We had planned to join a free, tips only, guided tour this morning but struggled to drag ourselves out of bed in time. We're both enjoying the benefits of jet lag and spent most of the night wide awake until it was time to get up, when we were fast asleep. We had breakfast at the hostel and headed out intending to walk the route of one of the tours. Santiago has apparently had millions of pounds of investment poured into the capital to support it's cultural development, not that we really recognised any effect of this. It's a big, grey Latin America city and certainly would never be described as glamorous. We headed towards Cerro Santa Lucia, initially thinking we'd have to miss out on walking up the small hill as the gates were still locked, only to see the security guards wandering down to open them, nearly 2 hours after the time shown on the sign outside. The hill was once a hermitage, then a convent, then a military bastion and now offers a respite from the chaos of the city. From the summit we got our first view of the snow capped Andes despite the grey skies and smog surrounding the city. Continuing our walk we reached Plaza de Armas, the symbolic heart of Santiago since it was found back in 1541 and after a quick pick me up coffee there we visited the National Museum of Chile (everything was in Spanish so Diane had to suffice with looking at the pictures and Simon being able to get the gist of some of the explanations) and the Catedral Metropolitana. We stopped for lunch at the cafe in the Precolumbian Arts Museum and then strolled on to Palacio de la Moneda where Chile's presidential offices are located inside an ornate neoclassical building. It had started to drizzle so we headed inside the Centro Cultural Palacial La Moneda but it was all too much for two jet lagged souls and we wandered back out into the fresh air and strolled back to the hostel for a bit more planning. We've decided to go to Valparaiso for a couple of days before heading back to Santiago to catch our flight to Easter Island. In the evening we walked to Bellavista for dinner before heading back for hopefully a good night's sleep.
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| The view from Cerro Santa Lucia (the Andes are in the background ...honest!) |
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| Plaza de Armas |
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| Catedral Metropolitana |
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| Palacio de la Moneda |
What a different culture fron Australia and New Zealand, must be strange adapting, especially when suffering from jet lag
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