A Terminal Case
by Ronnie MacLennan Baird
March 2025
Ronnie MacLennan Baird watches the world go by.
There is a Belgian maker of foodstuffs and tableware that brands its products La vache qui regarde passer les trains. For a few days last week, I found myself regardent passer les autobuses … or, since I was in Chile at the time, maybe I should say estaba viendo pasar los autobuses.
I had taken an hotel room overlooking part of a bus terminal in Santiago and, far from regarding this as a bad thing, it gave me a corner of the world to watch go by, as buses manoeuvred in and out of bays and people scuttled from their arrivals and to their departures, from and to the length and breadth of Chile. Well, the length anyway.
It was, moreover, a different view from previous stays at the same establishment. This time, the panorama was of the sunrise and the ‘posher’ of the two local termini—the modernisation of which I find regrettable not least thanks to the replacement of the shopping centre store directory, which once translated lenceria, hilariously, into ‘skivvies’.
I book into this hotel whenever I am staying in or passing through Santiago precisely because it is conveniently located for the airport bus and onward transport.
It is important, however, now to remind myself very firmly that there are two termini, and that the airport bus comes into the one that involves a left turn at the exit, not a right turn. True, it is possible to reach my hotel by turning right; but that would involve walking all the way around the world minus about 10 yards.
The other terminal used by the other bus companies has not been recently refurbished, and it reminds me more of what Glasgow’s Anderston Bus Station used to look like. Which is not to say that it is down at heel or that the buses that use it are either. In fact, one outfit has very smart buses and very smartly turned out hostesses… but only one of the three locations listed in its name is actually served by it. (Despite implied claims to the contrary, it is not possible to reach Paris or London by bus from the Terminal Sur in Santiago—even by changing at Talca.)
The entrance to that terminal provides the view from the rooms on the other side of the hotel, and the comings and goings and the street vendors and the traffic offer something more akin to an unfolding scene than a mere ‘view’. To say nothing of the Santiago sunsets for a backdrop.
Since last week, though, I have moved on, and so now have an entirely different scene unfolding beyond my hotel window as I write. In the port city of Valparaiso, I can watch ships roll in and watch them roll away again. Rooms on this side are advertised as having a ‘sea view’ and that is true. It’s there, between that massive tanker and the other tanker.
