Santiago, only 520 meters above sea level ; I’m breathing normally again! It was 24 degrees when we landed at 8 pm yesterday and it should be approximately the same today. This morning it was only 11 degrees, so it was nice and cool to sleep. The city is located in the country’s central valley and is therefore surrounded by lush greenery. I’m doing the city tour today to get my bearings. It was a beautiful sunny day and the pick-up time was at 8:40. The tour started at 9 am right on time; Jaime was our guide & Carlos was our bus driver. We had a big tour bus where you are sitting quite high up from the other traffic and had great views of the city streets.
According to the guide (notice I don’t state things as facts anymore?) there are 17 million people living in Chile and 7 million of them are in the Santiago metropolitan area. We started off with a visit to Santa Clara Park, a huge hill in the middle of the city, which used to be a site that the native people used as a burial area. When the Spanish arrived, Pedro de Valdivia, one of the Conquistadores, built a fortress on top of this hill in 1541 and founded Santiago. He was able to conquer a large part of what is now Chile for the Spanish. He was conquering areas south of Concepcion until he reached an area where the native Araucanians fought back. Lead by Lautaro, they captured Valdivia and made him drink molten gold, telling him: “You wanted gold, you now have gold” or “you will be rich forever” or words to that effect. (I wonder who documented this? Fact or Legend?) There is a statue of Pedro de Valdivia in Plaza de Armas; he is seated on a horse but has no reins in his hands. Supposedly the artist did this on purpose since when the natives first saw a man riding a horse, they thought it was 1 creature with two heads and 4 legs.
Although we reached the mid-point of the hill/mountain, we were advised by our guide not to try to climb to the top since earthquakes have badly damaged the staircase and it is dangerous. Others seemed to be able to climb to the top however so, who knows. Being the “good little girl” that I am, I did not climb to the top, but I still got some nice views of the city.
In 1872, the fort and mountain were converted into Santa Clara Park. They used prisoners to do all the work.
From there, we went to the Plaza de Armas. What is now the Post Office used to be the Governor’s Palace. The Cathedral is spectacular as are the other buildings in the square.
The old meets the new
Plaza de Armas
La Catedral
This dog followed the guy with the hose for at least 5 minutes and got to drink and get a free wash all at once.We walked to the Plaza de la Constitution. In 1805 the main building that existed here was the Casa de la Moneda; in 1845 it became the President’s palace. This building is now “infamous” since this is where Salvador Allende died on Sept 11, 1973. He had been president for about 3 years and had almost bankrupted the country in that short time. Pinochet, an army officer who led the revolt against Allende, supposedly called Allende in his office in this building and told him: “Abdicate now and I will personally ensure that you are transported safely to any communist country you want. Otherwise, we will bomb the building in 20 minutes and you will die.” Allende supposedly replied and he would rather die than surrender his presidency. The air force planes bombed the building and the entire left side of the building was destroyed.
Obviously the building has been completely restored
They found Allende dead in what was left of his office, (second floor, corner office window on the left) holding a gun which he had been given by Fidel Castro. No one knew if 1) he had committed suicide, 2) he had been killed by the bomb, or 3) he had been killed by the soldiers who entered the building after the bombing. Only two or three months ago, they exhumed Allende’s body and completed an autopsy; they were able to confirm that he had committed suicide.
Pinochet was able to put the country back on its financial feet however, he did not step down after 3 or 5 years to allow elections to be held. He stayed in power for 17 years as a dictator and was responsible for “Los Desaparecidos” .
We continued with the city tour from the bus, visiting the street named “Concha y Toro”. For you wine lovers, this is the family who own the famous vineyards. Supposedly, one of the wives had been to Italy many times and decided that she wanted her own little piece of Italy in Santiago. The result is this street, its buildings and fountain.
I got a few other pictures during our drive back to the departure point.
No idea who designed this fountain, or what it stands for, but it is quite beautiful. Shot from the bus.
Santiago streets
Santiago parks
No idea what kind of bird, but its song was beautifulI was back at my hotel by 1:30 and decided that I needed to get a few “housekeeping” issues out of the way. First order of business was to get every single piece of clothing from my suitcase WASHED. Luckily there was a lavanderia just around the corner. Although they usually charge by the piece, the lady I dealt with agreed to charge me by the kilo instead (a lot cheaper) and promised to have everything washed and dried by 6 pm. And she did. All my clothing (except for what I wore today) is now nice & clean and smells fresh. {Not sure I mentioned this, but in La Paz I sent both pairs of black jeans and a black t-shirt to be laundered by the hotel. They came back stinking of …. Who knows what. I needed to wear the T-shirt so I decided to rinse it in the sink with a bit of shampoo to get rid of the smell. Lo and behold, the water turned stinky black. I’ve had this T-shirt for years and it has been washed more times than I can count; the colour has never leached out. Don’t know if they used dirty water, or if they washed my clothing with other very dirty clothing. THIS TIME, everything smells fresh.
After dropping off the laundry I set out to try to buy a spare battery for my SONY Cybershot camera. I have one SONY battery and had a spare I had purchased in Mexico 2 years ago. For some strange reason, during the last week, the Mexican battery is no longer being recognized by my camera. The clerk at the reception desk gave me direction to a shopping mall about 17 blocks away. Nice long walk and a leisurely lunch along the way, but no luck finding a battery. I will need to go to another mall at the other end of the city where there is a SONY camera shop. On the walk back to the hotel, along a different street, I spotted a hair salon. YES ! Two months without a decent hair cut; this is a God send.
So I’m back at the hotel for the evening, with short hair, clean laundry and a ticket to ride the “Hop on, Hop off” bus all day tomorrow. That way, I can get to the mall, visit El Cerro San Cristobal, visit the zoo (which is supposedly quite impressive) and visit a few museums along the way.
I LOVED TODAY ! Another bonus is that I can actually climb hills while breathing normally and run across streets with no problem.
LIFE IS GOOD.
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