Logbook: Santiago, Chile.

We go for a stroll and fall for the city...

Logbooks are informal dispatches from us when we are actively traveling. Quick, unpolished, and immediate for a sense of what is around us.

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I am glad he was wrong. Ecstatic. I told him so. “Ryan, you need to revisit Santiago - the food is exquisite. In twenty years, since you have been here, the city has re-invented itself.”

He told me at volleyball, a few days before we left Panama, how much he loved Santiago, just not the food. “Food is bad,” he said.

But something happened in the culinary world. Anthony Bourdain? The parade of celebrity chefs who spread the exquisite cuisine from the elites to the masses? Instagram influencers - a scourge playing good - elevating expectations and pushing cities to up their food game?

So Ryan, I am glad you were wrong. The Completos - the overstuffed Chilean hotdogs, the salmon, the tapas, the beer and wine at Barrio Italia, and Bella Vista are worth the trip.

I loved Santiago. We both did.

We leave the apartment in the early morning and walk the sleepy streets. One coffee shop is open, then another one, but all else is shuttered at 10 am, sleeping off the hangover of the night and resting before the evening’s gaiety. Tens of places on the immediate blocks. Hundreds in the two adjacent barrios. We saw swarms of frugal young and the rich in the night before. All in the social embrace of the city.

But they are gone now. Only the empty streets. Chairs chained or hidden. Workers spraying the green grass against the dry air of central Chile, spraying sidewalks to beat down the dust and detritus of careless revelers. Very few cars on this street. Quiet. Intimate.

The sidewalks are wide. They are built for couples holding hands and passing other couples walking the other way. From restaurant to restaurant, from a photo of food to a photo of drinks, to a photo of smiling faces. Later, but not now. Now it is only the workers washing the street.

I am a bit angry. I want a latte, but coffee shops are closed for another hour, until 11 am. We long passed the two that were open. All closed. What?

Coffee shops open early in the business district a few blocks. The suits need the coffee before the Bohemians. The suits don’t wander into the chaos of these barrios. Not until night, when the humans in them shed the suits and escape the LinkedIn universe of pretenses into the mismatched architecture of bohemian streets, unique and rebelling. Wall art, bursts of color on the concrete.

I want coffee, but I can’t go to Starbucks. It is too close to work. When I work, although without a suit, I am the business person, like the rest, choked by task lists. Going to Starbucks will pull me out of the spirit of the vacation. I will smile through the irritation instead. I hope that Alex won’t notice.

We are at the hill - Cerro de San Cristobal. The one with the Virgin Mary lifting her arms over Santiago and over the tourists. They are milling underneath, some kneeling at her base, others gawking and snapping photos.

“Don’t go there,” Alex says, “you will boil the holy water, you heathen.”

It is mostly a joke…

We ride the funicular. Walk the parapet. Listen to the clean female voice of the gospel singer. I can’t see her, but I know she is singing live. There is a priest at the entrance. He looks German, tall, and pasty. He could be a Chilean, of course. We try the Santiago Zoo on the same hill, but back out for the crowds.

There is an open coffee shop! One Latte, one black. My woman likes it strong. I have a Zoom meeting with a client. Fuck. Can’t escape. The connection was bad, at least, so I cut it short…