We arrived pretty early at our backpackers, Hostal de Sammy, and were impressed to be offered breakfast, which included cornflakes, yogurt, juice, toast and fruit despite not staying the previous night.
Fortified, we ventured out. When I get to a city, I really like to get up high to a good lookout point. So our first stop was the metropolitan park (Cerro San Cristobal that had the zoo and the highest lookout.
The zoo was pretty amazing, with a wide selection of animals, especially cats. They had an African caracal cat with the most amazing tips on its ears, a black jaguar with bright green eyes (we could see the pattern where his spots were meant to be - black big cats are a sort of albino-ism in reverse), lions, tigers and a white tigress with three tiger cubs. The mum was amazing: gigantic and scary when she looked straight at us, the primordial part of our brain temporarily removing the fence between us. They had a polar bear, a brown bear, elephants, giraffes, zebras, penguins, flamencos and many beautiful birds, and a sea lion. They also had three native camelids (llamas, vicuna, guanacos) and camels but no native pudu deer, which are tiny and endangered (and what I really wanted to see).The ethics of keeping such animals in zoos is always questionable but the size of the enclosures were reasonable and the animals all looked happy enough.
My favourite moment second to being terrified by the white tigress was watching the young llama taking a drink straight from the tap like it was a teat, rather than drinking from the tub beneath the tap.
After spending many more hours at the zoo than we intended, we climbed up the dusty path to the virgin statue at the top of the hill. The previous Pope held mass there, and it's a pretty amazing spot with the city spreading out in all directions and lines of mountains, dry with palms and cactus.
We had empanadas and the same drink we had in Chiloe, Mote de Huesillo, which was just delicious, and just the thing after a hot climb. Sad to say, but the food is so plain in Chile that this is about as good as it gets.
We then watched a black and white hawk hovering amazingly still on a thermal, and then heard the squawk as he scooped up a rodent. It was incredible to see, with the city spreading out behind him and sky turning orange with the approaching sunset.
We walked back through the crowded bars and restaurants of Bellavista beneath the hill, but kept going to the neighbourhood of Lastarria, where we stopped for another highlight of Chile: pisco sours. These are made with pisco (a brandy made from grapes) egg white, icing sugar, ice and loads of lemon juice. It really is fantastic. Somewhat like a tequila but much better in my opinion.
It is a cute neighbourhood full of trees and pretty buildings. It was just one of several distinctive areas in the city just slightly off the main avenue but with a totally different look and feel.
Back at the hostel, Charles the owner was making peanut chocolate cups for us (he also made pancakes and french toast for breakfast) and we were amazed at the transformation of his dog Sausage after a haircut. At breakfast, she was a scruffy spaniel with more bangs than sense; on our return, she was a smooth, black dog with the same dizzy but lovely disposition. I guess she had had the equivalent of a number 2 shave, and the transformation was incredible. Max, my parents Border collie with a considerable excess of hair, better look out after this revelation that it is possible to give a dog such a make over.
The next day we took in the main sites of town, wandering around the political buildings and the main plaza called the Plaza de Armas. We then went up the Santa Lucia hill, which is the cutest park in the middle of the city with gorgeous fountains and views out on the city.
We explored the tiny London and Paris neighbourhood, so quaint with built-in gutters in the paved streets and pretty buildings.
After freshening up, we went to explore the neighbourhood called Barrio Brazil and went to the sweetest restaurant (called Peperone) that serves up solely empanadas with a variety of fillings. It had red-and-white checkered table cloths, home made coasters made from papermache from glossy magazines and old knick knacks. It was comfy and delicious, like a neighbourhood Italian restaurant with a difference. We also had 'slurpalicious' fruit shakes (strawberry and melon).
The next couple of days we spent in Valparaiso (which I will write about separately) and when we came back to Santiago the only sightseeing we did was to go to the museum of precolumbian cultures. It was bizarre to see artifacts from central American sites that we have visited, such as Monte Alban and Teotihuacan.
There were amazing ceramics and metal work on display but most amazing to me were the tiny mummies from people from Northern Chile who were preparing elaborate mummies thousands of years before the Egyptians. One of the two on display must have been for a very young baby and most of what you could see were the sticks and clay used to reinforce and mask the mummy, but you could still see the tiny fingers on one side. It was really touching. It is funny how emotionally you don't respond to mummies until you see something that shows you they are real, even though you never doubt their authenticity.Hopefully we will find out more about the Chinchorro people when we are up in San Pedro de Atacama, closer to where they lived.
After that we went back to Saint Lucia park and spent a very pleasant lazy Sunday afternoon reading and dozing, with many locals doing the same.
Overall, we found Santiago a pleasant and easy-to-get-around city, but we prefer Buenos Aires for reasons that we struggle to articulate. Santiago has its fair share of beautiful buildings and parks and the the setting of Santiago is spectacular. Chile in general lacks pretension, which I like, but it also seems to lack a certain buzz or energy. We wonder if this lack is our travel fatigue rather than Chile (we have been on the road for over five months now). I guess the test will be how we react to Bolivia and Peru which have wowed many travelers before us.
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