Santiago de Chile

My only regret about Europe was that I didn't get outside more. I love cities, but even in Europe you get sick of them and have the need to go into nature. I saw plenty of beautiful country from the inside of buses and trains, but I could count on one hand the number of days, out of three months in Europe, that I spent outside one concrete jungle or another.

I consoled myself with the notion that South America was about outdoor tourism anyway and I would make up for it there. My first opportunity for this was in Mendoza, a charming city set at the foot of the Andes in Argentina's wine country. I went trekking, horseback riding, cycling; the whole bit. It was just a start, and I'd get further outside later. After this brief respite, though, it was back to the city.

That city would be Santiago, the capital of Chile that lies on the other side of the mountains from Mendoza. The bus ride there was the most scenic of my trip. The weather was sunny and mild in Mendoza but where I crossed the border high in the Andes it was snowing hard. About four hours after clearing customs I'd reached the capital.

The rap on Santiago is that it's sleepy and no great loss to skip. But I was to have one good night. I was drinking beer with a couple guys from Switzerland who were touring South America on motorcycles - and who were the greatest, nicest guys - when a local girl who worked there invited us to a party. She was studying to be an actress and it was some kind of theater fundraiser. We had nothing better to do so we followed her.

The setting was the first floor of a long, narrow house. It was an old building with high ceilings and worn crown moulding. In the front at a folding table students were selling beer and a mixed drink they put ice cream in. It was an ok scene, people milling about, smoking, talking in Spanish. The real show, though, was in the back.

Here was a large room with a concrete floor that could fit about a hundred people. There was a rudimentary stage set up in the back of the room and to the sides of the entrance bleachers that faced the stage. Up on it was a group of adult musicians playing traditional Chilean music. There were four men, some with instruments (an accordion was present), some who just sang. A sole woman playing a guitar. They all wore country clothes.

To the music they played a troupe of children danced. I guessed they ranged in age from 10 to 15 years old. The girls all wore the same white dress with a purple floral print and purple accents. The boys wore gaucho outfits, with wide black hats with neck cords and red tassels hanging from their waists. The boys wore spurs. The dancing was wonderful in its childish uncertainty and what a way, I thought, that some societies have for channeling the feelings that arrive at that age.

But in Chile despite a perhaps more wholesome upbringing kids still grow up weird. The music came to a close and the dancing children and their parents who'd been watching from the bleachers cleared out and who gets up there next but a young drag queen. The room went dark. He began (or should I say 'she'?) by lighting a cigarette and smoking it, or pretending to smoke it, way too fast, like she was out of breath and the smoke was air, to the point where she looked like she was about to vomit coughing. There then followed a monologue in Spanish that I couldn't understand but which got some good laughs and then a striptease dance.

After he/she finished a salsa band got up there and played for hours. We danced the night away. The two Swiss guys both pulled girls. I didn't feel like working. I'd be working the next night when I was supposed to meet up with a girl from Santiago who I'd met in Buenos Aires. Around this time I was feeling very lonely for a woman. I saw a cute hipster girl at the party, a local girl, who wore glasses. I watched her dance and finally I thought of something to say to her. She had a boyfriend, an American. "I guess I'm late," I said. She smiled honestly and sweetly and said, "but we can still talk!"

I had bad weather the rest of my time in Santiago and the girl I'd met in Buenos Aires cancelled on me. In one redemption I stumbled onto a dusty antiquarian bookstore where I found an old hardcover of T.S. Eliot's essays on poets. I sat down on the floor and read the one on Goethe.

I'd heard from everyone who had an opinion on Chile not to miss Valparaiso, a seaside city full of street art and a cultural hotbed. The poet and Nobel laureate Pablo Neruda had a house there you could tour. That was my next stop.