More Santiago

Clockwise from top left: Fruit stalls outside the central market; Plaza de Armas; the metro; buying empanadas; the Metropolitan Cathedral.

 Feb. 2nd & 3rd

Our kids are growing up in a world where we are starting to be a little bit more open and honest about the people who inhabited parts of our planet before the era of European settlers and colonists. Each area of the world has a different story. In Canada the legacy is horrific. In a short few hundred years the way of life that it existed for First Nations people for tens of thousands of years was shattered. Almost everything that I have learned about Canada pre-modern settler, I have learned since working as a teacher in the Canadian school system.  Which is bad because I was educated in a country that at one point ruled over a quarter of the world's population.

Santiago is a modern city populated mostly by people with European and mixed ancestry. It felt important to learn something about the people who lived in what is now Chile prior to the arrival of people from Europe.  Hopefully this will be an ongoing theme as we travel through South America. We started at the Museo Chileno de Arte Precolombino.  We saw mainly artifacts such as ceramics, textiles, ceremonial dress, statues, and ornaments.  There was also a huge timeline dating back to around 14,000 BC and comparing points in history, such as the building of the pyramids, with South American dates.  

I photographed some eye catching pieces but did not make good notes, which I now regret. Middle left: I will leave you with the Spanish: "hombre y mujer en acto de copula" from the Vicus of north Peru; Top centre: wooden statues were typically placed on top of tombs in ancient Mapuche ceremonies cemeteries, reflecting the spirit of the deceased and intended to assist them in their journey to the afterlife; Bottom left: from the Nasca of the southern coast of Peru; Bottom centre: birds in human poses representing the removal of separation between humans and nature, from the Jama Coaque culture who inhabited a part of Equador 355BC-1532AD;  

These outings can be a tough sell for kids. I remember visiting the Greek and Roman parts of the British Museum as a kid and I was really bored because I had to read the information and fill in a worksheet (or perhaps because I lacked curiosity and a sense of wonder).  Our approach has been a bit more free range with F&T... Let them find what interests them. And they do. A camera helps. They love taking pictures and experimenting with video and effects.  I don't know but I hope that they might have made memories of cool visuals and have left with a positive association with the stuff of history.  

Afterwards we looked for ice cream and found juice while wandering the streets.

Yesterday we went to the market, got shooed away from the wholesale fish section as we tourists probably deserved, bought some cheap cherries and some tasty empanadas, and sat in the Plaza de Armas to enjoy our bounty. Crystal bought a gigantic 30GB SIM for $15 for two months (sort it out Canada) while we ducked inside the Santiago Metropolitan Cathedral, which if I'm honest was a little squat in proportion. Spain, Italy and Ken Follett are making me into a cathedral critic.

We bought our Bip! (as in "beep") card for the subway, rode to Parque Quinta Normal and visited the Natural History museum.  Cool dioramas of the various regions of this vast and endlessly diverse country.  Now we're ready to see it for real.  Too bad the whale skeleton was all wrapped up for repairs :-(  Picnic in the park, a short walk to the closed modern art museum, subway and bus back to the apartment, and our now routine afternoon of pool and domesticity.

Admin/paperwork anecdote alert! I should mention that our trials and tribulations around vaccines and Mobility Passes are not behind us.  I settled down on our balcony to enjoy my coffee and read my book but instead spent an hour translating, making sense of, and responding to a notice from the Ministry of Health. They had visited while we were out and were now warning us that we were breaking quarantine and that our Mobility Pass would be suspended.  I checked the rules again and, for fully vaccinated visitors, the only requirement is to quarantine until receipt of negative covid test, which we got the morning after we arrived.  So I resubmitted all our documents and hoped for the best.  Luckily we were in this morning when they visited again so we could show the documents and we have now been assured that it will sort itself out.  We will find out when we try to fly to Puerto Natales in 10 days time!  By the way, the inspectors were incredibly nice and incredibly friendly.  Thank you Government of Chile for employing nice people.