Weekend Excursions In Santiago, Chile

December 10: Museo de la Memoria y los Derechos Humanos

On Saturday, December 10, we went to a museum highly recommended by our Frommer's travel guide - Museo de la Memoria y los Derechos Humanos (Museum of Memorial and Human Rights). This museum showcases Pinochet's reign in Chile from 1973 to 1990, something we knew very little about before coming to Chile. Many people were tortured and/or killed during that military dictatorship, and the museum has videos of some of the violence as well as interviews with survivors. The idea behind the museum is to "never forget" so that something like that doesn't happen again here in Chile. It just so happens that the day we visited was International Human Rights Day (go figure!) so there was a concert that night outside in the museum's ampitheater. We returned for that later since the museum is easy to reach by metro, and it was fun to see a Chilean concert with a big audience and many different bands playing.

Nikki liked how they had human rights laws displayed on the wall outside

December 11: Parque Metropolitano & Zoo

On Sunday, December 11, we paid a visit to the Parque Metropolitano. It's a park in the Bella Vista neighborhood of Santiago, which is much quieter and prettier than where we're staying in the center of the city. Inside the park is a zoo. Because Nikki loves zoos, we went! Although it was pretty much your average zoo, it was up high on a foothill of the Andes, so we had a spectacular view of the city. The highlight of the animals were the grizzly and polar bears and the "pudus" (tiny miniature deer - only about a foot tall - that we'll get to see in their natural habitat while we're exploring the rest of Chile!). We also saw beautiful completely snow-white peacocks and some other exotic South American birds, including flamingos and one type of bird that is a brilliant bright orange color.


December 17: Cajon del Maipo & Cascada de las Animas

This past weekend we decided to venture out of the city and to see the nearby mountains. We didn't want to rent a car, so we took public transit and a taxi "collectivo" (shared taxi) to get to our destinations and back.

On Saturday, we took the metro to get to the outskirts of the city and then a collectivo to get to Cajon del Maipo (Maipo Canyon). The collectivos have a route that they follow, which is indicated by a number on the top of the taxi. The canyon is about 60km outside the city. It took an hour to get to our destination. The taxi made stops to pick up and drop off people on the way, and also to get gas. The overall experience of travelling to the canyon was a good one because the metro & taxi were clean and efficient (only about $5 per person including metro, collectivo, and tip).

We were dropped at our hotel, Cascada de las Animas (Waterfall of the Spirits). It's sort of an ecotourism spot with campgrounds, cabins, a main house, and a separate house, the hostal, a few blocks down the road (where we stayed). "Hostal" in Chile seems to generally mean bed and breakfast, with the choice of sharing a room &/or a bathroom. Most of the hotels we booked for our travels next month are hostels (of course we're staying in private rooms with bathrooms!), and we're hoping they'll be like this one, which was SO lovely! We were able to get the room on the top floor of the house, with a huge private balcony overlooking the pretty garden and with a view of the mountains. We relaxed out on the balcony to the sound of the river flowing in the distance and the breeze blowing. We paid about 60USD (US Dollars) for the night. We'd definitely recommend this place!

Our Private Balcony

View from the Balcony

Once we arrived in the canyon, we went on a guided hike to the waterfall that is the hotel's namesake. Although we would have preferred to go alone, there is a gated bridge that they open for those paying for guided tours. The Spanish-speaking guide wasn't that helpful for us, and a big group can ruin some of the silence of nature. We had to cross a couple of very rickety bridges to get to the waterfall (yikes!), but we made it. Along the way we saw signs describing the huge spiders and scorpions that live in the area. Apparently there are "chick spiders" (so called because they are really hairy like chicks), which can have bodies up to 2 inches long!! (We think it was lucky that we didn't see any of those :P) The canyon was very pretty.

In the Canyon

After our hike, we ate dinner at the hotel's restaurant, which is right on the river that runs through the canyon. The food was good (we had salmon and beef stew), the setting wonderful, and the architecture really interesting. There are tree trunks through the middle of the restaurant and there's a large outdoor seating area with a fire pit. All in all, the day was very nice!

December 18: Banos Morales

The next day (Sunday) we decided to go to Banos Morales, which is a Chilean national park and home to a melting glacier. We took a bus for over an hour to get there from the canyon. Most of the road along the way is unpaved, so it was a bumpy ride. The bus was not very clean. For part of the way Greg had to sit next to a man who was drinking a can of beer and was obviously drunk (so it was interesting!). However, we made it to the park with no real problems. There we found nothing but a few small snack huts and one restaurant (& possibly a hotel) basically in the middle of the wilderness. At that point we were really proud of ourselves because we got to such a remote area - it was our first trip on a Chilean bus as well! Our patience was rewarded by truly beautiful scenery.

We began hiking shortly after noon, and our return bus was scheduled to leave  at 6pm. We hiked up to a lagoon, but at that point it was 2:40 and Nikki was feeling tired, so she stayed to rest. Nikki recently read the captivating book Into Thin Air, where many people died trying to climb Mount Everest in part because they kept climbing after their established cut-off time. After Nikki made Greg promise to turn back at a 3pm cut-off time, Greg made his way up to the glacier as quickly as he could!

After an exhausting uphill run, there is nothing like a cold glacier to cool you down!

Greg lying on part of the San Francisco Glacier

Greg knew he was risking perishing like the Himalayan mountain climbers, but he couldn't help but stay on the top for a while to snap photos of the amazing scenery.

The reward for getting to the top is looking back down!

To make up for time spent at the top, Greg ran downhill along the very rocky path until he made it back to where Nikki was waiting. The Vibram Five Finger Trek shoes (that his Mom still doesn't believe you can hike in) were up to the task. When running on loose rocks you mostly need to respect that you can't stop or turn quickly.

We kept taking pictures on the way back down - the scenery was absolutely gorgeous! It is frustrating to attempt to convey such beauty in a photograph.

There were several small lagoons with orange and red colored water.

Purple flowers throughout Baños Morales

Going down was much quicker than up, and we made it back with plenty of time before the bus left. The ride back to Santiago was LONG and the bus was extremely crowded most of the way back - people were standing throughout the entire aisle for about the last half of the trip. We had seats together, but Greg's legs are too long for Chilean bus seats, so he was very cramped. The bus did take us all the way to the metro, so we didn't end up taking another collectivo to get back to Santiago. However, the collectivo was faster, cleaner, and more comfortable then the bus. We'll probably take those whenever we can in the future.

More to come soon!  Hasta luego!

Our First Week in Santiago, Chile

Bienvenido a nuestros viajes en Chile (welcome to our travels in Chile)!

Nosotros estamos muy entusiasmados estar aqui (we are really excited to be here). [I really need to practice my Spanish, so some of the content on our blog will be written in both English and Spanish (please forgive any errors in Spanish - I'm not great at writing yet - todavia no muy bueno cuando escribo)].

Aerial View of the Andes (from our plane - nuestro avion)

We have just spent our first week in Santiago, the capital and largest city in Chile.  About 1/3 of Chile's population resides here (about 5 million people), even though the country is approximately 2,700 miles long!  Santiago is in the central region of Chile and is located at the foot of the Andes Mountains. We have a beautiful view of mountains from our apartment, although it is obscured by the smog. The weather here has been great - reminding us of a Los Angeles summer with lots of sunshine and smog in the distance. We've found Santiago to be sophisticated in its infrastructure and basically a "first world" city. It has a large, clean, efficient, and convenient metro system that we have been taking advantage of.

View of the Andes from our apartment (see the snow-capped peaks in the distance?)

In the subway (en el metro)

We are staying in the "grittier" Centro District of Santiago, in the heart of the city.  Our neighborhood is a bit run-down with a lot of construction occurring. There are old dilapidated buildings, old beautiful historical buildings, and newly constructed high rises. Any of these could have graffiti, which after a while just becomes part of the background here. Here in the city center we are near many historical buildings and museums, as well as parks, markets, and my Spanish language school, and we can travel easily by metro or by foot. Our muscles are still adjusting to the amount of walking that is required in a big city. We are also still adjusting to the amount of noise. Even though we're on the 22nd floor of our building, the noise level is incredible (you were right, mom!), although perhaps comparable to a large city in the U.S..  When our windows are open, which is almost all the time, we get a constant barrage of traffic sounds day and night. One of the places we like to visit to escape the noise is the Parque de los Reyes near our apartment.  There is a music school located in the park, and musicians practice inside and outside. We like our small apartment even though it is noisy - it's also very sunny in the morning. Many thanks to Greg's sister Lauren who pointed out when Greg said "we need to get a sunny south facing apartment" that in the southern hemisphere the sun is in the north!

Our Apartment (nuestro apartamento)

Parque de los Reyes (see the man playing the trombone?)

Santiago also has a lot of stray dogs living on the sidewalks and in the parks. We were told this is because it is illegal to put a dog to sleep here, and so all of the pounds are full and can't take any more animals. It breaks my heart to see them, but people put water out for them in buckets, and they seem to get enough food. 

Stray Dog in a Park (un perro callejero en un parque)

One thing that we've noticed since we've been here is how friendly and helpful most of the people have been. When we arrived our landlady took us to the nearest metro station and bought us each a metro card and she showed us a nearby internet cafe and marketplace where we can buy food.

Last weekend we spent some time with an English-speaking Chilean family in Las Condes that Greg's Aunt Pat connected us with. They were extremely welcoming and took us to lunch at their country club and then to a "Walmart" type store to buy items that we couldn't find in our neighborhood. Greg played a match of tennis with Christian (who his Aunt Pat used to work with). He received instructions on the Spanish words used during tennis, and also on how to play tennis! Christian is a very good player, and Greg is very out of practice :P

The friendliness of the Chileans has been a blessing because the language barrier makes everything difficult. Although Nikki has a nearly perfect accent, our vocabulary is extremely limited and Nikki learned from speakers talking at a much slower pace and without the quirks in the local dialect. Even though Greg's Spanish is worse, he has more often been the one responsible for communicating because he is better at non-verbal and creative forms of communication. Meeting with Christian's family was a nice reprieve for Nikki, who had been getting frustrated with the language barrier.

Initially even buying groceries was a challenging task. Along those lines, something funny happened to us while eating dinner in a nearby restaurant last Saturday evening. We were excited to see that the menus were translated into English. After skimming the descriptions, however, it was apparent a translator program was used and that the menu had not been reviewed by an actual person before publication. The Spanish word for "potatoes" is "papas," and the English translation on multiple descriptions read "dad's" :).  Staying here is really changing our perspective on the world and increasing our respect for immigrants. Lani, thank you so much for the translator - it has been so helpful, especially when buying food!   

The price of food here seems similar to the U.S.  The staples seem to be potatoes, carrots, onions, nectarines, peaches, beef, and chicken. In any small store (what I usually call a corner store in the U.S.) there are usually the staple vegetables and fruits, along with a variety of processed foods. They don't have what we would consider fresh milk in Santiago. Milk is produced in the southern regions and transported to Chile after being Ultra-High-Temperature pasteurised (UHT). UHT milk does not require refrigeration, but most expats complain that it does not taste good. Cheese is very common here (thank goodness because Nikki wouldn't survive without it!), and butter is easy enough to find.

In Santiago, people seem to eat a lot of chicken and beef, and much of the beef is imported from other South American countries (Paraguay, Brazil, and Argentina). The cuts of beef here are very different from American or European cuts, making the task of purchasing meat here even more difficult. When cattle was first introduced here, they were more concerned with the hide and the fat of the animal. The 17th century became known as the "century of the fat". The meat was made into a traditional form of jerky called charqui as it had been done with llama. You would probably be upset to chomp down on a bones when you eat beef jerky! So the Chilean form of butchering was designed to limit the bones and strip away all the meat. Today there are still very few cuts of beef with bones in them. Any beef in South America is likely grass-fed. The grain-fed beef model of the U.S. is based on grain subsidies - the economics are much different when those are not present.

It has also become apparent to us that we need to specifically ask for all of the options when purchasing an item or risk not knowing what's available.  For example, when we asked for probiotics at a pharmacy, we were initially shown only one brand (of course it was the highest-priced).  When we requested a different kind, we were shown one more brand.  It wasn't until we asked whether there was a GNC nearby that the pharmacist finally showed us that they in fact carried GNC probiotics (which were much less expensive than the others).  The difficulty may have been due in part to the language barrier, but a similar situation occurred with our internet.  Before we arrived, I made it very clear to our apartment contact person that it was incredibly important for us to have internet access at home.  She told us that the landlady could provide us with a portable modem but didn't mention any other options.  After we arrived, we had numerous problems in getting the modem to work acceptably for our purposes and informed the landlady of this issue.  After some time, she finally mentioned that we in fact had another option (having wifi installed in the apartment for a small fee).  She also mentioned that there is wifi in the lobby of our building. If we had known that earlier, it would have made it much more convenient for us during the transition period.  Fortunately, we now have a wireless connection in our apartment so that Greg can work and we can post entries on this blog.



Greg and I will remain in Santiago until the end of December, and then we will continue our travels around the country. While here, Greg is working and I am taking intensive, individual Spanish lessons for two hours every day at the Spanish language school A.I.E. (Academia de Idioma Espanol). My teacher, Sonya, is very kind and patient with me. However, she will not speak any English, therefore, the lessons are providing a significant mental challenge. Of course Greg and I are also exploring the city and surrounding areas. We should be posting a few more blog entries before we leave Santiago now that we have internet access. Until then (hasta luego)!