now you can find "Cafes with legs" which are the Chilean versions of Hooters. Basically it is coffee shops with waitresses in skimpy clothing full of only business men in the middle of the day. Some are a bit seedier than others, and the first one we walked by had more the feeling of a strip club than a coffee shop.
And, speaking of ridiculous sexual
expression, we went to a gay club on the second night in Santiago. It was my first time going to one, and it was every bit as outrageous as I had heard they can be. It was the only place open in our neighborhood on Monday night that wasn´t playing salsa (as the previous night we both proved completely incompetant at that) and we had a large number of girls with us to come off as straight, deflecting any potential come ons. At least that is what I´ll tell myself now, as I only got hit on once all night and kind of was hoping for at least a little more than that! Anyway, a it was an absolutely hilarious night, one of my favorite of the trip so far, and the pictures from the club are completely insane.
The biggest news of the week though, is that our friend Burton met up with us (hello to all the new people he asked me to add to the blog e-mail list!). He quit his job recently and is going to be traveling through South America with us for a few weeks. If you haven´t been keeping track, that is
now the fourth person that has quit their job and met up with me at some point in the journey. I´m hoping to inspire more and eventually start a revolution.
The other thing I´ll note is that there is some amazing graffiti in Santiago. There are some great tags I found scattered around, and there are some murals (i.e. they aren´t illegally placed) which are just amazing. I´ll throw a small sampling of the ones I saw up...
On a humorous note, I just realized that I called the blog "Welcome back to the 21st century" and a large percentage of it is about sexuality. An unintentional statement on the state of society...
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Linda Kelly
non-member comment
Bar picture
Loved the pics. esp. the bar one. It reminds me of my wilder days at studio 54 in NYC. You had to have at least one or 2 gay friends with you to get in. THanks for sharing your trip. Aloha, Linda