Lou and Chris's Travel Blog: Los Chilenos

Buenos de Chile. So far everything here has been pleasantly surprising, and Santiago was no exception. After managing to book into a nice hostal next to the Argentinian embassy, we settled into trying to interpret the local Spanish, primarily to get our hands on the best food possible. This involved several small errors and lots of Nescafe and Chips. The dictionary we have doesn´t seem to correspond to the local spanish.

Plaza de Armas, Santiago

Ignore the reasonable prices and friendliness, and Santiago could be Paris or Madrid. The metro seems to be better than anything in the UK and nightlife abounds (not so good after 10 hour time difference). Luis, a Chilean friend of Otso´s, invited us for lunch in the business quarter and I had a quick three courses for 2 quid. Digestion took place in the funicular and a cable car up onto the hills around town and we realised just how enormous Santiago is, sprawling outwards in a big valley.

Looking for quick trips away from Santiago before heading north, we went to the coast. Valparaíso is where the Chilean Navy is based and their HQ looks like a chateau dressed up as a wedding cake. It is an obviously colonial town. In fact, the area we´re staying in is the old Bristish quarter, and looks far more Bristish than most of even New Zealand and Australia. The local houses and church look like they´ve been transplanted from Bristol. There is also a lot of German influence here too, including a Lutheran Church. Looking around the town I realised how much the British helped to prize the Spanish out of Chile - Half the places around the town are named after Irish or Bristish independence heros. This might have had something to do with Chile´s mineral resources, rather than Bristish altruism. A relationship based on mutual backscrubbing still appears to exist - a look around the Navy museum found a letter from Margret Thatcher in pride of place, agreeing to help stop the Argentinians get hold of too many weapons. Speaking of the devil, also in a fairly proud postion was the edict declaring the reasons behind the 1973 military coup (Gen Pinochet et al.). I still think Chile is very divided over this, some being very proud of Salvador Allende and Pablo Neruda, who both died shortly afterwards, and others backing Pinochet. I saw a soldier using his spare time to peal socialist propaganda from a wall in town. Anyhow, this is only my first nieve impression of history in Chile.