Day 1&2 12/19&21 – Arrived in Santiago, Chile after an all night 11 hour flight from LAX. Chris had booked a room for two nights in the Orly Hotel in the Providencia District of downtown Santiago. After the flight we paid our $131.00 “Reciprocity Fee” to customs, had our passports stamped and were on our way to a shower and midmorning nap.


Recharged in the afternoon, we had lunch and went for a long walk (really long) to check the Providencia area. Santiago is a very clean and up to date town. As in most of Latin America, there are plenty of buses but in Santiago we saw only new or nearly new buses. Nothing spewing black diesel smoke with lots of exhaust noise (a small disappointment for me).

The main freeway into town from the airport is underground through the center of town as is a very clean subway system. Both run parallel to the Rio Mapucho and are covered over with a long (several miles) public park. Running and bike paths and lots of public art. All

So much construction in the city (that may stop because of the economy downturn). It is a city being reborn as modern and attractive. Amazing how much transportation, including parking, is underground. throughout We were told that even though the parks are beautiful, there are mixed feelings as they were developed by the Pinochet gov’t, which apparently was not very sensitive to project detractors or private property rights. I always thought conservative governments were all about private property rights but maybe like the counterclockwise whirlpool when you flush the toilet in the southern hemisphere, those types of things are different here.

As in many cities, there are bands of homeless dogs around the streets of Santiago seem to have staked their area of the street- same ones in the same places each day. They cross busy streets with the lights and are very streetwise. They are unnerving in packs, but alone some are so eager just for simple attention- they seem to have been someone’s pet sometime.

The river has a huge bed but is fairly low because it’s the dry season. We both noticed that the water is fast running as the entire city is built on a tilted plane that receives snowmelt from the west slope of the Andes. We couldn’t see the Andes from Santiago because of the smog. Maybe those buses aren’t so clean after all. Or maybe it’s just the 6 million people that live in the city .

We walked all afternoon and ended up in the Bellavista neighborhood for dinner at one of dozens sidewalk cafes after riding the funicular to the top of Cerro San Cristobal. Beautiful, somewhat hazy views of the city and a slow but exciting ride back down. . Argentine sirloin steak for dinner and we split 2 bottles of Schop Beer. We took the bus back to our hotel, missed our stop, and thought we’d just stay on the bus until it looped back. (my idea). Took 2 hours to get back.

Saturday we took an escorted tour with another couple to the Pacific coast and the cities of Valparaiso and Vina del Mar. Beautiful weather and the crowds hadn’t arrived yet. The Argentines come in January and the Chileans come in February. More on that later. The second photo is of one of the many hillside houses left from when the English occupied this part of Chile in the late 1800’s.

The third photo is supposedly the only carving removed from Rapa Nui (Easter Island) in the early 1900’s. It’s in front of a museum in Vina del Mar.
Click on the location ink below for a Google Map