Santiago - gateway to Sud America

Despite a gruelling, sleepless flight via Auckland I could not hide my excitement arriving into Santiago. For nearly 15 years I have been promising myself to travel the South American continent & finally, after 5 months, my adventure had landed me finally here. In my pigeon Spanish I haggled my taxi down to the fare printed in my newly purchased (& surprisingly up to date) Lonely Planet guide. A short ride later & I was checking into the aptly named Hotel Londres, in Barrio Paris Londres. With little sleep & CNN to lull my off, I crashed for the next 15 hours, surfacing only for breakfast, early the next morning.

I bumped into another European guy at breakfast – Nici, from Belgium. We’d apparently been on the same flight in from Sydney, where he’s been working there for 2 years. I happily agreed to share a private afternoon taxi tour of the city & suggested we head out for an explore to soak up some atmosphere. For both of use this was our first experience of Chile.

The streets are reminiscent of Madrid, they are wide, clean & safe (well, as far as our naivety could make out) . People were curious & friendly but also shy. We stomped around the central barrio looking for a café & stumbled upon Central Mercado, a Victorian covered market full of fresh fish, veg & fruit. The sights & smells were fantastic so we hung around for lunch before heading back to the hotel & our tour guide.

Our 1^st port of call was to climb San Christobal hill a steeply climbing hill in the centre of Santiago, with a porcelain white statue of their guardian Mary keeping watch from on top. A funicular railway runs people up from the city centre but with private transport we drove up, explored, snapped a few shots, Oo’ed Coo’ed a bit & then descended by tele-cabin back down.

Santiago was shrouded in smog. The pollution, trapped by the surrounding mountains, hangs over the city, creating an eerie half light at dawn & dusk. The smog stings your eyes & throat after awhile so I was glad to have just 2 nights stay.

Our tour continued out east, to a monastery that houses hundreds of small craft stalls. The jewellery, leatherwork & pottery were great to look at, but proved completely unpractical to buy, so I nodded & smiled a lot, added the occasional “Esta muy bien” comment before hinting that we could move on to Plaza de Armas, the main square.

As it was Saturday the entire city appear to be out strolling. We ducked into the central Cathedral to avoid being accosted by 2 clowns entertaining neigh on 2,000 people in the central square & thanked God that they’ moved on when we reappeared so we weren’t tormented like others we saw.

That evening, Nici & I ate out early before succumbing to jet lag & crashed at about 10. Again the dulcet tones of CNN en Espanol carried me off to never-never land, whilst my mind ran over the new words I’d picked up during the day.

I’ve really enjoyed my first full ay in South America.