SantiagoSantiago

Published on October 4, 2019 ⋅ 2min read

A dreary haze hung over the bustling city; a thin layer of smog clinging to the skyscrapers in poor imitation of the fluffy white clouds shrouding the peaks of the nearby Andes. The city was a cacophony of activity, as cars swarmed the streets, tooting their horns mercilessly, and sellers hawked their wares all along the pavement. The air was dry and cold, as the city slowly awoke to the idea of summer. Everything was dusty; from barren parks to crumbling houses. The cracked facades of derelict buildings stood testament as victims of near-constant seismic movement. But for all its run-down appearance, Santiago pulsed with life on every street corner.

I landed in Santiago late in the evening, starving after a long 12 hour flight. I hadn't realised it before, but my ticket didn't include any meals, so all I had with me was a couple of hundred grams of pistachios to snack on during the flight -- I stubbornly refused to spend any money on the overpriced "food" they were selling on the plain.

After a few hours, my stomach gave up grumbling. It eventually realised no food was coming.

Dad met me at the airport, I grabbed a quick pizza to fill the yawning chasm that my stomach had become, and then we caught the bus into the city to our accommodation. It was about 9pm by the time I'd got out of customs, and with an hour journey left, I was running on fumes. By the time we arrived, it had been about 22 hours since I'd woken up in Barcelona. No wonder I struggled to keep my eyes open on the bus! As soon as we arrived, I crashed and slept deeply. It was the equivalent of 4am in Europe.

Our first day in Santiago started off pretty relaxed. We were both tired from our flights and so we let ourselves sleep as long as needed. Eventually, our stomachs drove us out and our first excursion was to the supermarket. We picked up some bread and pasta ingredients for dinner, then walked back to the apartment for a late breakfast/early lunch. We realised that the apartment was extremely close to the largest urban park in South America, so we seized the opportunity to explore it. The afternoon was spent climbing up the hill, around 300m in altitude gain, to spectacular views over Santiago and our first look at the Andes mountains in the (not-so-distant) distance. We finished the day with a homemade vegetable pasta and head to bed early, as we both felt a bit jetlagged.

We rose earlier on the second day, as we had planned to do two walking tours; one in the morning and another in the afternoon.

The first walking tour took us to the various street markets of Santiago, where we learned about some of the Chilean cuisine and how it has been influenced by the increased immigration over the past decade. After the markets, we jumped on the metro for a couple of stops and came out at the general cemetery. Here, we learned about the Chilean burial process and had a few mausoleums pointed out to us of famous Chileans. The tour ended at the cemetery, and afterwards we walked back into down, where we rested our feet in the park near the contemporary art museum and ate a bit of lunch while we waited for the next tour to start.

The second tour took us through the downtown area, focusing on the highlights of the city centre and some of the political history of Chile. The guide was very knowledgeable, and passionate, about Chilean history so I took advantage of that and asked many questions. He was also surprisingly blunt about the racism in the country and how the geographical features around Chile had historically prevented immigration and how over the last decade the rise in immigrants has brought to light some inherent racism in the country -- racism not just against people of different skin colour, but those from other Latin American countries.