Chile Hot

The old and new of Santiago, Chile

From struggling to escape the desert due to too much water, to arriving in the capital city of Santiago and having no water, Chile has not exactly gone according to plan so far.

Thankfully Santiago has been far from chilly since our unplanned visit so the blue skies and constant warm sunshine quickly lifted our dark mood when initially everything was closed and we couldn’t even have a shower.

The city itself is very modern, clean and European-like with many grand old buildings, museums, parks, street cafés and even an underground but unfortunately it’s not where we want to be or should have been.  It’s very expensive which was the sole reason for us not wanting to spend much time here and we refused to spend our last week in South America eating crisps, bananas and pizza. They laughed at us at the fish market when we said we couldn’t afford the £50 they were asking for snow crab.

However, we have made the most of the free museums, in particular the Memories and Human Rights Museum which is a fitting memorial to the thousands of civilians who lost there lives under the brutal General Pinochet dictatorship which incredibly only ended in 1990.

Our intended route out of Chile remained blocked so there was no option but to call upon emergency funds and invest in a return flight to Mendoza in Argentina where we originally planned to visit. It’s going to be steak and wine at least once before we leave.