I continued on my way to a church: the Iglesia de San Francisco and its accompanying little museum the Museo Colonial de San Francisco. In case you were wondering they were both pretty typical, but it was really nice to get out for the morning. Anyways, rather than going into all of it, lets look at the photos of these pieces of 17th century artwork. Well, they were completely covered in dust so it was difficult to take pictures of things behind glass cases. But I managed to get a weak shot of some of the whips practitioners would use to punish themselves, along with some interesting statues and some dolls of the various saints.
A day later, I had a complete day planned out for myself to hit museum after museum, interesting site after interesting site. I couldn’t resist getting up super-early to head to the graveyard by 9:00 am. I was itching to get the day started and see if I could manage to navigate around the city using my limited Spanish. The Cementerio General was totally awesome. Gigantic tombs and monuments to the deceased surrounded me after I managed to use my phone’s Google Translate to ask for a map of the area. I started snapping away photos, everything looked so interesting with the shadows the monuments to the dead cast on the tombs. No matter the importance of the person, they all had a place in the graveyard, huge structure or small stone plate. You could get lost so easily – which of course, is exactly what happened to me. Luckily “¿dónde está la salida?” worked its magic for me and a few turns later (with a security guard’s help) I managed to get out of the magic graveyard puzzle.
Next on my list was going to the Cerro San Cristobal park where the funicular sits ready and waiting to take its’ passengers to the top, this includes me! I bought my ticket and rode all the way to the top, taking photos of the city down below. I also managed to get people to take a few shots of me, awesome. I just gasped when I reached the top. It was a clear and beautiful day and you could see the Andes in the background picture-perfectly. Score! Of course, I needed a thousand pictures here and I started trading off my exceptional photo abilities for others to take shots of me. I also climbed up towards the top of the funicular where a gigantic statue of the Virgin Mary (14 meters high to be exact) sat waiting for me to capture her on film. (Didn’t go too well though, my flash can only reach so far and the sun was in the wrong spot!) I rode the funicular back down vowing to come back.
The crowning glory of my day was my visit to La Chascona, or the poet Pablo Neruda’s house. He named the house after his third wife, Matilde Urrutia’s, unruly hair which is literally the translation of the house’s name. I had to wait until 12:30 for my tour, so in the meantime I went upstairs to the café and ordered one of the most delicious sandwiches I’ve ever tasted. Pesto, tomato, mozzarella, oregano… really, what more could you ask for? (Although, I’d never deny that anything could be made a little better with chicken!) I was a little surprised when it came time for my tour. It was just me and a sweet little English-speaking tour guide! Hehehe, all to myself! She explained to me that Pablo Neruda was a Nobel Prize winning poet who supported the communist party, even serving as one of the Chilean Communist Party’s senators.
Regardless of his worth as a poet or a politician, his house was shockingly cool! This guy had a real sense of humor; you immediately realize walking through the door to his home. Everything in the house serves to complete the house’s resemblance as a ship! The dining room looked like it could be straight out of a ship, and there was a secret passageway that led to the rest of the house behind some cupboards. There was even part of the house decorated as a lighthouse, and little knick-knacks throughout which were from ships or simply just “things” that Neruda collected from around the world – glasses from Mexico, Japan, and Paris, rocking-horses from India, giant shoes from outside the shop of a shoemaker! He even called himself a “thinger!” One of the best little hidden treats he had were secret “bottle-openers” in various rooms of the house, hidden away inside one of his random “things” or in the décor on the walls. Much of the artwork on his walls was done by famous painters, such as Frieda’s husband Diego Rivera, and those friends he had were usually his friends politically as well as personally.
After my 45 minute tour (and amazing learning experience,) I grabbed a cab to the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes nearby. This incredible building had a ton of construction work going on inside, but its free entrance was worth it to take a few photos inside of the architecture and outside of the statues. There was also some interesting modern art inside. Let’s just look at the photos:
I had planned now to visit the MAC (Museo de Arte Contemporaneo) but once I slipped around the back of the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, I realized I had already seen it days before! Thus I jumped ahead to the Museo de Artes Visuales which took quite a while to find. In fact, it took so long that I ended up running into the Cerro Santa Lucia which we had passed by on our Hop On, Hop Off tour the weekend before. Since I was already there I chose to roam around a bit, admiring the colorful flowers and the remarkable structures they somehow built up on the hill in front of me. I happened upon a Chilean woman whom I assumed spoke little to no English when I asked her in Spanish for directions and a confirmation that she did not speak English. I was shocked when she replied back to me in perfect English and no accent that she could help me! Score! At first I assumed she was a Westerner traveling in Chile or living abroad due to her lack of accent, but she explained to me that she was Chilean – and an English teacher! Ahhh….
I wandered in the direction she pointed me, to the Museum de Artes Visuales or MAVI. There was some more modern art here, but I was most interested in the collection of earthenware and other artifacts they had on display at the top floor of the museum. I was also pointed there by a Chilean man I ran into who happened to be meeting his wife at the same museum, so he could lead the way for me! Here I learned about the Mapuche, a South American tribe of people who lived in the Chilean/Argentinean area pre-colonizer arrival. I saw examples of their pottery (filled with multiple zig-zags and other geometric designs) examples of their jewelry (silver and both women’s accessories and precious war booty) and examples of their textiles (bright and colorful!) I also saw some carved wood from Easter Island (aka Rapa Nui) and symbolic representations of the bird-man cult, but let’s talk about that in a later post.
Much like the pre-Columbian museum, this one led into examples of Incan pottery, Aconcagua pottery, plenty of other cultures around Chile pottery examples. I’ll describe the most interesting characteristics here: The Diaguita pottery has “spots” in it that make reference to the skin of the jaguar, which is a special animal in South American culture and consistently comes up as an important symbol for shamanistic rites. They also used zig-zigs and wave-like designs to represent various elements of the natural world.
San Pedro pottery, on the other hand, started out being very anthropomorphic with detailed animal designs. Over time, it became more like the symbolic Diaguita pottery with the pottery changing from, “…being figurative (with frame, eyes, nose and mouth) to abstract (four borings.)” Those in Northern Chile used wooden cups called “wood keros” which had concentric squares which symbolized the windows or caves from the birthplaces of their rulers. There were also a bunch of different hats that those in various parts of Chile used, and another mummy similar to the one we saw in the pre-Columbian museum, which according to the display case “…had its museums and organs replaced by sticks, plant fibers, wood and/or feathers, then covered with clay or pigment and skin.” I soon encountered more clothing. Here is the “kneeling man” also known as the Lukutuel which you can see in both the description (more clearly) and in the weaving (symbolically.)
The streets outside where the MAVI was were really architecturally significant, apparently left over from the French style of design I was told by a local. The quiet yet dynamic cobblestone streets were interesting to walk down and sprinkled with Chileans selling everything from pink-haired troll dolls to old poetry books. I spent a little time on them before grabbing a taxi towards Agustinas, the street I work on. We passed by the University on the way, where there was a giant banner outside hung by the students, their protest ongoing. Since I had done almost everything on my list, I decided to go to the Palacio de la Moneda (Presidential Palace) yet again to see if I could negotiate my way inside. What I found out was that one needed to place a request via e-mail one to four weeks ahead of the time you want to have a tour for. Yikes! I grabbed the e-mail address and got out of there.
Next I had a shady experience with a taxi driver (who I wanted to take me back to my hostel) driving me all the way out who-knows-where. I had to get out of that cab and jump into another one who drove me back towards the city and where I needed to go. I had him drop me off at the Military School subway stop so I could grab a “completo” or a Chilean hot dog with tomatoes, avocado, and mayo spread all over the thing. I couldn’t resist adding ketchup to mine when it was offered to me! Tasted delicious. I added a soda and a small empanada and my dinner was complete.
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