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Published: March 20th 2011
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We arrived in Santiago at 8:30am on the 25th February, fresh from a 10 hour bus journey and with the daunting prospect of a 23 hour ride at 7:00pm that evening. Still, that gave us ten and a half hours to try to see all of Chile's capital.
We immediately headed for the tourist office on the main square to get some clue as to what to do for the day. After being given a map we headed for Cerro Santa Lucia, a small hill in central Santiago, which the Spanish had climbed in 1541 when deciding the location for the city. Nowadays the hill has picturesque gardens adorning it, a fortress now used as an events centre and a lookout point to see the city.
From here we went back to the tourist office and took a one hour free guided tour of the centre of the city whilst learning a bit of history about its formation and some of the buildings and monuments in its centre. After this had finished we had a quick empanada pit-stop at a food market before walking along the Rio Mapocho to Santiago's 'bohemian' district, Bellavista.
We looked around a small
handicraft market before taking a funicular to the top of Parque Metropolitano, from which we could see pretty much the whole city. At the top of the hill was a statue of the Virgin Mary; a very spiritual landmark and a picturesque park, combined with a wonderful view of the city.
The rest of the afternoon was spent looking at palaces, parks, statues and £1 sunglasses (Carina's had broken!) before we reluctantly headed back to the bus station. However a full day's exploring was enough to see what a great city Santiago is.
Fast forward 23 pretty uncomfortable hours and we arrived in San Pedro de Atacama, a town of nearly 3,000 people on the edge of the Atacama desert and the Andes, far more native in appearance than any other town we had visited so far. Although in the middle of nowhere there are lots of things to do there, so we booked a tour to see the geysers at El Tatio...at FOUR O'CLOCK the next morning!
After an early two-hour bus ride to 4,321m above sea level we were at El Tatio. Early moring is the best time to see the geysers as it is
below freezing so we wandered around taking pictures of these natural phenomena while wearing a million layers and feeling a bit odd because of the altitude! From here we headed to a thermal pool - Carina had to go in of course, but Chris wimped out this time as it was too cold! The tour finished with a visit to Machuca, a tiny village high in the mountains. A great but tiring morning!
The rest of the day was spent looking forward to a good nights sleep, though we did organize a late tour to an observatory to see the stars at night. Although San Pedro is one of the best places in the world to see the night sky, sadly our luck was out as the trip was cancelled due to cloud cover. We signed up for the following evening and had an early night.
The next day we hired some bikes and took a short ride to the Pukara de Quitor, a small fortress just out of town where the indiginous people resisted the Spanish invasion in the 16th century. Next to the fortress was a hill where we got great views of the region. Despite
being a blindingly hot day - and with little water - we cycled some more (including straight through a river!) until it was time to do our next tour, an evening trip to the Valle de la Luna.
So called because it is supposed to resemble the surface of the moon (having never been to the moon we cannot pass judgement!) we spent about four hours seeing the rock formations and incredible landscape. We finished by climbing a small sand dune to watch the sunset, though this was slightly ruined by more clouds...which again meant we couldn't go to the observatory, so we just admitted defeat there!
On the 27th we took an 11 hour bus trip to Salta (back in Argentina again!) via the Juma Pass, a 4200m high road through the Andes. It was by far our favourite bus journey; we spent the whole trip looking out the window at passing volcanoes, salt flats and snow-capped mountains.
We had booked a bus to the Bolivian border for early on the 1st March so in similar fashion to Santiago we had only a day to explore Salta. Just as in any South American city we knew
the main plaza would be the best place to start; Salta's featured a pink cathedral and some wonderful colonial buildings, so it didn't disappoint. We went to the MAAM museum which was devoted to Incan archeological discoveries made at high attitude; seeing as we're heading to the Incan heartland in Peru soon we thought we should learn some history about them!
The museum's highlight was the three Incan children discovered in 1999, sacrificed to the mountain hundreds of years ago and preserved perfectly over 6,000m above sea level by the freezing temperatures. Unfortunately we weren't allowed to take photos, but it was pretty amazing.
We continued exploring the city, walking past the impressive San Francisco Church. We noticed that everybody that even walked past it crossed themselves as they did - more evidence of the spirituality that underlines daily life in South America.
From here we continued to wander through the town, on the look out for empanadas - which didn't take long to find! We then took a cable car to the top of a hill for a view of the city. Even though we hadn't really done much in the day, it seemed that the
hours of travelling and early mornings were catching up with us, so at the top we sat in the sun with an ice cream! It's hard work this travelling lark!
We eventully went back down in to the city, strolling through the park (and playing on the seesaw!) and enjoying Salta's distinct character and design. It was a nice way to spend our last full day in Argentina - the next day we were heading to Bolivia and that was going to be a completely different kettle of llama...
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jennifer
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jennifer@wrapson.com
Pleased to see that you are taking things very seriously whilst you are away!