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.

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.