Arrival: Santiago, Chile

We made it to South America! First stop: Santiago, Chile.

After a smooth flight and easy pass through immigration we navigated our way via public transportation to our AirBnB apartment in Santiago Centro. The bus and metro system is very efficient, although as always it took some time to figure out how to purchase tickets and go in the right direction.

The apartment has a lot of personality and has everything we need for a comfortable stay, although it is on a fairly loud street and could probably use a deep cleaning (don’t worry Mom, the sheets and towels are fresh, straight out of the cleaner’s plastic sleeves!).

Santiago itself is a typical modern Latin American city – lively, dirty, colorful, loud. Over 6 million people live here (that’s almost 40% of the entire population of Chile!) and the central areas that we’ve visited are bustling with street vendors and business people and beggars and students and traffic just like any big city. Colonial architecture intermixes with modern glass and concrete towers, cobbled streets merge into wide paved boulevards, buses and taxis and pedestrians clog the streets.

Thankfully, the crush is punctuated by several city parks and plazas, our favorite of which is right around the corner from our apartment: Cerro Santa Lucia. Originally a lookout point for the conquistadors and later topped with a Spanish fort, the hill was transformed into a park in the late 19th-century by then mayor Benjamín Vicuña Mackenna (we have also noticed a startlingly large percentage of Spanish-Scottish surnames in this city, not sure what that is about yet!). Today it is a charming jumble of old fort structures, graveled paths and steep stone stairways, rock outcrops and monuments and statues to historical figures, saints and even the god Neptune.

We also visited the largest city park, Cerro San Cristobal, in which a 22 meter (72 feet) statue of the Virgin of the Immaculate Conception watches over the city from on top of the 300 meter (1,000 feet) hilltop. We had planned to take the funicular up but it was closed for maintenance so we ended up hiking to the top on a pleasant but steep trail (in the full 80+ degree afternoon sun – the snack stand at the top made a killing on bottled water!). The virgin was very large and very white and visitors were overall quiet and respectful, even as they posed with their selfie sticks. Another main attraction is an upcoming visit to the city from the pope in January – his image is everywhere!

No city tour is complete without a few museums. The best so far have been the Mueseo Chileno de Arte Precolombiano (Precolombian Art Museum) which has an excellent collection of Native American art and artifacts from across Latin America, and La Chascona, one of three house museums in Chile dedicated to the poet Pablo Neruda. At the precolumbian art museum our favorites were the Mapuche (Chilean) funerary statues, Moche (Peruvian) ceramics, and the textile collection (multiple cultures, unfortunately, no photos allowed!).

La Chascona (named for his lover’s wild, messy hair) is a whimsical jumble of buildings connected by gardens and stairways reflecting Neruda’s eclectic style and personality. It was nearly destroyed during the 1973 coup by Pinochet, and rebuilt by his widow after his death to commemorate the poet.

Of course, we had to inaugurate the place with our first game of bones on the continent! The tournament will be a long and epic battle, but let’s just say that Steph is off to a good start 😉

And that is just the first few days! Much more to come…