Our Last Week in Chile: Santiago, Valparaiso and Arica 28th March - 3rd April

As one may have noted, very little that you get in Chile is good value for money (and for this reason it’s often skipped by the budget-seeking traveller). After paying over the odds for scrimping hotels and laundry (never expect enough bogroll or towels, and always expect clothes back still dirty or damp), feeling quite indignant at having tips added onto the bill for us and being charged more than we were quoted, we were very pleasantly surprised by our overnight bus service to Santiago with TurBus. For US$40 each (still pricey by South American standards), we got a camabus, theoretically a bed, but literally a very comfy chair that reclines all the way back. The only disadvantage to this is that you have someone stranger’s bottom and feet right underneath you - luckily smell issues did not affect this journey! Our attendant was extremely attentive and professional, so much so that, on delivering our bedding he actually tucked us in and plumped the pillows behind our heads. Not only this, he made sure the loo was clean all night. N was also particularly impressed with the ingenious toilet seat fitted with a spring so you have to hold it down if you want to use it, therefore preventing the standing sex from making the usual filthy mess. For this Chile gets at least two gold stars for giving some consideration to ladies’ comfort in the powder room! And we wait patiently for the day when they are introduced back home in Spain, where they are most desperately needed.

As we’d splashed out on our busride, Paul thought it would be a good idea to get on the metro to our hotel. Lovely idea in theory but extremely complicated at 8:15 am in the morning, when most of Santiago is heading to work. The crowds on the platform were five people thick and as each jam-packed train went by there was no sign of the crowd getting thinner. So as we were in no hurry we perched patiently on our rucksacks until 9am when we could comfortably board a train with our rucksacks.

We settled comfortably into yet another very well-chosen neighbourhood: Barrio Lastarria just next to the city centre. Santiago has lots to offer, including lots of hills and parks to climb up and around (or ride up in the funicular), shops, a massive market where you can indulge in all sorts of seafood, a fair few good bars and of course a whopping dose of smog. The Andes hug the edge city but you’ll be very lucky to get an outline of them through the thick yellow fog from the top of Cerro Lucía. It would be unfair not to mention Barrio Bellavista, Santiago’s answer to Palermo, with a huge range of bars and restaurants to suit all budgets and tastes, and Barrio Brasil, another quaint neighbourhood where we enjoyed a fantastic meal at the elegantly-named La Vaca Gorda (The Fat Cow).

The highlight of our trip in Santiago, however, was our visit to the Museo Chileno de Arte Precolombino (Pre-Colombian Art Museum), where we were given our first glimpse of some Pre-Incan mummies, which are on permanent exhibition among various other artefacts, pottery and clothes. The temporary exhibition ‘Sex and Death in Pre-Incan Art’ (or something like that), however, was not for the prudish or the light-hearted. On display were hundreds of pre-Incan figurines in the throes of various sexual acts (leaving little to the imagination). According to the accompanying theories, these took place between men and women, some dead, some alive, to help their ruler make it to the world of the dead. Therefore, and thankfully, these were not daily rituals. Us visitors where somewhat taken aback when a German man came storming through the exhibition shouting his wife’s name (who was obviously intrigued by the whole thing), found her, grabbed her and dragged her out of the exhibition in a rather humiliating episode.

We made a one-night side trip to Valparaiso, not quite the place now that is so romanticised in Isabel Allende’s novels, but certainly one of the most photogenic cities we’ve visited, despite the rather evident poverty. The whole city is sprawled over several hills, and it’s highly recommended to stay on one of the ‘cerros’ (hills) where you’re pretty much guaranteed excellent views over this colourful coastal city from your room.

After our various enjoyable shenanigans around these two cities, it was time to head further north to Arica (Chile’s northern most town, on the coast). Like Santiago, dry and dusty Arica boasts an excellent Museo Arqueologico, where we got our second taste of the many ancient mummies that the area is becoming famous for. Unfortunately, we hit the place at the same time as a boatload of cruiseship tourists, and were quite surprised at their selfish insistence on flash-photographing these very well-preserved mummies, despite the blatant signs stating that this was actually forbidden. The local church is also a must see, especially as it was designed by Eiffel and therefore made of metal, and brought over from Europe in pieces to put back together again - all very reminiscent of our visit to Santa Rosalia in the Baja Peninsula (Mexico), most famous on this blog for its cockroaches!

The next day we boarded the international cross-border express to Tacna in Peru, which consisted of one rather squashed carriage that took 2 hours to cover 30km. Views from this humble train offered little more than desert and sand dunes, but we enjoyed the experience all the same, being an excellent introduction to Peru and the colourful town of Tacna.

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