After being charmed by the warm and enchanting Silva family (Ivonne, Esteban snr., Esteban jnr., and Patricio) on the Patagonian Channel cruise in February, I couldn´t resist taking them up on their warm and generous invitation to visit them in Santiago. Given that I was already 2 weeks behind in my itinerary I had only planned to stay for 4 or 5 days, but I was unable to leave so quickly: 5 days easily became 11. Something very special happened: I bonded strongly and grew very close to them, especially to the son Esteban.
Ivonne´s passion for cooking and desire to show me the Chilean culinary delights (sopa de porotos, sopaypilla, mote con huesillo, humitas, empanadas, kuchen) enabled me to spend some wonderful (and very funny) hours under her direction attemping to reproduce them, mainly sucessfully, but sometimes with interesting results (see photos of the humitas – sweetcorn leaf parcels packed with the delicious sweetcorn, basil and onion filling). Thank you Ivonne, you have enriched my gastronomic reportoire and I miss your company!
Esteban snr. (in all his patience with me and my poor understanding of Chilean Spanish) engaged me in very interesting and informative conversations about Chile, South America, Europe, mainly from a historic, cultural and political angle. I only wish I could express myself better in Spanish. Although I am fluent in Spanish I lack the sophisticated vocabularly that I needed to get my points across.
I also very much enjoyed meeting Ivonne`s daughter, Vanessa, her boyfriend, Cristian, and their son, Sebastian. Such a lovely family, so friendly and we got on immediately. I even bonded with little Sebastian, who I´m told is usually quite cautious of strangers. Esteban and I went out dancing with Vanessa and Cristian, which was a fun, but also interesting experience for me: a dance-freak with a very independent attitude to dancing. In Chile it is unheard of to dance alone: all dancing is done in couples, whether it be techno, pop, or latino music (like cumbia, reggeton, merengue, salsa, etc). As you might imagine, I found it hard to shake off my independent nature! I must thank Vanessa again for giving me the amazing experience of visiting a class (approx. 10 years old) in the school she works at (in a relatively impoverished neighbourhood in Santiago). I had the honour of meeting the director, who gave me a clear indication of the particularly low social class of the majority of the pupils in this school by showing me the weapons that she had confiscated from some pupils. Startling! On arrival in the school I was surprised by the amount of physical affection that the teachers were showing the pupils, but it quickly became evident that this was indeed an apt approach to dealing with social poverty of the pupils. In fact, most of the staff, including the director (former education secretary for the municipality), had previously worked in very well-respected schools and positions, but had chosen the challenge in order to improve the lives of these less fortunate Chileans. I was received in the classroom with a rapturous applause and a lot of curious faces. The teacher, a former exile from Chile having lived most of his life in Vienna, tried to control the unruly, but enchanting class, while I spoke a bit about England and answered the storm of questions, about my experiences in Chile, about England, about music and dancing, about football, etc. The entire class stayed behind during their break to bombard me with further questions and to give and receive affection and to get my autograph in their school books. It was a high-impact experience and one that I would like to repeat again in other parts of Latin America.
Esteban deserves a special mention! He made every effort to show me as much as possible of Santiago, the surroundings and the coast (see next post). He took me to the impressive Templo of Maipu (Catholic church), where there was a special religious festival (Dia de la Virgin) with groups of dancers in beautiful and elaborate, colourful costumes dancing to upbeat music provided by bands. (I was gutted that I didn´t bring my camara.) We toured Santiago: La Moneda (government building), an exhibition of indiginous art, the Cerro de San Cristóbal, a huge hill in the centre of Santiago affording beautiful views over the City, which we drove up as the sun was setting, affording the surrounding mountains and the ever looming smog of the City a rich orange hue. We climbed the smaller Cerro Santa Lucia, with its classical architecture, colonnades, statues and fountains and views over the City. He took me to the Pacific coast to experience the stunning, UNESCO protected town of Valparaiso (see next post). As the days passed and we bonded further and our affection grew beyond friendship. Esteban is an amazing person: he has to be, as anything less would not have captivated my independent backpacker heart!
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here for the first lot - more to follow shortly...
DISTANCE TRAVELED SINCE USHUAIA: 5,316KM
