So, It’s been slow on the job front but I’m expecting to have some breakthroughs pretty soon. Otherwise, things have been interesting and much more active lately.

One afternoon recently I decided to walk westward towards where the Andes rise up from the skirts of the city to find a nearby place were I can access the mountains for hiking. This view down below is from the last road in Santiago in that direction before the mountains prevent any more development. It’s a nice area with really expensive looking homes, whose fences and gates effectively restrict access to the mountains to anyone who is not lucky enough to live there.

I really like the way the light came through the clouds that day to make the apartment towers in Santiago seem as if they were part of rolling hills in a jungle. You can see this better if you zoom into the photo.

After a lot of walking I finally found an area that was marked as private and being developed but I talked to the gatekeeper and he told me that I would be allowed to go through and hike around in the future, which is pretty great.

This is a park I walked by that day which had horses grazing in it. It seemed like a nice park and even though I walked around a large section of its periphery I’m not sure how anyone is supposed to get into it, since it was fenced and all the gates were locked that I saw. This neighborhood is one of the wealthiest in Santiago and definitely wealthy by North American standards as well. The fact that the elite in this country seem to be so obsessed with security is one of the things I like least about Chile, but this sort of attitude seems inevitable in a place where the distribution of wealth is so awful.

Another day I got around to photographing some of the more interesting parts of downtown Santiago. These next photos are of el Palacio de la Moneda, which functions as the presidential headquarters for Chile. It was originally build as a mint, and still bears those origins in its name. The building is supposed to be a prime example of colonial architecture in South America, but my opinion is that the exterior is rather bland and kind of ugly. It is really nice on the inside though.

This is the view of la Moneda from the front side, which was stitched together from three smaller photos as can be seem by the some of the translucent people in it. I could have fixed this with some work but I kind of like it this way, so I just decided to leave it so.

This is a view of some government buildings looking opposite of la Moneda. The Plaza here was just completed a few years ago and is called la Plaza de la Cuidadaní­a, Which translates a “Citizenry Square.” The road you see, la Alameda, is the main thoroughfare through the city and choice location for protests. There are plans to put this section underground in order to join the plazas on both sides together.

This is the side of la Moneda that was bombed by the Chilean Air Force during the US-backed military coup on September 11, 1973. A good place to start to learn about the first September Eleventh is the Wikipedia article on it here. There is also a very good, hour long radio program concerning the military coup and subsequent events available for free download here. The program is in English and features the famous Chilean writer and niece of former president Salvador Allende, Isabelle Allende. I highly suggest that anyone unfamiliar with “the first September Eleventh” check it out, considering how important it is to be informed about the foreign events that our government (for those in the US) has been involvement in and spending our tax money on.

This building is just to the left of la Moneda and is the city hall.  If you look closely you can see a statue of former president Salvador Allende in between some of the flagpoles.

This is the statue closer up. The plaque here displays the last words of Allende broadcasted by radio to the nation before he died. In English, “I have faith in Chile and its destiny.” There is still debate about the manner in which Allende died on the day of the coup. Many contend that he deceased in the bombing of la Moneda, however the official story says that he killed himself with a machine gun given to him by Fidel Castro after it was clear to him that his government had indeed fallen. Personally, that explanation sounds suspect, possibly invented by Pinochet’s government to tie any discussion of Allende’s death with the reminder of his involvement with”enemies” like Fidel Castro and communism.

These three photos here are of the outer walls of a former building being propped-up in downtown Santiago. Looks kind of like a movie set. The building used to be the headquarters for El Mercurio, the conservative Chilean paper with the highest circulation in the country. The quality of the paper is generally pretty high, but its credibility was heavily damaged when was exposed that it printed a series of fake news articles written by the government of the United States with the intent of destabilizing the Government of Salvador Allende. The building was toppled in the last very large earthquake here in Santiago, I believe back in 1985. I’m curious to see if they plan on using this lot in the future and if they intend to integrate to facade into whatever that might be. Kind of strange, but pretty cool.

This scene in the downtown, which is really nothing more than the backside of several building but really caught my eye.

Here is an apartment building nearby with a some pretty cool balconies. To my eyes they form an interesting pattern that rescues an otherwise dull and ugly building from being nothing more than an eyesore.

The next series of photos are all from the neighborhood Bellavista, which is often called the more Bohemian part of town. It’s always pretty active with lots of restaurants, schools, bars, artists, and as you can see from these photos, abundant public art.

Love the tone of blue in this building.

The artists in action…

Here above is a close up on a bird (is it a lark?) in one of the murals.

On the left a painted tree that almost seems to shadow the real tree next to it on the street.

The photo below shows what is probably the most interesting part of one mural that was already pretty fascinating as a whole.

Really like this one. I’m not sure if it’s supposed to depict anything specific, but I’d like to find out.

This mural of a woman listening to music really caught my eye. It’s really cool how it was painted with a ledge in the middle of the mural, which makes it look really odd if you look at it from certain angles, as you can see in the photo on the left.

Below is a cottage type building nearby Pablo Neruda’s house.

For those of you who aren’t aware Pablo Neruda was a Nobel Prize winning poet from Chile who also played a prominent role in politics. He ran for president in the 1970 election with the communist party but ended up dropping out of the race in order to support Salvador Allende. It has been said that along with English poet T.S. Elliott that he was one of the two greatest of the Twentieth Century. I recommend checking out his writing, much of which is available translated in English. The Heights of Machu Picchu is especially good, which was also put into musical form on a great album by the Chilean progressive rock band Las Jaivas.

This is la Chascona, Neruda’s house here in Santiago. For a communist he sure had a lot of houses, with others in Valparaí­so and south of that city in Isla Negra. This one was flooded by the military shortly after the coup. Tragically, Neruda died just a few days after the coup. Always a ardent fighter for his country and leftist causes, he died as Chile had fallen into a seventeen year long dictatorship and as many of his friends were being murdered by that government. The houses are really fascinating however and give a lot of insight into Neruda’s Character.

Above and below are two sides of a very long mural across the street from la Chascona. The face on the right end of both photos is Neruda’s. Click on these and zoom in as they’re rich both rich in details that merit at least a little scrutiny and attention.

The photo below of those parrots was taken from my apartment window. The common name for the species is the Argentina Parrot and they spend the winters in the valleys and migrate up to the mountains during the summers. They are really common right now in the city and noisy as well. But still it’s cool to have them around.

As always, there are more photos that what I show you on this site. If you want to see them they are in this set on my flicker here .

I’ll leave you all with this graffiti that I found on a wall near my apartment.

Not long after completing my last post, three friends of ours, a Colombian doctor named Javier, a Chilean bus mechanic named Andrés, and a student from Texas named Robert showed up from Viña del Mar so that we would begin our trip to the Chilean Lake District. We piled into the car and took turns driving throughout the night and in the morning arrived at Los Lagos, a quiet small town in the center of the Region.

This is my roommate Cesar with our generous hosts in Los Lagos, Juan and his son, Juan.

From left to right we’ve got Juan, Andrés, Robert, and Cesar in front of the house in Los Lagos. We spent the afternoon that first day just hanging around and relaxing and getting to know each other. Of of the residents we got to know pretty well early on was their cat-dog.

So this cat-dog up there is Luna, and he climbs up these logs to sleep on the roof, which is really one of the the more ridiculous and comical things I’ve seen before. Each step climbing up it looks like the entire log pile is going to come crashing down. It the photo it looks like Juan is about the hit the dog with that stick but he’s not.

I’ve got so say here that I took a picture that was similar to this but one of the best pictures I think I’ve ever taken, which I then I deleted on accident. Really pissed about that. I wish I could have shared it here.

OK ladies, this one’s for you. This little guy kept getting his head stuck in the gate trying to get near all the action in the house. After setting him free a couple time I didn’t feel too bad about taking some pictures of it. The little bastard is kind of cute, after all.

Unfortunately, I still haven’t picked up my camping gear from Valparaíso so that first night Chechi and I stayed in Los Lagos with Juan while the rest went to that farm I was talking about in my last post to go camping. Not too worried about it though since we plan on repeating this trip several times, and that is definitely high on the list of places to visit.

Oxen are still used frequently like this in the South of Chile, but I was a little surprised to see them working in a residential neighborhood like this one, across the street from the house I was staying in. Here they are hauling gravel, either for a driveway or to mix cement. I’m not sure which since this was actually the last thing I saw before we left Los Lagos to return to Santiago.

That first night then Chechi, Juan, our friend Rita, and I headed over to Valdivia and went down to the Kuntsmann Brewery. Valdivia really is a spectacular city, and unfortunately this trip we didn’t see much of it during the day. It’s one of the places I visited last December when I was traveling in Chile and it’s absolutely one of my favorite places in the country. I won’t say too much about it here because I’m saving that for the next time I go back and photograph it.

Kuntsmann is definitely far and away my favorite beer in Chile. It has a German name because this part of Chile was originally settled by Germans and the culture is still really strong in the area. If you are lucky enough be be able to find this beer wherever you might be at I highly recommend that you try it.

That night we crashed at Juan’s place in Valdivia (the place in Los Lagos is really his parent’s and he actually works in Valdivia) and in the morning we drove back to Los Lagos to meet with the rest. We had a pretty grand plan to visit several places including a couple of towns with German styled building and some waterfalls on our way down to Puerto Montt, which is the last major city in Chile before you get to Chilean Patagonia. (Some people consider the Lake District of Chile Patagonia, but it’s not.)

We stopped at a town called Osorno to eat lunch, which pretty much nixed most of our plans for that day. I expect bad service in Chile this place was beyond ridiculous and we must have spent more than two hours in this place, which obviously cut pretty deep into our plans. Here are Robert, Javier, and I at that restaurant.

After we left the restaurant we came across this religious gathering on the main road of the city. I’m sure it probably had something to do with this holiday they celebrate here called Easter, which was going to be happening the next day.

So we decided then on a couple of places that we would still be able to visit before the night came and we got in the car and drove past Frutillar, one of the towns we had planned to stop at, and then through Puerto Varas, which was another one. They’re both two of these German settled towns I referenced earlier on the shores of Lago Llanquihue with a really stunning views of Volcán Osorno hovering over the lake.

This is a photo I took of Volcán Osorno just past Puerto Varas while we were driving to Petrohué©.

Here is the Volcano from a little closer.

We got to the waterfall, Salto Petrohué, just before the trail heading to it closed. It’s waters are characterized by the bright turquoise that is in all the water here in the South, which you can see running down the channel in the photo on the left. It’s really stunning and I still need to figure out exactly why all the water down here has this color, but it must have something to do with dissolved elements in it.

These falls were definitely impressive but really weren’t nearly as cool as some of the ones I visited nearby last year, specifically Salto Huilo Huilo and Salto Chino. But those are for another trip and I’ll have to show you later.

Me at el Salto Petrohué. After checking out the waterfall we drove over to Lago Todos los Santos just in time for the sunset.

I believe that this peak here is Cerro Nevado, which is in Argentina.

Here is the sun setting over the lake. You can take a ferry across this lake into Argentina where San Carlos de Barriloche is, which is a really popular tourist spot and ski resort. It’s one of the most popular places for both Argentinians and Chileans to vacation, plus lots of other foreigners. Still haven’t been over there yet.

After that we drove down to Puerto Montt and had dinner. The city seems kind of cool and I’ll definitely have to come back to see it during the day. This is also the city where you take most of the ferries that go further south to Patagonia or la Isla de Chiloé, all places I have yet to visit.

So despite the fact that I had a ton of fun and met some great people on this trip it was a bit rushed and left me with a desire to come back and really spend some time in all these places we saw. But this is definitely a trip that my friends and I intend on repeating several times (hopefully with a little more planning) and a place I´ll be dragging any of you who are lucky enough to come visit me while I´m here in Chile.

As always I took a lot more photos on this trip than I’ve shown here, the set of which is available here .

The next major trip we have planned is a weekend in Mendoza, Argentina, another great place I’ve visited before and somewhere anyone who comes down here will be obliged to go to with me when you visit.

Let me go ahead and briefly go over the issue of Chilean soldiers fighting in Iraq that I talked about in the last post. Before I get into it let me state that this is not an issue that is confined to Chile and is more foreboding for my own country, the United States, if one makes exceptions for Iraq and any other countries that are unfortunate enough to be direct victims of our foreign policy.

This involves a particularly alarming issue that has emerged in the United States within the last decade, which is the increasing privatization of the military. The company that is at the forefront of this is Blackwater USA. It is notable about this company that two of its employees were the American contractors killed in Fallujah, Iraq in 2004 and drug through the streets, which led to our forces leveling the city and possibly committing international war crimes in the process. (A short Italian documentary in English describing these crimes can be downloaded for free here.) Blackwater USA was also the first to respond after Hurricane Katrina, reportedly using excessive force in many cases.

I hope I don’t have to spell out the potential consequences of this for anyone reading this post, but two of the most obvious involve the lack of accountability of these companies to American and international law and also the lack of accountability to the American people. I feel like I’m pointing out the obvious here again but anytime you have a situation where war is profitable you’re probably going to see a lot more of it.

The news program Democracy Now! dedicated the large part of two episode to this which can be either read of listened to here(part1 part2) and there is a book I haven’t had the opportunity to read yet but has been highly recommended to me about this by Jeremy Scahill called Blackwater: Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army. The website for that book is here.

Regarding Chile, this country has been one of the major recruiting grounds for these companies, particularly by the aforementioned Blackwater USA. Most of these soldiers go over to Iraq and provide security and perform other tasks, often leaving the Chilean military for these higher paying jobs. This is particularly disturbing when one notes that the 90% of the Chilean people are against the war in Iraq and the government is officially opposed to it. A very good article about the recruitment of Chilean soldiers by US private security firms is here.

I hope to look into this more myself and see to what extent recruitment is still taking place within Chile, and will certainly include anything I find here. I think I’ve met one person in the entire time I’ve been here who supports the war in Iraq, and many, many people have brought it up with me. I think that this is not very well known in this country and I think most people here would be really upset if they found out.

If I get a good response to this (it is possible to leave comments here) I’ll try to include a lot more about Chilean current events and their relationships to global events and happenings.

I know I said that I’d be posting more frequently, but the truth is that things have been fairly slow lately. I’ve been looking for a job and in all likelihood should have something very soon. Other than that, I have to admit that I’ve been fairly lazy. Here’s what the view from my window looks like right now though.

Interestingly enough the whole country of Chile has somehow become significantly more interesting of late as to compensate for my recent regression into lameness. Last week there were some pretty intense riots due to the anniversary of the murder of some university students here in Santiago by Pinochet’s regime back in 1985. This day has been called ¨The Day of the Young Combatant” by protesters ever since and every year it is marked by large protests. At least this year there were a few riots and a fair amount of destruction in some areas.

From what I saw on the news it was pretty out of control and the amount of violence used by some of the protesters was certainly excessive, which is disappointing. That being said, governments in general have a tendency to to exaggerate the violence that is committed by protesters and and paint the entire group protesting as being violent when usually these acts are only committed by a minority of the people present, whom incidentally are always labeled as anarchists whether they are or aren’t.

A good example of exactly this sort of thing happened on that day when the police invaded the University of Chile (one of the most prestigious of Latin America) and confiscated what they said were bomb-making materials and machetes that they said were to be used against the police. This was all over the news for the entire day and from the video footage that they showed it was pretty clear to me that they just went into the chemistry lab and took some bottles of chemicals. Indeed, the university dean came out and said that this was indeed exactly what they were and that the machetes were used by an African dance troop. This still didn’t stop the media from endlessly showing this all day long. From my perspective it was clear that there was a serious attempt by the media and the government to villainize the protesters and create an atmosphere of fear among the ordinary people here.

Keep in mind that this is in a country with a left-of-center “socialist” government. It is this case though there is still a lot hanging over from the military government of Pinochet. It’s easy to forget sometimes that it wasn’t that long ago that Pinochet was still head of the military and Constitutional senator for life.

This is the military hospital here in Santiago where he died last December, managing to evade conviction for any crimes until his death. There were large protests when this happened as well, though a sizable crowd showed up outside this hospital to express their grief and support for the ex-dictator. I happened to be spending that entire day on a bus riding from the North of Chile to Santiago.

I would like to continue with this but am pressed for time. I should be reintroducing this topic in the future, however.

Here from left to right is Me, my roommates Chechi and Blanca, and Javier about to go eat some great food at a Colombian restaurant here in Santiago.

This is seaweed and some other stuff that is commonly eaten by vegetarians here. Oddly enough, I’ve managed to be here in Chile for two months as a vegetarian without trying any. I’m sure that will change at some point.

One of the many churches in the city.

This is Edificio Consorcio, which is near where my TEFL school was. I’m typically not a fan of all glass building but I really like the plants growing all over it.

This is Edificio Telefónica here in Santiago. It’s for the moment the second tallest tower here in Santiago and as you can see it looks like a giant cell phone. I don’t particularly like it, but it seems to be a matter of pride for many who live here. Probably it will be eclipsed by the following building once it’s completed.

Through this glass covered in graffiti you can see where they are building a skyscraper which will be the tallest building in South America when it’s competed. It’s going to be called the Costañera Center, I believe.

This is the Law School of the University of Chile. Above it you can see Cerro San Cristobal and the statue of the Virgin Mary at the top. There is a elevator that takes you up the side of the hill where of course there are some really amazing views. One of these days when we have good visibility I’ll go up there and take a bunch of photos for all of you.

This is a mural I really like on the Rio Mapocho. Santiago doesn’t have murals like Valparaíso does, but this one makes up for that a little.

A view down Avenida Bernardo O ´Higgins. The tower there is la Torre Entel.

Here is downtown Santiago. Note that this is what people call the downtown and is the historic center of the city but is not the downtown as we commonly think of it in the United States. The financial district with lots of towers actually extends for a couple of miles and the heart of it is quite a ways from here in Providencia and Las Condes.

Sorry that this was pretty brief but I’m in a bit of a hurry. I also wanted to include in the post some stuff on the Iraq war and the current involvement of many former Chilean soldiers there, but I’m really short on time and will have to bring it up later.

I’m really exited right now since I’ll be heading to the South in just a few hours. We’re going to be staying at a farm that I stopped at on my previous trip, which is beautiful to the point of being idyllic. I Promise to take a lot of pictures and post soon after returning. Hope everyone reading this has a good weekend.