A Pilgrimage to Home Cooking

And with that title, we have uncovered the name of our new recipe book. Just joking, this is a blog.

Our journey continued to Chile following the Copa Airlines Saga, and we landed in Santiago in the early morning and caught the bus to our accommodation smoothly, glad to fall into a comfortable bed after only 2 hours sleep on the plane.
Our accommodation itself was a joy and we spent a lot of time cooking things like cookies and vegetables, drinking water from the tap and flushing the toilet paper. All things we hadnt done since the US.

Santiago felt very homely for us, similar to Melbourne but with much more street art and the one big difference. Nobody spoke English. We assume because Santiago is not so much of a tourist destination, the people here havent needed to use English, unlike Cuba and Mexico where most people knew at least some. We wandered around supermarkets, through the city and to a huge fruit and vegetable market bustling with people. We walked past a shiny Starbucks and also past many locals with shopping trolleys, the gas bottle in the base hooked up to a cooker balanced on top on which they cooked meat skewers and other goodies. We didn't sample their wares, partly because it didnt look fantastic and partly because of the queues of people lined up to buy the food.
We discovered a hip plaza full of student restaurants near the uni and resolved to come back for a beer. We walked along the river and admired the street art and through the luscious green parks with metropolitanly trimmed grass. We walked up to the beautiful castillo hidalgo overlooking the city and spied another hill nearby, but bigger. We looked at each other, both thinking the same thought. We'd conquer that tomorrow.

The day came and we fueled our bodies with porridge and packed our sandwiches to climb Parque Cerro San Cristobal. As we walked there we became aware of an increasing amount of people the closer we got to the park, many carrying small bunches of wheat. Odd, we thought, but perhaps a Saturday ritual? When the numbers of people streaming past us and with us towards the mountain increased to the hundreds we thought maybe this was something more. Santiago we had read, was largely a Catholic city with numerous churches and religious statues.

Just like Carbondale and the Potato Festival, we had happened to come to Santiago and happened to climb this mountain on the day of the Immaculate Conception, and the Statue of the Immaculate Conception was on top of the hill. Except this time there were no potatoes, just lots of people walking barefoot, carrying wheat in one hand and a bottle of coke in the other. And it was steep and hot, these people were slogging up the hill. But pilgrimage has something to do with suffering? We overtook them, our mountain legs returning and our bodies enjoying burning off some of the Cuban food we'd been storing.

Thousands of worshippers awaited us at the top, with a religious sermon and choir blasting out over the loudspeaker. There was a huge white statue of the virgin Mary, echoing Rio de Janiero Christ Statue vibes. But despite the religous zeal, it was also a family day out, there were food and drink stalls, and people had brought blankets and picnics to set up within the sprawling parks and gardens. After getting our fix of catholicism, we meandered amoung the jacarandas and through the flowering plants, past some Eucalypts and down the other side of the hill. We made a beeline for the pubs we had noted yesterday and found a couch in the corner to recover. 15 kms of walking and our feet were a little sore, but boy what an interesting day! We caught the train home and made a veggie curry.

A day of rest, trip planning and cooking again before we set off towards Curico. We hope to get out of the cities a bit and see the National Parks and the Andes. It has been nice to have a taste of home in this city but we are excited to discover the rest of Chile.