Sunday 12 June 2011

Hasta luego, Santiago...

Time to say goodbye to Chile, at least for the time being. One of my colleagues picked me up and took me to lunch at his magnificent house just north of Las Condes to have a barbeque with his family and a few friends. It was wonderful to see another part of the city and actually experience a bit of 'home life' after three weeks of service flats and artistic itinerants such as myself. I won't be so indiscrete as to post the pictures I took of his house and garden, but here's one of the urban freeway, the Kennedy, out to his district:


Once again, it seems the point cannot be made. You probably can't see the Andes in the background, the mountains that make practically every city vista a jaw-dropping experience. Wherever you turn (providing it's all points east) , you've got this imposing, snow-capped mountain range looming over you. It's hard to describe its impact but I find it awe-inspiring and can't wait to bring the family out here to see it. Quite frankly, I often wonder if you can find a way of making things work in Latin America, why bother with Europe at all? It's something to bear in mind...

Anyhow, here's a final picture for you. It's of my computer just before I started writing this post, with my Bip! card. A Bip! card is for public transport and can be loaded with as much or as little money as you like. You have to be careful, as the cost of using the buses and underground varies according to the time of day. They say underground and buses are combined so you don't pay twice if you connect between the two services within half an hour or so, but something went awry when I went to Los Dominicos the other day and I ended up paying a lot more than I would in just about every European city save London, Zurich and Moscow, I think. Will have to get genned up properly if we come back next year:



Note the charming iSight webcam sitting atop my 2005 iBook G4. Yup, I'm still in the Dark Ages. No mobile, no car, no integrated webcam. But I'm sitting in Santiago de Chile and you're not, so there.

Nighty night.

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