Hello from Santiago! After three great nights in Valparaíso, we left for Santiago, which we’d be making our home for at least the next eight nights. We hadn’t spent such a long period of time in one place since Cartagena, so we both were looking forward to settling in a little bit and slowing down. Plus, we have a lovely AirBnb, with a kitchen and a washer, so we have the chance to do some cooking, and to catch up on laundry!

Santiago is Chile’s capital, and it’s huge. With a population of over 5 million, it’s one of the biggest cities in the Americas. The scenery, and the weather, are gorgeous. We’ve had nothing but hot, dry, clear, sun-filled days. And with the clear views, it’s easy to see the towering mountains that surround the city, as you’ll see from some of our pictures below.

Getting to our place was very easy. The bus brought us into the same station we’d left from earlier in the week. From there, it was just a short ride on the subway to get to our neighborhood.

The subway here is awesome. We’ve used it a good bit to get around, and it’s fast and cheap, about $1 USD or so per ride. Even when it’s late, close to closing time, you’re still never more than a couple minutes from a train arriving. It’s amazing how frequent they are. Maybe we’ve just been beaten down by 10+ minute waits for trains in DC, but this is wonderful.

Cerro Santa Lucía

After getting settled into our place, we headed out to explore the neighborhood on foot. Our apartment for the week is in the San Isidro neighborhood, close to the Santa Lucía metro station. It’s also very close to Cerro Santa Lucía, or Santa Lucía hill, which is a park with great views of the city.

To climb the hill, you have to go up some uneven, steep, and very slippery stone steps, which were borderline terrifying on the way back down. We both almost lost our footing more than a few times. But, as you can see, the view at the top is definitely worth the small risk.

Now, for some reason, hot dogs are a thing in Chile. There are chain restaurants famous for their hot dogs, you can get them from street vendors, etc. Erika was excited to indulge this; I was less so, finding hot dogs gross. Nevertheless, we ended up at one of these said chain restaurants for our first meal here, Dominó. The Dominós are everywhere in Santiago, we’ve seen dozens during our walks. And as we were walking back from the cerro, Erika wanted to try one now. I couldn’t bring myself to do a hot dog, so I got a hamburger. It was definitely one of our less healthy meals so far, but it was pretty good!

Erika, of course, did get a hot dog, with everything on it.

Our First Friends on the Road!

Erika has friends, Kelly and Pato, who live here in Santiago, and they invited us over to see them (and their new baby!) Friday evening. It was, once again, an easy metro ride to get out to where they live, and then a short walk to their place. Their neighborhood is beautiful, and very pleasant and easy to walk. Their condo is stunning, in a high rise, with an amazing terrace giving fantastic views of the city and mountains. As we looked out over the city, and they pointed out the buildings where each of them works, each a short walk from their apartment, we couldn’t help but imagine living here ourselves.

We also couldn’t stop ourselves from pumping them for recommendations of places to go. They showed us their pictures from their trip to Torres del Paine, which we’ll be doing in a few weeks, and it got us excited for that portion of our trip all over again.

It was such a great time spent with them, and we so wished we could see them more. Kelly, Pato, thank you so much for inviting us over, and sharing your precious downtime with us, not to mention your wine and cheese!

Mercados and Barrio Bellavista

On Saturday, we once again hit the streets to explore the city. Our plan was to walk north thru two large markets, the Mercado Central and La Vega, then continue around into the neighborhood of Bellavista. Walking to the markets first takes you through the Plaza de Armas, the heart of the old colonial portion of the city.

We continued up until we got to the Mercado Central, which is basically a huge seafood market. You’re struck with the fishy smell of seafood the moment you step inside, with fish, shrimp, octopus, etc all around you at each of the vendors. We weren’t really here for raw seafood, but we were here for a seafood lunch!

After lunch we continued up to the second market, La Vega, which has more produce and grains and such. Here, we did have aims, as Kelly had suggested coming here to build our trail mix for our Patagonia hiking. So we did, getting a ton of nuts and dried fruits to make trail mixes. We also got all the oatmeal and blueberries we’d need for the rest of our time in Santiago!

We took our haul and headed east toward Barrio Bellavista. I think I’m glad we came here during the day, because it looks like the nights here would be crazy. Huge bars and spaces, with loud music blaring even then, and advertisements for cheap drinks (cheap not so much meaning inexpensive, but as in garbage drinks, like pisco and soda).

Rooftop at the W

Sunday, we took things pretty slowly, waking up at our usual… um… late time. We finally went down and took advantage of the pool in our building, a lovely outdoor space with no where near enough lounge chairs, and glacially cold water. Like, are they refrigerating this?! A couple other pool goers enjoyed laughing at Erika and I as we daintily got into the frigid bath.

We came back upstairs to cook a pasta lunch, and get ready for our fancy drink date at the W hotel. The W is out near Kelly and Pato’s condo, and we’d thought of going over there for a drink after seeing them, but by the time we left it was getting close to closing time for the metro. No matter, it’s a great excuse to go back out that way!

We’d heard there was a nice bar with views there, which is what we were looking for. When we got into the building, it looked like everything was on the 4th floor. Hmm, doesn’t seem like there could be too many views from there, but alright. We went up there, and there was a bar. Just a bar. It’s an okay bar, I guess? We had a couple overpriced pisco sours and were ready to call it a bust.

Erika did some more googling, and it really did look like there was some bar on the roof, called Red2One. We looked again inside the building, and couldn’t find any signs for it. We went out to the sidewalk, and walked a full lap around the outside of the hotel, still nothing. Finally, we asked a couple of the employees inside the front door of the hotel. Ah, yes, they said, and they whisked us away, back up to the bar we’d stopped at before, and beyond it to another set of elevators, that they badged us into with a keycard and sent us on our way. Is this place only for guests? Did we just get “in”? I’m not sure, there still was never a sign of any sort. At any rate, it’s there, nameless or not, it’s real, and the views up there really are spectacular.

We sat in fun chairs and drank a couple glasses of wine while we stared at the city as it descended into night. Maybe it was the super tall high rise we were in, but even though we’d wondered about and talked about earthquakes before, here we wondered about them even more. Finally, wondering about them enough to google about it! We knew Chile took them very seriously, but we didn’t know just how seriously.

New buildings must be designed and constructed to survive a 9.0 earthquake, and building code enforcement is strict. They do full-scale emergency simulations, to simulate and prepare for 9.0 earthquakes. In 2015, when an 8.4 hit, followed by a tsunami, they mounted an evacuation of over 1 million people. One million! After the earthquake happened! We can’t effectively manage evacuations when we know a hurricane is 4 days away!

So yeah. Earthquakes are a fact of life down here, and they take them very seriously, and because of that even the 2015 quake wasn’t the disaster it could have been. So as we sat on the rooftop of the high rise, drinking our wine, we felt a new bit of reassurance for our time that we’re in earthquake country.

Cheers!

What’s Next

We’ve still got the rest of the week in Santiago, to leisurely explore and experience. Thanks for stopping by!