After our laid back and warm time in Central America, we were looking forward to starting the slightly more hectic (and a lot colder!) adventure through South America. First stop was beautiful Santiago in Chile. We were actually surprised when we arrived in to the large city, as it wasn’t what we had expected. I think we were still in the Central American state of mind and we thought that Santiago would be a lot smaller with the infrastructure of somewhere like Guatemala City. We were very wrong… This place is massive! And very pretty.
So we’ll start at the beginning. We flew out of Guatemala City at 7:20 am Wednesday morning, had an hour or so stop over in Panama City before making the 6 hour flight to Santiago. It was 7:30pm local time when we arrived and about 9:30 by the time we had cleared customs, ordered a taxi and made it to our hostel in Central Santiago. We were cold and pretty tired when we made it to our room, so we called it a night ready for a big day the next morning.
We allowed ourselves a sleep in before getting up in time to catch the end of the free breakfast provided by the hostel. It was nothing extravagant, but we had fresh rolls with homemade jam plus yoghurt, avocado and scrambled eggs and it was enough to get you through most of the day! We set off in to the crisp morning air armed with a local map, our walking shoes and a sense of adventure. We wanted to walk up San Cristobal Hill so that we could get some exercise and take advantage of the fresh air, but unfortunately the path was closed so we had to settle for taking the funicular to the top! A funicular is basically an outdoor lift, so you stand in a little carriage and it gets winched up to the top on metal tracks and some heavy duty wire! It also very steep but the view is spectacular.
The view from down the track from the Funicular
Once we reached the top we sat on the small wall to take in the view, it’s absolutely stunning and goes forever. We were also lucky to have a clear morning and it wasn’t too busy up there either. We continued up some stairs to get a better look at the statue of old Mary, who’s perched on top, arms spread open, keeping watch over Santiago. It’s very beautiful up there, with well manicured gardens and a bit of nice music and I’m sure if you were super religious it would be a beautiful spot to sit and pray as we saw a lot of people doing. Curtis was most excited when he managed to get a picture that looked as if Mary was holding the sun in her hand, the highlight of his morning perhaps…?!
Mary and the sun!
The amazing view over Santiago
By the time we had finished with San Cristobal, it was around 2pm and we wanted to go join the free walking tour (Tours 4 Tips) that starts at 3 but we realized that we didn’t have enough Chilean pesos to cover the tip so instead we went back to hostel so that we could ask where the closest ATM was to get out some money! Luckily it was only a few hundred metres from our hostel so from there we headed out along Pio Nono (one of the two main bar/restaurant strips in the city) for a late lunch / early dinner. We found a reasonably quiet place and had a delicious, filling meal of steak and mash. To warm me up, I washed my meal down with some pisco sours, which is Chiles national drink consisting of 40% alcohol and a sour lemon mixer… they are delicious! Curtis discovered that he could get a litre of beer for $2 so of course he got two… would be rude not to at that price right?!
We ended up leaving around 7pm and decided it would be wise to head home as opposed to joining the hundreds of uni students enjoying happy hour across the street! We had another reasonably early night and hoped the hangover wouldn’t be too unbearable the next morning!
Friday morning we woke up again with intensions to do the 10am walking tour, but after skyping both families and having breakfast we realised we had missed it, so vowed to do it the following morning on our last day! We wrote some postcards, got our laundry done (you take clean clothes for granted when not travelling!) and then made our way to the Arts Museum to do the 3pm tour we had wanted to do the day before! Whilst waiting for the tour to begin, we made friends with an Australian couple from Adelaide, Flic and Tom, who we ended up hanging out with all night!
The tour itself was fantastic, we learnt so much about Chilean history and got to see all the important buildings around the city. We went to the Plaze de Armas which unfortunately was closed as it was being refurbished, but we saw a beautiful cathedral, the Museum of National History building which used to be Parliament House and we visited La Moneda, which is the site of the famous attack on President Salvador Allende by future dictator Augusto Pinochet on Sept 11, 1973. From here we visited New York Street which is Santiagos financial district and then on to Paris-London street, which is a beautiful area of the city. At the very end of the tour we were treated to a free glass of Borgoño which is a sweet red wine and strawberry drink which is very yummy!
The awesome street art in Santiago
‘La Moneda’ – The presidential building
Paris-London Street in Santiago City
It was about 6:30 by the time we finished the tour and we were starving so the 4 of us set out in search of a good place for dinner and a few drinks. We had been told to head to Galindos so that is where we went and we were not disappointed! The food was delicious and there was lots of it, plus the drinks were cheap so we were all happy! Flic and I shared a litre of Borgoño whilst the boys had a few pints of beer and we watched the pre world cup friendly between Chile and Egypt. There was a great atmosphere in the restaurant as all the locals had come for some dinner and to watch the game. At around half time we headed down the road to a slightly less packed bar where we continued to watch the game (and join in the soccer chants!) and to have a few more drinks. Again, Flic and I shared a litre of ‘Terremoto’ which means earthquake in Spanish (it has pineapple icecream in it!) plus a few pisco sours whilst Tom and Curtis went halves in a litre of beer. Safe to say by the time we decided to start the short walk home, we were all pretty drunk! It was great to meet some more new friends and hopefully we’ll be able to catch up with them again in Buenos Aires or Iguazu in the next week or so!
Flic and I enjoying a pisco sour!
Saturday was our last full day in Santiago so we wanted to make the most of it. We got up early and made sure we were outside the museum for the start of the 10am walking tour. We got to visit places that we wouldn’t have found on our own such as the fish, fruit and veg and meat markets. These places are full of locals and none speak any Engligh, which seems to make it a bit more authentic as you know you’ve got off the tourist track!
Very busy fruit and veg markets in Santiago!
From here we jumped on the Subway and traveled a few stops up to Santiago City Cemetery. In Chile they believe that everybody has a right to be buried, so even if a homeless person dies, they try to locate the family and let them know where thry have been buried and if the family want to buy the grave for a certain amount of years. There are two parts to the cemetery, basically a poor side and a rich side. The ‘poor’ people are buried in apartment type graves (see the picture below) and can hold up to 4 people each. The body can rent the grave for 5 years and after that they can renew their lease for a new body! They take the coffin out, put the bones in a box, put the new coffin / body in and add the box of bones to the ssme grave. That’s why you can see up to four names per grave site.
All the graves stacked on top of each other
On the other side, the richer families have built massive mausoleums which can house their whole families. Unlike the other graves, these are personal property and are not rented. They are all built down beautiful leafy ‘streets’ and its actually very nice walking through the llace, is very much like a big park. We saw ones of all different sizes and designs but they were all very pretty. Curtis has decided that he doesn’t want to leave an inheritance for his future children, and so instead he’s going to build himself a large mayan inspired mausoleum for when his time is up! Each to their own I guess!!
The ‘Mayan Temple’ mausoleum Curtis has taken his inspiration from!
The sadest, but noticeably the most colourful area of the cemetery is the childrens section. There are lots of graves and all are covered in fresh flowers, toys, cards and other small items. One family in particular lost their 1 year old son Benjamin in 2005 so each year on his birthday the whole family go to his grave and throw him a party. They put invitations in the other children’s graves so that they are all welcome at the ‘party’ and they play music, bring him gifts and eat lots of cake. The guide was stressing to us that they do this purely as a celebration of his life and that it is not supposed to be a sad time for the family. It’s a very beautiful area inside the cemetery.
One of the childs graves in the cemetery
After we spent an hour or so walking around the grounds, we made our way to a small locally run restaurant across the street. Here we enjoyed another free glass of Terremoto before saying our goodbyes to the group and our tour guide. We stayed at the restaurant for lunch and had a traditional beef soup for lunch that was delicious and filling and only cost 2500 pesos ($5!). We are very full after this and ready to tackle the Museum of Memory and Human Rights.
Traditional Chilean soup
The museum was a short subway ride from the cemetery so it didn’t take us long to get there. It is a free museum and it covers the period of dictatorship lead by Augusto Pinochet which lasted 17 years. As Laura previously wrote in her blog, “It conveys the attempts against life and dignity, including being tortured, murdered or ‘disappearing’, during the dictatorship rule from September 11th, 1973 to March 10th, 1990”. This museum only opened a few years ago after the 2006 death of Pinochet, as he had a great influence on the Chilean government right up to the day of his death. It is a beautiful building and although it can be horrific in parts (the torture section especially) it was extremely moving and a important part of Chilean history which I am glad I have learnt about. It really is a must see for anyone visiting Santiago. Unfortunately we couldn’t get any photos of inside the museum.
We were really hoping to visit London38, which is another museum in santiago but we unfortunately ran out of time. This address in the very up market Paris-London area is where the people were taken to be tortured. As it was in such an obvious place, no one ever suspected it to be a place of such horrendous events, and all victims were blindfolded, driven around in circles and then dropped at London 38. They did this so they didn’t realise how close it was to where they were originally being held and it was only found out because survivors could remember the distinct black and white tiled floors (they could see the the small gap beneath their blindfolds) and could hear the sounds of the bells ringing from the nearby church.
When we got home we were completely exhausted, it had been quite a long day physically and emotionally! We tried to get an early night ready to head to Valparaíso in the morning!
C & C xx
Wanderlust 