I made a mistake when I arrived in Santiago. It wasn't a huge gaff by any means but I've been doing this travelling thing for a while now, so it sort of bugs me when I make a mistake. Ideally, I should be learning from these errs and improving my efficiency, if you take self-realization goals as far as your vacation which I try to.
It stemmed from my experience in Buenos Aires, the last capital I had visited over two months ago. An incredible city and a great time. But I chose a hostel in a nicer neighbourhood about 15 minutes subway ride from downtown (that I usually walked since rush hour in the subway is a nightmare). The "commute" to sightseeing and the taxi ride home at night were a bit of a bother. I would even dare some personal analysis and point out that it reminded me of living most of my life with a very long commute into Toronto. So I figured that while I was paying for "rent" I might as well choose the location I always wanted. That is how I ended up staying on Calle Londres, a cobblestone pedestrian street sandwiched between office towers in the busy downtown core of the nation's capital.
The mistake was not the high cost nor the windowless room. It was a total lack of vibe or backpackers, of any hostelers in general. I ate a delicious, full breakfast every morning and the only ones in the room were staff watching some Spanish Jerry Springer-type morning show. I was the only inhabitant of my four-person room, probably of the entire wing of the place. There was never a line up to use the computers. All the things that normally irk you about a hostel were missing, but instead of celebrating I was lamenting. Who was I going to do anything with?
Luckily, a friend I had met at the wind-chime making factory a month earlier had moved to Santiago to live and work for a while. It's interesting how these things happen, how a huge continent actually becomes a very small place. One day we took a funicular up Cerro San Cristobal, a great way to experience the city's crippling smog problem. A huge bike network, a hilltop pool, and the highest elevation in town are nothing when you can barely make out where the city is. Santiago has a lot to brag about (WIFI in the shiny subway stations) and would be quite a nice place to live, were it not for an unrelenting smog soup in every direction.
Caitlin worked for next to nothing by North American standards waiting tables at a sports bar. She's the sort of person who comes down to South America with a one-way ticket and a few thousand dollars and doesn't have any plans to come back home. She was the one who first mentioned Chilean soccer to me.
Futbol is insane in South America. Actually, futbol is insane anywhere else in the world besides Canada and the US. For us, the whole experience is incredibly foreign. How can people care about something so much? We have hockey, you might say. No, even in Toronto, hockey doesn't even compare. People have died at futbol games. People have gotten messed up just for wearing the wrong colour on the wrong day. A British guy told me how a Swiss referee had once made a really bad call at a match. The next day every optometrist in town was offering "Free eye tests for Swiss people".
My last experience with futbol had been in Buenos Aires. Actually, the stadium in Buenos Aires is located not far from where my camera got hijacked. The Boca fans there have a widespread reputation for being hooligans, and they are indeed the fundamentalists of the futbol religion. Stories circulate of visitors getting concrete chunks thrown at them from seats above during the game. You'll probably get spit on too. Fans get let out after the game at different times depending on the team they cheer for. You could pay $10 for tickets at the stadium or $150 for the bus-guide-match combo. That price tag is an easy sell since everything you hear makes one overriding rule very clear: don't go alone. If Chilean fubtol is anything like its Argentine equivalent, then I would need to at least find someone to go with.
Fast forward to my last day in Santiago and one of the greatest days of the trip so far. I had done a lot of walking in the city, but hadn't really done anything cool. Waking up at 11am didn't help that any. So the last day I lined up some excursions. It started with a guided visit to the Santiago Cemetery. Not to extend this long post too far, but cemeteries in South America are remarkable. There's no grass, it's more like a little city enclosed in tall stone walls, crisscrossed by streets of mausoleums for each family. Some are small, some are imposing, some are architectural and artistic wonders. All presidents save two have been buried in the cemetery (they're still debating if they should house dictator Pinochet's body right next to Allende, the beloved predecessor he drove to his death during the 1973 coup). The entire place is a hive of construction repairs and mourners and many stories. What's more profound: the blank wall paying tribute to "The Disappeared" during the Pinochet regime, or the tomb of a young girl entirely covered in prayers and notes?
My next stop was down the subway line to a less-than-stellar industrial area. I wrang a bell and was ushered inside, to Santa Carolina winery. Santiago sits in a valley of grapes and most of the production in the country is actually bottled right in the capital. Santa Carolina is the fourth biggest producer, running an export-heavy ship under a variety of labels from their small colonial building headquarters. They age the good stuff in their basement cellar, and that's the stuff that we get. Canada is a big buyer of Chilean wine, and I felt at times I was being welcomed as a client as opposed to a tourist.
"Wine tour" is only slightly more academic than a "brewery tour". We sampled a few wines while touring the grounds, and then a bunch more after the other guests left. I did learn a lot about proper winetasting. "What do you remember when you smell this wine?" asks our tour guide. A hangover.
By this point I had decided to go for the futbol game, which was even moreso a resounding success than the cemetery and wine tours. Of course, that is a story for another day: the short of it is Palmeiras vs. Colo-Colo: Palmeiras wins 1-0 and knocks Colo-Colo out of the Copa Libertadores, the South American equivalent of the Stanley Cup. This is a huge deal and the coach is fired the next day and the team cast into shambles.
The night ended in a club in the trendy Provencia neighbourhood, with a dancing Matt high on the success of the day. I made a mistake in Santiago, and I stayed in dud when I should have followed the crowd. But I emerged from "make your own fun" Santiago with a new confidence, for I had conquered the futbol game. That final day in the capital, two months into my trip, was the first time I felt like a seasoned traveller who knew what he was doing. And I could do this for a while...
It stemmed from my experience in Buenos Aires, the last capital I had visited over two months ago. An incredible city and a great time. But I chose a hostel in a nicer neighbourhood about 15 minutes subway ride from downtown (that I usually walked since rush hour in the subway is a nightmare). The "commute" to sightseeing and the taxi ride home at night were a bit of a bother. I would even dare some personal analysis and point out that it reminded me of living most of my life with a very long commute into Toronto. So I figured that while I was paying for "rent" I might as well choose the location I always wanted. That is how I ended up staying on Calle Londres, a cobblestone pedestrian street sandwiched between office towers in the busy downtown core of the nation's capital.
The mistake was not the high cost nor the windowless room. It was a total lack of vibe or backpackers, of any hostelers in general. I ate a delicious, full breakfast every morning and the only ones in the room were staff watching some Spanish Jerry Springer-type morning show. I was the only inhabitant of my four-person room, probably of the entire wing of the place. There was never a line up to use the computers. All the things that normally irk you about a hostel were missing, but instead of celebrating I was lamenting. Who was I going to do anything with?Luckily, a friend I had met at the wind-chime making factory a month earlier had moved to Santiago to live and work for a while. It's interesting how these things happen, how a huge continent actually becomes a very small place. One day we took a funicular up Cerro San Cristobal, a great way to experience the city's crippling smog problem. A huge bike network, a hilltop pool, and the highest elevation in town are nothing when you can barely make out where the city is. Santiago has a lot to brag about (WIFI in the shiny subway stations) and would be quite a nice place to live, were it not for an unrelenting smog soup in every direction.
Caitlin worked for next to nothing by North American standards waiting tables at a sports bar. She's the sort of person who comes down to South America with a one-way ticket and a few thousand dollars and doesn't have any plans to come back home. She was the one who first mentioned Chilean soccer to me.Futbol is insane in South America. Actually, futbol is insane anywhere else in the world besides Canada and the US. For us, the whole experience is incredibly foreign. How can people care about something so much? We have hockey, you might say. No, even in Toronto, hockey doesn't even compare. People have died at futbol games. People have gotten messed up just for wearing the wrong colour on the wrong day. A British guy told me how a Swiss referee had once made a really bad call at a match. The next day every optometrist in town was offering "Free eye tests for Swiss people".
My last experience with futbol had been in Buenos Aires. Actually, the stadium in Buenos Aires is located not far from where my camera got hijacked. The Boca fans there have a widespread reputation for being hooligans, and they are indeed the fundamentalists of the futbol religion. Stories circulate of visitors getting concrete chunks thrown at them from seats above during the game. You'll probably get spit on too. Fans get let out after the game at different times depending on the team they cheer for. You could pay $10 for tickets at the stadium or $150 for the bus-guide-match combo. That price tag is an easy sell since everything you hear makes one overriding rule very clear: don't go alone. If Chilean fubtol is anything like its Argentine equivalent, then I would need to at least find someone to go with.
Fast forward to my last day in Santiago and one of the greatest days of the trip so far. I had done a lot of walking in the city, but hadn't really done anything cool. Waking up at 11am didn't help that any. So the last day I lined up some excursions. It started with a guided visit to the Santiago Cemetery. Not to extend this long post too far, but cemeteries in South America are remarkable. There's no grass, it's more like a little city enclosed in tall stone walls, crisscrossed by streets of mausoleums for each family. Some are small, some are imposing, some are architectural and artistic wonders. All presidents save two have been buried in the cemetery (they're still debating if they should house dictator Pinochet's body right next to Allende, the beloved predecessor he drove to his death during the 1973 coup). The entire place is a hive of construction repairs and mourners and many stories. What's more profound: the blank wall paying tribute to "The Disappeared" during the Pinochet regime, or the tomb of a young girl entirely covered in prayers and notes?
My next stop was down the subway line to a less-than-stellar industrial area. I wrang a bell and was ushered inside, to Santa Carolina winery. Santiago sits in a valley of grapes and most of the production in the country is actually bottled right in the capital. Santa Carolina is the fourth biggest producer, running an export-heavy ship under a variety of labels from their small colonial building headquarters. They age the good stuff in their basement cellar, and that's the stuff that we get. Canada is a big buyer of Chilean wine, and I felt at times I was being welcomed as a client as opposed to a tourist."Wine tour" is only slightly more academic than a "brewery tour". We sampled a few wines while touring the grounds, and then a bunch more after the other guests left. I did learn a lot about proper winetasting. "What do you remember when you smell this wine?" asks our tour guide. A hangover.
By this point I had decided to go for the futbol game, which was even moreso a resounding success than the cemetery and wine tours. Of course, that is a story for another day: the short of it is Palmeiras vs. Colo-Colo: Palmeiras wins 1-0 and knocks Colo-Colo out of the Copa Libertadores, the South American equivalent of the Stanley Cup. This is a huge deal and the coach is fired the next day and the team cast into shambles. The night ended in a club in the trendy Provencia neighbourhood, with a dancing Matt high on the success of the day. I made a mistake in Santiago, and I stayed in dud when I should have followed the crowd. But I emerged from "make your own fun" Santiago with a new confidence, for I had conquered the futbol game. That final day in the capital, two months into my trip, was the first time I felt like a seasoned traveller who knew what he was doing. And I could do this for a while...
No comments:
Post a Comment