Almost every traveler that we´ve talked to has said that Santiago is just a big city without much personality. I guess you could say the same thing about Los Angeles, right? If you just went to LA you would think it´s a huge city with tons of traffic and only a few cool areas to visit.
Luckily, Lisa and I met a couple from Santiago in our travels and they invited us to stay at their apartment in Santiago. Cristian and Gloria are awesome! Not only did they tour us around literally every cool part of the city (turns out, everything cool is hidden...or at least difficult to find), but made sure we knew where we were going, were safe, and had an overall great time in their city.
Cristian is a consultant who is currently doing work for a mining company in Chile (the north of Chile is full of all sorts of mines, it´s a huge part of their economy) and Gloria is an ex-teacher who has opened an awesome restaurant (called Fides Cafe) with great healthy food (turns out, it´s difficult to find it in Chile sometimes...). They´re both awesome and we hope they come visit SF sometime so we can show them around too!
Views from the top of the San Cristobal Mountain, notice the light grey building in the shape of an old cell phone!(it´s their national cell phone company..)
LA, no...YES!
Humpty Dumpty in their main plaza?!
The presidential palace, home to the 1970's coup where Pinochet bombed the president.
This is what Santiaguinos do at night...visit the water fountain and buy cotton candy. GOOD TIMES
Our new friends and tour guides, Cristian and Gloria. They're awesome!
A tour of the Concha y Toro winery, the second largest winery in the world (after Gallo in Cali)
The famous "Casillero Del Diablo", you´ve seen the bottles of wine on supermarket shelves at home, it means "Devil´s Cellar"
Legend has it that the founders of Concha y Toro noticed that wine kept disappearing from the aging cellar. They thought something fishy might be going on, and since the locals were very superstitious, they started spreading a rumor that the devil lived in the wine cellar. They made up all sorts of elaborate stories...and it worked! No wine ever went missing after that. Crazy, huh?
On another note, we´re finally done with Chile. It was such a great unexpected experience. As you all know, we came down here with the thought of exploring and staying in Argentina, and only Argentina! Things certainly took a detour to Chile. First of all, it turns out that if you visit all the great places in Patagonia, you have to go between the two countries. I think we´ve crossed the border four times so far. Yep.
A few other Chile takeaways:
*They don´t heat their houses. Yeah, imagine this in the mountains!!
*The south is basically like the old west. They use wood fireplaces to cook, heat their houses, dry their clothes, etc. It´s crazy! If you´re not in the same room as the heater you better have layers.
*Transportation in the south is sketchy at best. We´re talking a lot of dirt roads, buses that come only a few times a week, and to be honest...not a lot of good central tourist information. Luckily we were flexible. Imagine taking a bus that only runs to a town only twice a week, total, not every hour!
*The simple life. Imagine going to the grocery story and having your choice of ONE type of pasta, ONE type of pasta sauce, and ONE type of oil. Certainly makes things easy...and made us realize how many freakin choices we have in California!
*French fries. They LOVE them. With an egg on top.
*Yep = (in spanish) Si-po (not Si), Nope = No-pu (not No). You can even say okey-dokey = Ya-pu! It´s hilarious to hear.
*"Did you get it?", or "Do you understand" = ¿"Cachay"?. We heard it like a million times every day!
*The Chilean people are great, super friendly, open, and have no attitude.
*The country is just a bit rough around the edges in comparison to Argentina. Subtle differences like central plazas that aren´t manicured, roads with no sidewalks, etc. Very interesting.
*Excellent wine. So far we may like it better than Argentinian wine...and cheap!
That´s all we got for now, hasta ahora, adios Chile!!
Scott and Lisa
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