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great fountain at one of the city's parks
view of Santiago from the top of the funicular
Santiago is wealthy with trendsetters and well-dressed business people taking the lead. The city is built up but has also very successfully retained it’s green spaces, which are constantly patrolled by guards to prevent any undue behaviour. We become aware that the parks tend to generally be used by young couples smooching on benches, out of the condemning gaze of their parents most probably. The parks are very pretty, particularly the Santa Lucia city park which has a magnificent fountain and tower esplanade from where a great view of the city can be enjoyed. We also take a trip up the funicular railway to one of the city’s hills, upon which sits an immense statue to the Virgin Mary and an open air church with wooden pews, where a very atmospheric mass must take place every Sunday. There is much evidence of Catholicism still playing a very important part in peoples’ lives in Chile and, in fact, in all the South American countries we’ve visited. We take in a revealing exhibition at the contemporary wing of the Belles Artes Museo in which new South American painters addressed issues of sexuality alongside Catholicism, plus there was a display of Inca-related product packaging. In other words, the artist has collected as many product advertising using ‘Inca’ as a brand name to emphasise quality, which is highly amusing to us.
And this ends our South American adventure. We’re off to Easter Island tomorrow, leaving behind the Latin American peoples, histories and cultures we’ve encountered here, to taste some island living, then it’s on to the down under, English speaking nation of New Zealand!
