Going Underground

Some reflections on the city of Santiago de Chile (because there is more than one Santiago).

Santiago is a big city. Perhaps not the biggest in the world or even in South America but big all the same, and I´m sure, like all cities, it has it´s good areas and bad areas. Having been here only a short time, I´ve only seen a small part of the city but that small part has been consistently clean and spacious. I´m sure there is graffiti but I haven´t noticed any and there is very little litter or (BsAs favourite) dog debris on the pavements.

Unfortunately, like a lot of South American Cities, Santiago doesn´t have a lot for the tourist to do. The museums are well-intentioned but tend to be sparse, the historical buildings tend to be closed to the public or have been knocked down in the drive to modernise and the public spaces are small (more on that later). Shopping is the number one activity and I have been shopping today, buying presents for a selected few people whose name begins with Shiralee (so don´t get your hopes up).

Coming back to the public spaces, today I went to Parque O'Higgins (Bernardo O'Higgins is one of the heroes/creators of South America as we know it today - go here for more information - with the hope of seeing some reconstructed colonial buildings and a museum about the cowboys (vaqueros) of South America. Well I found the buildings and almost all of them had expensive tacky fried food restaurants in the ground floor (very disappointing) and no-one knew where the museum was (although they could direct me to the insect museum and the stuffed bird museum. The park itself looks quite big on the map but isn´t in real life. There is grass and trees and benches but, in contrast to yesterday´s park, it´s completely flat and featureless. There is an amusement park at one end but when you´ve done a 4x4 trek and are about to go over the Andes, amusement parks aren´t that appealing. I´ve just realised I haven´t told you about yesterday´s park - Parque Santa Lucia. Built on a rocky outcrop in the middle of Santiago, this is a park on the vertical, an excellent use of space and where I took the pictures of the fountain from. But getting up there in the heat - it almost drove me mad.

Anyway, all this (BsAs and Chile) has made me appreciate just how well we do parks in the UK. The main one in Ramsgate (Ellington Park) is a gem, with up bits and down bits, shady bits and sunny bits, bits with flowers and bits with trees. It has a bandstand and a play area for the kids (which I remember with great fondness). This was the park where my brother Sean broke his arm falling out of a tree (oops, was that a secret?) And the London Parks. Green Park with it´s flowerbeds and waterways, Hyde Park with the Serpentine and concerts, Regents Park with the rolling green lawns and the zoo and my all-time favourite Greenwich Park where we celebrated my 35th birthday with a picnic to remember. Greenwich Park has Roman ruins (now carefully reburied for the future), a herb garden, a rose garden, a deer enclosure, the Royal Observatory, views of The Thames, incredibly ancient trees and so much more. No matter how much you may hate the UK at times (and everybody does), we know how to do parks.

However, Santiago does do one thing oh so much better than the UK and that one thing is it´s underground system. Light and spacious, the trains themselves are more than adequate for the passengers being carried (admittedly I´ve only travelled outside of rush hour so that could be a different story). As the carriages are square (well, oblong, but you know what I mean), it is possible to stand upright anywhere inside. There is advertising but it isn´t intrusive. The underground maps are large and easy to read (ie not overwhelmed by the adverts alongside). The stations are high-ceilinged with well-lit, wide platforms and plenty of room to move around. The signs and directions at the stations are clear and easy to follow but should you be confused there are plenty of people in yellow metro polo-shirts eager to help you out. Interchanges are clearly signed, not only on the walls but on the floor as well. Nobody runs for a train, not because of the heat but because there will be another one along in a minute (and that´s out of rush hour) and when it gets too hot, the fans mist water onto the platforms to lower the temperature. My only quibble? There aren´t enough escalators - but then again that may have been a deliberate decision in order to save resources. I realise that the Santiago metro is new and London Underground is old but there are some simple lessons that could be learned here (or maybe they have, I haven´t been in the UK for two years). Mainly, the underground system here makes it a pleasure to explore the city and that has to be a bonus for any tourist industry.