Last Day!

The museums were closed on Monday, so this is it. I am bound to violate my travel rule on museums. El Museo de Historia opens at 10. I learn some of what I told you about Valdivia.

By 11am I am in the Precolumbian Art/History Museum. There is a lot of stuff there and I focus on the Chilean artifacts and take a lot of pictures. I will only bore you with one. Remember, I was an anthropology major.

This seems to be a theme of people in the Andes: this guy has an axe in one hand and a head in the other. Things have been rough down here for a long time.

I am out of this museum by 12 and head back to the fish market for another fix of seafood. I go to the same place where the lady restaurant monger greets me with a big smile and a kiss.

I buy the specialty of the house which has the entire ocean worth of species in it. It comes piping hot and is superbuena. I have learned the routine now...get it with a Pisco Sour.

I walk a few extra miles for some gift shopping I had logged in the memory banks on earlier treks, and then to the hotel to check out. But I still have two hours until I go to the airport and I finally figured out where the MAVI Visual Arts and Archeology Museum is: just around the corner! I hit that and then to the GAM Center for a Latin American Folk Art exhibit.

This was very cool and the best part was that all of it is on this link: http://www.mapa.uchile.cl/exposiciones/index.php

I get to the hotel with 30 minutes to spare and take the opportunity to climb to the top of Sta Lucia park. It's higher

than I thought, with many little parks and places to sit along the way. The free guide on Monday told us the hill used to be a pile of garbage and a graveyard, but as the Lastraria neighborhood became more well-to-do, the families decided to do something about the hill and sunk a pile of money into it,

building walkways, stairs and planting all sorts of non-native trees and shrubs. I get carded twice by the security as I go in, passport and all information written down.







This is the view from the top looking down toward my hotel.

And amongst the clouds, a bit of a view of some of the Andes to the east.

I am back at my hotel by 3:50 and the taxi is waiting for me. Time to begin about 20 hours of sitting on my butt in taxis, planes, airports and bathrooms. I go through emigration and get to the gate with two hours to spare. There is a bar there and hanging from the ceiling is this message from God:

What could I do but respond in humble obedience...

Graffiti and Notable ads

Get rid of the taco and put on your sneakers!
This ad on the back of a Santiago bus was similar to the set up I saw in Valparaiso about turning off the TV.

Reminds me of Keith Buzzell at home in Bridgton.
Then there was this billboard going after lost and discouraged souls in a big way.

Education may be expensive, but doctors don't seem to be... That's only $5.00!

And I'll leave you with this one: Free Chile!

Tour de Santiago...

I head to Plaza de Armas for a 10am rendezvous with a Free Tour. I just have to find the guy with the red "Free Tour" shirt on in front of the cathedral.

No problem. He works for tips, generally a fraction of the commercial tours. I like his style; his name is Franco. He starts off telling us about the founder of the city, Pedro de Valdivia,

who dared to venture through the Atacama Dessert to find more hospitable lands when the rest of the Spaniards were content to stay in Peru. There was a woman involved, who promised to join him when he got his act together...and she did. But then, based in this fertile valley, 200 years of fierce battles began with the many native tribes. The most vicious and persistent of these were the Mapuche.

These Spaniards were children of the Inquisition, and eventually Valdivia's wife convinced (badgered) him to let her get involved in the warfare. She instituted fear tactics, most notably lopping off the heads of prisoners and waving them around on sticks to give the enemy something to be afraid of. Valdivia captured a young Mapuche named Lautaro and raised him as his stable boy, educating him and teaching him to be a good Spanish soldier. After 5 years, Lautaro escaped to his people and eventually used the tactics he learned from Valdivia to lead his people against the Spaniards. Valdivia eventually lost his life in battle with forces lead by Lautaro!

We were shown La Moneda, the Presidential Palace and scene of the 1973 "Golpe de Estada". Salvadore Allende had been making some sweeping socialist changes that did not sit well with business or military interests, locally or globally. Aided by the CIA, Chile ended up with 18 years of repressive dictatorship under General Pinochet

La Moneda (it used to be the mint) was bombed and Allende shot himself in the process.

Allende had made moves toward providing free education and under Pinochet, education became expensive. Today there are many demonstrations pushing for reform of the system toward more accessible education.

Aside from major sites and politcal themes, the free tour pointed out other items of local interest and flavor. A recent successful business trend had been "Coffee with Legs" (Cafés where the servers wear really short and tight skirts). But now a new trend is taking over: Coffee shops with dark glass windows where the women serve only coffee in g-strings and you must be 18 to enter. Three times a day (but randomly) they take it all off for one minute.

Then there is Nuts4Nuts.

This chilean made millions selling nuts on street corners. But first he had to make it in NYC. After success there he brought the concept back to Chile and the warm, sweet nuts are on every corner.

Our tour skirted the hill and park of Sta Lucia, right next to my hotel and took a lunch break in the Lastraria neighborhood. I had eaten my two previous evening meals on this same street and the food was wonderful. At this cafe

I had my first Pisco Sour. Wow! I have been missing out! The guide says all chileans have at least one of these a day. The key ingredient is egg white. That's what makes them so smooth. Pisco is a sort of brandy, made from grapes, but has a bit of a taste of tequila. Here I break off of the tour because they are going to the Bella Vista district where I spent Saturday. I go to the GAM Cultural Center,

named for Gabriela Mistral, Chile's first Nobel Laureate poet. She is on the 5,000 peso bill and it is referred to as the "Gabriela". Most of the Center's exhibits are closed on Monday, but I note to come back, as they look interesting and it is close to my hotel.

Now I was off across town to the central markets. I buy a juice at my first stop.

Then it's off the the fish market...the real thing.

As I wander, I find on the perimeter of the market are some of the restaurants: all fish, and instead of fish mongers, there were restaurant mongers. I pick the Marisol Restaurant

and this item: Ceviche made from Sea Bass. It is really good, especially with the garlic spread on the bread

and a little salsa on top. Hmmm. There was more to this day, but it was mostly walking and more walking. It ended with dinner at a Peruvian restaurant where I violated one of my travel rules: Never eat in an empty restaurant. It worked out OK, I was just too tired to look any further and had a fish fillet (swordfish) with a seafood sauce (pretty much everything in the sea).

One day to go! Still lots to see.

La Sebastiana and Valparaiso

We cruise the waterfront to the Valparaiso side of the bay and go right to La Sebastiana, Pablo Neruda's Valpariaso house. He loved this place, the view of the ocean and the 45 hills that the colorful houses are built upon. He searched for a few years for the right place to buy and eventually it presented itself. Partially built by a Spanish architect/builder named Sebastian, and high up on the hill, it commands a great view of the houses, ships and the ocean.

Because it was unfinished, it was especially suited to Neruda, who love to tinker with building and designing. It was a process that never ended for him. A living space was to be lived in and, because life is always changing, evolving; so should the space in which it takes place. If you read my post on La Chascona (prerequisite to this post) you can understand that this house is shown more as it truly was, because it did not suffer the ransacking and looting of the Pinochet regime. The ship theme still was present, but not so much in the building itself as in the artifacts with which it was furnished: nautical maps, ship's sinks, maidenheads, ships models...

Other items: a carousel horse from Paris mounted on a round section of floor as if the whole room was spinning;

the ever-important bar; Neruda's favorite chair, "The Cloud", from which he claimed he could see a certain woman on a certain rooftop sunbathing in the nude on a regular basis (this just made his friends hang around longer to see if they could get a glimpse...and they never did); his writing room, above all of course.

Leaving La Sebastiana, I noticed several plaques on the neighboring house with quotes from Federico Garcia Lorca,

Spanish poet and friend of Neruda's in the early days of the Spanish Civil War (in which Lorca was executed).

From La Sebastiana, we rolled down the hill and eventually dismounted the bus to walk through the streets

and get a feel for the typical houseswith their brightly colored corrugated steel siding (now coming into vogue in the States),

graffiti

, and stray dogs of the city

(watch out for the many "memories" they leave in the streets and sidewalks) and then we take a "teleferico" down to the main square by the port.

Viña de Mar

I was so taken with Neruda's Santiago house that I looked into a tour bus, primarily to see another Neruda house. People said that you have to see Viña del Mar and Valparaiso, and that tour included a Neruda house. Cost: $70. Time: 1 day. They pick you up at your hotel and not included is lunch and the Neruda Museum entry fee.

On the bus I meet a Spaniard gentleman, Manuel, who is a professor of history at the University of Sevilla. We hang out and have lunch together.

His accent is much easier to understand than that of Carlos Barragan, my roommate in Portillo who lives in the north of Spain. I also get to try out some of my new Portuguese with three gals from Brazilia who are food inspectors for the Brazilian government. On the way we stop for a coffee break and the bus is unable to shut the rear door. We are delayed nearly an hour, but they finally figure it out.

Viña is quite elegant, with stately houses.

We visit the house and garden of the founder of the city, Jose Vergara.

The house is under repair from the 2010 earthquake. The gardens are beautiful and ornate.

We eat at a mediocre restaurant, but some musicians come in who play some great music and I buy 2 CDs from them and get their picture on the beach.

The view across the water to Valparaiso is pretty.

The homeless on the beach, not so much.

La Chascona/Museo de Pablo Neruda

I have to say that seeing two of the three houses of Pablo Neruda was definitely THE highlight of my time in Santiago. Neruda was a Nobel Prize winner for his poetry, the second in Chilean history. The first was Grabiela Mistral. Both are huge national figures, Mistral for her dedication to education and promotion of the arts in Chile, and Neruda for his simple eloquence; pride in not only Chilean, but South American heritage; and for his colorful lyfestyle and humor, all of which is evident when touring his houses. Neruda died in 1973, not long after the Coup d'Etat in which the socialist Allende was overthrown by Pinochet, who ruled with a ruthless dictatorship for the next 18 years. Of the Neruda houses, La Chascona, the one in Santiago, was ransacked the most at the time of the coup, because Neruda was considered part of the opposition. Neruda's widow (his third wife), Matilde, later formed the Neruda Foundation to protect the houses and share the rich literary and cultural past of her husband's life with the world. So tucked away in a quiet corner of this bohemian barrio, is a tastefully created monument to this literary giant who could say so much with just a few words.

Each of these pillars has a verse, final words of reflection and advice from a life well-lived.

She took many objects and books from the other two houses to restore La Chascona to something like its original state. It was named La Chascona (wild hair) after her wild and crazy red hair(see the iron-work design on the door),

although he bought and built the original part of this house to conceal a secret love affair which did not last more than two years. As with all his houses, the spaces were small, intimate and full of interesting objects from around the world, but many from the dump and flea markets. Paintings and other objects given as party gifts by Neruda's circle of artistic friends adorn the houses.

This painting of Matilde, a gift from Diego Rivera, depicts the two sides (public and private) of Neruda's wife. Creatively included in the wild and wavy red hair on the right side is Neruda's profile. La Chascona has a strong theme of ships and the ocean, perhaps because the house was no where near the water and he missed it so much when he was in Santiago that he recreated some of the sensations of life on a boat in this house. This house has three bars,

because he like to entertain so much. Neruda would preside behind the bar, often in costume. He did not drink so much, but wanted to make sure that people were having fun and that the conversation was lively. His dining room had a long ships table

with a window that overlooked a canal running right through the property with a wall behind it painted blue like the horizon seen out of a ship's porthole. He liked secret stairways and surprise entrances, where he could liven up the party with a change of costume! At the far end of the dining room is a cupboard, the right side of which conceals one such secret entryway. The bedroom is up a few levels and his writing area even higher, with great views for reflection...everything connected by small winding paths and stairways as well as objects from around the world and the dump.

Matilde, in making the museum, had the canal diverted and filled in to protect the house and its objects. As I left I noted the water running in the street through small channels in the tiles and pavers. It meant nothing to me before I went in, but made total sense as I departed.