Una Hermosa Tierra de Contradicciones

The pride of the south is the longaniza: a sausage similar to the chorizo and commonly eaten in Chile with bread as a choripan. Chile in fact is like the longaniza; it's long and thin and full of different flavoursome components. It is rich in natural beauty of varying colours and rich in natural history.

So much of Chile seems untouched by humans... until now, as you can see by the highly protested decisions to install more dams and introduce transgenic foods and the powerful mining lobby.

I teach English to the private sector, mostly commercial engineers for that matter, a lot of whom are quite conservative in many regards. During one early bird class, a student of mine questioned why so many Chileans were out in the streets protesting against HidroAysén when none of them recycle. Litter is scattered across the streets and outside the rich business end of Santiago, there aren't any council street cleaners with their large palm leaves to sweep away the mess. A receipt is given to you for every purchase, not matter how minor, and the staff won't let you leave until you have received it. Water is treated as if it were in abundance with old men washing down the public footpath in front of their house and a very small minority of households owning a plug for their sink.

There is definitely the possibility to recycle here though. The shopping centres all have recycle bins in their car parks but if you don't have a car, it's very hard to travel half an hour on public transport with bags weighed down by bottles and cans. They have a great system where you can return your Coca-Cola or Cristal beer plastic bottles for a refill, and if you need ink for your printer, you simply take your ink cartridge to be refilled by sticking in a syringe full of ink.

And yet, at the supermarket a plastic bag is used for each individual item. You can't buy bread, fruit or vegetables without wrapping it in plastic. There is a ridiculous amount of plastic bags in my house, which we use to line the rubbish bin but that hardly makes a dent in the pile. Lider supermarket (owned by Walmart) has introduced environmentally friendly blue bags for a cheap price but it is yet to catch on with the masses.

I'm just waiting for the day that the local municipality decides to integrate recycling into their garbage collection system. But that seems a long way off yet. Chile is still in its economic developmental stage and everything is geared towards economic improvement. Until this is reached, recycling and other such things will be consistently pushed to the back of the agenda, something that is happening in many developing countries. And yet the contradiction lies in the enormous amount of people here who feel some sort of connection to the land in some way or another, whether it is to preserve it or to adventure across it.

Because of Chile's geography, it is full of astonishing natural beauty that most Chileans are proud of and are protesting to protect, and yet life in the city seems to suggest something different. The tree-hugging hippy is still having ridiculously long showers.

Bendición de la Casa

Chile is the most economically stable country in South America, making it as some might say, a safer place to live and work. There is an incredible influx of commercial engineers churning out from the many tertiary institutions. Let's face it, Santiago is the business capital of Chile and if you work in any other industry, your chances of getting a good income is just that much harder.

My lovely Chilean's mother's partner is a teacher in the field of educación especial, specialising in the education of the blind. His moral job involves extremely long hours at several places and at 40 years old, he has successfully raised enough money to buy one of the cute, 3-storey, Elizabethan-style townhouses in the same condominio as us.

Last Saturday, he held the bendición - a blessing of the house witnessed by his family. 14 of us gathered around the living room as his brother, who had studied 10 years of priesthood, recited various verses from the Bible and sprayed holy water around the room. This was followed by everyone chanting the Lord's Prayer and the blessing of a cross that was stuck onto the back of the front door as a reminder that the house was now under the protection of the Lord.

The smell of roasting meat on the barbeque drew us all to our seats and we spent the afternoon enjoying a merry Chilean feast. With bloated stomaches we congratulated the new residents and wished them the best of luck with the noisy dogs on one side and the woman on the other side who likes to complain about the light on the path outside the joining houses apparently never being on, even though the light switch is located in the new resident's house, meaning they have to pay the bill.

El Patrimonio Cultural

Sunday, 29 May saw Chile celebrate its twelfth Día de la Patrimonia (Cultural Heritage Day). On this particular day, government agencies, public and private museums and national monuments were open to the public, like Museo Bellas Artes, Santiago Municipal Theatre and the National Library to name a few in Santiago. Yet, what most people don't realise is that these state buildings are not the only heritage-listed feats to check out.

Santiago is filled with heritage-listed garden suburbs: a planned suburban development with open spaces, low-density housing and of course, many private gardens, that were popular in the early twentieth century in England and English colonies. This includes the English that settled here in Chile, most notably in Providencia.

After English sailor, William Noon, arrived in Chile and established Fort Bulnes as governor of Punta Arenas, he went on to construct what is now called the William Noon Community, located on the corner of Manuel Montt and Eliodoro Yanez. This historical area is composed of two-level dwellings that are organized around patios, each one painted identically in deep crimson and eggshell white.

After Noon passed away, he left his estate to the Sisters of the Dominican Order - the name Providencia actually being a derivative from the Convert of the Sisters of Divine Providence, who came to Chile in 1853 from Canada. Providencia now harbours 27 World Heritage sites, including the William Noon Community.

Today, many ordinary Chilean citizens live in these protected garden suburbs. Another such place is Población Leo XIII, again located in Providencia. This population was the first social housing in Chile and was named after Pope Leo XIII, who encouraged the awareness of the bad conditions for workers and hence their need for better housing.

Each one of these cute one-storey houses look very similar to the other, except for their unique shades of pastel. As you walk further along the street, you feel as if you have entered a charismatic country lane in a Hollywood movie set, each cosy-looking house inviting you in for a warm, homemade soup.

Then you step onto the set of My Fair Lady in Viña del Mar Street, with its grand English style houses that are characterised by their bow windows and Art Nouveau wrought iron fences. Nothing makes the street more distinctive though than the vibrant colours that awaken the senses like a fresh summer’s day at the beach.

You can find the Consejo de Monumentos Nacionales (Council for National Monuments) hidden amongst the casas, and from them you can get a map of the heritage route around Providenica, which takes you from Viña del Mar Street to the multitude of historical monuments in Bella Vista, including La Chascona and the Plaza Camilo Mori.

These are just a few of the garden suburbs in Santiago. Just aimlessly wondering down the streets of Providencia and Bella Vista is like stepping back into a time in the past when attention was paid to detailing houses and painting them the colours of the rainbow, and making them a part of a community. It just goes to show that you don't always have to pay a price for history.