Santiago is a city of contrasts. On the surface it presents as a sophisticated, modern city but at times the undercurrent of bedlam bubbles through. We spent a week in Santiago where we were joined by friends Jas and Chantal from Ottawa.

Santiago de Chile

Our guide screws up his face, waves his arms, contorts his body and generates remarkable sound effects to help make his points. He brings the bottle he’s casually holding up from his side and mimics pulling the cork out of the bottle, replete with the matching ‘thrrwwwp – pwap’ sound. He then produces a corkscrew and, with the cork successfully removed, our tour is officially underway.

We’re at Bodega Cousino Macul, a winery that 150 years ago was in the countryside but is now on the outskirts of the huge, sprawling city of Santiago de Chile. As we stand looking out at the vines, it’s easy to forget that the frenetic city traffic is just over the walls.

It’s just as well that Nicholas is effusive with his gestures, as the entire one hour tour is in Spanish and while we’re improving we are a long way from understanding the intricacies of malolactic fermentation explained in Latino. Luckily his theatrical style, accompanied by a never-ending supply of excellent wines, helps ensure we get the gist of what he’s describing.

Barbed Wire and Graffiti

The relaxed charm of the winery is in stark contrast to the reality just outside the gates. Despite the leafy outer suburbs and grand old buildings throughout the city, many buildings are covered in long curls of barbed wire and the whole downtown area is tattooed with large tags of graffiti in every reachable wall space. Buildings that in other cities you’d expect to be open as galleries or museums are boarded up and some are even burned out.

Just the day before we had been walking through the streets of downtown and across the main square, Plaza del Armes, where the city has a sense of calm with an uneasy tension bubbling just below the surface. Every day large numbers of heavily armed and armoured police and troops patrol the main downtown area; armed vehicles including several with water cannons stand at the ready on the main square. It’s almost as if they’re expecting something to erupt. We’ve also noticed people aren’t as immediately open and friendly as in Colombia.

 As we stand in the shade of a large tree during our walking tour of downtown, our guide, Carlos (sporting a bright ‘Where’s Wally’ t-shirt) does his best to explain what’s behind this feeling.

The divide that brought about the 1973 coup d’etat still exists and there are still a number of Pinochet supporters despite the obvious atrocities of his regime. The divide between rich and poor has continued to increase ever since Pinochet changed the constitution in 1980.

In 2019 the tension finally reached fever pitch and what was a small thing tipped people over the edge. When the government raised the price of the subway for the third time in a year, the young people of Santiago came out in protest. Unlike the older generation, still scarred and scared by 20 years of Pinochet-era military rule that ruthlessly suppressed rights and freedoms, the younger generation were not afraid to voice their opinions in opposition to the government.

When the police used force against what were primarily teenagers and children, the real protests began. In October 2019, an estimated 2.5 million people spilled onto the streets of Santiago in protest: more than half the population of Santiago, and 15% of all the people in Chile. (Al’s Uncle and Aunt were visiting Santiago at the time and tell of the boarded up streets and fear in the air).

To appease the population, the government agreed to revise the constitution which had been established by Pinochet in 1980. That was 2019. Three years later and they still don’t have a new constitution and things remain the same. Last year a draft was presented to the people, but it was rejected for failing to address the key issues they were facing. Carlos suggests that in his opinion this is what has lead to the current feelings of frustration and disillusionment.

You can’t help but feel for the people of Chile. A visit to the Human Rights Museum went some way to helping us understand what led to the military coup of 1973 and the horror of the Pinochet regime. The museum’s huge grey concrete facade that you then need to walk under to enter, sets a somber tone for the explanations inside. While there is some English, many of the displays are a little hard to follow if you don’t read Spanish so it takes some time to fully appreciate, but it’s worth the effort.

A few weeks later in Mendoza, a winemaker we were chatting with gives his perspective on the recent changes in Chile. He explained that he’s been visiting Chile for years on family holidays and it’s always been relaxed and welcoming, but on a recent visit felt very different. As if the people were ‘resentful’ and it felt less safe.

Obviously this is only the sense we had after just a week in the city, and it’s bound to be a lot more complex than we can hope to understand in this time.

The Centro Cultural Gabriela Mistralis (GAM) is a large arts centre in the city built by the socialist President Allende, who preceded the Pinochet era. It was built to host a UN conference in a mere 275 days by enlisting the help of thousands of Chilean volunteers. Following the 1973 coup it was repurposed by Pinochet for government ministry purposes, and then was nearly completely destroyed by fire in 2006. It was rebuilt with lots of glass to ‘let the light in and show there is nothing to hide’ as a symbol of change. Today it is a stunning modern complex, with plans to add a conference centre in the future.

Like in much of Latin America, graffiti serves as both art and strong political and cultural statements. Two murals at the entrance of the Belles Artes subway station were painted by famous muralist Mono Gonzalez in 2018. You can see three people hiding in the bushes, which is designed to symbolize how indigenous people feel in a society that doesn’t accept them.

The second mural reflects modern Chile, as a country of multiple religious beliefs.

Murals have been used since the 1960’s in Santiago when the communist party used them to spread messages to illiterate people in a time of very low literacy. When Allende was running for Presidency the murals were an important part of his campaign.

Fun on Two Wheels

The flat, wide streets of Santiago are perfect for cycling, and a huge network of cycle lanes criss cross the city. Unlike some cities we’ve been to, the city bikes are easy to access and only a few dollars a month to use.

One cycling adventure took us about 10km along the tree-lined cycle paths and the all-but-dried up Rio Mapocho to the very high class neighbourhood of Vitacura where our goal was the Ralli Museum. It’s worth the trip just to get out of downtown and see the leafy suburbs. The Ralli is a private gallery created by a wealthy Israeli banker whose ongoing legacy is to promote Latin American Art.

Like a Local

As luck would have it, the Summer Festival of Providencia was on during our stay so we caught two outdoor events: a jazz show in a local park and a flamenco show in the plaza of a colonial home / palace.

In the Hills

“Let’s not walk back down via the road – let’s take the walking trail’, suggested Jas. We were on top of Cerro Christo just minutes from our apartment and where you can see the city stretch as far as the horizon, punctuated only here and there by hills of low scrub. The hill is a large park with botanical gardens, cycle paths and sports fields.

Jas’s suggestion sounded like a fun plan, and Chantal wasn’t there to provide a voice of reason, so we hopped the wall and took off down what looked like the trail. But then the further we slipped and mis-stepped our way down the dusty path, and the longer we spent in the full sun of the midday 37 degree heat with multiple trails leading in different directions, we started to wonder about the wisdom of the decision. We joked, only partly in jest, about news headlines describing foolish tourists found dehydrated in the hills just minutes from the city. The type of things where Australians would shake their heads at dumb tourists not taking water when walking in the heat of the day. Not to worry, we were never out of sight of the city so not in any real danger other than feeling foolish. We emerged an hour later, parched but with a sense of having done something few other people would have done (probably sensibly).

Mapuche

We were quite familiar with Chile’s flag. Red, white and blue, but what we didn’t’ realise was the significance of the white star. The indigenous people of what is now Chile, the Mapuche, survive to this day having never been conquered by the Incas or the Spanish. In fact, they played an important part in the independence of Chile. As a result they are honoured in Chile’s flag – a blue flag with a white star is their flag.

They are also part of the reason Chilean Spanish can be so hard to understand. Many words in ‘Chileno’ are in fact from the Mapuche language. Back on our walking tour, our Where’s Wally-lookalike Carlos was very pleased to tell us about one of his favourite such words: pololo.

In Spanish there is usually no word for boyfriend as Latinos use the word novio. In Chile they use pololo. This is actually related to the word for the giant bumble bee and is used to mean a lover that is acting particularly annoyingly like a fly buzzing around. Carlos waves his hands around and laughs as he tells us this.

He also explains to us that the Precolombian Museum of Art , while a great place to learn more about the ancient people from whom the Mapuche are descended, only has a small part of its full exhibition open and is unlikely to reopen anytime soon. It’s one of the only museums in the city that is not free and not funded by the government. They don’t have the funding to undertake the required renovations to protect the museum’s artefacts. What is on display is interesting and gives us a small window into the many thousands of years of history of the indigenous people in this area.

Other Things to Do In or Near Santiago

During our week or so in Santiago, we took a day trip to the coast, to visit the seaside towns of Valparaiso and Vina Del Mar.

And, following Santiago we will be taking a bus from Santiago across the Andes and through the famed ’29 curves’ on our way to Argentina and Mendoza!

Santiago In a Nutshell

Phone cards: You can buy a SIM card in Chile from Entel for 1,699 pesos for 7 days and 1GB. It’s a special tourist SIM that is as easy to get as turning up to an Entel shop and asking for the card. Pop it in and then call the number in the text message you immediately receive. No need to understand the voice message, they are just activating the card. Once it hangs up, you’re good to go. This can then easily be topped up, or upgraded to include voice calls, by clicking the links Entel sends by text message.

CIty bikes are easy to use and a great way to get around. There’s lots of bike paths, traffic is very aware of cyclists and while helmets are required we found the police are not interested in pulling you over for not wearing one. The city bikes are very easy to rent. Download the Bike Itau app and follow the prompts. You can download the app and set up an account in advance of arriving in Chile quite easily, but can’t buy the actual pass until you’re in Chile.

Where to Stay: We stayed in the Bella Vista area because it has lots of restaurants and bars. The only problem is that Chileans like to party late and loud. It was so loud in our apartment until 4am every night that not even noise cancelling headphones drowned out the beats. The Italian area might be a better place to stay, unless of course you like to party until 4am every night.

If you’re flying into Santiago from the north, get a window seat on the left side for the plane for amazing views.

A Schop is the standard serve of beer, half a litre. Like seemingly everywhere in the world, there are plenty of Artesanal breweries around.