Cali to Bogotá, and then a connection flight to Santiago. The first flight was an hour late. I really don‘t recommend landing on 2700 m above sea level and pulling off a sprint through an entire airport. The automatic passport control of course didn‘t work and cost me another 5 minutes at least, that I didn‘t have. Right before the gate closed I made it onto the plane.
I‘m pretty sure I had a fever on the flight. I mean, I planned to take a week off in Cali and just dance a little, but well, it didn‘t go this way… might be an explanation.
I sat down in the uber from the airport - a brand new Chevrolet, it was so quiet in this car, nothing made rattling noises or was bumpy… a culture shock like I never thought I‘d have one. And it kept going on this way. My driver was really nice and waited in the car until I was through the door of the hostel - Latinos are the kindest people.
Santiago is a nice city. Living here, you don‘t miss out on anything, i believe, as long as you have European income. The minimum wage for chileans is around 500€, which is barely enough for rent, so it‘s hard for a lot of people and many live on the streets or have to beg for money. But of course not in the main tourist streets, you only see that once you wander away from those parts.
If you take a picture in Santiago, you don‘t recognise it‘s Chile. It might as well be London, Madrid, Budapest or Vienna. It‘s quiet - barely any street vendors, no loud music, nobody‘s dancing, people chat quietly.
They have a museum of memory and human rights, losely translated. Of course I had to go. So I‘ll give you a short history lesson about Chile. You don‘t learn about that in european schools, but the people here have quite a bit of interesting (and bad) history themselves.
1970, Chile was torn between left and right parties, there was barely an in-between. Salvador Allende, a socialist, was elected president. He focussed mainly on social programs and wanted key industries to be nationalized, which obviously led to sky high inflation and shortness of goods, and neither left nor right liked that.
At the same time, both parties became more and more distanced, their ideologies extremer. The right wing made chaos in form of demos, sabotage and violence.
On September 11th, 1973, the chilean military led by General Augusto Pinochet launched a coup d‘état. La Moneda, the house of the president in Santiago de Chile, was bombed and Allende died in the attack. His followers wanted him to be safe somewhere else, but he refused to leave the presidential palace since he couldn‘t leave his people alone.
The military took control of Chile and started a gruelsome dictatorship. Thousands of left-winged people, including students, workers, activists, men and women alike, disappeared or were sent to concentration camps to be interrogated, tortured or executed.
This horrible phase lasted 17 years. The Chileans voted against the dictatorship and showed that with demos, and so laid the path to democracy. In 1990, Patricio Aylwin was elected the first democratic President and the dictatorship ended, finally.
Did you expect that? Did you know of it? I sure had zero plan.
Whatever. I have to remind myself that I can‘t tell myself yet that I don‘t love Chile. I just miss the chaos of Colombia, the kind people, the culture every day. And the fresh, ripe mangoes for 1€ - here, an imported one costs around 3,50€… buuut I know that I will see many incredible places, have epic experiences and many, many memories, and of course I‘m looking forward to that :)
Well, currently I am in Valparaíso, about 2 h west of Santiago at the sea. Here, I instantly felt better - there‘s more going on, a bit of chaos, and most importantly: Every corner of the street is painted. So, enjoy the pictures, take it as inspiration and some of them with a grain of salt.
Next time, you‘ll probably hear from me from Argentina. Until then, ¡hasta la vista!
