Labor Unrest Thwarts the Other Part of Today's Santiago de Chile Plan

At Santiago's Plaza de Armas, new and old co-exist
like the religions of the world on a left-wing bumpersticker

I knew not when this afternoon energy burst would dissipate, so I decided after climbing Cerro Santa Lucia, and it being too early for my room to be dependably ready, I decided to walk a few blocks over to the Plaza de Armas and, perhaps, take in a museum.

It's a short walk past interesting-looking buildings, only some of which I am able to attach a name. Por ejemplo, this is the Basilica de la Merced:

And before I know it, I've arrived at my destination:

Plaza de Armas.

There's always something happening in any Latin American city's Plaza de Armas. Por ejemplo: a man on a horse.

This is El Monumento a Pedro de Valdivia. He sits astride a horse that is transitioning from stallion to mare.

For some reason, and I hope I never find out, the horse's -- ummm -- masculine feature? -- is noticeably gone. Only some jagged white plaster where the horse's pride once was. Usually on these bronze equestrian statutes, the horse's most masculine feature has been "rubbed" to a shiny bright gold. For good luck, they always saw. Yeah, I buy that one. So, perhaps someone, at some point, was a little desperate for luck to swing his or her way and -- poof! -- the stallion transitioned to a mare. Clearly the Old Bronze Horse ain't what he used to be. But, say what you will, Pedro de Valdivia is taking it in stride. Literally.

And what do I spy here:

 

A map of Old Santiago! Embedded in sidewalk. Y'know, more towns could follow this example and embed old maps into sidewalks. I can't be the only map nerd tourist out there.

Which sight to see. Which site to visit next? The Catedral Metropolitana de Santiago de Chile?

El Museo Histórico Nacional? The National History Museum?

Or the Old Post Office building? CorreosChile Plaza de Armas?

CorreosChile Plaza de Armas: I will visit you tomorrow and I will visit in my capacity as one in need in postal services.

I can't find the entrance to the national museum, so it looks like Catedral Metropolitana de Santiago de Chile.

One word, however, before I enter the cathedral: power-washing.

Santiago is a very clean city. And the fact that people are out power-washing the Plaza de Armas is one of the reasons why.

The cathedral is beautiful. Not "knock my socks off' beautiful. Sock are still on. But beautiful nonetheless.

A service was going on, so I couldn't mosey around the joint playing shutterbug. But I did snap a photo of St. Michael the Archangel, looking particularly martial.

The building looks bigger on the outside:

Maybe there is a lot of territory inside that us members of the General Public cannot enter.

Speaking of not being able to enter, I entered the Tourist Information location next door to the national museum and found out why I couldn't find the entrance.

The employees of all the public museums in Santiago are on strike. The strike could last a day, It could last several months. All I know is that I will not be visiting the national museum this visit to Santiago.

The national museum is closed due to labor unrest, but if anything should be causing unrest, it would be this:

Monumento al Pueblo Indígena. Yes. Nothing says I support indigenous peoples of my native land quite like modern art. I know this is symbolic of something, in some way, but I will take a hard pass on finding out.

So, speaking of native indigenous peoples, one of the non-governmental museums I had considered visiting in Santiago was the Museo Chileno de Arte Precolombino, the Chilean Museum of Pre-Columbian Art.

In the Latin American countries I've visited so far, they refer to what we in the U.S. of A. call "pre-Columbian" as "pre-hispanic," which, come to think about it, is more descriptive. But Chilenos use the term "pre-Columbian" and I'm going local on this.

But before I go in, I'm going to walk down the street, the street being Compañía de Jesús. And, here it is: the Chilean Supreme Court:

Or, more specifically, El Palacio de los Tribunales de Justicia.

Celebrating 200 years!

Circling back to the open museum unhampered by labor unrest:

And I spy a map, placing very indigenous peoples of the Americas in their proper geographic locales.

I am greeted by a distinctly non-Chilean statute:

This fellow is from the San Agustin region of Southern Colombia.

This one looks shockingly modern:

This I recognized as a stela from Mayan country.

This came from Southern Mexico.

And this one just looks plain grumpy:

There was a textiles area. Generally, I'm not interested in textiles, but I would like this one as a rug:

And this is a representation of a llama:

A llama on a pillow. Not normally where llamas are found. But artistic license and all that.

And this is one fat dog.

How fat?

Almost Botero-esque, although the recently-deceased Fernando Botero is most definitely not "pre-Columbian."

This one looked like something drugged out from the 1960s.

Again, I like it. Again, not "pre-Columbian," if that were what this was.

This one struck me as bizarre.

It's from over 2000 years ago. Olmec, from Mexico, possibly. And yet it looks decidedly, almost stereotypically East Asian. How? How did this happen?

And while this piece doesn't traffic in Asian stereotypes, again, the style is strikingly Chinese.

Was there some sort of trans-Pacific Chinese / Indigenous American contact B.C.?

And, finally, we will end our museum tour with this:

Because, after that, what can you say?

Still not picking up on the indigenous vibe on that.

But I do want to pick up the vibe on some local cuisine:

This is the completo. Actually it is two completos. And what is a completo? A giant humongous dollop of mayonnaise, with a generic hot dog underneath. Tasted like Oscar Meyer, not something upscale like Hebrew National. But how could you taste anything under that much mayo? There are some chopped tomatoes and onions (sort of like a mildly spiced pico de gallo) nestled in the bun. The "completo" in the lower half of the picture is topped with pepper sauce. Which actually does make this delicious. With this much mayonnaise, you do not have to worry about overdoing it on the heat.

It was not nearly as mayonnaise-y as you would expect.

Room is ready. 

It's a great room. Clean and quiet. Much larger than a typical hotel room anywhere else in the world other than the United States. But I'm glad I'm not staying with someone. That shower right out in the middle of the room would weird me out.

Let's take an evening stroll through Lasterria:

-

And above is the destination for my evening stroll: Emporio La Rosa. Reputedly the best ice cream in Santiago.

They did have a nice selection of flavors.

I went with a three-scoop variety pack. 

One scoop of Lucumba, known in English by the unappetizing name of the "eggfruit." I'll stick with the Spanish on that one. One scoop of Naranja y Jengibre, Orange and Ginger, which was not ginger-y enough for my palate. (Truth be told: rarely is anything "ginger enough" for my taste. I love the stuff. Can't get enough.) And the white on the right side? Rosa? Yes, Rose-flavored ice cream. It's their signature flavor, being in the name of the ice cream parlor and all. It tasted like rose or, more specifically rose water. It had too much of a floral flavor to work as ice cream. The star of the cup? No doubt. The Lucumba. It was awesome. Great flavor. Creamy texture. A winner.

Landscape Week! Phot-o' the Day: Southern Colombia, near San Agustin

All the cool kids on Facebook are posting landscape photos, I think as a distraction from the social distancing and self-quarantining associated with the coronavirus pandemic. I may not be cool. And I am not a kid. But I am slavishly devoted to following internet trends. And I have a boatload of landscape photos that I can post accumulated over years of travel.

So let's start with this one. This is the southern Andes of Colombia, near the town of San Agustin (and, more importantly, San Agustin Archaeological Park). The smoke in the foreground, right, is from a sugar cane house, squeezing the sugary juice out of the sugar cane stalks.

Landscape scenes are always more beautiful in person than in a two-dimensional photograph. So you don't get the full sense of how beautiful this area is, with the sheer cliffs and amazing greenery. You just have to visit here.

Visited September 2012.

Phot-o' the Day: San Agustin Archaeological Park, San Agustin, Colombia

The Andes highlands of Southern Colombia, around the area of San Agustin, is maybe the most beautiful land I have yet seen in my travels. I visited there because I had been planning a trip to Peru and Machu Picchu. I got discouraged reading about the extreme crowding at Machu Picchu and how that was ruining the experience. So I thought: where will be the next Machu Picchu? Where can I go before it gets over-run by tourists by me?

I decided to visit Colombia, with the intent of visiting the San Agustin Archaeological Park in the Andes in Southern Colombia. It was beautiful. It was amazing. It was beyond awesome. While Colombia itself is getting more and more tourists, the Archaeological Park is not on its way to becoming the next Machu Picchu. It's still not even on the radar for most travelers to Colombia or South America. I'm very glad I went.

Visited September 2012.

Day at the Museum, part 2 of 2

A view of a room

Continuing with our tour through the collection of the Museo Nacional in the Central Internacional barrio of Bogotá.

I told you it was a former prison

Let's check out this corridor, shall we?

Through the prison gates

This golden wall at the end was quite a sight:

Ornate

Again, if you are looking to me to provide an explanation as to why these pieces are grouped together, or to what time of Colombian history they correspond, you have come to the wrong place. As I said before, it's the national museum of a Spanish-speaking country that makes almost no concessions to the fact that English is the language of international tourism.

So just admire the beauty of the pieces:

That said, I do know the history of next piece:

Los Jesuitas en al Batalla de Lepanto. Artist anonymous.

This depicts a famous miracle that occurred in a naval battle in the Mediterranean in 1571, Spanish and Venetians paired up against the Ottoman Turks. One of the ships carried a boatload (literally!) of Jesuits who, with the aid of the Virgin Mary, were able to walk across the water when the ship came under Ottoman attack.

Continuing with what I cannot explain:

I call this one: Security Guard Contemplating a Stone Ball

As with museums all over the world, this one was positively lousy with schoolchildren, on field trips that were supposed to inspire them with a love of history and art, but, realistically, just gave them a day to be happy that they weren't in the classroom. You can spot a gaggle of them through this mesh hole in the ceiling:

Noisy schoolchildren (are there any other kind?) on the floor above me

Next we move onto a corridor that I did not need an English language translation: the pre-Columbian era of Colombian history:

There actually some English explanation of these exhibits. The most interesting thing I learned? This being Colombia and all, the word "pre-Columbian," which we use to mean "before Columbus," would make no sense. They call the time before 1492 the "prehispanic" era.

I recognized this guy:

San Agustin statuary! While it is nice to have a few of these statues in museums in Bogotá, it is even better to see them out in the open in the amazing San Agustin Archaeological Park, which oh by the way I visited back in 2012.

Continuing on, there was more "prehispanic" art on display in the big room:

This room seemed to be a survey of Colombian art, from both the prehispanic and the "hispanic" era of Colombian history:

What era is that piece from? Don't know. But I'd like to have one in my living room.

This definitely is not from the prehispanic era:

San Sebastian en las trincerhas. Translation: St. Sebastian in the trenches. Ignacion Gomez Jaramillo, artist/

Clearly a modern take on the torture of St. Sebastian.  It was there a lot of more modern art on the back wall:

Continuing, yes, they had Boteros:

As you know, Botero is Colombia's most renowned artist. And all of the subjects in all of his works are fat. Muy gordo.

Yes, even the birds -- even the trees -- are fat fat fat.

But if you want to more Boteros, the Botero Museum in Candelaria is where to see them in Bogotá. But the best place to see Botero's work, including his most famous work depicting the killing of drug lord Pedro Escobar? Medellin.

I took pictures of whatever exhibits happened to catch my eye, No theme here:

Acción del llano de Santa Lucía. Jose Maria Espinosa Prieto, artist.

For this one, the painting of the death bed scene inside the room was of zero interest to me. But I liked the two way-cool maps of Colombia visible on the wall, especially the one etched on a copper plate.

I do realize light etchings on a copper plate does not show up well in a photograph. Just trust me on the way-cool-ness factor if you are a map nerd as am I.

But even without the etching being visible, it is still more cool than forcing students to look at modern art from the "industrial waste" side of the street. Here are some older schoolchildren being forced to look at what appeared to be a collection of bent tire rims.

There was genuine history on display:

This is a photo of the destruction wrought by the infamous "Bogotazo," a massive set of riots that occurred in 1948 following the assassination of a liberal presidential candidate. This one was in the same set of photos from the Bogotazo, but it looks more like a "before" to me:

Speaking of photographs, I found this art school scene interesting:

Children and nude sculpture. What possibly could be wrong with that?

Heading out of that corridor, with the children and their nude scupltures visible in the back, was this lass. This other lass was in a different corridor:

I liked these paintings.

Above: Sin Titulo (untitled). Luis Felipe Jaspe Franco, artist.
Below: Murallas de Cartagena (Walls of Cartagena). Jeneroso Jaspe Franco, artist.
Guessing the artists were brothers, given the similarity of time period and surnames. 

The bottom is a depiction of Cartagena. I will let you know tomorrow how it compares to the actual city walls.

This one requires no description:

Desnudo con Gallo. Pedro Nel Gomez, artist.

Insert your own bawdy joke here, please.

But my favorite painting, the one that to me just had that special oomph to it, was this:

Palmas del Tolima. Ricardo Borrero Alvarez, artist.

Weirdly enough, and I don't pretend to have any insight into art, this is actually one of the more important works of art on display in this museum (aside from the Boteros).

So it is time to exit the museum:

That corridor leads to the museum gift shop (very small), a restaurant, and the Juan Valdez coffee shop.

One last look at the prison exercise yard before exiting the museum grounds and heading back to the northern section of Bogotá: