Santiago

Warning: this article contains some weird stuff.

In some ways, things were easier when I didn’t speak much Spanish. Ignorance is bliss, as they say. Now I get to have conversations like this one.

‘Do you know where 744 Monjitas is?’ I asked the taxi driver on the way downtown from the airport, noticing the lack of a GPS.

It was one o’clock in the morning. I was exhausted, stinking hot and a little edgy having to arrive in Santiago for the first time so late at night.

‘I know exactly where it is,’ he replied in an odd way.

‘Why do you say it like that?’ I asked. ‘Is it a famous building?’

‘It’s famous, yes, but not in a good way,’ came the reply that immediately triggered the alarm bells on my extra sensitive danger radar.

‘So what’s the problem with it?’

‘You’ll see when we get there. It’s not a good area. Bad people on the street. Thieves. Drug addicts. Prostitutes. They work in the strip clubs nearby and rent rooms in that building to take men back to.’

‘It’s a 15 storey building. Surely there aren’t 15 floors full of strippers?’ I proposed.

‘Maybe not, but you’ll see for yourself soon enough…’ the driver replied.

‘So tell me, how do you know if someone on the street here is bad?’ I asked.

‘What kind of decent person would be hanging around outside at this time? A good person should be at home with their family now.’

‘So if they’re outside, they’re bad people?’

‘On your street, yes.’

Great.

After 10 minutes of silence, during which I thought about all the times I’d been outside in London at this time of night, the taxi driver pulled over at the entrance to a dimly lit alleyway.

‘Look!’ he instructed. ‘Never go down there. See those guys in the doorway? And the girls down the end? You should stay away from here.’

As much as I appreciated the helpful advice, I was starting to feel a little uneasy now, especially as ‘those guys’ had clearly noticed the gringo in the airport taxi.

‘I see what you mean. Shall we carry on to the building?’ I suggested, hoping this was the only stop on the driver’s spontaneous night tour.

‘We’re already there. It’s on the other side of the road.’

Great.

I got out of the taxi quickly, and got my bags out of the back even quicker. As I was waiting for a security guard to answer the buzzer, two teenage boys opened the door to the building from the inside.

They looked as surprised as I did to meet in the doorway, staring at me quizzically from bloodshot eyes tucked under their baseball caps.

Too small and too stoned to cause me any problems, I decided, thanking them politely for holding the door open as I walked straight past them.

10 minutes later the security guard finally found the key to the rented apartment, left in the wrong box by the day shift. I took the over-sized elevator up to the 10th floor and opened the door into what was to be yet another temporary torture chamber.

With temperatures hitting 37 degrees in the day and not dropping below 25 at night, and no air conditioning or fan to fight the effects of the sun beating down on the windows all day, it was another Lima all over again.

Welcome to Santiago.

Day and night in Latin American cities

To be fair to Santiago, I should highlight that this could have been the arrival in any South American capital late at night. And as is always the case, Santiago in the morning was a completely different story.

You get used to the gradual change in atmosphere in the downtown area of all the capital cities after the sun sets. But as much as you get used to it, it’s still better to avoid being there late at night.

During the day the center of Santiago is a bustling, lively and fun place to explore. And I came to learn that in the evening my road was a colorful hub for students and alternatively-minded people, before eventually handing over to the less friendly night crowd.

And just for the record, the elderly couple living in the apartment opposite me didn’t look like pole-dancing was their choice of Saturday night activity.

The sound of Santiago

Many people have told me that Santiago is a cold city, both the climate and the general nature of the people. When I was there though, it averaged 37 degrees and people seemed very friendly on the whole.

I also find it hard to judge a city as being cold when there’s so much music and art on the street. Perhaps it was the fact that it was a record breaking heat wave, perhaps I got lucky after getting off to a bad start.

But the streets of downtown Santiago were alive with the warmth of sunshine, music, art and countless people etching out a living.

Café con piernas – just coffee, or coffee with legs?

The coffee in Chile is fantastic. It’s smooth, strong and they know how to make a decent latte. They also know how to entice customers into their coffee shops – particularly male customers.

While out hunting breakfast and a caffeine kick the first morning, I found what seemed like a normal coffee shop, clearly very popular with the locals.

Evidently, the waitresses’ uniform was also very popular with the locals. The staff were all women, and all of them wearing the same ridiculously short, body-hugging dresses.

Apparently, this was normal in Santiago, with men and women, young and old, all having their morning coffee. So I had my latte and continued on my way.

Over the next few days, while exploring every nook and cranny of the center as always, I noticed that there was an unusually large number of coffee shops to be found.

And in the more hidden away corners and underground levels of the many labyrinthine shopping galleries that crisscross downtown, the vast majority had blacked out windows and neon signs outside.

A bit of Googling soon told me that this uniquely Chilean phenomenon is called Café con piernas – coffee with legs.

Apparently it was started in the 1970s by disgruntled men, fed up with the oppressive dictatorship they lived under. It was to be a more liberal place to have a coffee before, during or after work.

It proved to be extremely popular, especially with office workers and businessmen. What a surprise.

There are, of course, many in this predominantly conservative catholic country who strongly disapprove of the concept. Especially the more seedy establishments with blacked out windows and loud electronic music.

The girls in those places will serve your coffee wearing fluorescent bikinis, and you might get a bit more than just legs.

What I find interesting is that back home in London, this kind of place would be filled with drunk men late at night. In Santiago, they don’t even serve alcohol, they close in the early evening and the busiest time is in the morning.

I wonder what my taxi driver would have to say.

The art of Santiago

If you’re an art lover, Santiago has a lot to offer. Fine art, pre-columbian indigenous art, live audio-visual performances, contemporary art, local crafts, students selling their latest design work, murals and graffiti.

The city is as full of art as it is music and coffee shops.

I’ll never know whether it was pure coincidence when I was there, but even the museum of fine arts had major exhibitions of a slightly controversial nature: one on the theme of violence against women, and another of somewhat violent homoerotic art.

I couldn’t help wonder if there was a battle being waged against the widespread exploitation of women through prostitution, strip clubs and cafes con piernas.

Or maybe Santiago is just an edgy, gritty, in-your-face city that the more reserved English would take some getting used to.

The central market & Chilean food

I know this article might paint a slightly unusual picture of Santiago (or me), but thankfully there were plenty of opportunities for normal, everyday, family-friendly experiences.

If you’re in town and you want somewhere fun to eat, where you’ll find great seafood, the central market is the place to go.

You can walk around the outer corridors checking out your soon-to-be lunch, and then find yourself a spot in the crowded and lively restaurants in the center.

Kung-Fu in the park

It’s never easy making friends when you’re only in a city for a few days and you live alone. So you have to take every opportunity you can get to talk to the locals, and hopefully gain an insight into their lives and culture.

On my penultimate day, I was walking through the shady central park (shady trees, not shady dodgy) when I caught sight of a guy practising what looked like high level martial arts under a tree.

I sat and watched from a distance for a while, then decided to go and say hello. It turns out he was doing a form of Kung-Fu similar to that which I’d trained in London a few years ago.

He was a cool guy, and before I knew it he was going over what I’d learned, and teaching me some new moves.

I asked him how useful my Kung-Fu would be if someone attacked me on the streets of Santiago.

‘Don’t bother,’ he told me. ‘Just give them what they want. They’ll either shoot or stab you, or worse still, you’ll accidentally kill one of them and go to prison. And you really wouldn’t like prison here.’

I’m not sure if he added the second part just to make me feel better about my bad Kung-Fu, but either way, it’s good advice.

He kindly invited me to return the next day to train with him and his friends, but sadly I’d be moving on.

One of the downsides to travelling at such a fast pace is meeting awesome people, only to never become the friends you sense you could have been.

And one of the positives, of course, is that you even have the chance to meet such interesting people, if only for a brief moment.

South to Patagonia

After 5 days in Santiago, it was finally time to escape the at times unbearable heat and head south to the cold extremes of Patagonia.

I’m not sure what awaits me there, as I haven’t done a lot of research. But I have a feeling it’s going to be a world apart from Santiago.

But before I go, here are a few more photos of the city which surprised, amazed, amused, educated and entertained me in equal measure.

Despite some of the points I’ve chosen to mention in this article, I really liked Santiago and highly recommend paying a visit if you’re ever in this part of the world.