January 14 - Last Day in Santiago

So, my last full day in Santiago and I planned to join up with the "Free" Walking Tour, if "Free by Donation" is your definition of free.  Franco, our guide told us the tour gets paid by donation, but we can decide how much to give at the end.  Fair enough.

A couple of quick shots before I get into the tour.  First, a shot of one of the side chapels of the cathedral.  According to Franco, the cathedral has been rebuilt 5 times over its life, due to earthquake damage.

I had to take a shot of this guy enjoying the morning sun.  Kye sleeps this way too, so I figure they must be related.  Kidding aside, there are a lot of stray dogs in the downtown area.  Not much doggie doo, so I assume the City is pretty vigilant about cleaning it up.  Apparently, the city is now clamping down on owners who abandon their pooches.


On to the tour.  First I'll introduce Franco, our guide, who really wants to be a musician. Good command of English, very animated, quite irreverent and, in the end, worth a good donation.

Some of the other people I met on the tour:

-A retired couple from Kelowna

-A young German fellow who spent 6 months in Prince Rupert as an exchange student (and lived to tell about it).

-A Harvard Business student, touring SA on his winter break.  He already has an engineering degree.

-A girl from India, with a computer Science degree taking her masters in Texas. 

(Where do these students get their money from?)

One of the stops on the tour was back at La Moneda (President's Palace, although none have ever lived there).  Here's the statue at the north end of the plaza.  I forget who its of, but notice the dark spots on the building 

behind - those are patched up bullet holes from the coup (Sept. 11, 1973).  If you look closely, you can see a bullet mark on the statue's left cheek, just above the sunny spot (click on the image to enlarge it).  

All of the fighting on Sept. 11 was on or around this plaza, including the air force, who bombed the palace, set it on fire and largely destroyed it (but it's been rebuilt).

Allende's statue on the same plaza.  Franco noted it stirs strong reactions among the people - some hug it and others spit on it.  While we were there some fellow walked by and hollered "Bad president, bad president."

Franco spent some time telling us about coffee.  Chileans don't grow any, as a result they don't have any good coffee (so far I agree).  However, they invented "Coffee with Legs."  To try and spur on coffee sales, some entrepreneur hired scantily clad, long legged females as servers.  These 'special' coffee shops have darkened windows so us peepers can't look in.  Anyway, the presence of the gals seemed top help the bottom line, although these shops were only allowed in the downtown business district (don't want to corrupt those young coffee drinkers in the burbs, eh?).  Nowadays, in the interest of further enhancing business, females dropping in for coffee are treated specially, with a small gift (the version of 'Coffee with Legs' for female clients apparently didn't last long).

Anybody wanting to do further research can check out this link http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caf%C3%A9_con_piernas   :)

More culture now.  Across from the Opera House ( which is closed due to a fire 6 weeks ago) is this statue, given to Chile as a gift from Argentina.  It is children at play, supposed to symbolize the relationship between Chile & Argentina.  Not long after it was installed, some wag(s) observed that the kids looked like they were fighting rather than playing.  Franco observed that this sirt of symbolized relations between the two countries - nobody can figure them out.

Not far from the statue is this nice building - it is the Air Force Officer's Social Club.  Sort of symbolic, given the relationship between 

Chile's armed forces and their citizens.

Franco's next bit of irreverence was to point out 2 things that the citizen's of Santiago didn't like.  One was the Mapocho River (photo in the blog a couple of days ago).  It's ugly brown colour is natural, from the mountain silt it carry's.  

The other is this edifice on the right.  It was built by a Spanish cell phone company, who CEO wanted the building to resemble a cell phone.  You can see the antenna at the top, the bulky phone itself, and the ugly charger the phone sits in at the bottom.  Described that way, I can see the citizen's point.

I promise that's the last building today.

 Another winner!  Instead of just panhandling at a stop sign this entrepreneur gives them a show by juggling.  I don't know how well he does for change, but I'm happy he has a safety vest on!

Enough for today.  It's midnight and time for the sack.

I'm off to Punta Arenas tomorrow so I don't know how much blog I can get to.