Santiago in Santiago

The Santiago Free Walking Tour meets in the Plaza de Armas every morning. As we have become such fans of these tours where the guides really work for their income every day, that's where we found ourselves this morning. (Thankfully, the Santiago subway system is pretty easy to navigate.)

Naturally, as one of the participants identified himself from Canada, we drew him into conversation. He's from Toronto? He works at TIFF? He's close with a friend of mine who also works at TIFF. Small world! That's how we met the man Santiago in Santiago, Chile. Not only did he provide good company on the tour and some recommendations on where to eat in Santiago, we swapped contacts so that we can connect back home, as well.

The main square of Santiago, Plaza de Armas is busy at all hours with assorted vendors, street performers, and Chileans looking for a place to sit and take in their city. Through the tour, we made our way through these crowds to observe the statues at either corner or the square. The first commemorates the Spanish conquest of Chile, and the formation of this country.

For the bulk of Santiago's history, this statue stood alone as the preeminent memorial in the square. Not surprisingly, this didn't sit very well with the native populations that had lived here before the Spaniards arrived. Recently, the city sought to balance this one-sided view into history by installing a statue commemorating the native populations on the opposing corner.

Intended to show the balance of Chilean history, this statue ultimately aggravated the issue. The native groups lobbying for recognition claim that this statue fails to represent any one of the populations that predated the Spanish; in trying to represent all of them, it represents none of them.

Our tour guide Leon was very knowledgeable about the city and introduced us to various interesting elements of Santiago. Key to his tour were two story-lines: politics, and the city's shadowy side.

The story of Allende - the first and thus far only freely elected Marxist president - and the violent shift of power from Allende to Pinochet continues to impact Chilean society today. (For his part, Pinochet is one of the very few military dictators who continues to have supporters even now, long after his reign is over.) Allende campaigned on a promise to abolish the feudal-like system that continued to exist in Chile as recently as the mid-twentieth century. Once in power, he took steps to implement this vision within the constraints of the existing constitution and legislation. Not only did this cultivate opposition from the right-leaning elements of society, it also bred antagonisms within Allende's own party, among those who felt rebellion was the only sure way to implement Marxist socialism. The growing chasm among members of Allende's own party and his policies left him vulnerable. When Pinochet decided to seize power, he did so with significant support from Chileans - largely the financial elite and wealthy classes, though also the middle class who opposed what they perceived as Allende's attacks on their opportunities to move up in the world. Pinochet countered Allende's efforts and privatised every industry - healthcare, water supply, mining, transportation - and changed the constitution to support the increased concentration of power and wealth at the top. Pinochet maintained support through his 17-year reign such that he was never really removed from power. He "retired" from the presidency to a senatorial position, and his followers continue to yield significant influence today. This ongoing support challenges the current government's efforts to open up the economy and opportunities to spread Chilean wealth more broadly among its citizens.

While political battles continue, the violence in politics is no longer (or not currently) a facet of Chile's political sphere. The changing of the guard is a ceremonial affair meant to entertain, which it did.

Leaving the polished buildings around the presidential palace, Leon showed us an uninspiring coffee shop a street or two over.

Cafe Haiti, set among banking offices, political power houses, and museums, provides the men of Santiago (and women, should they please) an opportunity to get coffee, served by a scantily clad server. A "Hooters" for coffee, if you will. This unusual business model hints at the real "coffee with legs" in Santiago, where the women aren't scantily clad - they wear nothing at all. And the coffee is merely a cover for prostitution. Mindy and I stumbled upon one of these shops on our own. The photo generated quite the stir from the person sitting outside the door, so forgive me for not taking another one for clarity.

Continuing on the tour, we walked by the source of most of Chile's drinking water:

Leon assured us that the water is muddy from the silt picked up in the Andes, but in terms of bacteria, the water is very clean. Also, Santiago has very high water purification standards. (Mindy and I pretty much stuck to bottled water, nonetheless.)

Santiago is rife with parks, which themselves have statues throughout them. Many of these are not meaningful; in an effort to beautify their parks, the city of Santiago purchased a number of statues from artists in Europe and scattered them about. The parks are beautiful!

The German gift of a fountain to commemorate Chile bicentennial does have meaning. Even after its declaration as a country, the south of Chile largely remained wild - the home of native populations who repelled initial efforts to colonize this region. Chile sought support from German immigrants to settle and "improve the Chilean race". (Leon is dark-skinned, and so pointed out with humour that this effort to lighten Chilean's complexion was not entirely successful.)

At the end of the walking tour, we found our luxurious lodgings for the night - Quiral Boutique Hotel. Set in the upscale Providencia neighbourhood in Santiago, Quiral is a beautiful hotel with the friendliest staff - highly unusual for us, we ultimately stayed there three nights!

We only had a moment to drop our bags at Quiral before Gabriela arrived to pick us up for the afternoon. Gabriela is the Chilean-born mother of our (mostly Mindy's) friend Patrick, who generously offered to show us around Santiago where she lives. It was wonderful to have this sense of familiarity after a week of traveling. The kind and wonderful Gabriela picked us up at Quiral and took us back to her apartment at first. She offered us her spare bedroom if we needed it, and assured us that she was available anytime if we needed anything. (Had Quiral not been as nice, we might have taken her up on the bedroom option!)

Gabriela then took us to meet her sister in-law Maria Teresa, who lives in a beautiful house in a residential neighbourhood. Maria Teresa's late husband loved banana trees, and so she keeps some growing in her yard!

Maria Teresa treated us to coffee and the flan (sweet milk and egg pudding) that seems to be a common Chilean dessert.

It was far too early for dinner - Chileans have dinner starting around 9pm or so - so we went out for a late lunch (it was around 6pm). Gabriela generously treated us to traditional Chilean humitas (a sweet corn dish) on the condition that we treat her when she comes to Ajax in the fall. Absolutely!

Before settling in for the evening at Quiral, we went out for a short run.

Those street signs caught my attention!

Our run finished at the beautiful Aviation fountain park, where couples seem to all congregate to bask in the coloured lights. It's such a pretty setting; we saw two couples taking wedding photos!

Punted to the West Coast

As Phil Collins might say: “Another day in paradise”! (But without the irony.) The sun is shining and Punta del Este, this blight on the “real Uruguay” (according to our tour guide yesterday), is calling to us in its idyllic appeal. Our last run in Punta – at least on this trip – had a singe objective: to get to La Mano.

Maybe Mindy had another objective...

...thankfully we didn't have a ticket for this dog to join us in Chile!

Apparently there are a couple more of these hand sculptures throughout Chile – in the Atacama Desert and Magallanes in the south. This is the only one we’ll be seeing this time around. Sometimes, kindly passers-by aren’t well-positioned to make the most of our one and only hand interaction:

Oh, well!

We desperately wanted to spend at least a few minutes frolicking in the Atlantic surf before leaving Punta, but first was breakfast. It seems that every hotel in South America offers an extensive breakfast as part of the room rate. Having dined on breads, cheeses and fruit, we set out to find a new beach in the one direction we hadn’t yet explored from our hotel. In this peninsula of endless beaches, we managed to pick the one direction that didn’t have a beach!

We opted against the rocky outcropping and meandered around the coast to the beach. We found plenty of things to make the walk worthwhile, including a tribute to the patron saint of Punta del Este.

Then it was time for fun in the waves crashing up on the shore!

Alas, we only had a few minutes to take advantage of the beach before setting out across the continent. 

We caught a bus from Punta del Este and found ourselves at the Montevideo airport once again, excited about this next leg of the journey, but sorry to be leaving this amazing destination. We debated where we would want a home in Uruguay: the history-steeped cultural centre in Montevideo, or the beachfront paradise Punta del Este. We didn’t explore enough to require a decision, though we did manage to find an American-Uruguayan who had one foot in an Uruguayan retirement, and encouraged that we consider it further. Had we sampled more Uruguayan wine in the airport, perhaps we would be looking over a deed right now….. 

This is the only country (I am aware of) where the government incentivizes the use of credit cards by eliminating sales tax (on purchases made with credit cards). That would offset living costs nicely, come retirement time. Hopefully that’s not a short-lived policy!

Ultimately it was time to board our plane to Santiago and say farewell to the land of friendly, welcoming people – who always carry mate (even in a McDonald’s):

We also had to sit through another obligatory pesticide service inside the plane...

We landed in Santiago in the late evening and took a taxi to our hotel – a nondescript, uninspiring place. The man at reception was friendly, and the room was clean (mostly). The bed was comfortable enough, and we fell right to sleep.

Montevideo and Punta del Este

Long days make for late mornings – the next day. We had ambitious plans to get up early, run back to the track, and perhaps do a workout. Instead, we slept in. Even when we woke, our sore muscles from yesterday’s exertion in the heat precluded any hope of a workout. That will have to wait until this afternoon.

Hotel Presidente offered a varied and plentiful breakfast buffet included with the room, so we tucked in to replenish calories from yesterday (likely a lot more than I burned, truth be told).

We spent a lazy morning re-packing our bags and snoozing in our room before heading to the bus station. Onward to Punta Del Este!

Valentin the guide from yesterday lamented the draw of Punta del Este. He hates the over-priced materialism that he sees in the way the city has been taken over by foreign wealth. “It’s not real Uruguay”, he explained to us on the tour. Real Uruguay or not, we were very much looking forward to experiencing this “mini Miami”.

We opted to walk from the bus stop to our hotel a mile away. (More accurately, Mindy tolerated my decision that we would walk because she’s a good sport.) As soon as we exited the bus station, we saw “La Mano” – a sculpture of a hand rising out of the beach. Burdened as we were with luggage, we turned our faces away from one of the prime tourist attractions of this idyllic beach town and marched toward our hotel. La Mano is one of the prime tourist attractions, that is, if you ignore the endless beach. Beautiful sand beaches for miles and miles on end. Mindy and I quickly noticed on our walk to the hotel that not only were the beaches beautiful, a good number of the people were, too. Everywhere we looked we saw tanned, finely toned bodies in bikinis and board shorts. As we reached the Hotel Atlantico, the front desk staff who greeted us were – not surprisingly - fit, tanned, and attractive. They showed us to a room that was perfectly suited to our beach-house mood.

The afternoon was wearing on, so we quickly changed into running clothes and figured out our route to Casapueblo – the other main reason we are here. We planned a 15km run along the beach to this hotel-restaurant that doubles as an art display, overlooking the Atlantic Ocean (technically, an estuary that feeds the ocean).

The early part of the run from our hotel followed the Punta Del Este harbour and then one of the two endless beaches.  Finding the sand too soft for comfortable running, we opted for boardwalks whenever they were available, and otherwise stuck to the road that parallels the shoreline.

For the most part we ran along the boardwalk…we did stop and enjoy the view from time to time. These stunning beaches followed the shoreline the entirety of our run to Casapueblo, and they didn’t even stop there!

Though the beaches were stunning, the running route became increasingly less so. Relegated to the sidewalk on the other side of the road, we could glance over at the now sparsely populated beach, but otherwise our attention was on the highway itself, which had few interesting distractions. Eventually, feeling that our plan to run all the way might have been a little over-ambitious, we began walking down a side road headed back toward the shoreline, hoping for a shortcut. A car drove up and we hailed the occupants, asking about Casapueblo. “Just up the hill you will see a sign to turn off. It’s a little over a kilometre down that road.” At last! With rejuvenated spirits we ran up the hill…then walked… (rejuvenated spirits only do so much after an hour of running in the hot sun). Upon cresting the hill, we returned to running until another sight caught our eye.

The fabled sunset view from Casapueblo, for sale? That’s an interesting proposition.

Shortly, we came upon crowds and tour buses, and scrambled down the steep bank for the view from the water-side.

Uruguayan hospitality surfaced again as we got to the admission gate for Casapueblo. There is a fee to get in to the restaurant-museum-hotel, but as the gatekeeeper didn't speak English, he simply waved us through. Once inside, we were shown to a washroom to  clean up post run. These washrooms were by a beautiful pool, whcih showcased an incredible view of the sunset. One of the hotel staff (not the one who had directed us here to clean up) came out and told me that this place was for hotel guests only. Then he looked at Mindy who was taking a photo of the sunset, and said: "it's fine if you want to take a picture, but this is for hotel guests only." 

I understand why they charge a fee for this view!!

The staff seemed quite perplexed as to why we would want to have dinner at the restaurant even after the sunset, but they allowed us entry nonetheless.

As the dying light ultimately faded, we called a taxi for a ride back to our hotel. Driven by the cab, it was interesting to see just how far it really was that we had run earlier.

Welcome to Uruguay!

If our brief experience in Lima revealed a crowded, dirty city full of aggressive and frantic drivers, our introduction to Montevideo presented a clean, friendly and open culture. We landed around 4:00 am local time – 2:00 am by our internal clocks. (Side note: Uruguayan regulations require that airplanes spray pesticide inside the cabin prior to landing. While this may help control the spread of Zika, it's an uncomfortable experience.)  Upon landing, we decided to forgo a hotel for what remained of the night. (It was approaching 5:00 am by the time we had collected our luggage.) We used the airport WiFi and charging stations to power up our devices and then boarded the local bus for the trip downtown.

A perk of taking the bus with the locals is the opportunity it affords to observe local behaviours. Assorted Uruguayans on their way to work smiled as they managed the obstacle course of our luggage to find seats, and drank mate ("maw-tay") tea from specially designed vessels (the vessel is also called a mate), through a spoon/straw that filters out the pulp. Every third or fourth person carried a cup of mate, along with a thermos of hot water to pour over the mix.

(Later in the day, as we were on tour, Mindy drank from our tour guide's mate(!!) to get the local flavour. We'll get more into that later, but here's the proof.)

Montevideo’s suburbs, not far from the airport, are full of well-kept houses with broad lawns and gardens. The gates that surround each home – some of which are electrified – look to be made with aesthetics as much as security in mind. (As we later learned, home invasions did have a brief spike during an economic collapse around 2002, but now Montevideo is back to being extremely safe.) Inevitably, the manicured suburbs gave way to grit as we entered the urban core. These, too, improved as we wended our way to the city centre.

Our friendly bus driver dropped us off with directions to walk three blocks to our hotel, where we dropped our bags. Now 7:00 am, we went hunting for breakfast – no easy feat in a city that seems to come alive only late in the morning. We found Independence Plaza, almost devoid of people at this early hour.

Walking through the old city, we found restaurants set in parks – all closed at this hour. Later in the day, we will have our pick of open-air seating for dinner.

We finally found a restaurant for a small sandwich and some more floral coffee, and then made our way to the Spanish Plaza so that I could catch up on some blogging, with views of:

and

One of the first things that both Mindy and I noticed about the people of Uruguay is how different they look than Peruvians. We soon learned why, and it’s not a nice story. The Europeans who originally settled Uruguay annihilated most of the native populations. Those that weren’t eradicated were pushed beyond the borders to neighbouring countries. (Terrible as that is, I won’t pretend that the North American settlement story is a whole lot better.) Ironically, this malevolent history has given rise to a welcoming present, as modern Uruguayans have no preconceived notions of what a “real Uruguayan” looks like. In a country that is starving for immigration, this “open arms” attitude will be key to their continued prosperity.

Having spent the morning wandering around the city on our own, we met the Uruguay Free Walking Tour Montevideo in Independence Plaza. It was here that we met Valentin, the guide who forced Mindy to drink from his mate. (In case that wasn't unsettling enough: after Mindy acquiesced, we learned that it is customary for Uruguayans to offer their mate to everyone they meet. Valentin shared it with another participant of our tour, and probably shares his metal mate "straw" with several people every day. Ugh. I kiss Mindy's mouth.)

Valentin's lack of knowledge about bacterial transmission through saliva did not reflect his knowledge of Uruguay and Montevideo. He was fantastic! Really, this entry was largely written by him!

To start, we learned that Uruguay was founded - and is largely still managed - by Freemasons, and this has had a significant though subtle effect on the country's development. Freemasons exalt the number 33 and so the Independence Plaza, for instance, has 33 palm trees strategically planted around the perimeter. While Uruguay had largely completed the steps toward becoming an independent country by the spring of 1825, the declaration of independence was intentionally delayed to August 25th (25th day of the 8th month). The Uruguayan flag has Freemason symbolism in it, as well, and Freemasons still dominate the political sphere.

While Freemasonry may influence the country at the symbolic level, a laissez-faire and practical attitude permeates a lot of Uruguayan legislation and behaviour. They were the second country in the world to legalize gay marriage and have enacted very progressive abortion laws. In a country that only recently parted with Catholic predominance, these are not little steps! Marijuana is a regulated substance in Uruguay; the legalization and regulation has coincided with a dramatic reduction in the use of marijuana. Progressive practicalities also gave rise rise to Uruguay's Carnaval. 

Like most of the Americas, Uruguay imported slaves from Africa and the Caribbean. The difference in Uruguay is that - without plantations, factories or the like  - there wasn't much for the slaves to do. At the height of the slave trade, Uruguayan slaves had days off to do whatever they liked. One of the things they did was host parades celebrating the traditions and heritage they had been forced to leave behind. The Uruguayan slave owners loved these parades as a distraction from tending to their cows, and so imported more slaves and assigned them to put on more parades! (We tried to go to a Carnaval performance in the evening, but we couldn't find out what time it started. The websites all said they would be updated closer to Carnaval, and even our hotel staff couldn't figure out when performances were. Classic Uruguayan, according to Valentin.)

Back to the idea of mate for a moment. There is a style of watch that has gained traction in Uruguay specifically for this reason:

The flame is to light up a burner to heat water for mate!

While Uruguayans are tolerant of pretty much everyone, Valentin explained there is one group that is still persecuted to this day: vegetarians! It is a beef-heavy culture. A coastal country, they fish, but ship most of the fish elsewhere. (To countries that know what to do with the fish, according to Valentin.) Classic Uruguayan restaurants have a grill covered with various parts of various animals - though mostly cow. As Valentin later explained the surging running and cycling culture in Uruguay, as well as anti-smoking campaigns targeting improved health, he shared a secret with us. Uruguayans don't care whether you're black or white, straight or gay, or anything else. The reason they care about vegetarians is that deep down, they're afraid vegetarians may be right!

As Uruguay is a country of immigration, it is perhaps no wonder that we stumbled upon another cultural import as we wandered the city:

I suppose it doesn't say much that this real estate is for rent.

After the tour, we returned to our hotel - finally got a room - and enjoyed the view.

Though operating on little sleep, we prepared for an exploratory run. We ran along the stunning coast-line, naturally, and came upon a memorial to the holocaust as well as the welcoming sign to the city.

Depleted from lack of sleep, hot sun, and an hour of running, we made the only logical decision - look for a track to do a workout!

Admittedly, the workout was pretty much non-existent, though the facilities were stunning!

Back at our hotel, and unable to find out details for Carnaval, we opted instead for an orchestral "festival of Mozart" at the Teatro Solis.

("Solis" is in homage to the sun, the most important emblem in Freemasonry. However, when Uruguay was still dominated by the Catholic Church, the "official story" was that this theatre was named after the first explorer to discover Uruguay. The church insisted that it be re-named "Teatro de Solis" to avoid any apparent idolization of the sun. When the Catholic Church lost prominence, the name changed back to Teatro Solis. Incidentally, the explorer Solis was reportedly killed and eaten by the natives when he first arrived in Uruguay.)

The orchestra was excellent, but the day was catching up to us. We left at intermission and walked the brightly lit Montevideo streets back to our hotel and fell into bed.