(Santiago, Chile)
For many, many years, I have wanted to visit Chile. After a few false starts, including a 2014 trip to Patagonia that *nearly* happened (I went to Costa Rica instead), it has finally become a reality. It’s winter here – quite a shock as Kingston temperatures have been hovering around 30’C for the past couple of weeks. Fortunately, the daytime temperatures in Santiago still get up to about 15’C. It will get much colder later in our trip!
As English-speaking tourists are not as common here as they are in Costa Rica, it really was essential for us to learn some Spanish before we got here…hence, the Duolingo crash course that my wife and I have been taking over the past week. In fact, we are still working on it, even though we have already arrived!
After a long overnight flight from Canada, we just wandered around downtown Santiago today. Nothing too adventurous yet. We climbed to the top of Cerro Santa Lucía, a huge downtown park that is only a few blocks from our hotel and offers views (see photo at the top of this post) of the entire city. This is where the city was first founded. They really try to provide a safe family atmosphere: even though the park is free, they still ask people to sign in and indicate where there are from.
We also did some grocery shopping – this is always a fun way to immerse yourself in a new place. Our main mission today was to buy some bottled water: the local water is drinkable but heavily mineralized and can be troublesome if you are not used to it. We also picked up some interesting local snacks.
Finally, we wandered through the Plaza de Armas: this is the “heart of the city” and is festooned with palm trees. It was especially busy as this was a religious festival day; we took the opportunity to visit the huge Santiago Cathedral and explore the pedestrianized Paseo Ahumada before returning to our hotel. Our hotel is in the Barrio Paris/Londres: a very small and elegant cobblestoned neighbourhood that, as the name suggests, looks like it has been transplanted from northern Europe.
We’re joining a small tour group for the next little while before striking out on our own at the end of our trip. We met our group for the first time tonight and it seems like a good combination of people with diverse backgrounds yet shared interests. We enjoyed dinner together outside on a rooftop in the Barrio Lastarria and will be heading out for our first group expedition in the morning. Stay tuned for our South American adventure!