We both enjoyed Santiago, although after a couple of days we were ready to go somewhere else. Santiago feels like a bit of a gateway city into South America and as a result is an ideal starting place. Chile is the second richest South American country, behind Uruguay. This, combined with the slums being on the outskirts of town and (aside from the trip from the airport) out of sight, makes it feel like you could be in a slightly more run-down city in Spain.
On our second afternoon we spent a couple of hours at the Museum of Memory and Human Rights. While it can be easy to forget walking around Santiago at the moment, less than 30 years ago Chile was in the midst of a 17 year dictatorship, which saw over 3,000 people murdered and as many as ten times that number imprisoned and tortured.
I can completely understand people that feel otherwise, but I’ve always enjoyed going to museums and monuments that illustrate the worst in human nature, such as the concentration camps in Germany, and the museum of human rights in Santiago was no different.
I think one reason I enjoy these types of museums is that they can help put into perspective my own life. Hearing about someone who was so brutally beaten during torture they broke their back tends to make personal problems sound fairly trivial. It also can show the best in human nature, and some of the courage shown by people who were risking their lives to fight back against Pinochet almost certainly brought forward the end of the dictatorship.
The rest of our time spent in Santiago was spent in a far more light-hearted mood. We spent a little bit of time walking around the main square (Plaza de Armas) where Erin ended up in a conversation with a 60 year old local where of the 200 words he spoke she understood about three of them. We also checked out the street art around the Bellavista neighbourhood, which is basically the nightlife area of Santiago.
The arrival of the flight into Santiago was a pretty amazing sight as well. We didn’t get a glimpse of the city until fairly low in the descent and pretty much flying directly above Santiago, due to the smog. A combination of its valley location, huge (around 7 million) population and abundance of inefficient cars means that the city is constantly battling high pollution.
Amazingly, the air was actually clearer than when we’d previously been in Santiago, and for the first time we were able to enjoy great views of the 5,000m+ high snow-capped mountains that surround the city.
We went to the top of two of the major hills in the city area (walking up Cerro Santa Lucia and getting the funicular up Cerro San Cristobal) and enjoyed the views at the top:
Probably my favourite view of the Andes from Santiago came from our hostel roof, which was in the aforementioned Bellavista area.
In hindsight, the central location and closeness to bars and restaurants made for a great choice of hostel until about 11pm, when the parties were kicking off just as we were planning to get to sleep. This was particularly the case on the first night, when, after sleeping all of 15 minutes on the flight over, I found myself wide awake for five hours through the middle of the night. The loud snoring emanating from our dorm room, the loud music and yelling from what felt like directly outside our dorm window and the stifling heat all felt like they were in a competition to see what was annoying me the most at any given point in time. At one stage I calculated I’d been asleep for under three hours of the last 40. Over and over all I could think about was that this might be my life for the next year. Well, welcome to South America, it might be private rooms for a while now…
Andrew
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