Santiago
Trip Start
Jan 2003
1
141
200
Trip End
Dec 2003
Santiago,
Chile
Thursday, September 18, 2003
Given Chile´s strong catholic beliefs it wasn´t a surprise to see much of the city centre shut today (Sunday). We made our way to a local park named after an Irish bastard (in the literal rather than derogatory sense) - Bernardo O´Higgins (by all accounts quite a successful general) - and when we came out the tube station were pleasantly surprised to see a row of about thirty market stalls. On closer inspection however, it became clear that every single vendor was selling kites and string for kites only. Kite flying is evidently big business out here, so much so that 99% of the children in the park were occupied with their diamond shaped bits of tissue paper while the other 1%, the entrepreneurs, were charging to retrieve kites from trees with six metre long contraptions consisting of taped together wood.
The food in Chile has been mediocre with the emphasis on beef. For luch today we opted for a chilean ´speciality´meant for two. Costing a comparative fortune (GBP12) we expected something to remember. What we hadn´t imagined was a whole cow. The dish consisted of eight steaks from various parts of a cow, two beef sausages and two token pork steaks all draped over a pile of boiled potatoes. Now I like meat as much as the next man (or any non-South American man) but this was too much and I´m not looking forward to the inevitable colonic irrigation when I get home.
Day 234 - 235 - Santiago
With two more day´s tuition under our belts we can almost hold a conversation with locals. We are actually doing quite well, even if I do say so myself, and we´re certainly progressing much faster than the class idiot. one of the teachers spent about ten minutes discussing the musical influence and popularity of The Beatles in Chile before "Dumbass" asked, "How could a car have such a strong effect?". We alse revised what we had learned thus far and the tutor started by asking us all in turn what our names were (the first thing you learn). He ended with Dumbass who can manage a pathetic response of "I don´t understand".
We haven´t spent this long in one place since we left and the tedium of the same restaurants etc is setting in. It doesn´t help that we´ve run out of books to read and we´re willing the language course to be over so we can move on. Chilenas are supposedly the most difficult nationality to understand because they speak so quickly so not only will life be a little easier elsewhere but Chile is not cheap or particularly stimulating by South American standards. Exciting times lie ahead............
