Yup, you can all (all six of you) heave a great sigh of relief. This’ll be a fairly short one. After a couple of months of fairly frenetic travel, one epically long intercontinental flight, and a wacky week of jet lag, we did almost nothing during our 10 days in Santiago. And we have almost no photos to prove it.
Riddle me this….We landed in Santiago before we left Auckland. Ha! True story! We kept joking, “goodbye tomorrow, see you yesterday” and that’s precisely what happened. Cue messed up sleep patterns for the next five days. We tiredly hunkered down in a snug little Airbnb in Santiago’s “centro historico” in the artsy/boho-chic Lastarria neighbourhood.
Waiting for the landlord, Airbnb’s single greatest downside. Lucy’s actually asleep on the sidewalk
Basically, we slept, ate, did schoolwork, celebrated Lucy’s 8th birthday and visited a few Santiago ‘must-sees” and then slept and ate some more.
We landed the day after a fairly big earthquake – 7.1 on the Richter scale. For our first few days there were regular aftershocks, all stronger than anything I’ve ever felt in Vancouver. It was a little unnerving to feel the building sway and rattle, but the kids loved it. And the Chileans carried on, completely unfazed. Turns out that Chile averages an earthquake every second day. All year long. Year after year.
On our second day, we did a great free walking tour of Santiago and got our first taste of South America’s ‘gringo trail’. We learned a bit about the Allende years and Pinochet’s devastating coup in 1973. We checked out street art and replenished some basics like socks and toothbrushes. We found out the hard way that you don’t flush toilet paper down toilets in South America. We explored our neighbourhood, found the best coffee place, the laundromat, and the lined-up-out-the-door waffle joint. We went to see Guardians of the Galaxy 2 (in English!) and ate sushi at a huge, modern mall in the fancy-schmancy El Golf neighbourhood. And, of course, we sampled almost all the ice cream flavours at ‘Emporio La Rosa’. Turns out that Chileans are c-c-c-crazy about ice cream. And they do it well. And often.
We learned that, in fact, the whole world does not speak English. We struggled mightily to make ourselves understood at every turn, often embarrassing the kids with our (charmingly?) imbecilic pantomimes. In fact, I so completely bungled our order for ‘completos’ without mayonnaise (the Chilean version of a hot dog), that the lady behind the counter gave me a funny look and passed me three hot dog buns slathered in mayo with no actual hot dogs. Fail.
We explored the Plaza de Armas, Santiago’s main square, and loved watching the street performers, artists and musicians. We ate more ice cream. We ventured up the San Cristobal funicular and marvelled at Santiago’s sheer size – stretching from the foothills of the Andes to the Pacific Ocean and as far as the eye can see.
We ate ceviche and fell in love with Chile’s national drink – the pisco sour. We very nearly coughed up muchos pesos to go see Sting in concert, but then reason (and dwindling bank account) prevailed. As it turns out, Sting is a huge fan of this country. Fun fact: two of his songs, Valparaiso and They Dance Alone, were written for Chile’s people.
Trump caricature, anyone?
waffle sandwiches – yum
always with the dirty feet….
Santa Lucia – just another inner city park
And then, Lucy turned eight. After Tom’s Hobbiton birthday extravaganza, she thought long and hard about what to do for her special day. She finally narrowed it down and presented us with two requests – bowling and an ant farm. The ant farm will have to wait. Like, forever.
We managed to find a bowling alley and spent a pretty fun afternoon knocking down a few pins. In truth, we must have looked pretty pathetic because we were soon approached by a man who (gasp!) spoke English and introduced himself as Jim. Turns out that Jim is an international bowling coach, originally from Seattle. He’s travelled the world for over 20 years and lived in 14 countries coaching bowling. Hrmphh…now there’s a job my career counsellor failed to mention.
Jim gave us a few pointers and doled out stickers and badges to the kids. Maybe he was being kind (having watched our endless gutter balls), but he also pointed out that Chile has difficulty maintaining level bowling lanes due to the many earthquakes. “This country dances”, he said by way of explanation. And sure enough, when we looked closely, we could see the warp across the lanes. All in all, it was a fun afternoon. A little odd, for sure. But good odd.
Santiago surprised us. It gave us a chance to slow down, catch up and breathe. It felt very Euro-chic, clean and friendly, hip and cultured, historically rich and architecturally beautiful. But what really won us over were the dogs.
There are almost a million street dogs in Santiago, lovingly referred to as ‘quiltros’. I believe that Lucy managed to befriend them all. They’re cared for, played with, fed and sheltered. Everywhere you turn, there are little dog houses and bowls of food and water. The parks are bursting with chilled out, lounging quiltros, the littlest ones often sporting nifty sweaters. All were happy to have their tummies rubbed and their ears scratched. Before too long, they became part of the landscape of daily life. They’re incredibly friendly, gentle and clean. And if that’s not a sign of an evolved society, I don’t know what is.
After 10 days, relaxed, clean and ready for action, we were once again off to the airport bound for the northern town of Calama. Thanks, Santiago. You were the pause button that we didn’t know we needed. And the reason our pants don’t fit. We’ll miss you and your beautiful, gentle quiltros.