Plaza del Armas: A decent plaza with a fountain honouring Simon Bolivar. He liberated South America from the Spanish colonial rule, and assumed the presidency of most of these countries in the process — very much like his role model Napoleon presided over Europe.
Catedral Metropolitan: Catholicism is very much alive in Chile. The cathedral looks not particularily South American. It could be somewhere in Spain.
Museo National Historico: A short exhibition mainly focusing on Chile’s colonial past. It ended with a picture of Salavore Allende’s broken glaces. The glaces are still covered with sprinkles of blood as a result of Allende’s suicide. He killed himself in the presidential palace using an AK-47 refusing to succumb to Pinochet coup d’etat in 1973. The glaces themselves are currently under restoration. Gruesome Gruesome…
Museo Precolumbino: Mostly pottery and other artifacts from Indian cultures living South America before the invasion of the Spaniards starting from 1535. There were actually many indigenous cultures , the most known being the Inca and the Mayas. Most striking I found the “string storage” of the Inca (the Inca version of an USB stick), a bundle of strings that the Inca used for record keeping. The information is encoded as knots. The exact knowledge how is however lost in time. And, the most striking similarity: One can hang it around the neck 🙂
