18-Feb-2007: This is my second visit to Santiago - I was here around a year ago. I'm still a little tired from yesterday, so I have a leisurely breakfast and it's nearly 9.30 am when I set of for the nearest Metro station, Los Leones, just a couple of hundred yards from the hotel. I go 12 stops to Estation Centrale. It's fairly quiet but a nice space. I look at where I might go to by train, but defer the decision until later. Instead, I start to walk back towards where I've come from, looking at the architecture and trying to take it all in. Just like the first time, I'm very taken with Santiago.
After a few miles of walking (!), I reach the church and convent of San Francisco. There's a recommended ecclesiastical museum here, so I make a visit. The buildings, paintings and artefacts are mainly 300 - 500 years old. Very interesting, very peaceful. The cloisters enclose a garden with a number of now-mature trees. There's a noisy cockerel strutting around the garden and he comes up to me in obvious anticipation. I look up and spot a plastic bag hanging in a tree. I reach it down and, as I guessed, it's birdseed. So the cockerel gets a little food before I leave.
I cross the wide boulevard I've been walking along using the access stairways to the Metro station of Santa Lucia. Can you think of a more delicious name for a major street than "The Avenue of the Liberator Bernard O'Higgins"? The Cerro Santa Lucia is in front of me. This is a small, steep hill turned into gardens with a network of paths and steps, a castellated lookout point (good views over the city make the climb worthwhile), chapel, ornamental staircases and fountains - a pot-pourri of styles that I find irresistible. Although there is no charge for entry, the charming security guards do require you to place your name and passport number on their list. Passport number? My passport is tucked away in the hotel safe and I certainly don't remember the number but, that's OK, they say. A rather bizarre piece of officialdom which just adds to the charm for me.
Slightly glowing from my exertions, I return to the Santa Lucia station and catch the subway back to my hotel. It's hotel check out time, but I decide to pay to keep the room until this evening, when I actually need to leave. So, after a shower, I go down to the lobby bar for a Coca Cola. Then it's back on the subway to the main railway station. I find subways are a good place for people watching - you can watch how the locals go about their lives without standing out too much, assuming you're not dressed too obviously as a tourist and festooned with an expensive camera.
It's just after 1.00 pm now, and Estacion Centrale is really thronged now. There's noise and bustle, but everybody seems good-natured. It's hot, so I decide on an ice cream. Once I work out I want a "cono vanilla", I get an excellent and cheap ice cream. Since it's a Macdonalds ice cream booth, there's also a wide range of 'McFlurry' type products at four times the price.
I decide to travel to San Francisco, partly 'cos that's the name of the hotel in Santiago a couple of friends off the boat were staying at, partly because that was the name of the museum I'd visited, partly for comic value ('no, not that San Francisco') and largely because I thought I could pronounce it.
Successfully armed with a ticket, I board a quite-presentable electric train for the 50 minute journey South. We're soon batting along, with a lot of whistling for the numerous foot and road level crossings we pass. In the poorer districts, there are a lot of rather indifferent-looking blocks of flats with a few wooden shacks on railway land. There's a lot of rubbish just lying around.
What strikes me most is the frequency of little informal shrines right on the trackside. They look just like the Spirit Houses you find in the far East. They vary in construction from wood to brick, simple to elaborate, some unkempt, some clearly tended. One even sports a cane settee facing the shrine, presumably for the comfort of those left behind when they visit the departed.
We pass vineyards and, in the distance, the further mountains are unusually still tipped with snow. There's been a lot of unseasonal rain recently and, although it's hot and dry today, we run parallel to a country road which is still flooded to a few inches with traffic ploughing through and sending up showers of water. As the terrain becomes more hilly, we cross a couple of wide river beds which drain tremendous amounts of water when the snows melt but, today, there's only a small flow.
San Francisco is a small town straggling along a fairly main road. On a side road, an informal street market is selling shoes. There's municipal offices (closed), a fire station, a host of shops and bars (all open but not particularly busy) and private houses very well maintained by their owners. It's Sunday afternoon and it's hot and nobody seems keen to do too much. Nearer the station, there's more modest housing.
The original station building has been nicely restored and, although automatic ticket barriers have been installed, they're not yet in use. I have no difficulty purchasing my ticket to return to Alameda - the new name for the Santiago terminus.
The electric train is on time and whisks me back to the city, progressively filling up at each stop. A lot of people board at Zoo station where, as you might imagine, there's a zoo which is a popular weekend destination for young families.
By the time we're back in Santiago, I'm becoming tired, so I return to Los Leones on the subway, buy some confectionery and soft drinks in a nearby supermarket which is very busy and walk back to the haven of my hotel to prepare for my evening departure.
