Some Santiagan satisfaction

After finally recovering from my bout of food poisoning, we ventured out of the suburbs of Santiago and up through the drastically arid bush to the national park. Here we were able to see the Santiagans relaxing and socialising in typical South American fashion – as always, every day and night is a party.

Avoiding two wild horses careering through the park we went to relax beside the stream. There were numerous Chilean families parked up beside it with barbeques and cooler boxes, blasting English rock music. Apparently this afternoon piss-up was an after-party of a wedding the night before. As is customary, every person we met greeted us with an affectionate kiss on the cheek and a handshake.

We also wandered through the quiet streets of Bellavista, home of the late Chilean poet Neruda. Despite not appearing on any Chillian banknotes on account of his radical communist views, he is on posters and pictures all over Santiago. He often wrote of love and desperation, highly appealing to his audience – Chileans love ‘love’, and everywhere you walk you will see couples intertwined.

The next day we were taken to Valparaiso, a place young Chileans love, a city of huge French inspired chateaus, grand naval buildings, big statues and the centre of the Chilean judicial system. Bohemian heaven is just a stone’s throw through some windy passageways. An unstable wooden elevator took us up to a cobbled street with brightly painted tin houses and carved balconies overlooking the beach and the sea. We wandered down the streets, lost in the broken myriad of rainbow colours.

From our Chilean friends we found out about the strong Chilean admiration for fighting for what you believe in, through tales of their national figurehead Arturo Prat. He was a naval officer who died rather than let his Chilean ship surrender to its enemies and now is lauded everywhere as the inspiration for such phrases as “never give up”. His statue stands proud in Valparaiso’s grandest plaza.

Our last day was spent in the sprawling metropolitan city centre of Santiago. As you move out from the skyscrapers and rows of little houses, you eventually reach hills with the most incredible views. The heart of the city is in the Plaza D´Armis, modern glass buildings reflecting the archaic imposing monuments and luscious old buildings (even if one does just house a rather peculiar event of a table tennis competition for elderly men).

You are constantly surrounded by noise and people, whether it be nut sellers, dried wheat and peach juice vendors, or protestors being scrambled into police vans. The men in our group yearned to be taken to the infamous ‘coffee with legs’ cafés, where customers are treated to coffee served by beautiful women bearing endlessly long legs. In some Santiagan versions of this shop, the managers pick a ‘happy minute’ where music blasts, shutters roll down, and waitresses climb onto tables and strip for the patrons. Then the minute ends, the shutters roll up and business continues as usual.

Rather than joining the crowd at the ‘café with legs,’ we joined the crowds outside the grand palace of the President, where schoolchildren running amok were singing and chanting “Chi Chi Chi-le!”, as TV cameras tried to capture the image. In the centre of all this was a large white capsule with the Chilean flag upon it. The red stands for the blood of the people, blue for the clear (ish – Santiago has a lot of smog) skies, white for the snow-peaked mountains of the Andes, and the star for the hearts of the Chilean people.

At that moment, the hearts of the Chilean people were singing with joy for the release of the miners and the crowds were baying for sight of these heroes. The white capsule outside the presidential palace was the very one which had released the miners from the darkness down below the earth to the light of the Santiagan sun, and we were honoured to be able to see it.

The main lesson learnt here was to ‘do it the Chilean way’. Do what you believe in with all of your might and all of your heart, just like Arturo Prat. Do it like a prat.