Santiago - Chili

9/5/05
Time Traveling
Who said it is impossible? We left Auckland at 7:00 a.m., and with the huge time difference, arrived in Santiago at 2:30 a.m. of the same day, yes, much earlier than we left!
Unfortunately the saga of Lan Chile wasn't finished with a flight 2 days late. One of our bags stayed in Auckland! After all the waiting and paperwork for the bag, it was almost 5 a.m.; so we decided to wait until 6:00 a.m. in the airport to save a night of hotel and get to the city in day light.

We were lucky to be brought to a very friendly hostel, we checked in and slept until noon. After a long nap we went for our first round in Santiago de Chile; the first stop was San Cristobal mount, crowned by a white statue of virgin Mary, from where there is a nice view of the city with the snow-capped Andes as a back drop curtain.



As we were still tired we ended the day with an excellent dinner and delicious Chilean red wine in a fine restaurant.

9/6/05
On this day we wandered around the center of the Chilean capital. It is really crowded.



There are lots of old well-kept buildings from the colonial time with different kinds of architectures. The old and the new sit side by side.



We relaxed for most of the afternoon at Plaza de Armas. It is considered the heart of the city, surrounded by the Cathedral, the Audiencia Real (Royal Court), the Central Post Office -formerly the conqueror's house- and Santiago's City Hall. After so much running in Australia and New Zealand all we did was to watch the senior citizens or mere passers-by feeding the pigeons or just hanging out under the fresh shade of leafy trees.

Other tourists are looking for the best angle for the next picture while the kids, shining shoes, are looking at everyone's feet in search of a potential client and the ambulant sellers carry their packs around. There are also many artists exposing paintings on the sidewalk; someone gathers hundreds in a circle to tell them about a miraculous 'natural' medicine that is capable of curing almost anything that can possibly bother you and so on, the square is the real reality show.

We resumed our walk by heading to San Diego, a street where you can find cheap used books. The Mercado Central is another landmark where you can buy good food. On our way back to the hostel, we passed by Cerro Santa Lucia, a hill in the city center with gardens, fountains and the remains of the fortress that was site of the original Spanish settlement. Here again you can have a good view of the city.





For the night we bought wine and steaks and stayed at our friendly cozy hostel. Talking to one of the guys from the hostel we got all the information to visit Valparaiso the next day.

9/7/05
Valparaiso
We left in the morning, took a subway to the bus station and then a bus to Valparaiso, some one hour and a half from Santiago. The trains of the subway in Santiago are French, like the ones in Paris, even the subway stations are alike; the trains have tires instead of iron wheel, so it runs smoothly and silently.

We left Santiago by bus, crossed poorer neighborhoods, hit the road and very quickly got to Valparaiso, the main portuary city in Chile and the closest to Santiago.

Valparaiso is very characteristic with still some old colonial buildings ...



... and hundreds of colorful houses on the hills facing the ocean.





There are also dozens of old ascensores (cable car), to facilitate the life of the locals living up hill.



We walked uphill, crossed a street-open museum, saw a lot of the local life around and reached the house of the most famous Chilean writer, Pablo Neruda (1904-1973). His house, now a museum, is today referenced as La Sebastiana and stands on Bellavista hill where from you can see the city and the see. We rested in the garden but did not visit the museum with its exhibition.





Around 3 p.m. we were heading back to Santiago where we wandered more around in its nice streets.

During dinner at the hostel we met an Argentinean studying architecture for social housing doing a research in Chile.

9/8/05
This was the day the damn Lan Chile promised to finally bring our bag, four days after we had arrived. We basically wasted the whole morning waiting for them to show up, which they did only around noon; at least they gave us 60 US dollars in compensation.

In the afternoon we went to a book store to buy a Portuguese/Spanish book to speed up our Spanish.
Then we sat in one of the busy streets for an ice-cream and laughed with the performance of The Mimic making fun of every one passing by.

9/9/05
Our last day in Santiago ended up being one of the most wasted days of the trip so far, due to lack of luck.
We went to Valle Nevado, a famous ski resort near the city. The guys at the hostel, again, provided all the information on where to rent the gear and how to get to the resort. It was very easy, we took the subway at 7:15 a.m. and got of at the last stop, then walking two blocks we arrived at the place where we rented gear and bought transport to go and come back from Valle Nevado; around two hours later we arrived at the resort, but there was a huge snow storm.

We mainly wanted to check the resort to see if it would be worth to come from Brazil on vacation, but visibility wasn't greater then three meters in any direction, we didn't ski and we didn't see anything, so we still don't know how Valle Nevado is.

It was two days after the independence holiday in Brazil, so the place was taken up by Brazilians, I was quite surprised because Chile has the best economy in South America, therefore it is the most expensive too; it might be cheaper then North America and Europe but is not exactly affordable for an average Brazilian income. The cheapest room was around a 100 US dollars.

In short, we did nothing the whole day.