February 1st - 3rd
Flying from New Zealand to Chile must bring about one of the
biggest time differences you can experience. It meant that we had to
put our watches back 16 hours, that when I eventually went to bed in
Santiago I´d been up 33 hours (partly my own fault though as I went out to see a friend on the same night we arrived) and that our February 1st was 40
hours long.
A different time zone wasn't, of course, the only thing we had to
adjust to. Not so chilly Chile presented us with warmer weather, a
change of language, another currency, an abundance of people (Santiago
is home to over five million people, New Zealand's entire population is
just over four million thus we were to face more people in one city than we had in the
past 4 weeks travelling throughout New Zealand), loud music - either on the streets or coming from windows - and lots of cars (our only traffic jam in New Zealand had
been with sheep, I'm not kidding). We also had to get used to people staring at us again (you can imagine when everyone else has brown/black hair, dark skin and we can see the tops of most of their heads, we don't tend to blend in with the crowd). They say a
change is as good as a holiday .... I guess for us change just marks
the start of the next country aka next holiday :-) In short, despite the jet lag, on landing in Chile I was
once again high on absorbing those first sights, smells and sounds ... for the first time on this trip, on the other side of the Pacific.
One of the nicest things about being in Santiago was getting to
see Sophie, a girl I met in Barcelona last June. We caught up on July
to February over coffee, she showed me where she lived, we exchanged
books, had a lovely dinner and she gave me enough tips to stay in
Chile for not only the week we had but for at least a month.
We also had fun at our hostel's "Pisco Sour Night". Pisco Sour is a Chilean/Peruvian cocktail made from Pisco (which is like a local brandy), lemon, egg whites and sugar. In retrospect, I find it a little bit leathal. The night started in the communal living room (Piscos, Caipirinhas, beer) and
continued on the dance floor of some club I could later only describe
to Sophie with the words "it had a bar on the right and a dance floor
opposite”.
Being forever curious and conscious of the little time
we had in Santiago, I got up after the Pisco Night, with only two hours of
sleep to draw energy from, and forced myself to walk into the city centre to see Chile's
apparently renowned museum on Precolombian art. Now I'm sure in
normal circumstances, Precolombian art must be an amazing period to
reflect upon as some of the artifacts date back to 1800 BC, but for
me, on that particular morning at least, it was a pretty torturous activity
staring at one painted bowl or figure after another. I could hardly
keep my eyes from closing or my body from falling over as I stumbled
around the museum and I was grateful for the video exhibit at the end
so that I could at least rest before facing Santiago´s heat
again. I cursed the length, dullness and pollution of the straight and busy road back to the hostel which
separated me from my bed that afternoon.
When I look back on Santiago, I think of chemists and sunglasses
stalls on almost every corner, faint outlines of mountains (you can't
normally see the Andes because of the fog/pollution),
“completos” (hotdogs with chopped tomatoes and guacamole, quasi,
in a sad way, the national dish), people kissing all over the place
(more noticeable after being in Asia), music, dancing, pisco sours
and friendly people. I wouldn't say it's the most beautiful city I've
been in but, as with most places, it's not so much what there is to
see there but who you meet.
