Santiago Part 3

On 15th March we decided to head out to a national monument called Villa Grimaldi where we could find out a bit more about the dictatorship era of Chile. The Villa used to be a townhouse restaurant located in the south of Santiago, about an hour away from where we were staying, and was one of four places in Santiago that had been restored as memorials to the victims of Pinochet and his gang of thugs.

Villa Grimaldi’s owner was forced out by the intelligence wing of Chile’s junta (DINA), sometime after the 1973 coup, and became a secret torture center for the dictatorship. The remit was to arrest or kidnap or otherwise illegally detain anyone with leftwing tendencies or suspected ties. These people were bought to places like Villa Grimaldi, all over Chile, and all over the other Southern Cone countries of the continent, and held indefinitely, beaten, tortured, murdered, or disappeared.

Once the dictatorship left office in 1990, it was soon pretty clear to the whole world what a nightmare they had been, and to what lengths they had gone to hide their actions. They seemed pretty amateurish and reckless to Francesca and I though, as they left a trail of paperwork, witnesses, DNA and bodies a mile long with which investigators could piece together what happened. Unfortunately, the future has not managed to bring much justice for the victims, as part of the deal Pinochet made when giving control back to a civilian body, was immunity for all those involved.

They had illegally appropriated the Villa for themselves and then sold it to a housing contractor to tear down and make into a block of flats, but a judge intervened just in time, and it is now a testament to the victims who had to endure being there. Torture, rape and murder were all described by survivors – both prisoners and guards alike have corroborated the horrors.

Bought in by a gate (now forever, symbolically, chained shut), the prisoners would only ever see the floor as they were blindfolded. Many were interrogated and tortured. They were sometimes able to catch a glimpse of guards, and some of these sightings have led to prosecutions, but only a handful.

Villa Grimaldi is actually a beautiful place to be now – evidently a choice made by the collective of victims and their families who now control the place. Monkey puzzle trees with parrots are central to the gardens of the property, as is a more historic Ombu tree, from which prisoners were often hung.

A wall of names commemorated those who were disappeared, and murdered. A swimming pool which was used to hide prisoners when the Red Cross inspectors turned up now stands empty. A watchtower is now used to display an information board showing the dictatorship’s hierarchy, from Pinochet to the known guards at Villa Grimaldi. The most chilling display was some railway lines that they had used to tie people to, and toss them into the sea so they would drown. Some rotten clothing including a button could still be seen on one of them.

English explanations along with an English audio guide made the visit really informative, if not a little depressing. However, it was good to learn that the past was not being swept under the rug (well, not totally anyway), and that the survivors had created something very pretty by resting Villa Grimaldi and it’s memories back from the dictatorship’s hands and shaping it into something that educates, and inspires.

We headed back to our place – we learnt no-one pays for the bus in Santiago – even though you are supposed to, so it was a cheap journey back. The next day, we got up early and went into the city center on the metro. The metro system is pretty clean in most places, not too expensive (if you get a metro card), but for some reason they did not bother to add seats to the cars so you will stand for most journeys.

We went to far flung street, Isidora Goyenechea, named after the lady who inherited the Cousino fortune which came from the Lota mine we went to near Concepcion. Lots of sculptures, expensive clothing stores and high-end banks and other businesses dot this long street, and we were lucky enough to be able to explore an antique market which was on. We made our way down to the hideous river Mapocho, and took a look around the underwhelming sculpture park. Francesca and I decided that sculptures have to be really impressive to get our attention – and these ones were not.

We walked along further to the Parque Forestal area of town. This park was now the location of the main art galleries in the city, including the Museo de Arte Contemporaneo and the Museo Nacional de Bella Artes. The contemporary art museum was a total sham and no-one should ever go there – they had one poor exhibit stretched over two floors and all of the other rooms where closed. They had more guards than paintings, and it was the only museum which charged money that day, which was a disgrace and they should be ashamed.

The fine art museum fared a little better. They had some good art, except none of it was fine art – it was all contemporary stuff. They should close the contemporary museum and change the name of the fine art one! They did have some sculptures which were old, but by far the best stuff was a room full of eclectic modern art that reminded me a bit of some of the exhibits they have in the TATE.

We were hungry by this point, so Francesca and I made our way to a Mapuche restaurant called Peumayen. We had found them online, and decided to give it a try. Located in artsy Bellavista, the restaurant boasts a menu of ‘ancestral food’ – Mapuche delicacies mostly, which we found not just interesting, but also delicious.

They first bought us a platter of tasty morsels which represented the various regions of Chile through food, from South to North. These foods included mijokinas, which are balls of white beans, peas and purple onion; katuto, which is toasted wheat with honey; and milcao (from Chiloe in the South), which is like a hash brown, with beef.

We also tried llama meat, multi-colored corn, or maize, beef, salmon, pork and lamb tongue. All the food was delicious and washed down with some Chilean red wine. Chilled honeydew and watermelon chunks in white wine made excellent palette cleansers, whilst we finished our meal with a shared main course of horsemeat. And to think I was vegetarian for so long!

We left the restaurant and went to the Museo de Artes Visuales, which was one of the better art museums in Santiago – not really for the art which were essentially funny look-a-likes – but for the Museo Arqueológico de Santiago which was located upstairs (we had to get the staffer there to walk us through sections of the gallery which were clearly still being put together. The older objects were really worth it though, like the Chinchorro mummies from the North and the black San Pedro pottery were first class. The Chinchorro mummies are the oldest ever found, and the San Pedro pottery is the highest quality pottery found from pre-Incan times. They also had some Easter Island carvings and Mapuche silverware which were nice to look at.

On our way to the Centro Cultural Metropolitano Gabriela Mistral, we saw a small bicycle race which had the streets roped off, but we never found out what that was all about. Only four guys passed us! The Cultural Center itself was extremely eclectic, with various exhibitions ranging from the latest Italian designs (awful kitchenware, and hideous impractical furniture) to Chilean weaving – some pieces of which were pretty good. I especially liked the mariachi band (although they are more Mexican).

Next we made our way up to the Cerro Santa Lucia – for which I wrote Francesca another walking tour (but forgot to give it). Nevertheless, here it is:

Santa Lucía Hill is a small hill in the center of Santiago, Chile. It is situated between Alameda del Libertador Bernardo O'Higgins in the south, Santa Lucía Street in the west and Victoria Subercaseaux on the east. An adjacent metro station is named after it. The hill has an altitude of 629 m and a height of 69 m over the surrounding area. The hill is the remnant of a volcano 15 million years old.

The hill comprises a 65,300 square meter park adorned with ornate facades, stairways and fountains. At the highest point there is a viewpoint popular with tourists visiting the city.
It was originally called Huelén by the pre-colonization inhabitants; in Mapudungun the word means "pain, melancholy or sadness". However, the current name comes from the day in which Pedro de Valdivia conquered the hill, on December 13, 1541. That day celebrates "Santa Lucía."

Its first use by its conquerors was as a point of reconnaissance, or a lookout in the years of the Conquista (1541). In 1816, the Brigadier of the Royal Engineers Manuel Olaguer Feliú, proceeded to draw and build on the Santa Lucía Hill, two forts or castles, one north and another south of the hill, built of stone and lime and able to put eight or twelve cannons each. Besides, Olaguer Feliú drew and built an outbuilding for ammunition depot and to house the garrison.
On one side of the hill, Fort Hidalgo was finished in 1820 as a defensive point. On the other side, the hillside terrain was used as a "cemetery for the dissidents", people who did not follow the then-official Roman Catholic faith, or were considered otherwise unworthy of burial at hallowed grounds. However, the remains buried in the hillside under this fashion were eventually transferred to a secluded section of the General Cemetery, before said cemetery, in turn, was opened to all burials regardless of creed or social condition.

In 1872 Benjamín Vicuña Mackenna decided to conduct a dramatic change to the urban atmosphere of the city of Santiago, among his many works aimed to improve the city, and thus initiated an extensive remodelation of the hill. The works of 1872 consisted of a road which crossed the hill, which at the top accessed a chapel which he also built there, illuminated by the then-novel means of gas. The rest of the hill contains a park with fountains and lookouts. The actual hill is watered by a sophisticated irrigation system. The now iconic yellow and white facade is also a product of Vicuña Mackenna's remodelation.
Vicuña Mackenna was assisted in realizing his designs by the architect Manuel Aldunate, the constructor Enrique Henes, and the stonecutter Andrés Staimbuck.
A few years ago, Santa Lucía hill received an improvement in its illumination system and protections. Also, Fort Hidalgo was restored and reopened to the public. Traditionally, a cannon shot is fired exactly at noon.

Located in Santa Lucía Hill there is a monument which consists of a 2 m high stone carved with a paragraph extracted from the text that Pedro de Valdivia sent to the Emperor Carlos V describing the features of the new land conquered.

Would have been a good walking tour had I remembered I had written one, huh? The views from the top were not half bad either.

On the 18th March we started our day at Constitution Plaza, where the main offices of the President are located in the Palacio de La Moneda. She had only been in office a few days, but we were informed by our guide that she was in the building working that very day. In fact the flag is put to half-mast when the President is present.

This palace was originally a Spanish colonial mint – where they made the money, hence the name, ‘palace of the coin’. Since then it has become synonymous with the 1973 coup when incumbent President Allende was bombed by the military, and probably murdered in the building by General Pinochet and his thugs. We had to secure a tour via email application first, and then with our passports at the gate at the appointed time. Luckily, some Japanese tourists stood the tour up, so it was just Francesca and I with our guide who barely spoke English.

Francesca had been on this tour before when she was last here, and not much had changed. We were shown some of the formal rooms where the President meets with other ministers and also foreign diplomats, etc.. We also saw an inner courtyard which contained two large bronze cannons, called Furious and Lightning, which were used to defend the coast from English pirates from the late 18th Century until the 20th.

Another part of the building contained a small model of the palace itself, whilst a nearby courtyard had some Mapuche wooden statues called Chemamulls, meaning wooden people. These were used to mark graves, and the gender and even features were carved to resemble the deceased. The Spanish burned many of these statues as they believed they were idolatrous.

We got to see the door we saw on our previous walking tour from the other side – the door where presidents traditionally leave the building upon completing their term as president. The same door they carried Salvador Allende’s body out through. In that room are commemorative medals for each president – a few even have two as they served more than once.

We checked out some exhibitions in the adjacent cultural center, and they had an interesting exhibit showcasing some of the new things you can do with 3D printers these days. An exhibit of famous Chilean film posters gave us some ideas of films to download too.

We next visited a neat little neighborhood called Barrio Paris-Londres, named after the two streets where it intersects. Located behind the famous San Francisco church which we also peeked in, the barrio is home to another of the former torture center sites which have been preserved in memorial to the people who were brutalized by the state. The house was called Londres 38, after it’s original address – the Pinochet regime changed the address to number 40 so as to stop people from finding it. Many of the victims’ families would visit demanding to see their loved ones, and if they did not go away, would themselves be forced to stay inside and be tortured. 98 people died or disappeared at this address, whilst more than 2000 people, mostly left wing politicians, were ‘guests’ there.

That evening, we decided to relax with a well-deserved Indian meal. Indian food is pretty much non-existent in South America, so it was nice to see a few restaurants in Santiago dedicated to curry and rice. We shared a meal of chicken tikka, and although there was not much food, it was delicious.

The next day, the 19th March, we went and got a bus (Chilean buses are pretty poor) to Isla Negra, another home of Chilean poet and ego-trip, Pablo Neruda. Originally called The Seagulls, Neruda used his influence to buy the house from a real sea captain (Neruda could not sail but insisted people call him Captain) and renamed it Isla Negra (black island), after the black rocks which covered the beach.

The house is very nautical in theme, with the first room that you enter containing numerous figureheads from ships. Neruda used to scour old boatyards for them, restoring them and putting them here. He had a fascination with the sea, and it would almost remind you of Hemmingway if it were not for the fact that he could neither swim or sail. Instead he preferred to entertain his guests, all the while making more and more money, and obtaining more and more strange collections, whilst maintaining a Communist façade like so many of the other artists who it is impossible to take seriously.

Nevertheless, a lot of his most celebrated work was written at Isla Negra, and it was here he kept a large collection of books. It was here he was also taken to hospital, sick with cancer, days after hearing of the military coup. After he died, he was buried there with his third wife, Matilde Urrutia. My favorite part of the house was Neruda’s collection of South American masks which he had used to line one corridor’s wall. Neruda may have been a pretentious prick and womanizer, but he knew how to decorate. His sea shell collection was extremely cool too, which was crowned by a narwhal’s tusk presented to him by Norway and written about in his book of poems called Enigmas.

From one guy living the nautical dream, to another, we made our way from Neruda’s home and final resting place, to an attraction called the Imaginarium. This strange place is the culmination of one man’s vision to drop out and tune in to the imagination. 15 years in the making, a man that we came to only know as The Captain (did this guy have a Neruda complex?) had built his house as a ship. There was no longer any house, literally only a ship. He had masts, rigging, sails, port holes, the lot. The neighbors and his family said he was crazy, and I have to agree a little bit – and they tried to stop him working on it. The local government got involved but by that time he was already showing people around his ship. His mission? To inspire people to think like children again – be innocent and imaginative. In short, to have fun! Some of his guests had turned out to be naval men from the Chilean army, and after they left, they sought an obtained permission to draft The Captain’s house into the Chilean navy itself. As crazy as it sounds, the house legally became a ship – albeit one located in the middle of a neighborhood, and the local government lost jurisdiction over it. The Captain now shows people around, creating a fun story and firing the imagination fro his visitors. Although he says he has dropped out and has no need for names, phones, bills or a job, it was a little awkward when he asked us for a financial contribution at the end of our visit. He should charge money upfront as his ship is cool, even if his mother does live next door and blasts disapproving looks at you when you walk the plank and pretend swim around the front yard / imaginary sea. A bizarre experience which he should definitely cash in on.

The next day - our penultimate day in Santiago, was actually spent everywhere except Santiago. We headed out by bus again to the coast, this time instead to the famous holiday destination of Santiaguinos, the coastal port of Valparaiso.

We arrived very early for a walking tour run by Tours4Tips, and we even had time for some waffles and tea. From the café we were in we saw the instantly recognizable tour guides wearing their red and white ‘Where’s Wally / Waldo’ shirts and so we headed over to join. The group was large, but the walking tour guides knew what they were doing and there were enough of them to allow everyone to get their questions answered.

The main problem with doing a walking tour in Chile is the stray dogs that follow the group. We had the same problem in Santiago, and now Valparaiso was the same. Some of the dogs were pretty aggressive too, and all of them were dirty.

The tour started with Plaza Sotomayor before moving to the port. Settled first by Picunche Indians, the Spanish arrived in 1536 and founded the city there. It was not until after Chilean independence however that the city really had a boom with the ships sailing from the Atlantic to the Pacific stopping off here, particularly during the California gold rush.

A major seaport, Valpo, as it is called, became a refuge for many immigrants from across the world. They built their houses far up into the hills which famously make up the city. Houses made of wood and discarded metals were put together clumsily, and objects found around the port were used in their construction, including the bright paint that ships use to be seen at sea, which made up the pretty skyline of the city itself. Spoiling the view somewhat, is the nasty tangled mess of wires that you find in all third world countries, and we even stopped at a house in one of the more colorful areas, which had burnt down and just been left there.

Buildings here are often so old they are protected as monuments and therefore cannot be removed, even if they have been burnt down. Their owners often collect on some small insurance, and because of the inherent dangers still found in the awful electrics and crowded accommodations, either cannot afford the restoration and insurance, or don’t want to, so the burnt out husks are just left there. Valparaiso is even more dangerous than other cities, as the volunteer fire brigade cannot access the narrow hilly neighborhoods with their hoses or trucks and so fires can easily burn out of control. We learnt about this from our tour guide, himself a volunteer firefighter in the city.

EDIT:

Since this was written, a huge fire devastated Valparaiso, enough to make some people question the voluntary firefighter system. Our guide had told us the firefighters were set up by the immigrants when Valpo had it’s first boom. Each group would have it’s own fire station, coat of arms, flag and particular rules. Some even now are very exclusive – for example you have to be descended from a particular racial group, or your father had to be a fire fighter at the station, etc.. Volunteers have to pay their own pay into the service – a practice defended by many as honorable and traditional, but also denounced by others as modern needs in a country beset by forest fires and third world construction grow.

After the famous colorful houses on the hills, the second most famous part of Valpo is the funicular railways. These trams serve the hills all around Valpo, some almost a ninety degree angle. The lifts are declared national monuments, but on any given day, only a few work as they are all run by the government, and therefore there is not much money allocated in maintaining them. We travelled up one which was pretty steep, but we were not worried as we had taken the one in Santiago up Cerro San Cristobal.

One of the things that you cannot help but notice in South America is the graffiti (everywhere!). Most of it is crass and tasteless, and some of it is pretty good street art – from Rio to Santiago, and Buenos Aires to Montevideo – but some of the best (and most surreal) we saw was in Valparaiso. Our guide told us that there is a mutual respect between street artists and people who just tag (write their name or handle on a wall). They do not spray over each other’s work. Some graffiti is so bad, home owners, and store owners even employ street artists to put something on their walls so taggers cannot make it look so awful! Another reason Valpo is so colorful.

With the funiculars only working irregularly, and the streets being so steep, people only head into town when they absolutely have to – often taking a long laundry list of items that their elderly neighbors have given them. In fact after the tour, we used the buses and collectivos (shared taxis), and we found no problem getting around.

Valpo is not just the main port of Chile (moving 10 million tons per season), but it is also the constitutional capital of Chile. In 1990 Pinochet moved the Congress there to get the politicians away from him. The city was also the staging post for the finish line of the 2014 Dakar Rally – which we would come across again in Bolivia, where it crossed the giant salt flats of Uyuni.

Our excellent tour ended with a small pisco sour to drink, and we thanked our guides who gave us directions to La Sebastiana, Pablo Neruda’s fourth house. The other three we had visited were his childhood home in Temuco, La Chascona in Santiago and Isla Negra. How come a Communist owns so many houses? Because, as I wrote in the guestbook at La Sebastiana, ‘Neruda is a pompous jackass’.

The house was nice – especially the writer’s reading room, which was supposed to act as a sort of crow’s nest at the top of his house. The rest of the house was quite narrow, and there were the usual collection of expensive dishes, sea maps, and the writer’s initials plastered everywhere. The house was shared by Neruda and his mistress with another artist couple they knew. A well-stocked bar, along with the usual weird knick-knacks Neruda kept to impress his friends, including a merry-go-round horse looking out over the city, all confirm the story that Neruda was indeed a plastic Socialist who was too caught up in his own self-importance to still be interesting. Shame.

Next stop, the Naval Museum. Located at the top of a steep hill nearer the waterfront, we took a cab there. This museum took ages to get around because there was so much to see on the packed two floors. An in depth exploration of the most important figures of Chile’s naval history, including Arturo Prat, Chile’s hero who single-handedly boarded a Peruvian ship only to be gunned down (brave but stupid), Lord Cochrane, an Englishman who was commanded by the countries father Bernardo O’Higgins to take command of the first Chilean fleet to defeat the Spanish, and Manuel Blanco, Chile’s first Vice-Admiral an President, whose sword is now used as a model for all the Vice-Admiral’s swords.

The battle of Iquique featured most prominently in the museum, as it is considered to be the turning point of the War of the Pacific, even though Chile lost the battle – they won the war. The loss of Peru’s greatest ship, the Independencia, compared to the loss of only an old wooden ship, the Chilean Esmerelda, coupled with the loss of Captain Arturo Prat, which historians suggest was the cause for thousands of young Chileans signing up to fight, swayed the war in Chile’s favor. This resulted in Bolivia losing all of their coast to Chile, leaving it landlocked – which they still bitch about today, and Peru losing many of their Southern territories, including lots of saltpeter mines, which was the real reason behind the war in the first place.

My favorite two things in the museum were an exploded torpedo, which had apparently exploded inside it’s own gun barrel. This looked like a cartoon drawing. Also, they had an original capsule that was built to descend down the borehole into the San Juan mine to rescue the trapped 33 miners from the 2010 mining accident.

We headed out to our final destination of the day, which was Vina del Mar, another coastal resort neighboring Valpo. Vina was Chile’s fourth biggest city, which was not what I had expected. I had pictured a remote tiny quaint seaside resort, but instead got buses belching black smoke! We went past the famous flower clock, whilst on the bus, and made our way with some (rare) local help to Museo Fonck.

This museum, named after a director, had a large display of indigenous objects from the area, including Mapuche silverware, a huge Easter Island Moai and several shrunken heads from the Amazon.

Much of the museum is given over to Easter Island and the explanation of the islands Polynesian origins that closely compare with Mapuche culture (belieing the myth that all indigenous South Americans came from Asia). An exploration of Northern Chile’s pottery introduced us to some tribes and ancient cultures which we looked forward to finding more about, including the San Pedro and Nazca peoples. A display of poisonous arachnids, the usual dead stuffed puma, and more pottery were strangely exhibited alongside old Chilean children’s toys. An eclectic mixture, the museum is definitely interesting enough to spend an hour or two in, especially with the explanation of how to create your own shrunken head!

We made our way back to Santiago by bus, where our time had come to an end. After a relaxing day at home, we packed all our stuff and headed onto our next destination, La Serena. We had heard about a possible earthquake that experts were saying might happen along the Northern coast of Chile, but we thought we would take the chance…and we certainly ended up feeling earthquakes!