Commuting

On my first two working days in Santiago, commuting to work would take about an hour with some 45 minutes on the metro and changing from the yellow to the red line. In London I usually avoided taking rush-hour trains (viva la bicicleta), but I could swear it’s a lot worse here. Trains run very, very frequently but are still so packed that there is not even space to take a glimpse at one’s Publimetro or La Hora, the Santiago equivalents to London’s Metro (luckily there is no afternoon thelondonpaper/London Shite epidemic here). Personnel in yellow uniforms walk along the platforms and help dispatch the trains. I find that in the crowded transportation system fat, middle-aged females were among the rudest - elbowing and pushing other people waiting to board a train. Unsurprisingly, I saw one of those evil, aggressive mamas get into conflict with a yellow dispatcher on my first-ever commute.
The good news is that people and metros in Chile don’t smell. The characteristic perspirational bodily odour found on public transport in so many countries is absent even on the most crowded of trains.

P.S.: The photo shows an empty metro train taken last saturday