Santiago, Chile

Country #40 baby! I spent a little over 2 weeks in Chile over the holiday break from school, and I see it as having visited 3 regions. Santiago is the landing spot from Brasilia, so I started here, and used this capital city as a home base for my other adventures as well. I aimed to be in Valparaiso for NYE because it has one of the best and longest duration of fireworks shows in the world. That’s 2 for 2 in amazing fireworks shows- I am really spoiling myself.

I started my travel at a sprint and did 2 walking tours of Santiago in the same day. I arrived late ish the night before, and I really only had 1 full day in Santiago so I wanted to make the most of it! I did the historic walking tour, and also the tour of the Yungay neighborhood in the afternoon.

On the historic walking tour I learned that Santiago doesn’t really have a lot of culture of it’s own. You’ll see in the picture above, it looks like a French city with the architecture. Santiago is home to a lot of earthquakes every year and they find themselves having to re-build a lot. Chileans back when really thought that Europeans are better and the French the best of all, so they copied their architecture style. It’s is interesting to see the global reach of the colonizers, but also makes me sad for any of the indigenous beauty that may have been replaced.

I always love a good juxtaposition of an old building next to a new one. This is an old church in the middle of the city. You know, Catholic countries always have to have a church!

I got some frites with new friends from the walking tour and then we explored the St. Lucia Hill. It’s free, and it’s a pretty short walk to the top of it for some nice views.

Afterwards I slowly made my way to my next walking tour of the Yungay neighborhood- which is ranked the 9th most beautiful neighborhood in the world. As a lover of street art, I had a feeling this would be where I found it, but this tour showed me so much more. One of the best “free” walking tours I’ve been on in quite a long time.

Our guide led us around Yungay, but this neighborhood is so cool because you have to kind of know where to look. The buildings are organized a little bit around a center square inside the building blocks, so it feels more like a community. Back in the old times you would have a small apartment, but people would gather in the middle. But from the street, you can’t see these at all. The guide is helpful because he showed us the spots.

(I’m writing this with a little bit of a head cold, so I have a feeling the explanation above makes no sense. Hopefully the pictures help!)

And yes, as to my hearts desire, we did see some street art. Little did I know that I would be utterly blown away by the street art in Valparaiso (known as an artists haven).

Truly jam packing my day, right after the tour ended, I jet setted to the other end of the city to watch the sunset at the Sky Costanera. It’s the tallest skyscraper in South America, and it’s pretty tall. I have to laugh though because there is nothing skyscraper-esque next to it. It’s just there. And it’s attached to a mall.

This was one of those experiences that I just enjoyed and didn’t worry too much about pictures. Mostly because the windows were crowded with Brazilians setting up shop with their time lapse videos and not willing to budge. So I shrugged and thought, well I’ll just enjoy it. You can post the video on instagram. The views from the top were very cool. I also like seeing the mountains in the background.

All of that happened on the same day! I walked a lot and my feet hurt, but I felt like I was really kicking off my adventure with a bang.

I would find myself back in Santiago to transport myself to Puerto Varas, and then also to Easter Island before returning home. I wouldn’t stay for long except for 1 day between Easter Island and home. On that day, my friend Maria and I did a wine tasting where we hopped around to 4 vineyards in the Casablanca valley and had an absolute blast! Chilean wine is highly rated, and these vineyards served strong pours. By the time we made it to lunch, I was veeery tipsy.

I was flying carry on only for an international flight, so I sadly couldn’t buy any bottles to take home. However, I did see some in the duty free wine shop, so I bought them there! My favorite vineyard on the tour was Emiliana.

There will be a direct flight from BSB to Santiago coming in July- who knows when I will find myself back here, but I definitely enjoyed Santiago! Stay tuned for the other tales of my time in Chile 🙂