South America Day 3: Constitution Square, Personal History

November 21, 2009

On the way to our next stop we drove past the National Library (or la Biblioteca Nacional de Chile, if you prefer):

(I had to photograph it out of professional loyalty).
Also la Bolsa de Comercio - the stock market:

I always like flatiron buildings. We soon arrived at Constitution Square,

home of the Presidential Palace.

We were informed that the Presidents just work there; if I understood correctly, they continue to live in their private homes rather than an official residence. The square is festive with flags

and civilized by the presence of mounted police

not to mention palace guards

and military personnel. The square was also home to a large and roving population of dogs!

Apparently this is common in South America - I have never in my life seen such a numerous and reasonably well-fed floating canine population. At home I would have been nervous, and I would have expected them to form packs, root through garbage, attack people for their sack lunches, and generally be a nuisance. Here, they just hang around, relax,

stretch,

and solicit occasional pats from the military:

They are obviously a regular and accepted part of the surroundings; they seem to know they are tolerated. I gave this fellow

a pat because he was just so sweet. Also he reminds me of Buster (I miss him!)
Facing the palace, the square features several large bronze(?) statues in dramatic postures:



Presidents Allende (a Socialist) and Frei (a far more conservative Christian Democrat) are represented. No Pinochet, though.

Patricia told us that political divisions still run very deep in Chile. Many families are divided on political lines and are torn apart. Among her own uncles and aunts she has one set who were prominent Socialists under Allende and another uncle who was a high ranking officer under Pinochet.

During the Pinochet coup d'etat (when Patricia was about eleven years old) many families denounced their socialist members, who were then disappeared. Patricia's Army uncle sent tanks to the Socialist uncle's house: but not to arrest them; to protect them. Family above ideology. It was quite emotional for her to talk about; she started to tear up. I was so glad she told us this story - it made that part of history personal for me in a new way.

South America Day 3: The Streets of Santiago

November 21, 2009

Today was our City Tour, in the Blue Bus (we were Blues in Egypt too; I wonder if this is mere coincidence...) Our guide is Patricia:

That's pronounced Pa-TREE-see-ah, which I think is pretty. She chatted with us as we drove through Santiago's modern residential district on our way to our first stop. Along the drive, we passed by this street:

I was a bit surprised that Chile would name a street in memory of the September 11 terrorist attacks; Patricia explained that actually Chile has a prior claim on that date. Turns out September 11, 1973 was the date General Pinochet overthrew President Allende and took over the government. About which, more later.

Things I learned along the way:

1. There is a presidential election in Chile in a couple of weeks - December 13, to be exact. Chile has a freewheeling attitude toward election posters:


The posters were just everywhere. In contrast to our stereotyped red, white and blue, Chile feels free to use the entire spectrum:

2. Chilean drugstores

can and will sell you a lot of things that we in America can get by prescription only. Almost anything but narcotics and opiates. Patricia says that Chileans are all hypochondriacs.

3. It is not "earthquake season" here right now. Chile is a very geologically active country, due to the Nazca Plate's ongoing conflict with the South American Plate. (Just remember what my geology professor always told us: Subduction leads to orogeny!) However, according to Patricia, there's kind of a cycle of years when earthquakes are more common and years when they're less common. Right this minute is a "less common" time. This, we think, is good news!

South America Day 3: Lapis Lazuli (Long?)

November 21, 2010; ~9:30 AM

Our first stop was (*sigh*) a Unique Shopping Opportunity.

At least this one was fun though. Faba specializes in lapis lazuli - not just jewelry but also inlaid statuary and objets d'art.

For those who are not gemstone-savvy, lapis is a lovely deep blue colored stone - ground lapis lazuli was the basis for the wildly expensive "ultramarine blue" pigment used to paint Mary's mantle in medieval Christian art:

It was wildly expensive because 1) it had to be imported from a distant (and hostile) source overseas (ultramarine literally means beyond the sea), 2) it took a lot of processing, and 3) it resists fading very well. In some medieval paintings Mary's blue mantle is the only thing that still has color! (I knew this part from my medieval hobbyist days.)

Apparently Chile and Afghanistan are the two main sources of lapis lazuli. The main difference is that Afghani lapis often has veins of gold pyrite running through it while Chilean lapis has veins of white calcite instead. You can see them here:

(click for bigger.) I had fun browsing, although the Chilean-peso-to-dollar exchange rate (500 pesos to the dollar) made the prices look even more outrageous than they probably were. I was also grateful that the store had a water dispenser since they weren't selling bottled water on the bus as we have gotten accustomed to. I became a two-fisted drinker:

Some of our bus-mates wandered off to a clothing store nearby

but they had to content themselves with window-shopping: in Chile, nothing really opens before 10 or 11 AM, especially on a Saturday. Faba opened early, just for us!

South America Day 2: In Which Nothing Much Happens Either

November 20, 2010

It was pretty cool watching the plane try to find a flat place to land in Santiago. If your South American geography is as shaky as mine was, check out this relief map (Thanks, Wikimedia Commons). Chile's the long skinny one down the left hand side, and Santiago is tucked in a nice valley between the coastal range and the Andes (the high mountains on the right). What that means is that the pilot needed a certain precision and...panache...to get us landed properly.

Inside the airport, we stood in line for a long time waiting to pay our $130 Reciprocity Fee. Apparently we charge Chileans $130 to get a visa for the US, so they charge us the same amount to enter their country. Then we went through Customs, where I had to declare a Snickers bar as an "agricultural product". (I could sort of understand this, since there are actual peanuts in there. If it had been a Twinkie, I think I'd have felt I was perjuring myself.)

Outside the airport, we caught a glimpse of the Andes

on our way to the bus that took us to our hotel, where we were held captive in a ballroom without luggage or a meal for the next six hours as our room keys trickled in at glacial speeds. We gradually figured out what happened:

The Santiago Airport had apparently been victim of a wildcat air traffic controller strike that morning. I guess I feel grateful they came out to land our plane! Of course, this meant that no flights were leaving Santiago this morning; therefore, none of last night's guests were willing to leave their comfy hotel rooms until the last possible second; therefore Housekeeping couldn't get into the rooms until after noon; therefore, we couldn't check into our rooms for a much needed NAP until - well, it ended up being around 2 PM.

To his credit, Eduardo (our GCT Program Director) arranged for coffee, tea, juice, and some little trays of cookies to give our caffeine levels and blood sugar a boost and stave off actual physical violence. Dad just zoned out, and I had my book and my knitting so I was OK. I also wandered the ballroom and located a couple of other knitters with whom I exchanged shop talk.

Part of the problem, as well, is that this group is just enormous. I thought Egypt was bad with four buses worth of vacationers, and China was great at just one bus-worth. But this is the first time in years that Grand Circle has done ocean cruises, and I guess they just kept selling tickets as long as people kept buying them. There are about 200 in this group, and there's just Eduardo with a couple of assistants on the other end. This was not his favorite day, I think - he got chewed out a lot.

When we got our room at 2, I fell unconscious on the bed. Poor Dad was stuck awake waiting for our luggage that had the alarm clock in it, since he was afraid if he fell asleep we'd miss the briefing and Orientation Walk at 4:30. Note to self: next time, the alarm clock goes in the carry on bags!

Dad skipped the Orientation Walk, but I went on it and made mental notes while Piedad, our guide, showed us useful locations nearby: a currency exchange (actually in the same building as the hotel, couldn't be more convenient), an ATM, a little grocery store that sells bottled water for cheap, a good sandwich shop, the subway. Our hotel (the Crowne Plaza Santiago) is in a great location.

Right after this we boarded a fleet of buses, crossed over the Mapucho River

and drove to a restaurant halfway up San Cristobal Hill, a huge hill overlooking Santiago. (There's a 22-meter-tall statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary on top of this hill, which just tickles my little Catholic soul. You can see it from all over the city. View gorgeous photo panoramas here!) We ate a tasty meal of salmon, I think, pâté, curried soup, and a millefiore cake of phyllo dough layered with orange syrup (yum - but oh so sweet! Apparently South Americans have an even worse sweet tooth that we do.) While we ate, we were serenaded by a mariachi duo:


After dinner, we were given some time to wander around the hilltop admiring the local flora


and the view over the city.

I also got in trouble wandering too high on the hill; a staff member shooed me down, saying "No es seguro!" I actually understood he was saying it wasn't safe.

We went over to the grocery store after they brought us back to the hotel, to pick up bottled water. It's Friday night, and guys were in the store buying baskets full of wine and other booze; it seemed pretty cheap if I understood the currency conversion. Dad and I didn't need alcohol to fall right asleep, though!

South America Day 1: In Which Nothing Much Happens

November 19, 1009

This trip is starting slow, eh? And today is starting even slower, since we don't fly out till 8 PM!

Dad let me sleep to a miraculous 8:45 AM, and then greeted me with the news that Atlanta's air traffic computers died early this morning. I sometimes give Dad a hard time about the whole "fly down a day early" thing, but he really deserves the credit this time: it's a darn good thing he didn't listen to me and book a flight from Ohio this morning. It would be nerve racking at best and disastrous at worst. Dad's such a sweetheart, he only rubbed it in a little bit.

Even looking out the window of an airport hotel, Miami has a certain appeal to this Ohio girl:

It's a glorious day, sunny and warm, and we have the whole day to kill before going to the airport for our evening flight. If my head cold and sore throat wasn't kicking into high gear, I'd have begged Dad to check our luggage and take me to the beach. As it was, after we had to surrender the room at noon, we just camped out in the lobby like upscale homeless people. The hotel had a business center with Internet computers, so we did a little last minute Christmas shopping on Amazon, lounged on the comfy sofa, napped, knit - started relaxing, in fact.

At 4 PM Dad got us on the airport shuttle and we breezed through security and landed smack in the food court where we ate dinner. At our gate we began making the acquaintance of our fellow Grand Circle travelers, identified by their name badges, GCT-logo-emblazoned carry-ons and jackets, etc. They seem like a nice interesting bunch of folks, though so far I am again the baby.

We're flying on LAN, a Chile-based airline I had never heard of before, and it was really nice. They've retrofitted all the seats with little entertainment screens on the back of the seat in front of you, with a wide selection of movies, TV shows and audio. Also a flight map, which kept Daddy happy! He kept it on almost all the way down. It was a little tight...

see more Lolcats and funny pictures

I watched Julie and Julia, then fell asleep for a couple of hours, only to have the flight crew wake us up for breakfast! Bad flight crew!

South America Day 0: On the Road Again

I'm finally going to start blogging up the South America trip from last fall. Following my earlier pattern I'll let the posts post on today's current date, but will put the date the events happened at the top of the post. Once a post's been up a month or so I'll move it back to its "native date". Have fun reading!

November 18, 2009; 7 AM

Dad and I are at it again: we're getting ready to board our plane. Not the plane to Santiago, oh no. This plane goes to Miami, where we will catch the plane to Santiago. About 28 hours later. That's right - we're going down a day early. Dad always prefers this, especially in a season (like NOVEMBER in OHIO) where there are potential weather delays. Better to take an extra day off work than risk missing the boat - literally!

As it turns out, the weather today is lovely - ridiculous, even. It was over 60 degrees out when my friend Christina picked us up for the trip to the airport (Thanks, Christina!) We were massively early for our flight so we breezed through Security without challenge and settled down in some conveniently placed chairs: right in front of the departure gate board and about five yards from the pastry/coffee shop. Our gate wasn't posted yet, but I figured no problem - they had hours, right?

Two hours of knitting (me) and newspaper reading (Dad) later, there still was no gate posted for our flight. Getting a little nervous - we should be boarding soon! - I did a walkaround and found our mystery gate, which by this time was staffed - by the same dude who'd checked in our baggage earlier. I guess he wears lots of hats. If he's the pilot, I'm getting off! I rescued Dad and the rest of our co-passengers who were milling around the departures board.

One of our fellow passengers is traveling with four little peach-faced lovebirds. She has them in a homemade carrier that looks like a two-story clear acrylic shoebox. It was rather entertaining watching them go through Security.

Once they decided to tell us where our gate was, our travel to Miami via Atlanta was uneventful, if dull. I got a chance to do my half-hour walk in the Atlanta concourse, which is a ridiculous half-mile long. I only needed two circuits to fill my time. Ominously, I'm beginning to notice cold symptoms - this is a bad sign, but I will try to nuke them with Cold-Eez.

Unable to resist, again!

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