Santiago de Chile, a city to fall in love with - Day Seven

I got up this morning and being totally relaxed after my mountain experience, I thought I can't be arsed walking around the city for 4 hours, even if its free but how else was I going to learn about Santiago?  I wasn't going to read about it in a book as I seem to have an aversion to any book that might teach some kind of history.  So up I got and out i went and met my guide of the morning, Frank.   We met in Placa de Armas which is the main square in Santiago but its where the arms were stored in one of the many conflicts this country had - as you may have realised I am shite at history so will never remember actual dates or names of things that happened in history unless they strike a particular cord with me.  so anyway we moved on from Placa de Armas to the main street which is very near my apartment so has sort of been my stomping ground the last few days, its called Paseo Ahumada.  Apparently this is the main walking street in Santiago and has anything you could ever want to buy in it.

So we move around the city with Frank being very entertaining and the rest of the tourists enjoying his banter. I met up with an english girl who is on a world tour for 6 months and an english guy who is in South America on a months paid holiday from his work.  We saw the Old Congress Building, the Supreme Court, The Government House, the Santiago Stock Exchange, the Opera house, Santa Lucia Hill, the Lastarria Neighbourhood which was full of cafe's and bars, we saw Placa Italia and then my favourite district which was Bellavista - full of students and arty types.  The stalls were amazing and it was the place to buy Lapis Lazuli - so be afraid - very afraid - I now have a Lapis Lazuli ring, necklace and very small Lapis Lazuli Easter Island statue which has so much energy in it that it jumps out of my hand.  So if you remember from my previous blog - Lapis Lazuli encourages self-awareness, allows self-expression and reveals inner truth, providing qualities of honesty, compassion and morality to the personality - so if I have a GO its only because of my Lapis Lazuli OK?!

The Maipo River runs through Santiago - do you remember my picture from the glacier where it starts and then heads to irrigate the vines that become our vines?  well I hope it irrigates the Vines before it hits Santiago as its a real shithole full of rubbish - yuck!!  i am not drinking that.....

so 20 years ago some Chilean Mado thought it would be brilliant to build a building in the shape of a mobile phone - if only he was a fortune teller it would have been the coolest building in the world in the shape of an iPhone!!!!  he probably would have made a fortune if he had had that kind of foresight instead of designing a building that only Dom Joly would recognise - HELLO!!!  Yup hard to believe that once upon a time we thought Dom Joly was funny!!!

 The poet Pablo Nerudo was a poet and nobel prize winner (this is a photo of his Santiago residence) - apparently he wrote a poem about Onions - yep read the poem which is beautiful but i still hate onions - they taste like squeaky horrible shitey things.

Ode To The Onion by Pablo Neruda

Onion,luminous flask, 

your beauty formed

petal by petal,
crystal scales expanded you
and in the secrecy of the dark earth
your belly grew round with dew.
Under the earth
the miracle
happened
and when your clumsy
green stem appeared,
and your leaves were born
like swords
in the garden,
the earth heaped up her power
showing your naked transparency,
and as the remote sea
in lifting the breasts of Aphrodite
duplicating the magnolia,
so did the earth
make you,
onion
clear as a planet
and destined
to shine,
constant constellation,
round rose of water,
upon
the table
of the poor.

You make us cry without hurting us.
I have praised everything that exists,
but to me, onion, you are
more beautiful than a bird
of dazzling feathers,
heavenly globe, platinum goblet,
unmoving dance
of the snowy anemone
and the fragrance of the earth lives
in your crystalline nature.

The guy in the red tshirt is Frank - my guide for 4 hours - he kept it cool and interesting and it definitely didn't feel like i had been walking for 4 hours.  The free walking tours is an amazing service - they work purely on tips - you give what you think the tour deserves.  Can you imagine something like this in the UK?  Not sure it would happen as the apathetic UK guides would never make any money but Frank was interesting, informative and excited to be teaching us which was really nice.

the free walking tours site is www.freetoursantiago.cl

So after the free tour I headed off into Bellavista for some Lapis Lazuli shopping and had a late lunch of chilean beans mixed with mashed corn and pumpkin with 2 cervezas - delicious.

I then climbed up Santa Lucia and had a raspberry ice cream for the walk down the hill.  Really lovely day in the city - its such a beautiful place with really nice people living here.  I have really loved Santiago and really hope to return soon - may be as part of my Street Dogs documentary... now street dogs is a whole other blog....

but a brief on the Street Pups in Santiago  (sorry you know I can't help but support the street dogs of the world!) - the happiest street dogs I have ever seen - i have so many pictures to choose from to share on this blog - lots of fat pups with no mange or other diseases and big waggy tails, they love tourists - of course because we feed them but they really are happy street dogs - Nepal and Tibet could take a leaf out of Santiago's book.  Now they are looked after by a few organisations one being www.proanimalchile.com  - only go to the website if you are made of hard stuff.  Although I have been told confidently that any Chilean seen beating a dog on the street would be turned on by the locals and beaten in return.  The street dogs are cared for by the locals in the city - perhaps on the outskirts they are not cared for so much but I have only seen fat happy pups in Santiago Centro - i have seen someone going round feeding them biscuits which explains the fatness - here is a pick of a cute pooch with so many biscuits she can't eat them.

A UK Vet would have cute streety on a diet!  I have seen many street dogs on my travels but none as happy as the Santiago street dogs.  I plan on getting in touch with the rescue centres to see if they have a successful strategy that we could use around the world to help with the very common aggressive and sick street dogs of the world.  It seems from the people I have spoken to the Santiago City people love the street dogs and happily take responsibility for the spay and neuter programme along with worming, disease prevention and feeding.  I LOVE THE SANTIAGO PEOPLE just for this.

suzxxx