Santiago de Chile (March 6, 2000)

Hey all.
This time I'm in an internet cafe in Santiago de Chile. The ride down was great. From Lima to the border was only about 22 hours, which was a pleasant surprise considering we were expecting like 38 hours. It was interesting because almost all the trip was along the desert wasteland near the sea shore. It was pretty surreal going to sleep in the bus while there were desert dunes like moonscapes floating by outside.

The border crossing into Chile was one of the most pleasant border experiences of my life. The people were joking about my passport picture and asking if my real name was Carlos Santana (do I look that old?). A colectivo took us down to Arica.

The difference between Chile and the South American countries I have visited became immediately apparent. I had always wondered what Chile would be like. On the one hand, stable economy, cultural excellence (the land of Neruda and Mistral), etc., and on the other hand, political unrest, inconspicuousness in World events (soccer, music, etc.), and just in general not a very strong presence in the press and the media. So it appears.
What I found in Arica could be any high desert town in Southern California. Laid back, friendly people, arid climate, less garbage and blatant poverty than Peru or Ecuador. And the interesting thing we noticed right away is that Chile is hitch hiking country. When we asked people in downtown Arica where the highway was that went to Iquique, they immediately understood that we were hitch hiking. In North America, I would always get weird looks and people would explain where the bus terminal or airport was, or else tell me that it's too far to walk. And our first ride out of Arica gave us each a large loaf of bread from a bread bag he was carrying after he dropped us off. This was a very welcome change from Ecuador, where you get rides as a hitch hiker, but your rides expect you to pay them for it.
Once out of Arica, we were of course in the Atacama desert. I have never seen such a superlative degree of sterile wasteland. The first one thousand kilometers have maybe a handful of oases spread out across them, where a stream trickles through a valley or where the aquifers are so close to the surface that the roots of the tamarugo trees can reach down to the water. But to see no sign of life at all, no cactus, no burnt grass, no snakes or vultures or even insects (your windshield stays clean for days on end driving through that desert) was a completely new experience for me. Every horizon around you is just rock and sand under a beating sun. I kept thinking of the lines by CS Lewis,

"Dreadful and undeflected as the blaze
Of some Arabian sky,
Where, dead still, in their smothering tents
Pale travellers crouch, and, bright
About them, noon's long-drawn Astonishment
hammers the rocks with light."

 

But of course here there were no people living either. It is all just wasteland with a highway through it. All along the side of the road are remains of tires that burst. Sometimes you see an entire car, rusted and dented and left in the sun.

We spent the night in Iquique and then hitched further South. Night time found us in the middle of desert, wondering whether we should just sleep in the sand or continue hitch hiking for a while. We caught another ride that took us a good hundred and fifty km further, and there we laid down in the sand and went to sleep. Around three thirty in the morning I woke up and found out what people mean when they talk about a desert night. My fingers, which had been outside the sleeping bag, were completely numb. I wrapped myself into my wool poncho inside the sleeping bag and went back to sleep. You never see stars like you do in the Atacama desert, though.
The next day we got a ride from a trucker heading for Santiago. We took the whole stretch with him, even though that meant missing out on cities like Vinia del Mar, La Serena (birthplace of Gabriela Mistral) and Valparaiso. Some other time maybe. Right now we're trying to get to the very South before it becomes too cold down there. The summer is already as good as over.

We spent the night in the truck, spreading out our sleeping bags in the empty container in the back while the driver slept in the front. He started up again early in the morning, but we stayed in the back for the first hour or so.
Once in Santiago, we hung out a bit in a small park. Man, it's hard to believe we're on the same continent as Ecuador and Colombia and Peru and Bolivia and Paraguay. This place looks like something out of Europe. Santiago probably has more acres of pedestrian zone than Hamburg does, and you see buskers and mimes and all that. The subway system is cleaner and nicer than any I've encountered in Toronto or Amsterdam. It is, however, not as cosmopolitan as those cities (in Amsterdam it is hard to say which ethnic group is best represented in your approximate vicinity when you're downtown). One of the many things that seems so un-South American about Santiago is that you can be blonde and tall (like Bryan) and have a completely touristy-looking backpack, and you can still sit in a park or other public area for hours without people trying to get at your money. If you try this in Ecuador or Peru, people will try to beg, steal, rob, or seduce you because "blonde tourist = money".

It is of course hard to take a new country in objectively if you have come with many biases about it. One of the things I heard from travelers was that Chile is the most hospitable country in the world. Another thing we heard again and again about Chile pertained to the women here. We were told by drama instructors and rock guitarists, by housewives and travel guides, that the women here would steal our heart. Well, I consider that an exaggeration. But the difference, not only in the women but in the people in general, is quite apparent. There seems to be a much stronger feel of dignity and freedom about the Chilean than about other South Americans I have lived among. People seem cleaner and more cultured. You also see more hippie types, people with dyed or dredlocked hair, hitch hikers and backpackers. Just all around the atmosphere seems more life-affirming (as Bryan put it, "more conducive to Bohemian lifestyles"). Much has to do with their acceptance of foreigners as something other than a possible fountain of money. The rest is, well, hard to define. I might return to the topic in a future eMail.

We are staying in Santiago with people that I knew years and years ago, when I was at a summer camp in Germany. It is interesting because they speak German and Spanish, so I was worried about how Bryan would communicate with them. It turns out that their English is quite good, though, which I had not expected.

This is it for now, my internet time is running out. More later, probably from a point further South.

Marco

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