We are in Santiago because our Antarctic cruise company wants us here! It's our first visit to Chile, and Santiago is a convenient destination because Qantas flies here directly from Sydney.
Chile imposes an extremely annoying Reciprocity Fee on arrival. We paid it on entry in US$ but it amounts to about AUD300 for the two of us. Why is it annoying? Because only Mexicans and Australians are required to pay the fee and we imagine that it is required because the visa for Chileans visiting Australia must cost about that much. It is after all a reciprocity fee! No country wanting to encourage tourism, including Australia, should charge anything more than a very nominal amount for a visa.
According to the guff we have read, Santiago was founded in 1541 and is the capital of what must be the longest & skinniest country in the world. Its population is over 6 million (the whole country, 18 million), but it doesn't give the impression of being such a big city. High rise is modest, most of it in the Las Condes region. There may be huge surburban areas that we're unaware of and the density is probably greater than we realise. The skyline in all directions (except to the west coast) is mountainous, but even in our short time here, the nearby Andes are often obsured by summer smog or soggy clouds. The sight of them, snowcapped, in clear winter air must be spectacular.
The Spanish conquered the Amerindian natives of Chile in the 1500. Apparently, the peace-loving northern and central Incas were easily defeated, but the southern Mapuche tribes offered much more resistance. Because of the extra distance, the massive immigration which later transformed Argentina and Paraguay was much less on the west coast. That said, recent census reveal that 52% of Chileans are European, 44% Amerindian and 4% African ethnicity. Chile declared its independence from Spain in 1818.
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The 30km taxi ride in from the airport was along excellent freeways, and included, we think, the 1.8km San Cristobal tunnel, a major engineering achievement, which opened in 2009. Some of the route followed the fast flowing and very brown Rio Mapocho, and we saw lots of shanty towns which no doubt account for much of the city's population, and remind us that poverty is a common blight in South America.
Santiago is a bustling city. The historical old city, which centres on the Plaza de Armas, literally buzzes with pedestrian crowds of office workers and other locals. There are tourists, but not many, and most are Speakers, by the sound of it. Cars are mostly excluded from this area, enhancing its attractiveness immensely. Magnificent buildings, dateing from the 1800's, are everywhere, and those in bad repair are getting expensive looking makeovers. Weekends, and Sundays in particular, are a different proposition altogether. All the street shops are closed, the crowds largely disappear, and the whole ambience begins to resemble a rundown area of Detroit. Museums are open though (they close Mondays) to give the residents some culture to absorb. Also open exceptionally, and very crowded, are the large ultra-modern shopping complexes, like Costanera, near our hotel. These new developments must be giving street shops a bad time.
Our French must be better than we realise, because it no problem for us to read the language and converse in basic restaurant language in French speaking countries. Here in this Spanish speaking country, it is very different - signage is often hard to decipher, and we cannot understand or make ourselves understood with non-English speakers. We acknowledge that this is our problem, not theirs, but the difference is quite notable to us. There are not that many tourists here, and many locals are clearly as monolingual as we are. They try hard, and are very friendly and helpful, but it's sometimes quite a battle.
We bought BIP cards (similar to Opal cards) and loaded them with Pesos so we could use Santiago's subway and buses. Give our non-existent Spanish, this process was mainly hit and miss and involved hastily handwritten notes and demonstrations on a calculator. We probably spent more Peso than we needed, but in the end, we concluded a transaction with the patient Transantiago lady. And the BIPs work fine, as does the clean, efficient and crowded Santiago underground metro system which we made good use of.
We became prey but not victims of thieves on our very first full day in Santiago. Someone squirts a vile bird-dropping substitute over you from behind, points it out, then offers to assist you with clean water. They then rob you when you let go your belongings. We know about this scam and were on to it straight away - we told them (a couple working in tandem) to go away, firmly and quickly. They were persistent and kept coming back to point out the mess on both of us, but we only survived unscathed by rejecting their advances and not ever putting anything down. We had wet-ones to do our own clean up, and the damage does not appear to be permanent. Other than that incident, we feel quite safe in Santiago. A heavy security presence is evident everywhere we went.
We spent all our free time wandering around the streets of Santiago, using the metro to get between major villages and back to our hotel. The photos show what we saw. One large highlight which we stumbled upon because it didn't even feature in our pre-reading for Santiago was Santa Lucia Hill, and the fortifications and Castillo Hidalgo on top. This rocky outcrop, an old volcano apparently, commands fabulous views of the city and is involved in much of its history.
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Our hotel in Santiago is the Hilton Doubletree in Av. Vitacura in Las Condes. It's ultra-modern and is still having some teething problems, but our room is spacious and very comfortable. It's within 2 minutes walk of the huge Costanera shopping mall, and 5 minutes from the Tobalaba metro station.
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Santiago is in an earthquake zone, and indeed we felt a brief but strong tremor whilst on the 13th floor of the Hilton. The hotel assures us that the new building is constructed to the highest standards, and indeed, while some guests were disturbed, no alarms were set off.
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