After a quick shower, we rushed to meet up with the free walking tour, where we spent the next four hours transversing across the city and learning where all the museums, bohemian neighborhoods, parks, and good places to eat were. We passed by Santa Lucia hill, the small mountain that Pedro de Valdivia, the founder of Santiago, slammed a Chilean flag into in 1540.
Once the tour ended we found out that nothing, including restaurants, would be open passed 5pm or on New Year's day, so we walked some more to find a supermarket and attempted to get edible food to cook for the next 2 days. Along the way, we found the fashion district; vendors selling clothing and shoes, urging people to come into their stores. It was chaotic and heavily populated, but fun to be around.
Our cooking attempt didn't seem too bad given that we only had salt as a spice. It might have been the bottle of wine I drank while Robby cooked, but we at least had real food and it didn't cost and arm and a leg (we found out fancy hotel restaurants were actually open). At 10pm we ventured outside. Everyone told us to watch the Santiago New Year's fireworks from Entel Tower. It was about 1 km from our airbnb, so we didn't think we'd have an issue getting there, but apparently many of the streets were cordoned off, separating us from the tower, or even managing to cross the large intersection to get to the tower's side of the street. After walking a mile out of our way to see if there was a cut through, and not finding one, we just walked back towards our place and ended up near this tall spiral tower that many people were all starring at.
The tower displayed a video screen with a live band singing on it while music blasted through the night. We found a small spot in a crowd of 100's and waited for midnight. More and more people arrived, trapping us in a sea of silly string spraying, glitter bombing locals. It was claustrophobic, but exciting. Everyone's joyous energy radiated throughout the crowd and inspired happiness. At midnight, we found out why all the streets were cordoned off, the spiral tower was the epicenter of the fireworks with baby fireworks firing from the surrounding buildings. We'd somehow stumbled upon one of the best locations to bring in the New Year's in Santiago.
The morning of the 1st, the zombie apocalypse hit. We were up and out by 10am (nothing in this town is open before 10, so no use getting up early) and we steeped into emptiness. The 1000's of people that we'd encountered the night before were all nursing their hangovers in their homes. Metal gates locked the shops as we walked to the fish market. It's said that the day after New Year's, everyone that is still awake, goes to the fish market for a fish stew to nurse their hangovers. Hence, we knew that the market would be open. It was, but by the time we got there, we actually weren't hungry enough for the stew. We just wandered through the fish stalls (there weren't many), and avoided the numerous restaurants asking us to sit down.
20 minutes later we were back outside, wondering what to do. Robby had read that people go to the Parque Forestal on New Year's day to sit and relax, so we headed there. Along the way we found women selling a ceviche and spaghetti mix out of shopping carts along the street. Naturally we had to buy some and it was tasty. We also happened upon a man selling a desert bar that tasted like bread pudding mixed with mochi. Street food really is the best.
We didn't last too long sitting in the park; it was beautiful, but we were restless. We came to Santiago to explore, so that's what we were going to do. We noticed a giant mountain with a very large statue of the Virgin Mary on it. As we walked the empty streets towards the Statue of Immaculate Conception on San Cristobal Hill, we admired the vast amounts of street art. Santiago has some of the best graffiti I've seen; similar to the Wynward Walls in Miami - stylized art pieces sprayed onto any building's exterior. In the sub-city of Bellavista, where we were, it seemed to be common place.
The entrance to the Statue was inside the Santiago Metropolitan Park. We arrived at the entrance to the funicular - a little train car that is pulled up a practically vertical hill by a large metal cable. We had to wait in the hot sun for over an hour to get to the ticket window because apparently numerous other people had the same idea for the day. If no museums or shops are open, why not see a statue on a hill in a large park?
The funicular was a little creepy, if the cable snapped, bye bye Robby and Em. It was old and made in a 2nd world country. Going up was enough for me- we were definitely walking back down the hill. The cool thing was that this park had the zoo in it, something that we always like to visit in other countries, so we now had our next journey planned out. The funicular ended at the base of the Mary Statue, next to a closed church and a lookout ledge that showed the vast city. Santiago stretched for miles in all directions, much larger than I had thought it to be. Luckily everything that we really wanted to see - mostly the museums, seemed to be centered around our airbnb and the three neighborhoods we kept wandering through.
After seeing the massive statue, we attempted to hike down the mountain to the zoo, but were given confusing directions from the locals on how to get there. Instead of finding the zoo, we got to discovered that this park is bigger than Griffith Park in LA or 2-3x bigger than Central Park in NY (or at least it felt that way). We ended up walking down the the switchbacks, that many people seemed to be hiking or biking up (ugh, exhausting), for about 3 miles in the blazing sun. We ended up next to a couple gardens and on the complete opposite side of the zoo. Good thing there were maps everywhere because we found that we were only another 1.7 kms from a subway station. Yep, I was done walking. No zoo for us.
On the way to the subway, we ended up walking through the fancy part of Santiago - large houses with trimmed hedges, long driveways, and clean streets. Still not many people about and definitely a lot of closed storefronts, but a cute area. We found a large street with numerous buses zipping by, so after asking, one said it went near the Plaza de Armas (only 6 blocks from our airbnb), so we got on, and held on. Santiago bus drivers might all have been demolition derby drivers in a past life. They speed through the streets and then slam on the brakes 2 feet from the bus stop. We saw a double-extension bus race through a yellow light going at least 45mph into the 90 degree turn it was making. Like being on a very cheap roller coaster.
Luckily the bus we were on drove passed the main street near our airbnb, putting us within 3 blocks of it. A shower, more home cooked food, and a Netflix movie finished out our New Year's Day.
The 31st was Saturday, the 1st was a Sunday, and now it was Monday. The one thing about every country in the world, but America, is that museums are not open on Mondays. So began another day of nothing being open. At the Presidential Palace, we did get to watch the changing of the guards - a ridiculously long show of military people marching up the street and into the courtyard to yell at each other while their band played pretty music. Robby and I were hoping for some gun twirling or a marching routine, but it was kind of a snore-fest. We lasted 20 minutes, after waiting over an hour for the thing to start because they changed the times on us.
Under the Palace was a compilation space that housed little shops and an exhibition on Picasso. With nothing better to do, we went to admire the famous artist, who surprisingly, does have pieces that aren't all swiggles that normal people can't interpret.
The previous day I had googled things to do and had booked a Wine tour where we got to bike through a pretty vineyard. They spouted that the vineyard was very easy to get to on public transit and it turned out to be true. But it was over an hour on the subway with a "20 minute walk from the station". That 20 minute walk was really a 40 minutes walk on a dirt path, 3 inches from speeding cars in 95 degree heat. I really, really wanted wine by the time the vineyard came within view.
We entered the front gates, seeing a tree-lined path leading to a lush fields of grapes. I was so excited, then the biking guide stepped out from behind the little guard shack and crushed my happiness. Since the vineyard was usually closed on Sundays, but it being New Year's Day on Sunday and the vineyard being closed for that, the vineyard decided to give it's employees an extra day off - Monday, the current day. Our guide was very apologetic, but there was nothing he could do. My wine was within and at the same time, out of reach. We'd just wasted 2 hours getting there and now were going to waste more time going back to town. I guess since nothing else in town was open, we didn't miss out on much, but it still sucked.
Back on the bus and train we went. We figured that since nothing was open we might as well visit the dead - they're always receptive to visitors. Santiago has one of the biggest and oldest cemeteries in the Country. It's divided into two sections - the rich and the poor. The rich section is for famous, rich, or political people and has large mausoleums erected in their honor housing the person and their family's remains. The poor section consists of rows upon rows of "dead people apartment complexes" (what Robby and I were calling them); multi-story blocks with rows of little squares big enough to house a single coffin, stacked on top of each other and to the sides of each other. Both areas were well maintained by various workers inside, so the cemetery held a peaceful quiet with in a garden like setting.
January 2nd, our final day in Santiago, was spent rushing from museum to museum. All the public museums in the city are free and as it was a Tuesday, and apparently the end of the long holiday weekend, things were open. We learned a bit on the history of the city at the National Museum before our moods turned somber after walking all three stories of the Museum of Human Rights. This museum tells about the atrocities that Chile committed against its citizens - mainly during the 70's when the military tried to make the country a Dictatorship. Over 40,000 people were detained, tortured, disappeared, and/or killed. To this day, a lot of family's still don't know what happened to their loved ones and probably never will. The museum was erected to remind people that human rights were violated and to not forget the tragedy that befell the nation.
Next, we rushed through the Natural History Museum because everything was written in Spanish and a stuffed tiger is a stuffed tiger. The Bella Arts Museum showed us that Chile is definitely not America as most of the exhibits were of naked men painted in compromising positions. They were created by an artist that was making a point on how society is altered by tv and commercialism. Pretty oils, but very racy. It was funny to see a mom walk in with her two young kids, look around, and quickly push them out.
We ended the night eating terrible veggie burgers and walking 2 kms home. A long, tiring, but eventful day.
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