Santiago: Not A Whale’s Vagina

For all you oldies reading this blog, that is a quote from a popular movie of the 21^st century – please do not be offended.

We hadn’t heard much positive feedback on Santiago, or Chile on a whole but we put that down to most of our friends possibly hitting Chile on the back end of the best 4 months of their lives, travelling down the east coast from Columbia through Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, etc. And really Chile is just a plausible place to fly home from.

This was one of the reasons we thought we would hit up Chile and Santiago first. And yes, Santiago is just another big city, but a pretty quiet and sedate one at that, which fitted us perfectly. We felt like all our time in Melbourne and Sydney was spent eating and drinking far too much, so we were hoping to use Chile as a bit of a detox before Brazil and the World Cup which I can only imagine would make our time on the Australian east coast seem like a Wiggles concert (early call but I am thinking Brazil may be like going on tour with Guns ‘n’ Roses).

We had a quiet few days getting over ‘jetlag’ and finally got out to seeing the place when the sun showed its face.

Santiago is actually quite a picturesque place for a dirty, grey concrete jungle, nestled in between the Andes on the east and the Chilean Coastal Range to the west. There are a few hills to climb to get some great views of the city and surrounding mountains which we eventually got out and stretched our legs on over the last couple of days.

The Andes

Chilean Coastal Range

One of the hills, Cerro San Cristóbal, has Santiago’s version of Christ the Redeemer, but rather the Blessed Virgin Mary, which was a nice 6km hike or venicular (funicular) ride up. Being our usual ‘frisky’ (Big Gib’s version of frugal) selves we didn't bother checking the price of the venicular and started heading up the hill. This was after our poor attempt the previous day where we took a right instead of a left and ended up at the zoo, and given it was only $3 AUD with our student cards (yes we pose as students when being frisky backpackers) we thought, ‘why not!’

Zoo Highlights ~ White Tiger

Zoo Highlights ~ Jaguar

Virgin Mary Statue atop  Cerro San Cristóbal

So after setting a cracking pace for a good 5 minutes we realised that walking in tight, skinny leg jeans was probably not the best idea to hike a hill in. But ‘thems the breaks’ so we kept on keeping on and actually made good time which made us question whether we heard the info senorita correctly when she said 6km (but for the benefit of making us feel better we will stick with the 6km). At the top you are rewarded with the best views of the mountains and the city itself (along with free tap water!)

Down Town Santiago and Cerro San Cristóbal on the right

After this we found a nice local restaurant that was filled with only Chileans, which is usually a good sign that the food is good and more importantly cheap. Well the food was good but probably not as cheap as we had hoped. But we put this down to the sizings as we were able to get a doggie bag and make lunch stretch for dinner as well. This was all after Callum’s tendency to order offal nearly stuck again. Apparently ‘beef stew wadding’ is actually the stomach, and lucky for all of us the waitress was good at charades and warned us of this horrendous choice (we saw it later and trust us it looked horrendous).

We are now currently (well as I am writing this at 12.22am) sitting back to enjoy a 12 – 14 hour overnight bus ride down to Puerto Montt where we will jump on a 3 night ferry through the Chilean fjords down to Puerto Natales where we plan to hike through Torres del Paine, Patagonia for 5 or so days... if the weather is kind to us (forecasting rain, wind and snow so lucky we’ve got our ‘waterproof’ skinny legs jeans with us).

Peace out kids.