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February 6th 2008
Published: February 27th 2008
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The gardens of Cerro Santa Lucia
Santiago - it is a city who’s postcard face is that of a modern metropolis poised under gargantuan snow tipped Andean peaks. Its courteous and orderly surface makes it the least intimidating of all Southern American capitals for travellers. The city itself defies pinning down. You can find polished suburbs and worn down cafes, neoclassical architecture dulled to grey and a conservative culture that erupts in street protest every now and then. Perhaps the most evasive face of the city is its lovely mountain backdrop. And every now and again when you are wandering around the city you catch glimpses of the beautiful Andean mountains. It really can catch you by surprise.

I was only in Santiago for a day, as it was really just a pit stop in order to catch a flight down south to Puerto Mont. I meet a really cool British chick, Katie, in the hostel and we spent a day exploring the city. We did a walking tour of the city and visited the major points of attraction; The Plaza de Armas, the Presidential Palace, the Bolsa de Comercio (stock exchange), the beautiful gardens of Cerro Santa Lucia and finally the Museo Chileno de Arte
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The gardens of Cerro Santa Lucia
Precolombino. We were in two minds about going into the museum, but it turned out to be great. The Lonely planet said that the museum held some Chinchorro mummies, which pre dated their Egyptian counterparts by thousands of years and we were keen to check these out. After wandering around for about an hour we came across what we thought were the mummies, but we didn’t quite get it. I was expecting something like the Egyptian mummies, but these were only about 30cm in length and just looked like bundles of sticks tied together. The description card explained that in order to mummify people, they took out the persons bones and hard parts of the bodies and replaced them with sticks and then put the skin back on. We weren’t convinced that these were the mummies, but after we had finished looking around the museum, we couldn’t find any thing else that resembled a mummy. I asked at the counter on the way out and sure enough, what we had looked at were the mummies, albeit, baby mummies. Weird.

That night Katie and a couple of others from the hostel took me out for my birthday. We went to
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The gardens of Cerro Santa Lucia
a nice restaurant and had dinner and cocktails and then went out dancing. I was expecting a huge array of nice Latin boys to dance with, and sure there were a heap of Latin boys, but unfortunately they were only interested in dancing with themselves, not the girls. Good one - we had ended up at a gay night club. It was certainly another side of South America that I hadn’t seen before!!

It was another early morning to catch my flight to Puerto Montt - the Lakes District in Chile. (And after a few drinks the night before, I was feeling a little under the weather).



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Santiago

Over looking the city
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Bolsa de Comercio

The Santiago stock exchange
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Santiago

reflection in the glass
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Santiago

A cool building


28th February 2008

Happy Birthday!
Hi Anna, Happy (belated) Birthday! Great to hear that you are still having a great time. Still love reading the travel blogs - reminiscing about our trip and also learning new places to visit next time we visit Sth America!

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