After napping for a couple hours and huddling together for warmth in a very cold and dry room, we got ourselves ready to face the day. Santiago doesn’t have a ton of things to see or do, so we were kind of winging it. Our hotel is a few miles from the city center, so we decided to try the metro. Despite not being able to pay with credit card, it was a fairly smooth and efficient process. We had to purchase a plastic metro card called a “bip!” card, which can be reloaded like a TAP card in LA, Oyster card in London, Octopus card in Hong Kong, Carte Orange in Paris, or SmarTrip in D.C. If there’s ever a metro system jeopardy category, I’m all over it. The lady at the kiosk only sold us one card, and told us we could tap it twice for both of us, which saved us maybe like $1 or something.
We rode it about four stops to a neighborhood near Cerro Santa Lucía. I had read that the park areas around Santa Lucia hill offered some good views of the city. Up to that point, we had seen typical big city stuff — graffiti, homelessness, gritty architecture, and A LOT of people walking briskly on the sidewalks. It was like being in Manhattan. The mask rules are still fairly strict here, and are required when riding metro or when inside any shops, so it is more common to see someone walking outside wearing a mask than not. The weather itself is extremely confusing. It was in the low 30s when we landed early this morning, but it was now close to 70. In the shade, we were shivering, but sweating in the sun. Almost everyone else committed to wearing a puffy jacket at all times, whereas we kept changing in and out of jackets and outer layers.
Walking around Santa Lucia required a fair amount of stair and hill climbing which helped elevate our temperatures once again. We took a brief rest on a bench before climbing up the remainder of the hill. Eventually we were afforded some very nice views of the city with the snow-capped Andes forming a nice backdrop.
With no other destination in mind, we took our time exploring different viewpoints, eventually reaching the very top of the hill and the top of an old castle’s tower. Unfortunately, there wasn’t a lot of space at the top, and a school group of about 40 children was closing in on the area, so we extracted ourselves fairly quickly.
From the hill, we continued our stroll back to the city streets and toward the Plaza de Armas, essentially the center of the city. It was very crowded at the plaza, considering it was mid afternoon on a Tuesday. There were entertainers, protesters, evangelists, people dressed in costume, hawkers, and every type of person you would ever want (or not want) to see in one spot. We did not spend much time there. It wasn’t pretty enough to justify its popularity.
We initially decided to walk all the way back to our hotel, even though it was quite far. We strolled through a long park area that was exposed to the sun. It now actually felt quite hot, which is an extremely bizarre thing to say on a day that began at 32 degrees. Dressing must be very difficult for people here, though as previously mentioned, people seem to just commit to the puffy jacket regardless of what the temperature is doing.
When we got back to the hotel, we planned out our dinner. It was a short walk across the street to Pipiolo, a sandwich place with various gourmet burgers and meat items with a large selection of draft beer. While the chilly air was setting back in for the night, it was a cozy atmosphere sitting outside on the quiet street. I like the neighborhood that our hotel is in — it’s much quieter than the surrounding streets. Hopefully this fact serves us well for a good night’s sleep tonight. Hasta mañana.
passports & pepto bismol 