Santiago, Chile

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We left Auckland on the 16^th June 2012 at 16:00; we arrived in Santiago, Chile, following an 11 hour flight at 11:00 also on the 16^thof June. Chile is quite a thin country trapped between the Andes’ mountains and the sea. On our approach to the airport we were looking UP at the mountain tops for the last 15 minutes of the journey. The mountains here are double the size of the ones in the Mt Cook region of New Zealand.

So Santiago, back in the real world where you can buy a beer without getting a mortgage, in-fact they only sell 1ltr bottles here and they’re a £1 so you can imagine where that led....Natalie telling me to calm down! Here we discovered the free city tours, apparently they stole the idea from Europe. A guy takes a small group around the main sights in the city but best of all they always speak good English so we can extract information about the best restaurants, bars and other things like that.

One thing that is immediately apparent is the dryness of the land; they don’t get much rain because of the mountains. Another thing that becomes apparent is the pollution; it physically burns your eyes after a few hours walking around. The city itself is much like any European city due to the Spanish and Portuguese conquistadores in the 1800’s, they wanted a taste of home, abroad. We took the funicular train to the top of a lookout to see the panoramic views of the city, surrounded by the mountains, it was quite impressive. Another highlight was a stroll around the Bohemian district of Bella Vista, which was a quirky collection of streets with little bars, galleries and restaurants; it seemed like a taste of the real SA and not a pastiche re-hash of Europe.

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