High times in Santiago

By PETER CALDER

Technically, the dogs are strays, but they lack the ribbed gauntness of the real whipped cur, the mangy peeling hide, the snarl and glare. They don't bite; they don't even bark much.

Stray dogs are the bane of the traveller. In the Pacific Islands or Asia, the alert walker learns quickly to adopt the extravagant crouch that mimes picking up a stone. In two years in South America in the 1970s I became adept at scooping up imaginary missiles without breaking stride, frightening to a safe distance whole packs of dogs that were scaring me witless.

Now, in Santiago, the capital of Chile, the dogs seem different. Sleek, erect-eared, bright-eyed, they cavort in the parks in bands - the word "packs" seems wrong - and pay no attention to the passing parade of humanity.

In a sunlit square I stop to ask a lunchbreaking office worker whose dogs they are.

"They're Chile's," he replies at once.

"But how do they live?" I wonder.

"They fend for themselves."

"Eating homeless children, perhaps?" I ask, my crude attempt at humour made more clumsy as I stumble over the Spanish word for "homeless".

"Communists," he fires back and, in the instant before he bursts into the wheezy chuckle of a devoted smoker, I see a deadly earnest in his eyes.

The word has powerful echoes here in the long, thin republic that runs more than half the length of the South American subcontinent, clinging to the land between the Pacific and the endless Andes. Here, after all, a socialist President, Salvador Allende was deposed by a United States-backed coup in 1973 - not a few Chileans have reminded us in recent years that the day the bombs rocked the presidential palace was September 11.

Allende led a coalition that included the local Communist Party, and recent transcripts of conversations between the then American President, Richard Nixon, and his Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, prove clearly that the White House approved and supported the coup. Its leader, General Augusto Pinochet, morphed into a dictator whose rule was extraordinarily brutal even by the dire standards of the region and the time: in 17 years more than 3000 people died or disappeared.

It is an episode in its history that many Chileans seem either keen to forget or unable to remember. In late May, a Chilean appeals court removed Pinochet's immunity from prosecution.

The 88-year-old's lawyers had claimed their client's infirmity and incipient dementia made him unfit to stand trial but he had appeared on an American Spanish-language television programme, vigorously and lucidly protesting that he had always been a "good angel" and blaming the excesses of his regime on subordinates. The case, as they say, continues.

Many of Pinochet's opponents are expatriate now, having made new lives in other countries, including New Zealand. Meanwhile, in 21st-century Chile, they seem keen to let bygones be bygones.

"Yeah, of course we remember," a waiter in a cafe on the Plaza de Armas in the centre of Santiago told me, "But it was 30 years ago and Pinochet is an old man. We are looking to the future."

That future seems sure to involve New Zealand more as greater numbers of travellers look to our first significant landfall in the east as they plan trips abroad.

The Chilean national carrier LanChile, which code-shares the trans-Pacific route with Qantas, reports that travel from New Zealand with final destinations in South America was up almost 50 per cent in the March quarter and is increasing its service from three to four flights weekly from December.

It's an index of the increasing trade interest - our Government has concluded a trade agreement with Chile - that business travel was up a whopping 125 per cent in the same period.

That's to say nothing of passengers in transit. Those for whom traditional stopovers such as Singapore and Hong Kong have lost their novelty - or who don't enjoy the jumpy hostility of the US immigration service - can get a different slant on the world by flying via Santiago.

That offers the opportunity to jump off into the full South American experience, including a visit to Machu Picchu and Ipanema, but even a brief sojourn in the shadow of those fabled mountains is a cultural blast.

Thanks to waves of immigration in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Santiago has a remarkably European flavour. The outdoor cafes are staffed by waiters in red jackets and bow ties and the upscale pedestrian malls are lined with smart shops.

But the unmistakable traces in the people's facial features of pre-Colombian civilisations - Mapuche in the south, Aymara in the north - and the snowcapped spine of the Andes looming over the city firmly place you in the New World.

In the central Plaza de Armas, men play speed chess as the shoeshine men work their mobile booths. Hustlers try sweetly transparent scams and smile sheepishly when they are waved away.

One group of buskers, engaged in a complicated and wordy piece of street theatre, attracts a three-deep circle of onlookers. Other street performers fill the cool evening air - Santiago is 400m above sea level - with the haunting strains of Andean music, the high tinkle of the mandolin-like charango and the breathy whistle of the Andean flute.

You're welcome to stroll into the presidential palace known as the Moneda (the name, which means "coin", recalls its original function as a mint) but you will look in vain for any trace of the repairs that restored the top floor after the 1973 air attack.

The neatly scrubbed palace is patrolled by soldiers whose spit-shined, knee-length boots and impeccable uniforms are inviting targets for tourist cameras. So, too, are the striking modern sculptures strategically placed around the courtyards.

Santiago eateries have an alarming habit of mounting window displays of the food on the menu. It's fine in theory, but a grey steak topped with a half-cooked fried egg and framed by ancient salad don't look too appetising after a few hours under fluorescent lights.

Best to work up an appetite for seafood so fresh it's practically wriggling, and walk a few blocks to the central market.

Here, along with tourist tat and cheap shoes, every conceivable kind of sea creature is up for sale - as well as the more exotic parts of cattle beasts. If you hanker after bull's penis or cow's udder, the white-gumbooted butchers will stop hollering for a moment and slap some on the scale for you.

If you'd rather have your food ready-cooked, there are plenty of restaurants inside where they'll serve an excellent facsimile of the Provencal bouillabaisse or the local speciality, pastel de choclo, a soul-warming chicken-and-beef casserole with a crust of ground corn.

Excellent wine is available by the bottle but, as at home, you get what you pay for. Most wine by the glass is conspicuously ordinary.

Santiago is not short of museums, which document the region's pre-colonial ethnography and often distressing post-colonial history.

They provide a fascinating insight into one of the world's great sub-continents. They, like the city, will likely change the way you look at the world beyond our shores.

* Peter Calder flew to Chile courtesy of LanChile.