Hi everyone,

I’m getting into the groove of some aspects of Santiago, and have even got into some conversations with people in shops…but more of that later.

The means of using public transport is the Bip! card that you get at any Metro station, and load up with cash. You touch on when you get on the bus or metro station, and the machine goes …yep, you guessed it. There is a single, very low fare (about $1) for any length trip. It’s so much simpler than the Byzantine MYKI card that Melbourne is saddled with. The trains and buses are very regular and frequent, and the network extensive.

On Friday I used it for a trip out to the Baha’i Temple which nestles halfway up the foothills of the Andes, about an hour from the centre of town. There is a half hour walk up an at times steepish road to get to it, although you could drive or take a taxi. I was pleased that I had trained multiple times on the 7 flights at my accommodation.

The temple is spectacular

You aren’t allowed to take pics inside, but it is a most serene and light filled place, the translucent ceiling swirling upwards, and the space surrounded by glass at floor level looking out to the gardens. The air is cool and crisp and clean.

It is a place for all people to spend some time, and the custodians are all charming and welcoming. I spent a half hour chatting with one guy (in English) who explained that they believed that every thousand years or so another prophet arises to set humanity back on the right course for the times. He explained how Jesus had renovated Judaism, and Islam had developed to revitalise Christianity, but all had solidified into power structures where the initial philosophy had been progressively distorted with mythologies and rituals, and had become enmeshed in the ruling state, until they were no longer fit for purpose. Crowd control features like heaven and hell, creeds that you have to believe in or you are doomed, and frankly unbelievable supernatural accretions are the barnacles to truth…in their opinion. For them there are no angels, demons, miraculous births, resurrections, transubstantiations…just a communion with a God …the God who is unknowable, but is the foundation of existence. For them, other religions are not wrong, just outdated and corrupted, and everyone is welcome to come to the temple or be part of the community.

The scene looking over the polluted city from the purity of the temple is perhaps a metaphor for their approach…

Nestor is away in Colombia for two weeks, so I have the place to myself. It is nice that he has trusted me to be here…I could make off with a truckload of star wars toys and never be seen again!

There are quite a few shops selling bongs and other drug paraphernalia.

I asked Nestor about is, and whether dope was legal here. He said that it is ok to smoke it, and to grow up to five plants for your own use…but not to sell or buy it. He conceded that that left a bit of a grey area in the law, but that there were plenty of those here.

The entertainment in the Plaza continues to be fun. Here’s the gold man getting golden…

and the drummers

I realised just recently that the ‘look time‘ when you pass by someone in the street here is the absolute minimum. In Italy the continued stare could go for several seconds, giving you a chance to smile or react, the same in Turkey or Bali, but here a few milliseconds is all that transpires. Even if you give way to a local the response is often ignorement or very occasionally a ‘gracias’ without a smile. Maybe any connection with a gringo or extranjero is not on the menu

I went to the Museum of Memory and Human Rights which is in a swish modern building, and looks at the military coup which brought the dictator Pinochet to power, and the horrors that went with that regime. There wasn’t much in English, but I could follow most things in Spanish. This is one bit that was in English.

There were lots of handwritten letters and newspaper articles. One wall detailed the different tortures that the regime did to dissidents and opponents. I couldn’t bear to read more than one.

This says, outside a room which recounted the brutalising of artists and singers and writers, ‘how dangerous can a song or a book be?’

September the 11th, 50 years ago was when the coup started. Nestor told me that right wing Pinochet supporters are still around, but up till now they have kept a low profile, but with leaders like Trump, Erdoğan and the right wingers that have come out of the woodwork (many of them nice people according to that orange fellow from the USA) in Europe and here in South America, the supporters are surfacing from the underground. He, Nestor, advised me to stay off the streets on the 11th.

This street art caught my eye as I was walking to the museum. The peeling is unintentional I suppose, but it does make a statement about the impermanence of many aspects of existence, and the need to ‘gather rosebuds while we may’.

Another is of one Jorge Salvo. Why the bung eye? you may ask. He was at a demonstration and a security person fired a teargas canister right at him, blinding him in one eye. He later became massively depressed and ended his life under a train in the metro.

There is another museum on the Plaza de Armas. It’s a social history of the country, with quite a bit about the independence struggles in the early 1800s. And of course there are paintings of Bernardo O’Higgins, hero of the revolution. Here he is after the dust had settled, and as supreme ruler wanted to bring in changes in the structure of society. However conservatives wanted to keep them, so they forced him to abdicate. Here he is doing it…

And a closeup…

He does look a bit more Irish than Spanish.

There was quite a bit about the Coup as well. It figures bigly in the Chilean consciousness.

So how about my interaction with shop people?

Here, if you have a non Chilean phone, and a Chilean SIM, and if you are here for more than a month, you have to register it. If you don’t, the phone gets locked and you can’t use it. There is lots of advice on the internet on how to do it, and lots of rubbish as well. I tried following some of it, sent off emails with the appropriate documentation, but got no response. So I girded up my linguistic loins, and headed to a phone shop to get some advice. The girding entailed lots of role play, developing the structures and vocabulary to cover the communication I was after. Unfortunately I prepared only from my side, and I was prepared to wing it as far as understanding the replies was concerned.

The first place was ok, I did my spiel, and got the news that I had to have the invoice showing where I had bought the phone…in Australia…three years ago!!! I guffawed in an appropriately Hispanic way, and projected the idea that I thought that was bs. No, he replied, it’s true, but for 20 000 pesos (around $36) his technician could do it for me without the invoice. Holy cow I said, that’s a heap of money for a procedure that the internet tells me is free. OK, he said, then 15 000, but it is ‘muy complicado’. Hmm, muy ripoff I surmised. So I made a dignified retreat, and went into another shop.

The guy there said that there was a website, forms to fill in, and Carlos is your uncle. He gave me the address, and off I went…filled in the forms, screen shot every aspect of the phone and of my entry into Chile…and now I await the response.

All of those interactions were in Spanish. I was very gratified that I had something to say even in novel situations: whether I made any sense is another thing.

Well…enough for this letter…too much you may say, but you don’t have to read it all, just look at the pics!

Hasta luego mis amigos.

T