Santiago for Beginners

The kids and I made it to Santiago. It couldn’t have started any worse. At check in, our seats were moved to the very back of the plane. Upon landing, we were at the back of the line for immigration. Once through immigration, it took ages to get through customs. There was not a single ATM machine nor a place to purchase a SIM card, so we were without commications and money. We finally reached an Uber on the airport Wifi, but coudn’t hook up with him once we left the airport lobby. All in, we were in the arrivals terminal for 2.5 hours. Without sleep. Once we were in an Uber, the ride didn’t get much better. The shantytown we drove past as we left the airport made it pretty clear that the very thing we were hoping to find in Santiago might be more evasive than we hoped. The visible pollution affirmed this.

We finally arrived our phenomenal (although small) airbnb in the heart of Santiago. Things immediately started looking up. We spent the next four weeks soaking up the good that Santiago offered. Our morning view every day helped.

The kids and I spent a few days getting to know our part of town and how the subway worked. For about $.95USD, the kids and I could travel anywhere in the city. It was tough for Caden because our second day there was his birthday, but without Scott there, we decided to celebrate later. We did have a mini-celebration at Hard Rock Cafe (with a street dog who wondered in and refused to leave).

Once Scott arrived from his work back in the USA, we hit some of the high points of Santiago. This of course included Caden’s birthday celebration.

We did a walking tour and befriended our amazing tour guide Valentina. We learned so much about the amazing history of Santiago, including the darker parts of Pinochet and the beautiful parts of Pablo Neruda. We visited the old city and saw the Central Market as well as La Vega.

We explored the Cerro Cristobal Parque (along with the gondola (teleferico), the funicular, and overall the park. The playgrounds were ubiquitous and reminded me of the tall proper playgrounds in the EU.

While I don’t mountain bike, the trails looked incredible. Even the zoo was one of the best I’ve ever been to (with only the elephant enclosure being awful). Many of the animals were rescued. The best kind of zoo for sure.

We had so many fantastic days exploring the city. We were fortunate to land in a group of homeschoolers who meet on Fridays for Forest School.

We made some good friends there as well. In fact, the kids weren’t in love with Santiago until they went to the Friday school days and met friends. Scott and I felt the same way as we insinuated ourselves into a group of people that we had just met but felt like we had known for years. I’m confident that a few of the parents there will continue to be friends, and we’ll definitely meet up again on the next trip to Chile.

We managed to hit a few other highlights of Santiago, including biking around the General Cemetery.

With over two million people being laid to rest there, it’s easy to imagine how one could spend an entire afternoon there.

The history and beauty of the place however are more than I could ever communicate in this blog.

We squeezed in a two day trip to Valparaiso. This is, best I can tell, the South American version of a European city that met San Francisco somewhere along the way. It was beautiful with all the street art and fun to see, but I didn’t love it as much as others.

I loved some of the paintings we saw on the streets, but the entire family (yes, the kids too) loved the wineries we visited on the way there and the way home. Wineries in South America are wildly different than in the USA. For starters, there are sometimes entirely different activities for the kids to do, but even if there aren’t, most of the ones we saw were perfectly fine with our (older) kids just walking around the vineyards. Some even had playgrounds right in the middle of the vineyard. Indomita was my fave for more than just the wine.

Based on a recommendation, we took a day to check out Maipo Valley.

In addition to the bucket list horse back riding on the mountain (which ended up being horseback riding up the mountain and walking down), we had an amazing day of actually seeing some of the behind the scenes of a small South American town. We learned about the honey bees and the honey.

It was surprising how different the honey is there from the USA. In order to make it pourable, it has to be heated. At room temperature it is crystalline.

We made a quick stop to see how the Chilean version of sangria is made.

Chicha is a very sweet, cheap, quick, easy to make, alcoholic beverage. The locals come by with gallon containers which is filled for about $1.50USD. It wasn’t for me, but evidently the locals love it.

We stopped off at a local’s house as part of the tour and had a traditional Chilean lunch. While the Chileans have outstanding beef (much like the Argentians), most Chilean food is fairly heavy and without a ton of flavor. Meat and potatoes are one of the mainstays for the meals, and lots of corn.

Our favorite food in Chile ended up being the Peruvian food. From the folks we talked to, I think many of the Chileans feel the same way.

Odds and ends of the tour included learning about the various kinds of avacodos. We picked them off the tree and ate them. So delicious.

Keali loved Chile for several reasons, but mainly because Chileans love their stray dogs. The dogs are all friendly and live on the streets. Rabies is a rarity. The people feed them, love them, and even buy them collars and jackets when it gets cold. The dogs love the people right back.

You could spot doggie beds wherever you went. (The dogs also love avocados. If they would find one, they eat all but the skin and pit. Who knew?)

We also made a little time to learn more civics. The kids and I were able to go protest with 150 other (largely expats) people to express our disdain for Trump and his racist comments after the awful events in Charlottesville when Pence came to town. I figure one cannot stop resisting just because the USA is far away. It also served as a place to meet some other new friends with commonalities.

I think it’s safe to see that by the end of the month, we were all really enjoying Chile. We are in love with the winter there and can’t wait to see what summer holds. Our plan includes going back so that we can further explore Patagonia as well as the Atacama desert.

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