Day 327
Santiago, Chile
Yesterday we had a pretty lazy day just looking around Santiago malls and shops. The news of Heath Ledger´s death made us reflect. How can something like that happen?
We strolled for hours in the Plaza de Armas..then found a local place for lunch that had a buffet. It seemed it served only local workers. They accepted us. We ate a 3 course meal of ministrone, ensaladas, bife and arroz (rice) for UAD$5 each. We´ve found we only need two meals a day..breakfast and one other meal.
We also went to the fantastic pre colombian museum and spent a bit of time looking at all the Mexican exhibitions there. Chile really does have some great museums!
Last night, we had a night of CSI, House and Law and Order shows! Having CNN has dampened our nightlife! But we´re lapping it up seeing we´ll be camping in NZ and won´t have anything but our tent and our books to keep us company. And ourselves of course!!!
We decided after a day of rest and recreation...we needed a goal! And knowing it was the last day the Central Santiago we decided to go and see the most important monument here!
So! We dragged ourselves out of bed this morning, ate our wonderfully healthy fruit breakfast and headed out to achieve our goal. To see the Cerro Santa Lucia!
And what is that you may ask!
It´s a parque (park) which we were told was absolutely beautiful, and unique and a place we had to go to while we were here in Santiago because it´s an important place to go when you´re in this city!
So..we headed off to central Santiago..and got to the park, saw a statue, and thought, well this is not very interesting!!! Until we got closer....and saw the old stone steps leading up to the peak of the hill we were standing on.
It wound it´s way up and up. There were hundreds of steps..and lots of little open buildings that had a brilliant view of the city. It stood 800m high.
Apparently, it was at the foot of this hill that the Spanish Conquistador Pedro de Valdivia is said to have founded this city of Santiago, on February 12th, 1541.
There is a huge statue of him at the bottom of the park with an inscription.
As we walked up the steps..we saw the wonderful views and after walking further and further up, we arrived at another flat area that has a statue of the mapuche Caupolican who faught the Conquistadors and the Fuente Magica. It´s in the middle of a a large and beautiful fountain.
It was here..the evangelist spanish guy started preaching. Which disrupted our peace..and sent us higher on the hill..to observe the really old church there..ahd have another look at the spectacular views.
There were lovers canoodling on the old broken down park benches, tourists asking us to take photos with their camera´s (and vice versa) and kids playing.
We then reached the peak of the mount and we could see all over the smoggy city! To as far as the massive Virgin Mary Statue that stood in the distance, looking brilliant.
We stayed a while, checked out the craft market below..and the lapislazuli, the beautiful blue chilean stone..before heading to Paseo Huerfanos Street in the mall of central Santiago square to find a restaurant. All the walking made us hungry!
We found a great little place where we could watch life go by..called, Japanco Resobar. We ordered a tapas and a camener vino tinto (Chile´s unique brew).
And some of the life...was quite startling. From where i sat, facing a bin in the street, i could see hands flying in and out of that bin...at the rate of 1 every 15 minutes. A paper was discarded, retrieved, read on the bench nearby and discared again.
The same newspaper serviced many people! People took out used plastic bags, looked inside, discarded the scraps, kept the bags..walked off. Other´s pulled the scraps of food from the bin, and ate them! The moral? Don´t have a bin next to a street bench. And: Don´t sit near a bin when eating lunch! As morbidly fascinating as it was..it reminded me of the respectful life we led. And the desperation in the lives of others.
Homeless people, beggars, street vendors, especially shoe shiners, were in abundance. Or was it because we were sitting there observing the life that it looked as if there were more on this particular day? We had kids asking for our food, old women asking for our pan (bread) and our water.
We stopped at a supermacado and bought some dried fruit and nuts and stocked up on water. We looked at the shelves of chilean wine.................and tried to resist.
That reminds me, yesterday we went to a street in central Santiago that had hundreds of optician shops!!! Greg finally got his lens fixed (they got damaged when the furry little animal in iguazu clawed and bit his glasses and then stole our lunch from the bag they were in!) The shops were all lined up..and we had to go into each shop to ask who fixes, and they kept replying in Spanish, and saying it was further up the street. The only thing was..there were hundreds of optical shops up the street!
It´s really funny when we go shopping here in South America...everyone talks to us in Spanish and we say si, gracias, adios and all is hunky dory. The scary thing is, we actually UNDERSTAND what they are saying!!!! But, we can´t reply back in more than a monosyllabic way!
At 6pm and after we got tempted by some more beautiuful lapislazuli, in the jewellery shops in the mall, we traipsed down the backstreets to Paris Londres, and home, to rest before the restaurants re opened at 9pm!
Are we getting tired??
Yep...
Especially today. Not sure why...but i think we´re both feeling a bit flat.
We didn´t end up going out for dinner. We the almonds and sultana´s instead! And drank, not wine, but minerale com gas!
Such goody two shoes.
And now..here i am, 1am, and blogging! And emailing. It´s great when my friends and family are actually online at the same time!!!
But now, time for bed. We´re going for a 200km round trip to the beautiful chilean coast tomorrow!
xxx
PS We bought ANOTHER shaving cream for Greg. The last one didn´t have a nozzle! Geepers...that´s one thing about South America..you can not trust what you buy, you MUST check! The moisturizer place the other day was the same! I bought a moisterizer as well as the snail cream hehe but..when i got home..the box that i thought was moisterizer contained a tonic!!! So now..i`m spraying tonic on my body instead of putting moisturizer on it!! Oh well......
