Santiago, Chile - Culture Shock and Music in the Streets

Santiago, Chile - Our LAN flight from Lima, Peru, touched down at Aeropuerto Arturo Merino Benítez, outside of Santiago de Chile, at approximately 1 AM this morning.  It was perhaps one of the smoothest landings I've ever had flying, which was a precursor to the efficiency by which we paid our reciprocity fee ($131 each to enter the country and receive a tourist visa good for the lifetime of our passports), had our passports checked by immigration (where Karla, who was born in Ecuador - which is stated on her passport - was briefly hassled for not knowing any Spanish), and passed through customs (I thought they might confiscate my tea and garlic salt, since they have strict agricultural protections, but they were looking for fresh vegetables, cheese, and meats).   All in all, it took only a half hour between disembarking the plane and finding ourselves in a taxi en route to our hotel, Hotel Vegas in the barrio Paris-Londres just south of the city center.

After sleeping in late, we explored the downtown area, and immediately were struck with a sort of culture shock.  Santiago, Chile, is nothing like any of the cities we've hitherto visited in Ecuador and Peru.  Nothing at all.  No incessant car honking and alarms going off, no trash riddle streets, very little graffiti and even less in the way of wild dogs, and a lot more colonial architecture, just to begin.  In fact, it feels more like being in Europe than in South America.  If I didn't know better, the language being a dead giveaway, I'd think we were possibly in a strange part of Paris, or New York City.  It was a strange change, having just flown in from Peru, and even more, having spent most of the last two weeks in rural settings.

We walked the streets, visited a small clothing boutique (where Karla picked up a really cute skirt and I bought an awesome high-end t-shirt), wandered through one of the parks that lines the northern end of the city center, and then headed south.  We found ourselves at the Plaza de Armas (the central square) where a group of musicians and dancers where performing.  It appeared to be some sort of traditional dances, although we couldn't be certain, and we were handed a news flier being distributed by the performers.  This at 2 PM on a Tuesday.  Our culture shock began to subside, overtaken by the magical wonder of this city.

We realized we were getting hungry, and set off to the find lunch.  After a couple of abortive attempts to find restaurants listed in our guidebook, we stumbled across The Clinic Bar, and went inside.  To be precise, we actually went to their back patio and bar.  Karla ended up ordering the menu del dia, which consisted of a tasty tomato soup, main course of stuffed chicken with couscous, and a desert of chocolate flan, and I order raviolis aji de gallo, which is to say raviolis stuffed with shredded cock male chicken in a cream sauce spiced with the aji pepper.  It was quite delicious, and the ambiance of the place was great too - a water fountain, a little altar with the Virgin Mary and some animals, a statue missing a head covered in melted wax from candles that must have been lit at night, and a laid back people-watching experience.  Our bill, however, came to 10,900 Chilean pesos.

A word about money in Chile.  The official monetary unit is the Chilean peso (CLP).  I'm not entirely sure of the history of the peso here - was there some kind of hyper-inflation at some point? - but a single Chilean peso is, well, pretty much worthless.  The cheapest items cost hundreds of pesos.  In fact, $1 US buys you about 533 CLP, so that means 1 CLP is worth roughly 19/100 of a US penny.  But, as I was saying, the goods and services cost in the hundreds to thousands of pesos.  Our lunch - 10,900 CLP - which is $20.45.  So we're carrying around 100 peso coins and 1, 2, 5, and 10 thousand peso notes.  The numbers are so large, but they aren't worth much, so it throws the mind for a loop when trying to understand the value of things compared to US prices.  It seems to me that the Chilean peso needs to undergo a 100 to 1 reverse "stock" split, so to speak, to bring the values back in line with any sense of reality.  Or they just need to drop three zeros and call them MEGA-pesos.  I guess everyone who lives here is used to it, though.

At any rate, after our late lunch, we wandered a block away and discovered The Clinic Bar store, which, oddly, sold items very similar to our own Atomic Books back in Baltimore.  That is to say, it sold kitchy hipster merchandise, such as custom labeled The Clinic Bar lighters and cocktail stir rods, along with an odd assortment of books, magazines, zines, movies, and clothing.  Nothing stood out as a rare find, so we exited the establishment and made our way to Cerro Santa Lucia, a big hill that was originally a giant rock sticking up in the city but was since terraformed in the late 1800s, dirt being added, trees and flowers being planted, and two buildings being constructed upon it, one a fortress on the very top.  Now the place is a beautiful public park with various types of gardens and the two historic structures to walk around and through, although  parts of the fort and some of the paths were closed due to damage, presumably from the earthquake earlier this year.  It was a beautiful place to explore as the sun sank lower on the horizon, wandering among the trees with their leaves changing to autumn hues, and the chill of the evening starting to seep in.

Now we are back our hotel again.  I'm typing on the second floor landing, where I'm able to get WiFi reception, and Karla is resting up.  Earlier a band of six musicians, faces covered in that white paint that usually is reserved for mimes, marched by below us in the streets playing music on pipes and drums.  We hung out the window and Karla tossed down a 100 CLP coin to thank them.  Tonight we plan to visit some of the incredible bars and clubs, hoping to catch some live music or find a chill spot for a cocktail, or otherwise discover some incredible nook in this rich and diverse city.