We spent one afternoon this week in the area of Quinta Normal, another of the main parks in Santiago, looking at museums.
First on our itinerary was Museo de la Memoria y los Derechos Humanos, the human rights museum. I wanted to come here to learn more about the 1973 coup which installed Augusto Pinochet into power, and the atrocities committed during his dictatorship, as we don’t know much about them in The UK. The museum contains a wealth of exhibits from the coup and dictatorship including previously unseen videos, letters from prisoners, newspaper clippings, military artefects, testimony from survivors and much more. It chronicles the time immediately before the coup all the way up to the return to democracy and is well worth a visit if you want to learn more about this dark period of Chilean history.
I already knew some stuff about the Pinochet era, both from my own studies and from what Steven has told me, but seeing everything for myself and reading information in more detail was very eye opening. As you may know from reading my blog I have seen some pretty horrific things in museums, including gloves made from human skin at the war museum in Kiev and mass graves of hundreds of thousands of people in Rwanda, and while the exhibits weren’t as graphic here they still made me wonder how evil and twisted those in power can be.
The museum also houses exhibits dedicated to peace and human rights in general in addition to a number of temporary exhibits. While we visited there was an exhibit dedicated to Pedro Lemebel, an openly gay Chilean writer and activist, which, although I had not heard of him before, was interesting to look around.
Contained within Quinta Normal itself is the Natural History Museum. I have visited the counterpart in London many times, and the content of this one was nothing new, but it had a much larger focus on the flora, fauna and environment of South America from prehistoric to present times and if you are interested in learning more about the area then it might be worth a visit. The park itself is worth a visit at any rate, and I enjoyed my time there.
I made it my mission to find some Sopaipillas while in Chile. Sopaipillas, as described in my previous post, are a traditional street food consisting of fried pastry, which in Chile has pumpkin pastes as an added ingredient. I made some with Steven in The UK, and I have made some myself since then, so I wanted to try some while in Chile just to compare. Unfortunately, we couldn’t find any for the majority of the trip as they are primarily a summer street food but luckily yesterday we found some. We spent some time looking around the Mercado Central, and surrounding area, before taking a local bus to the huge Parque Arauco shopping centre and right by the bus stop was a lady selling Sopaipillas. I have to say that the ones I made in The UK, even the ones I made myself, were so much better due to the fact these were most likely store bought or catering standard ones.
Parque Arauco was your standard designer shopping centre and, given that it is located within the wealthy neighbourhood of Las Condes, is full of international restaurants and designer brands. However, despite that, it was a nice place to visit. We spent some time looking around at the shops before eating at Ruby Tuesday and relaxing in Starbucks. Even though this was in a designer outlet the prices of food were still a lot cheaper than I am used to, for example two large steak meals with a few soft drinks each and a tip came to £30 which would not even buy one steak meal in London. The bus ride back to the city centre was interesting, however. We seemed to get a bus driver in a hurry and who swerved all over the place, driving extremely close to the car in front etc. This made us a little bit nervous and anxious so we got off the bus slightly earlier than planned, close to Pio Nono, but this area was closer to the apartment anyway.
The past few days, since our day trips out of the city, have been less rushed than the first half of my trip. We have looked around a few museums and churches but we have also done a lot of relaxing, just walked around and soaked up the atmosphere, eaten some good meals and done some shopping which to be honest has been quite welcome. While there is a lot more I wish that I could have seen in the city, and I’m the sort of person who likes to fit as much in as I can, it was nice to do things differently and I know I will be back again. We did so much walking in the first half of my visit so on top of that I think that my feet needed a rest anyway.
So here I am, at the end of my final full day in Chile. There has been a lot that I have seen that will probably have escaped my mind when typing up this blog, as it’s written in an overview style rather than being a point by point account of what happened each day like normal, so I will probably add an opinion and roundup post to my blog at some point after I return along with a few photos that I want to share but haven’t been able to include in these posts.