Chile - Santiago, Viña del Mar

After our short flight to Santiago, Chile, Christy and I made it into the city by night time. There is a tax for citizens of only a select few countries to get into Chile, and of course the USA was on the list. So, unfortunately, we had to pay a pretty steep tax to enter the country, but that was the only bad thing about our trip to Chile. We had booked a hostal in advance planning for our late arrival, but we had forgotten to write down the address! We knew the general vicinity and ended up wandering around the streets with all our bags for a while until we finally found the hostal. The hostal was really nice and offered free breakfast in the morning with a wonderful fresh juice.

Las vista de los Andes del avión cerca de Santiago

On Monday we spent the day wandering the city. We realized that Santiago is not a very touristy city, which we actually though was kind of cool. We climbed a park built onto a hill in the middle of the city called Cerro Santa Lucía where we got a beautiful view of the city from the top. After, we went to a market where we shopped a little for souvenirs. While we were there we found a little fruit and ice cream stand, where we got a giant fruit cup filled with every kind of fruit typical to Chile (including some fruits that they only have in Peru and Chile) and with a scoop of lucuma (one of those unique fruits) ice cream on top. It even had chocolate sauce dribbled over it! That was the highlight of our day and we made sure to come back to the market on Wednesday to get another giant fruit cup. After the market, Christy and I found the Pontificía Universidad Católica of Chile, which is the same university as my university in Lima. We browsed the beautiful buildings inside and I even found the same snack shop that we have in my university! We then walked over to the Plaza de Armas which was a really large and pretty plaza. In the plaza there is an area where older men play chess every day! The fountain in the center was filled with children swimming, and there were also large crowds at random times watching clowns of comedians. We went inside the cathedral, which was the most beautiful cathedral I have seen. After that we enjoyed some pizza dinner and went to bed.

La vista de Santiago desde el Cerro Santa Lucía

On Tuesday we woke up and took the subway to the bus station, which we had found the day before. We took the 2-hour bus ride to Viña del Mar, which is a pretty city on the coast. We walked for a while to get to the beach, bought some sandwiches for lunch, and laid on the beach for the rest of the day. The weather was absolutely beautiful and we had a wonderful, relaxing day on the beach. The water and sand were pretty, but the water was pretty cold due to a cold current. We went swimming anyways to cool off. In the evening we decided to take a public bus to Valparaísco, a city right next to Viña del Mar, which is supposedly a cute, touristy city. We ended up missing the spot where we should have gotten off, but I made friends with the bus driver in the process. He told me all about his life, asked about where we were from, and showed us pictures of his children! He even offered to give me his watch after noticing that I didn't have one, telling me it was important to have a watch when traveling. The bus driver, Guillermo, was one of the many very friendly people I met in Chile. After browsing Valparaísco we decided to go back to Viña del Mar to have a nice seafood dinner before taking the bus back to Santiago.

Christy y yo en la playa en Viña del Mar

Viña del Mar

On Wednesday we walked to another hill in the city called Cerro San Cristóbol, and this time the hill was even larger. We took a rail-cart, called funicular, up to the top which was quite steep and the views from the top were gorgeous. There was a statue of Mary and an outdoor church-like area at the top. We later walked back to the Plaza de Armas and tried a typical Chilean drink, called Mote con Huesillos, along the way. It is a summer drink made of a sweet syrup with peaches (huesillo) and mixed with cooked husked wheat (mote). After our refersher, we went to the Pre-Columbian Art Museum and it was really neat to see art from the Incan and Mayan cultures throughout South American and Central America. After the museum we walked around some of the government buildings and saw the president´s building. We also returned to the market to get another delicious fruit cup! We had dinner and cake for desert and then got to bed before our early flight the next morning.

Museo de Arte Pre-colombino - Arte de la cultura Mapuches de Chile en los inicios del siglo XX

Thursday morning, Christmas Eve, we left the hostal in the morning for the airport and flew to Lima where we waited for out flight to Cusco - the next city on the list in our adventures!