I'm Told It's Striking

  Santiago, Chile
Thursday, February 8, 2007

After a long of day of travel, including an eight-hour layover in Mexico City and a two-hour delay while they fixed an engine part, Aeromexico got me to Santiago, Chile.  Of course, my cell phone charger and phone battery charger were missing from bag.  I guess I will take some fault for that because I tempted the bastard by placing them in an outside pocket of my checked luggage.  I have had to buy replacements with the stupid 2 round prong (like Europe) plug.

I am told that Santiago is incredibly striking, being surrounded by 14,000 foot peaks.  However, the smog is so bad that I could barely even sense them.  This is apparently standard too, unless it has rained, due to an inversion layer similar to Denver.  It can apparently get so bad that people donīt leave their homes.  So, to help me (and you) out, I found this picture on the Internet.  (Whoo hoo - Travelpod has added new tricks).  My pictures show the near mountains, but not the biggies.

Overall, I liked Santiago.  Maybe it was just the contrast from where Iīd been, but the subways were cheap, clean, frequent and pervasive.  The people were friendly and helpful, and seemed relatively prosperous (which I knew in advance, as Chile has the best and most stable government and economy in S. America) based upon clothing, stores, cars, etc.  And maybe most importantly, the public and quasi-public bathrooms were clean, had toilet seats, toilet paper, and no one charging me to use them.  Call it Colinīs Corollary - the amount of poverty in a country is inversely related by an almost 100% coefficient to the cleansliness of its bathrooms.  (And the amount of restaurants overcharging for tomatoes and onion salads).

That said, nothing terribly exciting occurred.  Arriving on Sunday, I spent a lot of the day catching up with stuff on the Internet, organizing my upcoming few weeks now that I could get good information on bus travel times, etc., and reserving some key things in advance.

For that reason, I stayed in a hostel for the first time in years.  Not bad.  They have apparently become a lot more common and much better than the barracks we stayed at in Europe in 1988 and 1991.  Most have a few private rooms now (I got a double, with a queen bed to myself for about $36 a night), free Internet, washers and dryers (no more days spent in the lavanderia trying to figure out which hole the bleach goes in), a lot of great travel information, and no curfew.  Also, you meet a lot of other backpackers who have a lot of great advice and information, and they arenīt all 22 anymore, although most are in their 20s.

I also tried to go shopping.  As previously noted, my Tevaīs gave up the ghost after 7.5 years of schlepping the world.  They already had loose front flaps and thay clayey mud got in there and opened them wider than Linday Lohan.  I tried to buy something similar, but everything here is leather with fabric soles, and I just canīt imagine those can be hosed down as well in a 2 star hotel shower when they start to stink.  Nonetheless, I tried to buy a pair at a large department store called Ripley, but AMEX nixed the charge due to high fraud from that store.  (I am having to have a new AMEX card sent to my next stop.)  But, in the end, they saved me $60.  Today, I was walking down the street and passed a hole-in-the-wall shoe repair shop.  Five minutes of shoe superglue for $1.75.  Feels pretty sturdy too, but only time will tell.  Unfortunately, I had to pay retail for the two chargers.

Sunday night, Super Bowl Sunday dammit, I want to be with some people who appreciate football, as opposed to futbol.  So I went to an area deprecated in my guidebook as being Americanized, found a restaurant/bar called Alabama, and found it deserted except for four American students and two Chileans.  The game was also only on in Spanish, and the commercials were local ones in Spanish.  Underwhelming, shall we say.  Plus, the game was so sloppy ("wait, I only took a leak, and missed two more turnovers?"), and the Bearsīoffense couldnīt have crawled out of a paper bag.

Monday, I hiked around the city, seeing both parks/hills that oversee the city (one is actually inside downtown), the downtown and some old neighborhoods.  The most amusing thing is the coffee shops downtown.  I forget the Spanish word, but it basically means "coffee with legs" - counters with girls in spandex short dresses serving Chilean business mean coffee with an ogle on the side.

I could have eaten cheap, but after where Iīd been, I wanted quality.  So, Monday night I went to a recommended seafood restaurant.  It had 16 types of fish by Chilean region (north, middle, south, etc.) since the country is 4000 kilometers long.  I settled on corvina (seabass) ceviche, followed by Mako shark in a razor clam saute.  Monday, again, was pretty dead.  I hadnīt expected much, though, since my guidebook confessed that Santiago was only a Thursday to Saturday town, nothing like Buenos Aires (allegedly, I shall see).  Still, I was in the bohemian area of town (Bellavista) and expected more given that there were lots of bars open, just empty.  Open and empty.  It also appeared that the local boho Santiagans preferred to share quart bottles of cheap Escudo with their friends in the late afternoon/early evening and call it a night.

On Tuesday, I toured Concha y Toro - the grandfather of Chilean wineries.  It would have been more interesting if I had got there in time for the English language tour, but I was too busy eating conger eel and who knows what else at the fish market, and had been misled about the amount of time it would take to reach the winery.  Doh!  Still, it was interesting, and I tried what some book said is the best example of Carmenere (a relative of Merlot thought not to exist anymore, but found in Chile) made.  Eh, but I often donīt like what other wine snobs think is best - I find that shit too earthy and vegetal.  The winery was cool, though.

Castillo del Diablo at Concha y Toro

Tuesday night, I went to Astrid y Gaston, allegedly one of (if not the) best restaurants in Santiago (and Lima).  The meal was phenomenal.  Think Masa or Aqua, but Bauer would only give it 3.5 stars because of the entrance, the service, or something else.  I had the 5 course tasting menu, plus wines, and it came to around $60 including tip, less than half what similar runs me in San Francisco.  My appetizer:

Appetizer at Astrid y Gaston´s

And, surprise, Tuesday night was dead.

Next, I am to Valparaiso, Chile.