5 things learned from living in Chile-Part One
These will be a series of facts we learned from living in Chile.
It was back in 2012 when we moved to Santiago de Chile, my husband had been there before and liked the city’s feeling or as he calls it the vibe that Santiago offers. For me it was my first time visiting the city.
My first impression was confusion, I didn’t know where exactly the airport was hence; I didn’t know where in the city we were. Time passed by and soon we became familiar with all things Chilean, so here goes the list.
1. Chile se mueve! Meaning Chile is always shaking to where Chileans pay little attention to it anymore, unless the earthquake is 7 degrees or more, in which case they are all prepared and know what to do. Chile is always moving because of the converging Nazca and the South American plates, for more on earthquakes in South America check “Big Earthquakes in South America.” They told us to keep a backpack ready, to get out of the house. In this backpack you will have some supplies (food and water) also a flashlight, ideally a charged cellphone, first aid kit, and cash.
What happens is. In case the earthquake is higher than 7 degrees magnitude. Let’s say 8 degrees or 9 degrees the power will go off automatically. Mainly to avoid any incidents from people getting stuck in elevators. After all they throng all Santiago de Chile with many buildings. Here in Santiago, is where you will find the tallest building in South America “Torre Santiago” in “El Golf” neighborhood. People should count on having a blackout when things get serious. Because of this, the traffic would jam, among other inconveniences. It is important to emphasize that Chileans are experts on knowing what to do. They react quickly to the all familiar events for them.
When we got there in 2012 people were still talking about the big earthquake that hit Chile back in 2010. After we left, they had another big shake, not as strong as the last one. But we feel like we missed the big event twice. Preparedness is always good, to have a plan of evacuation with all family members informed, would make things easy, and backpacks ready to go.
2. Chileans smoke! This surprised us, growing up in Peru people smoked. Family members, friends, and people I knew had always been smoking. It wouldn’t be a surprise if I get second hand smoke at all. The point of this story is that this was over 20 years ago, now I still see some people smoking in Peru but not as many as in Chile.
What happened? Haven’t they heard of lung cancer? Apparently, they haven’t or they don’t care. Women especially are heavy smokers in Chile, I have seen mothers exhaling the smoke on their kids’ faces, because they smoke where ever they are, indoors, outdoors, with people, without people it doesn’t matter. One hypothesis is that women like to smoke to prevent hunger to stay fit. That is also worth mentioning upper scale Chilean women are thin, maybe there is a relation therewith the number of cigarettes they consume. Although this is surprising to Americans it is not so much so in other parts of the world. Australians for example are also heavy smokers, as they are in England, and other parts of Europe. Maybe it is a new trend or smoking never went out of fashion, except in the United States of America.
3. Chile has a great Metro System; The Chilean Metro System is one of the most efficient in South America, the second one would be Argentina. While living in Chile we used the Metro Line 1, this is the best service Line they have; Line 1 (Santiago Metro Line 1) This Line can take you from the Dominicos station to the Plaza de La Moneda, downtown Santiago. This is the oldest Line in the whole Metro System in Santiago inaugurated in 1975 and it runs mostly underground. All you need to do is acquire a BIP card that you can buy at any Metro station. We think it has this name because of the sound that it produces while you scan it, a “beep” sound, but in Spanish is pronounced “BIP.”
The Metro Line 1 connects to five other lines. It covers Santiago completely except the new neighborhoods like Lo Barnechea, Quinchamali and La Dehesa. Some Chilean history. Terrorists attacked this Metro Line 1 service in June 16th 1986 when a group opposed to General Pinochet set C4 bombs that exploded causing one death and injuring others. There is a plaque on the train now in memory of the attack and its reconstruction. Much later, shortly after we left Chile in 2014, terrorists had bombed again the same Line.
Note: After I wrote this post chaos broke down in Santiago after President Sebastian Piñera announced an increase on the metro ticket price. But the problem is deeper than that. It is based on income inequality, and dissatisfaction that has been building up for quite some time.
What is disastrous to the country is that, because of some people’s rage certain metro stations and trains were burned down. The estimated cost of the damage is $ 300,000 millions of Dollars. As of October 29th 2019, out of the 136 metro stations, 79 suffer some damage, and 10 were completely destroyed, mainly Line 4. Numbers published on Cooperativa Chile. The pride of the homeland was destroyed by their own people.
4. Nobody works in February; we learned this the hard way. It is important to mention that February is the hottest month of the year which in part is the reason people preferred to take a vacation during this month. Why? did I say we learned it the hard way is because we needed some X-rays done at this dental office because of some dental issues. The dentist signed the order for the X-ray person; we got to the X-ray office there was this other person who informed us she couldn’t take any X-rays because the person in charge of the X-rays was on vacation. We then asked how about somebody else? To which she replied NO, nobody knows how to take X-rays except this one person. We then learned that this practice is very common in South America, I believe is a way to protect their job or position, knowledge is power.
Another incident we had was, when we were dealing with some legal documents that a notary needed to legalize. After getting to the closest notary office (which wasn’t an easy task either,) we found a piece of paper glued on the door saying that the notary will be closed for the entire month of February. We tried another two more notaries. Thinking it was this one particularly office that was closed, but later we found out that the entire judicial system shuts down. As of 2015 they implemented a new Law No. 20,774 which abolished the judicial holiday, it no longer applies in any of the courts of the Judiciary. No more Judicial Holiday, that is good news, it would be a good idea to check before a visit to any of the judicial offices to save time.
Also during the summer months school is off session, the weather is nice, traffic is less congested and manageable, all these on the plus side.
5. They have a confusing monetary System; we came across this after getting the house lease contract we notice these two acronyms UF and IPC, and we were clueless to their meaning. Chile’s monetary currency is the Chilean Peso. They also have the UF (Unidad de Fomento). This is not physical money, they created it when inflation was high and its use in business and formal financial transactions indicting a large sum of money, so people don’t lose money in devaluation. Most of the time you will see prices for houses listed in UFs. The value of the UF changes every day so you have to check it regularly. The best web page to check is Banco Central de Chile. In our contract they had a part showing that they would base the rent on the IPC (Indice de Precios al Consumidor) which is quarterly calculated. This means we will have to pay more and not less, because the calculation would never be to pay less according to the IPC.
Other links:
5 Things Learned from Living in Chile-Part Two
5 Things Learned from Living in Chile-Part Three
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