South America, Day 14: Santiago, Chile

Alright, I'm finally trying to catch up with the backlog of blog posts I wasn't able to write because of my gear getting stolen. So let's resume with day 14 of the trip: the first full day in Santiago.

The graffiti outside the Princesa Insolente was cool, but merely a preview for what I'd see in Valparaiso.

 As I walked out of the hostel towards the subway, I found a massive protest in progress on Av Libertador, one of the biggest streets in Santiago. Students were protesting the cost of education, marching and delivering speeches in favor of free education through college:

While the protest (at the time) was peaceful, it was clear that the police were preparing for trouble should it arise, with plenty of riot police standing around and police vehicles sitting at the ready:

I decided it would be best to make myself scarce, so I headed into the city center to see what downtown Santiago had to offer. First up: lunch. A typical Chilean dish, pastel de choclo is a pie made with very, very sweet cornmeal, chicken, beef, an egg, and an olive. It's pretty good, and it's super filling:

Pastel de choclo

 After my lunch, I went to visit the main government area in Santiago. The Palacio de Moneda is Chile's equivalent to the White House. Normally, with advance reservation, you can book a tour. Naturally, I didn't have a reservation. It was irrelevant, though, as the entire place was cordoned off and guarded by riot police and military because of the protests taking place just down the street. Since there wasn't a whole lot to see on the outside, I moved right along to the Plaza de Armas, a large plaza bordering the Palacio and the main cathedral of Santiago, populated by beggars, buskers, artists offering to draw your caricature, and interesting statuary:

Plaza de Armas

Also bordering the Plaza is the main post office in Santiago. I had to drop by to pick up some stamps anyway (to mail postcards), and was pleasantly surprised by the presence of a postal museum. Amidst a very extensive stamp collection, they had a display of unique stamps from around the world, including the below two which are actually playable vinyl records!

The final planned stop for the day was probably the best museum I visited in South America, the Chilean Museum of Pre-Columbian Art. The museum had extensive, beautifully-presented and -explained collections of pre-Columbian art from North, Central, and South America, even including a couple darkened rooms for textile exhibits. It's particularly helpful to be able to read both Spanish and English, as sometimes the two translations would say different things!

The sculptor of this mask didn't make a mistake. The mask comes from a civilization in the Andes; the lump represents the wad of coca leaves that people would typically hold in their mouths in order to ward off altitude sickness.

This little guy is way too happy for being so spiky.

Very nicely lit exhibit of statuary.

 I was feeling a bit under the weather at this point (a feeling I later realized was due to dehydration), so I headed back to the hostel early. As I was coming out of the Republica subway station, near the hostel, two men in gas masks were closing the gate to the stairs. I managed to just squeeze by, not entirely clear on what was going on, and emerged to this:

During the day's sightseeing, I had totally forgotten about the protest. The morning's portents had borne out; the protest had turned ugly. I came into the plaza to see an armored personnel carrier water-cannoning a group of kids who were throwing rocks. There were still some wisps of tear gas in the air making my face itch, but it didn't seem too bad, so I stood around for a little while taking pictures. Then, I saw the riot police come up and prepare tear gas, round 2, so I decided to get the hell out of the plaza. On the way back, I saw evidence that earlier in the day, protesters had been slightly more effective than I had seen:

Armored truck by the side of the road with a flat tire and paint stains

That night, we had a barbeque at the hostel (fun!), where we mostly stayed huddled around the heaters inside, only briefly going back out to grab more food and drinks, because it was about 20 degrees out there (not so fun!).