Plaza de Armas and Mercado Central

For today's tourist excursion, I picked the Plaza de Armas. Which according to my guidebook is both the literal, all distances are measured from here, and symbolic center of Chile. It was certainly a lively place with plenty of vendors, pigeons, couples, and families with frolicking children. I never did get the thrill of feeding pigeons though, I always thought of them as rats of the air.

The actual plaza is quite large and surrounded by imposing stone baroque and renaissance style architecture. Most of the west side is occupied by the cathedral, which makes the myriad of evangelical preachers in the plaza more logical, but no less annoying. At least the preachers in Turlington didn't have megaphones and amplifiers. By far the most interesting aspect of the plaza was the people. People from all walks of life gathered on this Sunday afternoon to enjoy the sunshine. There were tourists, rich families, poor families, homeless men, and plenty of very loud, very happy children.

After taking in the atmosphere, I headed to the Museo de Arto Precolumbino. It is supposedly the best museum in Chile, but it doesn't hold a candle to even the more moderate museums of the US or Europe. Still, there were some very interesting pieces and I learned some cool things about Pre-Columbian cultures. Once example that stuck out was the drug paraphernalia used by shamans for their hallucinogenic adventures. They had a curved spatula used to induce vomiting before the experience and an intricately carved and adorned horn out of which they inhaled they hallucinogenic powder. All the while, they must sit on a tiny curved stool that looked a little bit like the eaten out shell of a watermelon slice and on top of that, they were tightly bound from head to toe. The drugs were thought to connect the shaman with the spiritual world and to see the future. Check out the pictures for more interesting pieces.

Walking through the museum worked up an appetite, I guess it's time for lunch! I headed over to Mercado Central, a large fresh fish market. It had fish (obviously) and things that I had never even heard of before, let alone seen. There were literally tentacles sticking out of shells probing the air like cockroach antennae. But, everything looked incredibly fresh and therefore tasty (with the exception of aforementioned tentacle/barnacle hybrids). After a quick tour of the market (I grew tired of everyone asking me to buy stuff), I sat down at a restaurant that was actually inside the market. I ordered a conger eel soup and paella especial. The conger eel soup was so-so, I only got it because it is very famous in Chile. The paella though was amazing with some of the freshest seafood I have ever eaten. Some of this stuff was alive just hours ago. All in all, a great trip, I will definitely go back at some point and try some of the other, more adventurous options they had.