Santiago - city

On my first day in Santiago, we went out to eat for lunch and I took a few pictures of the city while we were out.

This is us crossing the street after leaving the restaurant. I thought this was a good place to capture a typical view of the city and I also happened to get most of the family in the picture, unbeknownst to them. In the front is Sita’s mom (Sylvia), then her older brother (Daniel) with his son on his shoulders (Nico) then Sita is the only one looking at the camera and finally Jorge, (Sita’s younger brother) is partially in the lower corner.

I liked the architecture of this skyscraper so I took a photo of it. You can see more of the city in its reflection.

Another typical city street corner.

A few more city pictures. I believe the buildings featured are mostly residential. You can see the mountains in the background of the last two, although they are not as prominent in the pictures as they are in real life.

Most of the city streets are lined with trees. It makes for a nice view. Santiago is actually one of the most beautiful cities I’ve been in. It gets pretty polluted but it never looks as dirty as Dheli or Mexico city, at least to me.

One of the culprits in the creation of pollution is the city buses. Sometime during the military dictatorship of Pinochet the government was convinced to privatize the bus system. Pinochet violently overthrew the democratically-elected socialist leader Salvador Allende on 9/11 1973, with support from the US government. He ruled for 17 years until 1990. During this time almost everything was privatized, the rich became much richer, the foreign investors (aka foreign supporters of Pinochet) were able to take huge profits out of Chile, the poor became much poorer and unemployment rose to 40%. Although he is hailed as the one who put the economy back on track, the truth lies in the numbers (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinochet).

Many visitors to Santiago will remember the yellow buses, polluting like crazy and dangerously racing down the streets to compete for passengers. It’s a sight that would make the most die-hard free-market neo-liberalists wish for a government run public bus system. This has been promised from several of the recent Chilean administrations, but the corporate interests are too embedded into the system (hey fellow Americans, does this ring any bells?). As a result, there will no longer be the yellow buses as of yesterday, but the system is still partially privatized and many of the old yellow buses have simply been painted green and white. The following two pics illustrate one of the last yellow buses on the streets and one of the new buses following right behind the yellow bus.

Anybody want to pay $574 for a gallon of gas? How about for a liter? Well with an exchange rate around 545 pesos per dollar, gases prices really aren’t that bad, you can get the lowest grade for less than $1 a liter. With a US gallon equal to about 3.79 liters you’ll pay $3.74 for a gallon of the lowest grade gas. The lowest grade gas here has an octane rating of 93, that’s equivalent to the highest grade of US gas if my memory serves me correct.

I took a picture of the gas station when we were getting gas, to illustrate the abundance of signs in English. This is for no apparent reason, because the level of English fluency in Chile is really not that high.

Chilean highways can be compared to US roadways, high quality and fairly safe, inside Santiago the story is a little different. The driving in Santiago is like that of New York at best and that of Mexico City at worst (not nearly as bad as Amritsar or Dheli though). I took the following picture to illustrate the One and a Half lane concept. There are roadways that are not quite large enough to be considered two lanes, but people treat them as such.