Back on the road we hitched on down to Santiago and bought our little electronic Bip card for the transport system. This is the same as Oyster cards in London except without the option of just paying cash for the buses, which can leave you kind of stuck in large parts of the city not covered by the Metro trains. Anyway, we met up with our lovely CS hosts and asked them how on earth they managed to stay vegan in the Southern Cone, where nearly all bread you buy in the supermarkert contains lard (for reasons we're unsure of since bread doesn't really need bulking).
In exploring the city itself we wandered up the eccentricly developed Cerro Santa Lucia near the heart of the city, visited and recommended by Charles Darwin (which is more than can be said for Tierra del Fuego, but we find out for ourselves soon enough).
It is a very pretty knoll, covered in turrets and towers of half a dozen architectures with views as good as Santiago´s smog-bound horizon will let you see.
We generally took it very easy in the city. Autumn had appeared out of a cloudless desert sky and J was thrilled to get the foggy mornings, red and gold trees and grape-vines, visible breath and roasted nuts the season demanded (and that we had missed this year what with being in Mexico). Leaving aside the usual city things we saw, Santiago had the fattest street dog we had yet seen.
There, you won´t see that in the guides to Chile but equally you won´t see that fat a street dog elsewhere. He seemed very content. We´ve been having a problem with street dogs recently where they seem to identify us as their own, to the extent that a pack of 6-7 followed us for several kilometres out of town recently. We don´t know what the secret signal Chilean people give them so that they ignore them is and we showered recently and everything. It is a mystery.
We also visited the Museum of Human Rights, built in memory of the coup of September 11th 1973 and subsequent dictatorship. (incidently, this is the reason Chileans might be a tad unsympathetic to any Americans who expect global sympathy for their "9/11" given the massive effort America put into putting Pinochet in power). Despite the ridiculous building it is housed in we really enjoyed the museum, as much as you can given the topic. However we felt that by beginning at 6am on Spetember 11th, they had kind of avoided any looking at where the coup came from, or the actions of the Allende government in the preceding years. Also by focusing on an individual "baddy" like Pinochet, all complicated questions about the support from mining compnaies and large landowners or the international support of Reagan in America and Thatcher in Britain, could be ignored. And of course, the indiginous Mapuche didn´t get even a mention as far as we could see, let alone mentioning the post-Pinochet government never gave them the land he took back. But it was free and we would recommend it if you can read Spanish.
The fact that it was in Spanish was interesting as we felt it was a sign that museums were more focused on national visitors than international ones, the mark of a richer nation maybe. Despite much of the music in bus stations and on radios being in english, almost no one speaks english and much of the tourist info we have seen is in Spanish. We think it maybe explains why Chile is less of a tourist hole than Costa Rica or Bolivia (we can´t speak for San Pedro de Atacama of course), but it has made us really glad for the Spanish we have learned as we would otherwise be extremely limited travelling here.
Despite really enjoying eating and cooking vegan with our hosts, we also really enjoyed visiting the fish market in Santiago, we you can see all the fresh seafood brought in each morning and then eat it at the many restaurants. We splashed out on probably the most expensive meal we have bought on the trip (USD $25 for us both) and J had raw sea-bass, mussels, sea urchin and misc. marinaded in lime juice (which "cooks" it by oxidation) and C had red conger eel grilled with lots of garlic. There was also two glasses each of pisco sour and seemingly limitless bread rolls shaped like fish. It was a real change from our norm and a great meal, since despite being from a fishing port (Aberdeen), seafood other than fish and chips is nearly non-existant (except for silly amounts of money). Though we are looking forward to people buying us chippers (or chippies as the English say) when we return. Just saying.
Moving south of the capital, we hit something of a hitching snag, waiting for about five hours outside of Chillán. While we've faced long waits before, the disturbing thing is the blank look on people's faces as they drove past us, which is normal for the UK but very unlike the rest of Chile so far. The foggy chill makes waits more of a challenge than they were in Panama or even Canadian summer time as well. But we escaped the Chillán trap and have got off the Route 5 again to Villarrica, on the imaginatively named Lago Villarrica with amazing views of the Villarrica volcano. Our rides were even nice enough to stop and show us the Salto de Lajas waterfall along the way.
It's no no as impressive as where part of J's family is currently exploring (look here for more info on a very exciting trip for some lovely ladies), but it was very pretty and the kind of little thing we sadly often skim by, since we lack control of our own vehicle. Though we in no way miss road tolls, taxes, petrol prices or even the idea of taking one vehicle through many countries. We'll stick by our thumbs thanks.
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