On the fourth day things had become more familiar. It was nice because I saw one of my classmates from Famecos who now lives in Santiago, and I hadn’t seen her since those days, which may be some 15 years now. We talked about the differences between the countries and she painted me distinct picture from what we had been hearing from the tour guides. Those guides almost brainwashed us into thinking that Chile is the greatest place in Latin America. What they said is that people have to pay for everything, there isn’t one thing provided by the government: education, health, retirement. There aren’t government “handouts” (it reminded me of Fox News…) My friend, on the other hand, said that some people literally work until they die.
I have a problem with extremes. I believe the government should provide free education and health care to the population, but I see their point in always bringing WORK into the equation. Brazil may have become, say, too generous… One point that I found really interesting and perhaps should be implemented in Brazil is that inmates have to work to keep the prison functioning: water, electricity, food, clothes, everything. If they don’t work to pay the bills, they don’t have anything. Also, there isn’t reduction of sentence, they have to do their time, not like in Brazil that prisoners may only serve a third of their sentence for “good behaviour”… Yeah, behaving well so they can be freed and resume their criminal activities… But this a matter for another post.
The afternoon was to explore Providencia area, Concepcion, Pedro de Valdivia. Really nice places, and of course, EXPENSIVE. The idea that R$ 1 is worth 200 pesos chilenos is deceitful. Everything is priced up. In cafes and restaurants, you can’t spend 30 minutes without coughing up some 5,000 pesos, which is about R$ 25 (10 dollars). Now that the Dollar is worth more in relation to Real, that may not sound so much, but 25 reais is A LOT for me! As of November 2014 and buying in restaurants/cafes, a bottle of water is around 2,500 pesos, or R$ 10 (in Brazil, around R$ 4,50.) An iced tea in this really nice place (Tea Connection) costs 3,300 pesos, or around R$ 15 reais (we don’t have this store in Porto Alegre, but in São Paulo these are the prices I found in Itaim Bibi store, and the equivalent iced tea – águas de frutas – costs R$ 8). I would NEVER pay R$ 15 for iced tea in Brazil, no matter how delicious. But during trips money doesn’t seem to be a problem and we actually expect to spend more for things we don’t even buy in our hometowns, even though afterwards, when calculating the damage, we think “How there hell could I have spent so much money?? On what??” Now I know: water and iced tea.
The way back to the hotel was through Parque de las Esculturas (Sculptures Park), and the name is pretty much self-explanatory. The amazing thing about it is that among many of the sculptures that were there, some of them having been awarded national prizes, only ONE was spray-painted. If the same was in Brazil, there would only be the wholes on the ground marking where the sculptures used to be. Also, it’s a park for couples. I felt pretty bad walking along the pathways and seeing all those couples in love enjoying a nice day out… Ugh.
Parque de las Esculturas, Santiago
Parque de las Esculturas, Santiago
Parque de las Esculturas, Santiago
Parque de las Esculturas, Santiago
Parque de las Esculturas, Santiago
Finally, we went to the supermarket to buy some things to make the good old ham and cheese sandwich, since things had become pretty pricey, as you could see by the water and tea prices… I also kept my promise to my post-grad classmates to bring a bottle of pisco for us, and bought not only one, but two pisco sour bottles. Lime-y!!!
And below are some pictures from the third day. What I did was to write about my impressions at the end of the day, but on Wednesday we went for beers and I got to the hotel not feeling like writing anything down.
During the city tour in Santiago. Nice obelisk!
City tour in Santiago. Can’t recall what this building is…
This is Palácio La Moneda, the government building. The Changing of the Guards happens every other day at 10a.m.
More guards. The band played pretty nice tunes!
There was a protest going on when we were there…
People hanging out in front of La Moneda. Some protesting, some touristing, some walking to work, it was nice!
More historical buildings.
Old congress building.
View from Cerro San Cristóbal (more of these in the last post about Chile.)
Hot guy on the subway, Line 1. Btw, he was NOT with that woman, but sitting right next to a person in an empty carriage seems odd to me…
At the end of that street there is a market called Los Dominicos (at subway Los Dominicos, west end of Line 1) for traditional local art.
Entrance of Los Dominicos.
On the way back from Los Dominicos. Later the carriage got a bit crowded and there were two guys standing in front of us. When we stood up to get off at our station, they didn’t sit down, they let two women take the seats. We saw that happening a few times in Santiago, waaaaay different from Porto Alegre…
-- Never too many beers -- 