Chile - Santiago and around

We didn't expect to still be in Chile at the end of March, but we love it so much we just had to hang around. After eventually departing our free luxury cabin in the Lake District (we were tempted to become squatters and never leave), we made our way to the beating heart of Chile, Santiago - home to over 1/3 of the country's people and allegedly some of the worst pollution in South America. So we weren't really planning on hanging around too long. However Santiago immediately felt like a city we could live in. Really liked it. It turned out to be the first day of university when we arrived, and all the students have to perform a bizarre initiation ceremony involving having most of their clothes removed, being covered in eggs, flour and dead fish, and being forced to walk shoeless through the city begging for money to buy their clothes back with. We handed over a fortune as we felt so sorry for them all. Freshers week was very different at Leeds thankfully. On our first night in the city we wandered aimlessly into a bar at the end of an alley, which turned out to be a bit of a Communist hangout ...posters of Che all over the walls, a massive poster pledging neverending allegiance to a Communist politician called Gladys who had died a few days before, and loads of graffiti on the walls proclaiming things like "free all political prisoners now!" and rude things questioning the parentage of Pinochet. Nik toyed with the idea of scribbling "Capitalism is fun!" on the wall nearest to her, but decided against it. It was the sort of dark and slightly dubious place where random locals got up to play guitars and sing revolutionary songs, everybody joined in, and everyone got so drunk that they eventually started falling off their chairs. We had an excellent night. The barman seemed quite taken with us (they love the Engilsh here) and kept saying "Depeche Mode!" in a very excited manner whenever he brought us a drink. The following night we received an invitation from our good friend Pedro Walker to join him for dinner at his uptown apartment. He also invited us to spend the weekend with him at his seaside pad (at the last count, we calculate that he has at least 6 houses). By this time we were highly sceptical of his motives for being so friendly and hospitable - does the man have no other friends? or was he simply a one man cult? As it turned out, it was another great evening. Pedro invited his nephew, the 19 year old son of the Chilean foreign minister, and one of his 8 brothers, all of whom are lawyers, politicians or Chilean foreign ministers, and all of whom have highly successful and good-looking wives and children. I think between them they pretty much run Chile. The brother, Juan, gave us his card which simply said "Agent". He represents a Danish wind farm, runs a Japanese restaurant and various other things besides. We had a terribly sophisticated evening drinking good red wine, eating fine food prepared by Pedro´s "help", and discussing the finer points of Chilean politics. Well, sort of, anyway. Mentioning Pinochet is tricky ground here - Pedro proclaims to be a socialist, and was pleased when Pinochet was voted out, but his brother said that apart from murdering a few thousand people, Pinochet was an excellent president who sorted out the economy and built some terribly good roads. He was much more concerned with recent revelations in Chile that Pinochet siphoned off millions of public money to his private bank account, than a few human rights abuses (almost his actual words, frighteningly), which included the South American classic of chucking 'communists' out of planes over the Pacific. I mentioned in passing that the night before we´d been in a Communist bar, which was a bit of a conversation stopper. But Juan did have a very nice car, which he drove us home in. And as an added bonus, we didn´t get forced into any cults or anything. Such nice people, the Chileans. After Santiago we took a bus out to the seaside town of Valparaiso, an industrial little port built around 42 hills, which involves lots of funiculars and lifts and things. We checked into the cheapest hostel in town, and spent the next 24 hours in the twilight zone. It started when we walked up to to what looked to be a very nice restaurant. We sat down - the only customers - and after asking for the wine list were told that they had had their licence revoked and couldn't serve alcohol. You have to picture the look of first shock and then horror which took over Nik's face - almost as if a family pet had died. Somehow we had managed at least a glass of wine a night on our trip (including in the middle of national parks on 4 day treks). So After a very very bad meal, and still no other customers, we went back to the road our hostel was on, which by night had turned into the seediest street in Chile. We chose the most decent looking bar and asked for a glass of red wine. The owner didn´t have any (not our night) but waved at his friend across the street, who dragged us into his extremely dark and dubious bar, which contained the following: 2 Chilean merchant navy sailors, who were so drunk they couldn't stand, or speak, but adopted us as their new best friends and proceeded to play air guitar to non existent Kiss records at us for the next hour; 1 extremely old drunk chap who was singing the Bee Gees´ "Massachussetts" to himself at the back of the bar, with sheet music, microphone, and huge PA system; and the owner, who was also completely wasted. At one stage the Chilean sailors dropped their bag on the floor, so I picked it up and a bottle of beer fell out and smashed on the floor - it turns out they had been stealing from the owner. We feared that an almighty fight was about to kick off, with us in the middle, but it turned out the owner was too pissed to care, so everyone had another drink instead, and the old boy at the back started another song. Soon after, we left. Alas no phoographic evidence of the bar but I'll put some other pics up in the next week or so