Santiago, Santiago

Everyone told me that Santiago is a terrible city. Nothing to see. Nothing to do. Polluted. Dirty. Buenos Aires is a much better city, they said.

I am enchanted with this city, though. I can't quite pinpoint why - it's just a feeling. Some things just fit.

Friday morning I moved over to a new hostel here. Hostel Bellavista. I liked it immediately. Big roof-top terrace, funky neighborhood, bright colors.

I met up with my friend Elisabeth (from the school in Bariloche) that afternoon for lunch and sightseeing. Unfortunately, as it was Good Friday, EVERYTHING in the city was closed, from restaurants to shoe stores to museums. But it was actually really nice to get to wander around the city without dodging masses of people.

The first thing you notice about the city is, as everyone says, the smog. You look out in one direction, and see nothing but gray, which doesn't seem that weird until your eyes adjust, and you take in the faint outline of mountains beyond the city. The mountains, you can see, really are not so far away, but you can barely see them. And then you realize you're looking at them through a thick filter of dirty air! Que bueno!

It really is bizarre to look at. You look directly overhead at the blue, blue sky, but then as your eyes fall down to the horizon, things just start to disappear. They say that on a clear day, the skyline with the mountains behind is stunning, but they also say you get a clear day about once a year.

But, the city is quiet! Much quieter than Buenos Aires. The neighborhoods are small and intimate, with brightly colored buildings. People ride bikes everywhere. There are lovely parks full of palm trees and exotic flowers. A huge statue of the Virgin Mary looks out over the city from atop a huge hill. It's a charming city.

Friday night, I wandered up to the terrace, where I fell into a nice little conversation with Bjorn from Sweden, Cody from LA, Brita from LA (though originally from Germany), and Chris from Arizona. The people that you meet in a given city or hostel completely makes your time there, I've decided. At least it does when you are traveling alone. And I loved these new friends and the weekend spent with them.

We all rose early Saturday morning to head out to Cajon del Maipu, an area outside of the city - about 1.5 hour bus ride. It was Chris' idea. He had read about it in his Lonely Planet and just wanted to get out of the city for a bit. Lead on, fearless leader, we said.

Well, it was a great bad day. We arrived at this little park area where you can do treks and rafting and whatnot, but they were charging a ridiculous fee to do anything. We wanted to just go on one short hike up to what was supposed to be a nice waterfall, but not only did we have to pay $7 to do it, we had to wait til 3 PM when a guide could take us up there. I'm not going to say that I'm an expert hiker, but three of the five in our group had hiked Torres del Paine, so I think we probably can handle a 30 minute hike up to a waterfall without a guide.

After a lunch stop at a little farmhouse with grapevines and apricot trees and humingbirds, we split up, Brita and Chris heading onward down the road to see how far the bus would take them, and Cody, Bjorn and me to the waterfall.

We arrived back at the park office to pay the entrance fee at 2 PM, assuming we'd be forced to wait til 3 PM to do the hike. No, go right ahead, the woman says. No problem.

We had a little problem, however. We arrived at the river - necessary to cross to access the trail - to find a bridge with a locked gate on it. Hmmmm. We finally found someone to open the gate for us (clearly some dummy who didn't know what he was doing), but when we got all the way across the bridge and about ten steps down the trail, some park official came running after us. You can't go up there. You have to wait to go with the guide. Blah blah. En serio? I had a few curt words for this man (in English) - is it really necessary to put a lock on...nature??

So, back across the bridge we went to wait for our guide.

If you can imagine a state park in your state, on a holiday weekend, full of people that never enjoy the outdoors, you can imagine what was going on in this park. So when the guide rounded up all of the "hikers," we found ourselves amongst about 60 other people - small children, women in heels and too much makeup, passive fathers.

We did manage to run away from the group before the hike even began and made our way up the hill to find the waterfall. This was not a difficult hike, so I can only assume that they put up so much red tape as a precaution. They probably had a bunch of accidents with ninnies wandering up, wandering off, hurting themselves. One of the guides tried to stop us as we headed back down the hill before the group (Um, this is a group tour, so if you could just wait right here, that'd be great.), but we promptly ignored her, and made our way back. It was the silliest hike I've ever done, but it was a memorable day, for all the frustration and red tape dodging.

On our way back to the hostel, we stopped and picked up a few goodies for a barbecue - steak and salad - which we cooked up and enjoyed with a few other folks up on the terrace. It was a great night. We went out on the town for a bit after dinner, and that's all there is to say about that.

Yesterday was Easter, and I was determined to go to church despite being slightly hungover and exhausted. I managed to rope Bjorn into accompanying me, and off we went, to the big cathedral that sits on the city's main square, Plaza de Armas. I somehow misread the times of the services, so we walked in in the middle of a service, but it was still worth going.

As strict as Catholic churches have a reputation for being, the service was positively chaotic compared to the church I grew up in. Children were running all over the place, their parents didn't really care, people were wandering around, up and down the aisles, talking.

But in the middle of this chaos was a beautiful service. A large choir and orchestra sat at the front, and the music filled up that echoey cathedral with an eerie holiness. For communion, worshippers lined up in the aisles and the congregation sang one of my favorite hymns. I can't figure out what the name of this hymn is, and I've tried to google it, but the chorus goes something like, "Oh, Lord, you have come to the ocean, and while smiling, have called out my name. Now my boat's left, on the shoreline behind me. Now with you, I will seek other seas." I, of course, couldn't sing along in Spanish, but I know that melody by heart, and I sang my English words. I felt both nostalgic for home and enchanted with my new environs the same time, and the midst of the children running around, the heart-breaking music, and the incensed smoke filling the air, I was overwhelmed.

I was trying to explain to Bjorn after the service what church means to me exactly. Telling someone that you went to church every Sunday of your life until you were 18 generally scares them off, so it's hard to explain that even if you left those 18 years still fairly skeptical of the ideas being offered to you, something of the ritual, the process, sticks with you. The music gets inside you, and when you hear one of those songs that you haven't heard for years, it just takes you back to Home. Home.

I am heading to Pucon, Chile tonight, on the overnight bus. Si, I am heading back down south, back to the Lake District. I will definitely be back in Santiago in the next two weeks, though, so more on the big city later. I somehow managed to not really "do" anything in the last few days here, though they were some of my favorite days of my trip so far.

Back to the mountains - adios for now.