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“Go Back To Your F****** Country” Day 3 of 23 – 27/08/17



Street Art by Unknown Artist 
A Unique Poster
Anna (Left), Emma (Right) Next to Incan Tomb Stones 

This has proven to be quite an interesting day to say the least. Full of walking, llama seeing and using my extremely limited Spanish, which mainly consists of “Hola” and “Si”, oh, and not to mention the most important phrase “¿Hablo ingles?” without which, I would almost certainly struggle to do anything.

Sede de Santiago del Congreso Nacional

So I woke up, initially slightly disorientated after all I presumed I’d still be back home after the very long journey of getting to Santiago. Despite this me and Emma got ready for our ‘first’ day out on the streets of Chile with a very basic plan of what we were going to do – walk. Yep, just walk with no aim in particular. After all that’s the best way to discover things right? Most of the morning was spent this way, letting us see the true Chile away from the tourist side of things. This is where we located a local market that looked more like car boot sales that your parents would drag you to and this is where things got interesting… “Go back to your f****** country” was shouted at us by what we presumed to be an overly aggressive local. This however, was shortly followed by a friendly greeting of “Morning” by another. The locals are conflicting to say the least! We kept going. This got spiced up with another local wearing clothing as foot wear, smashing bottles in the middle of the streets before walking off and mumbling to himself. Emma and I were a little on edge to say the least. But we kept going, following each block to the end and deciding there and then if we would turn or just carry on walking – the graffiti we saw was both mind blowing and dire, some made the surroundings shine while others you’d wish were cleaned up, I suppose this would be expected of a 3rd world country. Never the less, the unique beauty you experience in the streets is something that you wont forget anytime soon.


Shop Street Art by Unknown Artist

After spending a good portion of our day doing this, we decided to experience the true culture of Chile and set off to ‘Museo Chileno De Arte Precolumbino’ to discover the pre-columbian Chile. The exhibits were truly magnificent and lucky for us had English translations everywhere. The entry was also surprisingly cheap for such a place only costing me 2,000 pesos (it was a good job that I packed that student card with the disgusting photo – can’t say no to a good discount). After this unique visit we decided to call it a day, at least in terms of going anywhere far. We later watched the sunset behind various mountains and watched as Santiago changed, with numerous lights appearing and the hustle of the night setting in.

   
      Street Graffiti Viewed from High Up
     Llama with a Tiny Hat
'Chile before Chile' Exhibit

Comments

  1. Joe Marcano28 August 2017 at 04:31

    Wow! A really interesting blog! I'm thinking of travelling the world, and Chile seems to look like the place to visit.

    ReplyDelete

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