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Published: February 20th 2007
Hello Mote
Jude proudly presents the cup of Mote she successfully ordered from the street vendor. Now, what to do with it?We honestly had no idea what to expect of Chile or its capital city, Santiago, when we arrrived other than having been warned by numerous people to be extra vigilant with our stuff. Leaving the hostel armed with only the bare minimum, we made our way into the CBD, a kind of triangular shaped bit of the city centre flanked by the river on one side and the metro lines on the other two.
Our first impressions of the city were far from what we had been led to believe. The weather was superb with a gloriously hot sun beating down and warming us in places that hadn't felt warm since we left Asia. All around us was a melange of new and old architecture fighting for supremacy on the narrow backstreets and on every side of the big plazas spread across town. To me, it felt no different to being slap bang in the middle of any typical Spanish city and we relished being somewhere where English was not the dominant language.
We love to try new foods and drinks whenever we're in a new country and today was no exception. On passing a street vendor selling some
Street Art
It wasn't so much the street artists that caught Glynn's eye; check out the Batman picture by Glynn's hand... weird concotion, we felt brave enough to give it a try. For 350 pesos, we got to sample some Mote - a plastic cup full of sweet peach-flavoured brown liquid with a big scoop of wheat that settled to the bottom of the cup. There were also chunks of real peaches in there - a very odd yet refreshing combination of beverage and snack! As we pounded the pavements around the city, we discovered quirky little shopping malls selling all manner of curiosities. In one I even managed to finally find myself a proper Sarah Conner-style black cap, something which I have wanted for years and years (Sarah Conner is a character in Terminator 2 by the way). Santiago has a lovely, vibrant feel to it and in some ways it even feels nice to be surrounded by so many people again after the relative solitude of life in sparsely populated New Zealand. In fact there are 50% more people in this one city than in the whole of New Zealand!
As it was our first day and we were still on high security alert, we didn't venture too far but somehow managed to be on our feet for
Halls of Justice
Would those be pillars of justice then? a fair few hours while we took it all in. We passed the judicial district and some brightly coloured murals as we made our way back towards the hostel. A couple of blocks away from the hostel, however, we succumbed to the lure of an ice cold beer and sat out on the pavement to enjoy a couple of amber nectars as the afternoon melted into evening. This is definitely my kind of town!
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james st. james
non-member comment
dangerous city
wonderful blog. you guys are living the life! just wanted to say a thing or two about santiago (don't know if you're even there still). santiago is actually THE safest capital city in the americas--only ottawa is safer with homicide rate of 1.1/100k people--and chile itself is easily the safest country along with canada. santiago has a murder rate of 1.4/100,000 people (compared with about 12/100k for most US cities, i know you're not americans but that's my reference, and lower than canada's). unless you venture into an unusually dangerous neighborhood (and as a tourist you have to really try hard to find one, you won't happen upon a bad area by accident) you will not get mugged. the main danger is pickpockets, but you're both seasoned travelers so unless you totally do something stupid you won't have any problems. no need to be paranoid, but being aware of your surroundings never hurt anyone. cheers, and enjoy your time in chile!