Monday July 24

Having flown out of Lima after 12pm and landed in Santiago 4 hours later we were pretty tired. Once out of the airport we caught a bus into the city. It was cold and still very dark at around 6:30 am. So what to do with a 20 hour layover in a foreign city?

Our usual routine in South America is to go to the Plaza De Armas and so we did. More trees than we have seen in any Peruvian Plaza.

To be honest our South America experience is very limited but one thing that seems to be a very strong theme is an obsession with macho military hero statues. As the plaque shows, this is the conquistador Pedro de Validivia. He was sent by Conquistador Francisco Pizarro on a long journey from Cusco, Peru. Validivia summoned the chiefs of the area to a parliament, where he explained his intention to found a city on behalf of the King Carlos I of Spain, which would be the capital of his governorship. On 12 February 1541, Valdivia officially founded the city of Santiago del Nuevo Extremo, Santiago of New Extremadura. The result?

476 years later, Santiago is large cosmopolitan city that, if you didn't know you were in South America, you would think you were somewhere in Western Europe. The city has a downtown of 19th-century neoclassical architecture and winding side-streets, dotted by art deco, neo-gothic, and other styles.

This is a Brother that we happens to meet doing street witnessing.

The Mercado Central de Santiago with its cast-iron roof and supporting structure was opened in 1872.

Fish market.

The fast flowing Mapocho River flows from the Andes mountains onto the west and divides the capital in two. The city is home to a great deal of artists including a great many graffiti artists.

The 1910 Chilean National Museum of Fine Arts. Sadly the walls of which which have become the canvas for low skilled graffiti artists.

Sculptor Fernando Botero voluptuous bronze Horse.

Parque Forestal.

The famous Chilean sandwich for lunch.

The incident

Feeling overwhelming tired after a nonstop month in Peru and literally only a few hours sleep on an overnight plane, we acquiesced to the idea of one of those hop-on-hop-off city tour tourists buses. So off we went in the open top bus to see some parts of the city that we could never reach in a day on foot. It was during one of the hop off stops, when we were standing on the footpath waiting for the tourist bus and looking a bit too much like tourists, that the incident occurred.

It all happened rather quickly. As she wiped her neck, Alexandra said, "What was that, I think a bird pooed on me". I looked at her back and sure enough, her beautiful green coat was spattered with dark, brown bird droppings. As I started to attempt to clean them off with my handkerchief, a kindly concerned man came to our aid with a tissue. He ushered us away from the kerb to the side of a building. Alexandra was rightly disturbed by the mess on her back, hat and hair. "Is it bird or bat?" she asked the helper. Of course his English was as bad as our Spanish so no definitive answer came. He sort of pointed to the trees that had long twisted seed pods but no sign of living creatures. He then indicated that I too had had been hit and set about helping to remove my shoulder bag and backpack. He placed them carefully on the ground against the wall behind Alexandra and himself. Then he put his hands on my shoulders and turned me around as if to clean my back. He even gestured for me to remove my coat. At that moment two other men, passers by, appeared right beside us, making sweeping pointing gestures to the sky or nearby trees as if to say "look up at the bird that got you". I could see no birds. My instinct kicked in. Somthing is not right. I spun around to see the hand of yet another person reaching down behind Alexandra and grasping the strap of my shoulder bag, and then whoever he was was, was off down the path with my bag. Instinctively I pursued him, grabbed my bag back and then shoved him away as hard as I could. Completly out of character I assure you but I was angry, shocked and just beginning to realise what was going on. I looked back quickly to Alexandra, I dashed back to confirm that we had not lost the back pack. "The pointers" had disappeared into the crowd. The "kindly stranger" who had been "assisting" us, himself began to shuffle off down the sidewalk. As he did I realised that he too was part of the scam and so I shouted "THEIF, THEIF"! with all my might. He didn't run. Neither had the snatcher or the pointers. They didn't want to attract attention. They were too professional. They merely calmly walked away and merged into the the people and architecture. Some people on the sidewalk looked and stared at me for shouting but no one really did much. We couldn't do much. We stood there, quickly checking that we had all three of our bags, checking our pockets for wallets, passports and cameras. Everything seemed to be in order. But we were in shock. It all happened so quickly.

Going over in our minds we put together what had just happened. We had been the victims of a professional gang of thieves and by chance or instinct, we had escaped, just by the skin of our teeth. As we had stood in a known tourist location with backpacks and bags waiting for a tourist bus with tourist bus tour brochures in hand, we were an obvious target. There were no birds or bats. Someone, probably another individual had passed and squirted a substance on us. Some sort of sticky food based substance that resembled bird poo. The "helper" approached and ushered us across the sidewalk to the wall where we would feel safe. He then proceeded to convince me to remove my bags, placed them "safely" against the wall. He then endeavoured to turn me around to clean my back. Then the "pointers" arrived to enlarge on the bird/bat theory and complete the distraction. At that moment, the "snatcher" slithers in from who knows where, bent down and tried to grab the bags. Had our instincts not been telling us that somthing was wrong, we would have lost our bags and even worse, possibly our money passports.

It was a most unsettling experience. For the rest of the day we looked at everybody that approached us on the street with suspicion. A horrible feeling. At the same time, we went away feeling good that we had reacted in the nick of time. We had realised what was happening and avoided the consequences.

We got on the next tourist bus and continued our city tour.

Colonial architecture of the Metropolitan Cathedral.

Palacio de La Moneda is the seat of the President of the Repubic of Chile. On this day there appeared to be several protests going on in the city.

But no one was getting in here.

The Neptune Terrace, in the Santa Lucia Hill.

Art Deco apartment building.

Finally we headed up the Cerro San Cristóbal lookout, a big hill in the middle of the city from which we could almost see through the smog, The Gran Torre Santiago (Great Santiago Tower), the tallest building in Latina America.