Santiago (3 Days post tour)

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Days 79 - 81 After saying goodbye to the remaining 5 from our original group tour who are continuing onto Rio we set out for the Plaza de Armas to pick up a half day free guided walking tour of the city. Our guide Franco is quite famous & works for well deserved tips.

Although Santiago covers a large area, the city centre is quite compact and fairly easy to get around. The city's centre is roughly triangular in shape with the Plaza de Armas, the main plaza and home to the Cathedral, sitting in the centre. Panning out from here are wall-to-wall shops, restaurants and parks. We had a coffee break at the Barrio Bella Vista area & known as Santiago's 'Paris Quarter'.

The rest of the day was spent wandering around town before retrieving our luggage from our hostel storage & taxi to our new B&B for 3 nights stay before flying home.

Day 2 we set of for a walk into town & soon came across blocked streets & police everywhere. We knew a student protest against the high cost of education was planned & we soon came across them forming in one of the main streets of Santiago. Thousands were lining up behind banners, flags, intense drumming, whistles etc & what seemed a jovial mood but we had been warned that they always turn ugly when masked agitators appear. While we walked beside them for some time as we headed in the same direction to a cultural museum they had passed by the time we came out. We only found out later while watching the local news that a full scale riot had broken out with cars set on fire, Molotov bottles thrown at police & anyone caught in-between & pitched battles between the two sides. It looked very ugly.

We had an ordinary seafood lunch at the fish market after it was recommended to us & continued walking for the rest of the day.

Day 3 was another walking day mainly to see the Pre-Columbian Museum which is dedicated to all the South & Central American Indian cultures before the arrival of Christopher Columbus. It was an outstanding collection of artifacts, textiles weapons, incredibly fine ceramics etc. The collection is housed in a a beautifully restored colonial building that was extensively damaged in a 2010 earthquake. The most interesting section was for the Mapuche culture from Southern Chile who had a fearsome reputation & were never conquered by the Spanish.

We had a final farewell dinner in Santiago happy in the knowledge we would be heading home tomorrow.

So it's adios South America, it's been great fun!

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