Semana Santa en Chile

So Easter Week led me across the border and across the Andes to Chile, Argentina’s skinny neighbor. After an easy 2 hour flight from Buenos Aires, an annoying $100 “reciprocity fee” that all U.S. citizens have to pay to get into the country (a clever way for Chileans to get back at the U.S. for charging $100 just to TRY to get an American visa), and a quick shuttle ride from the airport we were in Santiago, the capital. We spent 2 nights in Santiago and I really liked it – even though it’s a huge city, it felt much more laid back and WAY less hectic than Buenos Aires. We stayed in a really nice neighborhood, Bellavista (described as the “bohemia” of Santiago), which had tons of colorful houses, cobblestone streets and little restaurants and shops.

We spent most of the first day exploring a bunch of Santiago’s modern and fine art museums, the National Museum of Fine Arts, the Contemporary Art Museum and the Museum of Visual Arts. A lot of the art dealt with the September 11, 1973 coup against Salvador Allende (a democratically elected president) and the almost 20-year military dictatorship under Augusto Pinochet that followed it. Besides still being very present in the art we saw, the memory of the “Chilean September 11th” was all over the streets:



We also took a tour of La Chascona, Pablo Neruda’s house in Santiago, which had lots of artwork and gifts from famous friends of his like Diego Rivera and Siqueiros, his Nobel Prize, and tons of quirky furniture, dishes and decorations. After a late lunch we wandered over to the Plaza de Armas, the city’s main plaza:







On our second day in Santiago, we took a funicular up to the top of San Cristobal Hill, the highest point in the city, which (of course, this is Latin America) has a huge statue of the Virgin Mary on top, watching over Santiago.



Usually San Cristobal has an amazing view of the city and the Andes behind it. Sadly, you can usually only see that “amazing view” right after it rains because Santiago is absolutely covered in pollution. We did get a good view of Santiago itself, but could only make out the outline of the Andes behind the thick smog. Here are a few views of the city from the top (you can sort of make out the outline of the mountains in the background if you look closely):





After our few days in Santiago, we took a bus to Valparaíso, a port city about 2 hours north of Santiago. The city is built on a huge hill overlooking a bay, and tons of the houses are painted bright/beachy colors. We spent one morning exploring the hilly streets and looking at the colorful houses, a lot of which are decorated with murals and mosaics.







Even though Valparaiso was really pretty and seemed like a great place to live, we discovered that there wasn’t a lot to actually do there, so we spent most of our time at the beaches in Viña del Mar, the town next door. Needless to say, after being in the urban jungle of Buenos Aires for five weeks, it felt really nice to see the ocean again. Here are some pictures of the beaches in Viña:





Overall it was a really fun and relaxing trip. It was really interesting to experience another Latin American country and see the differences in everything from accents to food to architecture. Here are my favorite things about Chile:

1. The fact that they put palta (avocado) on EVERYTHING
2. The Santiago subway system (well-organized and planned, clean, and not ridiculously crowded - Buenos Aires, take note)
3. The lack of humidity
4. The fact that no matter where you go you're never too far from the ocean

I’d also say that one of the highlights of the trip was the people we met in the hostels we stayed at. A lot of them had been traveling all throughout Latin America for months, and it made me realize that there’s so much more of Latin America that I want to see. We even met one Canadian couple who had been traveling around the world for almost a year and had been to every single continent. Amazing.

Plaza de Mayo

So I had planned on posting this entry last Tuesday, but a little crisis involving me getting my wallet stolen on the colectivo sort of messed up that plan. So here's what I was planning on posting:

Since I'm finally up on technology and figured out how to post pictures here, I figured I could give you all a little taste of some of the major sights in Buenos Aires.



Here we have the Plaza de Mayo, the main plaza/square in downtown BsAs. It is named after the May Revolution of 1810 which started the movement for the city's (and eventually the country's) independence from Spain. In the late 1940s it was home to massive rallies of "descamisados" (the shirtless ones - Perón's name for the lower-class workers who supported him) that gathered to hear the speeches of Pres. Perón and their beloved Evita. In the 1970s it became home to the "Madres de la Plaza de Mayo," a group of mothers who marched around the plaza's central statue, protesting Argentina's military dictatorship and demanding the return of their sons who had been kidnapped (and consequently tortured and killed) by the government's paramilitary forces. The "desparecidos" are still very much in the minds of Argentines and since the 70s, the Madres have still marched every Thursday at 3:30 p.m. My host lady told me that they don't march anymore, but I'm going to go down to the Plaza one Thursday to see if that's true.



Here's the Casa Rosada, the centerpiece of the Plaza de Mayo and the seat of executive branch of Argentina's government. There's a few theories as to why the building is painted pink. One of which is that the President in power at the time of its construction chose the color to fuse the colors (red and white) of Argentina's opposing political parties. Another theory is that the paint used contained ox blood, giving it a pink hue. As you can see from the pictures, they're doing construction right now. My Argentine Literature professor told us that they're re-painting the house to restore its original shade of pink, which had been lost after years of new paint jobs. The balcony of the Casa Rosada is where Juan and Eva Peron would make their famous speeches, and the Argentine government actually allowed Madonna to be filmed singing from the balcony for the movie "Evita" (which most Argentines were not too happy about).

Nowadays, the Plaza de Mayo ground zero for political protests in Buenos Aires. You can tell just by looking at the graffiti around the plaza:







Well hopefully that's enough of a history lesson for now. I'll hopefully be able to post about my Chile trip within the next few days. For now, it's back to classes and the "real world."