Santiago, Chile

Day 1

We landed safe and sound around 11am Tuesday Chile time. We departed Australia at 12:50pm Tuesday so we are basically time travelers! Flying into Chile was amazing, we in came South of Santiago and we were gobsmacked by the size of the Andes Mountains we could see in the distance.

View from the plane

Ellen & I didn’t sleep a wink on the flight but battled our way through customs saying ‘Si’ to all questions asked in Spanish, until the customs man got frustrated and looked at my Visa form for the answers he was after! Anyhoo – the suckers let us in!!!

We caught a bus in to the city and immediately found out how crazy the Chileans drive. The bus was packed full of people, Ellen & I were standing, and the bus driver was swerving between lanes, hitting corners at what felt like 80km/hr & barely stopping the bus long enough to let people off at stops. All the locals on the bus didn’t seem fazed so I guess that calmed us a bit.

The rest of Day 1 in Santiago went quick. Checked in at Happy House Hostel, quick snooze, few hour walk around the city (worked out another city’s fantastic subway system. Learn from this Australia!), dinner and bed by 8:30pm. Very tired!

Day 2

Day 2 started early – 2am jet lag wake up. Fantastic! 😦     El & I used this time to plan the day ahead and did eventually get back to sleep at 4am. We had a quick breaky at the hostel and headed off for a free walking tour. It was a very insightful tour, explaining some of Chile’s history, including the Military Coup on September 11, 1973 and the dictatorship period that followed for a period of 17 years! Our guide said there is still a lot of Chillians who are supportive of the Coup even today. The tour continued all through the city and showed us a traditional cafe I can’t remember the name of, but our guide explained as “The cafe with legs”. This cafe has been open since 1873, it is very open & surrounded by mirrors with young pretty girls in short dresses serving coffee. This is a men only establishment and old Chilean men used to (and some still do) go in here to flirt with young women and drink coffee. No women are allowed except for the waitresses – just a little bit sexist!

After the tour, we went and hiked up Cerro Santa Lucia, a giant rock in the middle of the city. It gave nice views of the city and the Virgin Mary statue sitting on the top of Cerro San Cristobal.

Still a bit tired, and the temperature hitting 36 degrees we went back to the hotel for a swim, read & plan our next leg of the trip. For dinner, we had the cheapest Indian ever, Ellen felt a bit sick afterwards but I don’t think it was the Indian 🙂

Day 3

At the crack of dawn we left the hostel and again took the fantastic subway system to the Bellavista area. From here we hiked the 300m ascent to the top of Cerro San Cristobal, the views from here topped those we saw the day before as you could see how flat and spread out the city is. There aren’t many high-rise buildings due to major earthquakes occurring every 4 years in Chile. The last earthquake occurred in 2010 at a magnitude 8.8 so fingers crossed we won’t cop one while visiting! The Virgin Mary statue at the top of Cerro San Cristobal has been there for over 100 years. Every year on the 8th of December thousands of Chilean Catholic’s attend San Cristobal for a mass.

We then walked to the Central Vega markets, this is a large food market used by all the locals. Ellen & I weren’t exactly sure what we were in for but once we arrived it was clear we were the only tourists. Thousands of Chileans were buying anything you could imagine at amazing prices compared to Australia. 1 kg of strawberries = $2.2 AUD, 1kg of Banana’s = $1 AUD, the biggest block of cheese I have seen in my life, like picture a wheel as big as a car = $17 AUD. The size of this place I reckon was the equivalent of the MCG – in a big warehouse.

Once we got sick of saying “Perdoneme” every time we got in someone’s way, we followed the light out of the warehouse and Ellen attempted to buy an Empanada in Spanish. It was amusing, there was a lady next to Ellen in the line trying to help but she also spoke no English so I think Ellen just got whatever the lady was going to buy. Anyway – the Empanada was still delish. We walked to an old railway called Mapocho Station, which is now used as a local cultural centre. It is a very nice old building. Ellen got her sunnies stolen here by leaving them on the ground for a few minutes… That was quick! They were scratched and bent funny so the jokes on them!

We then walked all the way to the western side of town towards the Museum of Human Rights. This side of town seemed to be more ‘hipster’ or ‘trendy’ with very old houses and graffiti artwork everywhere. See some photos below. Very cool area.

The Museum of Human Rights or “Museo de la Memoria y los Derechos Humanos”. This Museum focuses on the 17 years of the dictatorship era between 1973 & 1990. It is very sad what occurred due to the Military Coop on September 11 1973. The president of Chile at the time was abandoned by a lot of his military government and they overtook the country. The president gave one final speech to all Chileans over the radio before killing himself. The final speech is very moving and is on Youtube if you are interested in listening – he seems to be an amazing man creating a final speech with no preparation and his building about to be stormed by Military personnel. The Museum had displays explaining the torture, disappearances & murder which occurred to anyone who stood up to the dictatorship during these years. This era still feels very real in Chile as it occurred only 30 years ago.

For dinner, we went to the Bellavista area full of bars, clubs & restaurants. We had traditional Chilean food, which to be honest, is a bit boring but served in large portions! Nonetheless it was still better than my cooking. We then walked the streets of Bellavista and found a large group of people dancing on the street to a couple singing. It was cool to watch, and they were really, really good. Ellen & I weren’t game to join in due to our poor dancing skills. We would probably panic when we run out of moves & start twerking or doing something outrageous. We walked back home, racking up 35000 steps for the day, tired and went to sleep. Tomorrow we move onto Valparaiso!

More photos in link here.