Santiago 3

Time to head back to Santiago. J stuck like a leech to M in Viña and at the last moment jumped onto the Santiago bus, saying that he was going to visit friends in Santiago. M divulged the story: she had met J in Peru, he had pursued her everywhere, and eventually she had sneaked away. But in Viña she felt guilty about dumping him and had phoned him in La Serena. He came down south and the rest we knew.

In Santiago J went his way at a metro station after getting M to promise to meet up later. D and M went back to the hostel and I checked into a hotel. (I had decided to luxuriate a little.) A colleague of mine back home had given me an introduction to Chilean girls she had met in Tierra del Fuego. We were asked to meet at Irarrázaval metro station. There are a few Basque and Galician place names in Santiago, reflecting immigration from there. M decided to keep her appointment with J inspite of attempts to talk her out of it. She thought J could help her get passage on a boat to Tierra del Fuego.

D and I arrived at the station 20 minutes late and were met by a young Chilean man. He asked where our backpacks were. It turned out that that they had thought we needed accommodation. We went to his flat, shared with a friend of the girls. D was a good ice-breaker; I was glad of his company. The other 4 girls turned up, two were sisters. I gave them photos from my colleague as well as some souvenirs from Sydney. At this point D took his leave.

They took me to a shopping centre and shouted me ice cream. The girls and the sisters in particular were delightfully idiosyncratic, they made noises to match the engine, and told me that they had un coche pessimo (opposite of optimo, i.e. a terrible car).  They took me back to their apartment where they made pisco sour to accompany cheese. I was introduced to their parents. Remembering the etiquette tips in my guide, I kissed the mother on the cheek and shook hands with the father (only men-men encounters do the handshake). The father, who was an engineer, said that the pollution of Santiago didn't agree with him. (Santiago is backed by mountains and this traps the pollution.) One of the girls was studying engineering and hoped to get a job up north; more opportunities and cleaner air, she said. The boyfriends who were supposed to join them didn't, so they gave me a quick car tour of the upper middle class suburb of Providencia before taking me back to my hotel around midnight.