The Last Days in Santiago

We made it safely back from Valparaiso on Monday afternoon and enjoyed a very casual evening-in, and early night at the apartment. On Tuesday morning we woke quite late to an empty house, with both of our hosts out, hard at work. Fiona and I decided to leave the house and search around for somewhere to have breakfast, and then to plan the rest of our days activities. We had breakfast in a Vegan Bike Shop believe it or not, and we decided to stay local to the apartment for the rest of the day.

We started with a short wander through the Italian Barrio which was quiet and peaceful, and then Fiona suggested that we get the Funicular and ride to the very top of the Cerro de San Cristobel, the massive great hill, (I still think it is a small mountain...!), that we walked half way up on our first real day in Santiago. Let me tell you, it was a darn sight easier riding the funicular railway up to the top, maybe we really should have done that on the first day...?  Anyway, even when we reached the upper funicular station, there was still about 100m of stairs to climb to enter the open-air church and reach the very feet of the ‘Virgin’ statue that looks out over the whole of Santiago. The views from the very top of the city and the Andes Mountains are quite spectacular, and we made the most of them as we were in no rush to descend back in to the hustle and bustle of the city. It was really quite peaceful and serene up the top there, at least until the local Catholic Priest started preaching his midday mass, and even then there was something soothing and restful about the way he recited his verses.

Eventually we rode the funicular down to the city again, and decided to visit another of Pablo Neruda’s houses, like we did in Valparaiso. This was not too far from the bottom of the funicular and only took us a few minutes to find, hidden away in a backstreet, tucked under a steep slope of the Cerro San Cristobel. As we had done at the weekend, we took the audio tour and followed the tour around another of Neruda’s fabulously quirky houses, with hidden passageways, spiral stair cases, and a plethora of art and artefacts. One of the things that Fiona and I both really liked was Neruda’s ‘Summer Bar’ built towards the top of his garden, where he could entertain guests. This has given us some ideas for our new house when we return to Christchurch. I think overall I preferred the house in Valparaiso for its stronger

nautical theme and stunning views over the city and ocean, something that can’t be said of the ‘La Chassona’, the name of Neruda’s home in Santiago. 

We left his house in search of a bit of lunch at a local place I had read about, called ‘Galinndo’s’, which appeared to be the only restaurant in a street full of restaurants where people were queuing out the door at 3:00 in the afternoon.... We eventually got in and I had the local speciality, a corn pie, and Fiona had steak and chips...! That was enough for one day’s wanderings..... We returned to the apartment and caught up with Christine and Andres, and ended up having a late soup and another round of Wizard.

On Wednesday, both Christine and Andres were going to take a half day to spend some time with Fiona and I, and take in some of the culture on offer in Santiago. First we had an early lunch and then headed to the Pre-Columbus Museum to see some history. It was fascinating, and the ‘Chile, before Chile’ exhibition was stunning, both in the quality of its presentation and the quantity of the ancient artefacts on display. There was also a lot of other stuff from all the pre-Columbus civilisations throughout the Americas, but I enjoyed the Chilean stuff the best. From there we went to the ‘La Moneda Palace’, which is the seat of the Chilean government, and the scene of the famous coup of 1973. From there we went to see the ‘London-Paris’ district which is a quaint little area of gothic houses and cobbled streets, and we visited a former military detention centre, now a memorial to the dead & missing, called ‘Londres 38’.

That evening we were meeting up with Christine and Andres’s friends at their local bar for a few beers and pizzas, whilst also watching one of Chile’s World Cup warm up matches against Northern Ireland, which was being played in Valporiaso. It wasn’t the greatest of games, and if I am honest Northern Ireland played very poorly, and even then the Chilean team only just managed to beat them 2-nil. It was good however catching up with all the people we had meet that first week we were in Santiago, and a few more besides. I am always happy to go anywhere where there is beer and good conversation to be had, and when you throw in a football match to watch, it doesn’t get much better. Seeing Christine and Andres’s friends for the last time did serve to remind us that our time here in Santiago was drawing to a close and the next part of our trip was approaching fast.

For our last full day in Santiago, Fiona and I did something else that appears to have become a traditional part of our World Cup trips, we visited a memorial to some former human rights abuse or atrocity. In Germany in 2006 we visited a museum and memorial in a former headquarters of the East German secret police, called the ‘Stasi’, and in 2010 in South Africa, we visited the Apartheid Museum and all that entailed. This time round we visited the Museum of Remembrance and Human Rights, to learn about the 1973 Chilean coup and the following 18 years under the dictatorship of Pinochet.  The Museum was very well laid out, walking you through the entirety of the troubled period in Chile’s history from the pitched battle at ‘La Moneda’ and the death of the former president, Salvador Allende, through the years of hardship and brutality under the dictatorship, to the ‘plebiscite’ or referendum to end it all in 1990. As you can probably imagine, it was a very moving experience, with some of the footage, photo’s and personal recollections being very harrowing, but the eventual defeat of Pinochet and his military junta being very uplifting, the full gamut of emotions were stirred. This should be a must see for anyone visiting Santiago.....

So now I am sitting here writing this blog with less than 12 hours to go before we get on another plane and this time head west to Sao Paulo in Brazil. We will be catching a cab to the airport at 4:00am with an expected arrival time in Brazil of around 11:30am local time. From there we will head to the Hotel we are staying at in the Paulista Jardin part of town, where we will finally meet up with Mr Yates Snowden Williams III, to kick-off our 6^th World Cup adventure..... But the excitement of meeting up with an old friend is tempered with the fact that we will be saying goodbye to Christine and Andres, who have been exceptional hosts and fast become firm friends during our time in Chile. Christine’s calming and ‘simpatico’ nature and her pride in her adopted home of Chile, added to Andres’s South American enthusiasm and

dynamism, paired with his awesome culinary skills, will be sorely missed. I hope very much that we will be able to catch up with them again, either here in Chile again, or even in New Zealand maybe, but not to too far off in to the future. Thank You for your generosity and kindness Christine and Andres, we hope we can repay the favour sometime soon.....

Now I just about enough time to finish packing and maybe squeeze in a final round of Wizard before we leave.....