Being a tourist in Chile

July 20th, 2011

Although I didn’t visit the southern part of the country, I was lucky enough to visit many other places. In the three months, I was in Santiago, Concepción, Temuco, Valparaíso, Viña del Mar, San Pedro de Atacama, Constitiución, Chillán, Paine and Cobquecura. Most of the trips were work-related (for meetings, visits to the native conservation forests, and research projects like the Islote Lobería Cobquecura for sea lion monitoring).

Pato punk en Paine. Here I visited a firend's friend, JC, who lived together with other nine people in a rented house and they led a pretty chill life revolving around things like permaculture

SANTIAGO
I had a touristy week-end in Santiago, where I took the 18 000 pesos Turistik bus and travelled around the city. I visited Cerro El Caracol, where you take a cable car to the top and then enjoy the polluted view of the city. I also went to El Museo de La Moda, which houses clothing and paraphernalia from the 80s, and a street whose name I forget but all the fancy clothing stores are located here. And Los Dominicos, an expensive craft market for tourists with chicken running around the dusty streets. On the Turistik bus I continuously saw throughout the day a group of four ladies on their forties that tried to behave like Sex and The City.

Santiago City from Cerro El Caracol

Metro Station in Santiago

VIÑA AND VALPO
I went to Viña and Valparaiso another one of my week-ends in Santiago and had an unsettling trip with a gory, low-budget film that was just repulsive. No one seemed to mind this terrible choice of film for a bus, but I had to ask them to turn it off and get rid of the sound of breaking bones and knives. It was a rainy day in Valpo and Viña, and at the bus central I signed up for a 15 000 pesos tour of the two places. We went to the house of Pablo Neruda, La Sebastiana, and I was impressed by the amazing view of the city and the port, the pastel colours of the houses, and the weird feeling of walking among ghosts. I met two Colombians on the tour, which also made it fun, and we had Telepizza (pronounces Telepisa, obviously) at Reñaca after having visited the place where the Viña del Mar International Song Festival takes place. I had never heard of this (should be ashamed), but they told me it's very famous and promising new talents perform here before becoming famous, like Shakira did.

Reñaca beach

CHILLÁN

With Carolina I visited Quinchamali, a small town by Chillán that could be considered a street, characterized by their black pottery (turns black when fired with soot) with white decorations. The three-legged chanchito, a three-legged piggy bank, is pretty characteristic. Needless to say, I was fascinated! First of all I love pottery, and second of all they get the clay from their own backyards! This is a really ancient tradition and women have been doing this type of greda negra for generations, selling it on their front porches and going to crafts markets with their pottery. They have a special room in the house where they fire the pieces at different temperatures and with the various techniques to turn the bright red pieces a polished black colour. She also showed us a room piled up to the ceiling with clay pieces, I had never seen so many in my life. A box of stuff was 20 000, so I think it was a good deal, but the best part was the feeling of buying really authentic stuff. When we were looking at the fresh clay, I immediately thought of my soils class and my soils teacher back at UBC, as she always got mad when people called soil "dirt". Well, this soil was definitely NOT dirt!

Chillán was also very nice, with a spacious and well-organized market where I got nuts and dried figs. They have a famous mural in Escuela México of the Mexican muralista David Alfaro Siqueiros. I didn’t see that one, unfortunately, but did go see the González Camarena mural at the Casa del Arte of the Universidad de Concepción, Presencia de América Latina, which was quite gorgeous.

Greda negra de Quinchamali

Presencia de América Latina at the Universidad de Concepción