I’m having a beer and dinner at a cafe-bar across the road from a park. Its not far from where I am staying. There is a lot of activity there, some of it a bit bizarre! There are a group of singers singing to pre-recorded music. They are very good and probably opera trained. There are tenors and sopranos belting their lungs out, but to a largely indifferent audience. Kids with skateboards, dogs, ice-cream carts and more pass by between them and their small audience. Next to them is a young band on electric guitars doing their best and on the corner are a bunch of guys practicing their drums. Quite a confusing mixture of sounds.
I wander around Santiago again today. Unfortunately I haven’t given myself anytime to leave the city. I’m only here for four days before flying out to Buenos Aries. I don’t find Santiago a comfortable tourist-friendly place. It’s fairly dirty, police and army are a constant and there is angry graffiti over everything. Nothing is spared, not even the public art. Not a lot of respect is shown, indicating a society that isn’t entirely at ease with itself – to me anyway. There was plenty of graffiti in Peru also but I didn’t get the same sense of unease. Chilians certainly don’t love their dogs as much as Peruvians. There are many unkept muts everywhere. Can you judge a society by the way they treat their dogs?
I had intended on watching the changing of the guards at the presidential palace this morning but they moved the palace and I couldn’t find it, not until way too late.
I try out the metro today, just getting off randomly and having a look around but I don’t find anything very interesting. The beautiful Andes mountains are a constant backdrop, as they were in Peru and I guess they are anywhere on the west coast of South America.
The food I have had here is ordinary. While there are some great culinary ideas on the menus, they put way too much salt in everything. And I have seen customers add even more salt. I woke up in the middle of last night completely parched with no bottled water handy. I wasn’t game to drink from the tap so I had to wait it out until morning. I won’t make the same mistake again.
A talented bunch of operatic singers playing to an indifferent crowd in the park.
angusmccoll 