Wednesday 10.9.14 Part Two - Santiago, Chile

Our flight arrived early into Santiago, but once landed things quickly slowed to Chile time, there was a slow moving line to pay the reciprocity tax and again at customs and even after long waits to get this far, baggage claim was slow, my bag was ready and waiting but Sue had that awful experience of not seeing her case, not seeing her case, thinking about lost luggage and then it turned up. South America has the slowest baggage claim process I have ever experienced.

We negotiated our transfer to the hotel, a lovely driver – Jose – who had a little bit of English and we also arranged our return trip for tomorrow.

We arrived safely at Hotel Santiago about 12.30pm, too early to check in. We were offered complimentary drinks at the bar while we waited for our room to be ready…so we ordered the first of our Pisco Sours (this is a drink that Chile is known for) that went down a treat. Once into the room we had showers and re-organised ourselves. The shower went some way to compensating for no sleep on the plane – despite the comfort, I just couldn’t drop off fully. 

Something was needed to keep us awake for the rest of the day, so we found our way onto the local Hop on/Hop off Red bus tour – Turistik.

Santiago is an amazing city, with a mix of old and new, though many of the old buildings etc have been destroyed throughout it’s history – either burnt in sieges/wars/skirmishes which Chile has had many of, or destroyed by earthquakes. 

There was quite a few 'green walls' this one was very well done.

There is a bit of building happening, and evidently Chile is prospering thanks to mining of copper, silver and some other things I didn’t quite catch.

What’s most captivating to me is the ever present views and glimpses of snow-capped Andes that provide a backdrop to the East of the city. It was a fair challenge however to capture a picture from the bus as it wended its way through the city and the mountain range was visible between buildings, cranes and wires. 

The electrical wiring is something else, such a nightmare of spaghetti, hanging low across busy streets, the bus cleared them by centimetres.