Hi again.

One big activity for my last week in Santiago was to have a meal at a restaurant called Ocean Pacific’s Buque Madre. The third and fourth words translate as Mother Ship.

It is a nautically inspired place, considerably upmarket from my usual nosh joints…

The staff were very welcoming, and I plumbed for the Tuna. Strange that the Spanish word for tuna is an anagram of tuna, namely atún.

Soon enough it came, delivered by a robot that talked, and looked a bit like an office water cooler. A bit twee I thought, but why not?

The food looked challenging…

The outside was seared to a crisp layer…the inside was vaguely warm. I felt a bit like Gollum, but didn’t think of saying ‘my precious’.

Holding my preconceptions at bay I launched into it, or more correctly launched it into me. (It’s a bit like taking the train to Melbourne, even though it is the other way around!) it was delicious, so tender and tasty. The fish was languishing on a bed of stewed figs, and there was an Uluru of some yellow food-like substance whose name I ought to know. It was quite an experience.

I’ve been to a couple of concerts.

One was of a couple of Cantatas of Bach, done with period instruments (recorders, a theobo, viols, oboes, harpsichord, strings) and a ripper choir of twelve, four of whom were the soloists when their turn came. The music was excellent…so rarified and intellectual.

The second was a classical guitar recital by one of the staff members of the music department of the University of Chile. Lots of Latin American and Spanish pieces…tangos and other exciting genres…and some classical European works. It really is a different experience, being in the presence of the player, compared with listening to a cd. I’d forgotten a bit. The sensuality of the music, the phrases that lift you then resolve, the violence of the strummed chords, the virtuosity of the melody and accompaniment that would make you believe there were two instruments…all seem so much more potent when you see it being produced. I loved it.

The sourdough bread that I showed a pic of way back…here it is again.

has continued to be a favourite, and the guys in the shop have been fine with having a chat. One, called Claudio, has some English, so we alternated between languages for a while. They make all the bread themselves, it costs an arm and a leg, but wow…such an experience to eat. On my last day here I got some bread, and chatted lots with him. And he gave me a cake called Pan de Pascua, and is traditionally eaten at Christmas. I did ask him why a cake called bread of Easter is traditionally eaten at Christmas, and there was a reason. But the cake is available all year round.

So I shared the cake…that’s my half…

…with Nestor…

The cake is a spicy number with nuts ‘n’ that on top. Delicious. Nestor said that at closing time they give unsold bread to whoever wants it. ..for free.

It’s only after you’ve been in a place for a few weeks that such interactions happen. If you whip around for a hectic day or three of sight seeing, then leave, you miss out completely.

The trees are greening up a lot, so the look of the place is becoming much more appealing. The graffiti don’t seem as prominent, the traffic seems less maniacal, although the buses seem as kamikaze as ever, and random people in the street do share a grin or a buen día. It’s all about perception.

I voted in the referendum on Tuesday at the embassy here in Santiago. It was quite painless really. The staff were all on for a chat (I was the second voter and they had been open for over an hour, so I guess the boredom had begun early). There were two Australians and an Argentinian woman on duty. When I told them about my difficulty in understand Chileans they asked the Argentine how she got on with the Chilean mode of speaking. She replied that even she had problems. I felt a lot better then.

As an example of their characteristics…he hablado means I have spoken, but they swallow the ending, so it comes out, at warp speed and through largely immobile lips as heablao. The chica in the embassy did suggest that it would be much easier in Perú.

To get to the embassy I used the metro. It is amazing. In the morning rush hour there are trains every 2 minutes, and they are chockers. It took two trains before I reached the front of the throng on the platform, and could shuffle in and become part of the solid chunk of humanity. Later the trains softened off to every 4 minutes. It’s a great system, and the ticketing is fully integrated with the bus companies as well. All coordinated with the Bip! card.

The RED written at the bottom of the card means network. For a long time when I saw it at the stations I thought it referred to the red metro line (they each have a number and a colour). It wasn’t the greatest problem I have encountered. I should have realised that red isn’t Spanish…that’s royo, pronounced roho. and strangely red wine isn’t vino royo, but vino tinto, which means something like stained wine, or maybe tinted wine. These linguistic labyrinths are easy to get sidetracked into…proceed at your own peril.

The last lesson at the school happened on Wednesday. There were lots of hugs and kisses with the staff that I’d interacted with. Here’s Catalina the teacher…

It was a happy place to be; the staff were very friendly, and the atmosphere was really alive.

On Wednesday afternoon I bussed to a Sculpture Park a half an hour upstream from where I live. It was a restful place with lots of shade and grass, and sculptures.

And a good view of the Costanera Centre, a 300m tall structure with a mall attached. It’s the second highest building in South America.

The nice thing about the gardens was that there was no graffiti on anything. They lock the place up at night, which might help. But even in the suburbia around there wasn’t much tagging. So the impression that I may have given that all of Santiago was covered in it, doesn’t really correspond with reality.

Well…more than enough for today. I head off to Peru tomorrow, Thursday, for two weeks.

Take care everyone

T