Chile!

Now halfway done my first major trip outside of Buenos Aires, I feel I ought to start chronicling it so as to not forget everything. My three days in Santiago were action packed, ranging from salsa dancing to fish-eating to hanging out with Chileans and going clubbing. I apologize in advance for how long this post is going to be, but hey, I'm writing this as much for myself to remember as for you to enjoy it vicariously.

Before heading to Chile, I caught up with Matt who had studied abroad for a semester in Santiago to get some tips. It's amazing how many parallels you can draw between Matt and my experiences. Last spring I studied abroad in Barcelona while Matt went to Chile, and now that we're both college graduates Matt is doing much the same as what I'm doing except in Barcelona. He recommended that I stay in the Bellavista neighborhood and told me a bunch of fun tourist attractions to see, and best of all he connected me with some amazingly friendly locals.

I landed in Santiago at about 6pm on Wednesday after my Air Canada flight from Ezeiza. The flight was the first leg of a flight that goes from BA to Toronto with a stop in Santiago, although it seemed as though more than two thirds of the passengers were only along for the short ride to Chile. It was entertaining watching the polite Canadian cabin crew attempting to communicate with many of the less than airplane savvy non-English speaking passengers. After arriving I paid my egregious ¨reciprocity¨tax of a whopping US$131 (supposedly to avenge the fees Chileans pay to travel to the US) and caught a transfer, basically a SuperShuttle to my hostel in Bellavista. It took almost an hour and a half through crawling rush hour traffic, but only cost $10, so I suppose I can't complain.

Bellavista is a hip part of Santiago. At first I would describe it as the East Village, were it not for the main drag Pio Nono Street which is really just a long chain of divey tourist trap bars. Off Pio Nono, Bellavista is home to the edgy as well as the only gay culture in the city, and ended up being where I spent all three of my evenings. The hostel I stayed in (Matt's recommendation) was great as well, full of character and one of the top-rated hostels in all of South America.

Unfortunately, I failed to notice the distiction between street numbers starting with 0, as in Dardignac 0184, and those that don't, like Dardignac 184. Apparently this is how they demarcate the difference between the East Dardignac and West Dardignac--a fact I learned the hard way when the transfer dropped me off four blocks from the hostel. Walking alone at night in a new city with a backpack is not high on my list of likes, less so in edgy areas, although I didn't have any issues.

I had planned to meet up with Annie, one of my residents from last year in Phi Sig, who is currently at Stanford in Santiago for dinner on Wednesday. I got to the hostel just in time to meet Annie at 8, and we walked around the neighborhood and eventually grabbed dinner at one of the more happening restaurants. We wandered into a bar that had live music hoping it was something Chilean, although it ended up being an awesomely bad Bon Jovi cover band with a frontman who grew up in Nueva Jersey.

Thursday morning was my first day to wander, although before I even had the chance to get lost in the city I was already making plans to meet up with Raul, one of Matt's good friends. Before meeting up with Raul, I climed the Cerro Santa Lucía and explored some of Santiago's vast amounts of green space. The parks in Santiago are great, and the city as a whole felt much cleaner and stroll-friendly than Buenos Aires. Maybe they're trying to compensate for all the air pollution and smog. I summited Santa Lucía right at noon, and much to my surprise there is apparently a daily firing of the cannon at time. Among the tourists at the top many had their ears plugged, although I didn´t think twice about it (maybe they were struggling to listen to some audio tour?), and so I nearly peed myself when, only twenty feet away, the world exploded.

Raul and I arranged to meet near the cerro, and as we got to know each other he led me around a bit through Plaza de las Armas and by the Palacio de la Moneda, the presidential palace and focal point of the 1973 coup. Allegedly, the president who was being overthrown was cornered in the palace and committed suicide, thus allowing Pinochet to take over. (At least I think that's the story). At the recommendation of my Chilean roommate Nicolas, we had lunch inside the Mercado Central, one of the main seafood markets in Santiago, where I ate a mariscal, a bowl of various unidentifialbe squidlike objects. It was delicious.

After some ice cream from Emporio la Rosa and some relaxation in the Parque Forestal, I headed back to Bellavista to tour the home of famous Chilean poet Pablo Neruda, an eccentric if not surrealist guy living in an appropriately bizarre home. I ended up getting a private tour of the place and it was quite cool, all in the motif of a ship and a corresponding lighthouse. Neruda was friends with some great artists (Diego Rivera, Picasso, among others) and has a nice collection of paintings in which Neruda himself, or his profile, is the subject of at least half.

Thursday night I met back up with Annie along with the rest of the posse of Stanford in Santiago at none other than Ruby Tuesdays. As guilty as I felt going to an American chain restaurant, it was the only place in town showing CNN coverage of the Palin-Biden debate. It was fun running into some familiar faces--Salone and Angie from tour guiding--and waxing nostalgic about life on the farm. The Stanford group was planning to go Salsateque-ing and invited me to come along, which I was happy to do as the place they knew of was not two blocks from my hostel.

We arrived too early for the salsa, so we waited around in, you guessed it, one of Pio Nono´s dives. For that hour, I remembered exactly why it was that I chose not to go to one of Stanford´s abroad campuses. We stood around on the sidewalk like a bunch of gringo freshmen, all too dumb to know where to go and sticking together like a gaggle. The pressure to conform to the group was really strong, and I could see how easy it woudl be to spend the entire quarter surrounded by none other than Stanford students. Sure, they're still abroad, but sometimes you just have to cut the cord.

Fortunately this awkwardness didn't last too long and we went into the salsa place and it was fantastic. Live music played by a 10-piece band, and songs that everyone in the place seemed to know the words to except us; it was great. We danced as gringos do, but still had fun, and eventually I parted with the Stanford kids and headed to bed.

(It's late, and I'm tired. I'll write about the last, and most exciting, day in Santiago tomorrow or whenever I get the chance.)