Blogs from Santiago, Santiago Region, Chile, South America - page 9

The ride from Mendoza to Santiago was spectacular if a bit uncomfortable. My journey through wine country towards the snow-capped Andes was accompanied by a rumbling stomach as a result of the previous day’s 12-hour bender through said wine country. Once in the mountains, the landscape was rather barren and rocky and I have probably seen prettier. On the narrow and winding cliff-edge roads, there were a few hair-raising moments before we hit a three hour wait to get through the border - three hours in the snow, in my shorts, although it looked like it should’ve been colder than it was. In the form of Teo and Nicola however, at least I had company to ease the boredom. Passing some slums similar to the ones I had seen in South Africa earlier in the year, ... read more

As I packed to leave Rio after 4.5 weeks of travel I was feeling ready to get home and even contemplated changing my ticket and skipping Santiago and Chile. Fortunately Santiago reinvigorated me. By far the most 'European' city I had visited, I enjoyed wandering bohemian suburbs and tasting great quality and good value food and wine. Large areas of Santiago are made up of well designed high quality 6-8 story apartment blocks spaced apart in park like grounds. This means that the view is green and open, rather than into your neighbours living room. A lot of apartments have 3 or 4 bedrooms and families seem to like the lifestyle. While I had seen big volcanoes in Ecuador and been over 3000m in Peru this was just high hill country with glimpses of the high ... read more

Another cold and wet day. More rain, really pummeling down, pretty much all day. We started by going to the theater again. Yesterday, we saw an ad for a movie called Los 33, which is about the Chilean miners who were trapped for 3 months a couple years ago, and we thought it would be particularly cool to see it in Chile. It also doesn’t come out in the US until November, but it’s released today here. But strangely (to us), movie theaters here have assigned seats, so we went to get our tickets early so we weren’t stuck up front like yesterday. After picking those up, we went to the Central Market, which is a big fish market that also has a lot of restaurants with the MOST aggressive “greeters” you will ever find. We’d ... read more

As today is supposed to be our only really nice day in Santiago, we used it to get a good, clear view of the city. Santiago is very much built in a valley surrounded on one side by the snow-capped Andes, and on the other by the shorter Chilean Coastal Range. Although the valley is perfectly flat now, it's fair to assume that it was probably a bit more hilly in the past. Although the city fills most of the valley, there were a few hills left to stand, including San Cristóbal in the center of it all, part of a huge city park (probably about the size of Central Park). On the recommendation of my sister, Serena and I chose to hike it today. First, though, since Dialogue is over, we did nothing for a ... read more

Hi Bloggers, friends and family, We seem to be out of sync with everyone in this hostel. We went to bed about 12 last night but we were the only people in the 8 bed dorm when we went to sleep but when we woke up it was full, we got up about 8am and went online and got breakfast from the hostel. (It’s only 900 peso for eggs and toast so £1) When we got back to the room about 10am everyone was still asleep so they must have been out partying last night, very jealous!! We had booked 2 more night at Casa de Roja, but in the 10 bed dorms, as it was cheaper. We changed rooms and decided to head out for the day exploring the city. We were meant to meet ... read more