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Exploring Santiago

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09 April 2019

 

Santiago

Chile

 

33°25'34"S
70°38'02"W

835m ASL

 

Google Maps Link

 

   

WELL I'M exploring Santiago City today. The tour I've been on over the past few weeks has finished. I'm actually doing a day tour - there's the group up there. Five of us from our group are part of this group today going through the heart of Santiago. This is the presidential palace. I did a blog from here about nine years ago. They had the capsule they used to rescue the Chilean miners here. Look under the website blogs, then Chile, then you'll see the blog about the capsule. Today it's business as usual, and anyway it's back to the tour.

Okay so we're walking on this tour. Look at this dog over here. It's been following us around for about half the tour. Apparently, this dog follows our group, this particular tour, every single day. It guards us, so every time it finds someone (not on the tour) it doesn't like, it will bark at them to go away. It's a funny little dog, about 14 years old.

We've arrived here at this nice fountain here, a little ship with its waterfalls coming down. It's a very beautiful park here with its trees starting to lose their leaves to autumn. We're approaching the San Cristobal Park which I hope we will be able to get up.

Okay I'm taking the easy way up the hill now using the Santiago Funicular. As you can see it's a long way to go. Then looking in the other direction here, we've got the city. Hopefully we'll get some pretty good views from up here and it's actually looking pretty good. With me in the carriage here we've got Ray and Candice who have been in my last tour, and Ray has taken most of my mug shots and video diaries in recent weeks. But unfortunately, tomorrow we part ways and fly off in different directions. I'll have to find some other photographer. So yeah, we're making progress now. There's a very good view of the city so hopefully I'll get some good pictures. So, I'll see you at the top.

Now I've reached the top of San Cristobal, almost the summit. I'm about to walk up to the very top up there shortly. But here's the view of Santiago City. It's quite smoggy actually. It's always like this. Apparently, the Andes is in behind and I won't be able to see it - probably not at all because I'm heading off very early tomorrow morning. That's the city. I've made it up to the top of this hill. It's something I've always wanted to do, so that's another one kicked off the bucket list so I'm going to be exploring, heading towards the top and see what's around and then from there head back into the city.

Well I'm almost at the summit. There's a large statue here which I'm going into and there it is up there. So almost at the top.

So, inside the statue was a smaller statue of the virgin Mary. It is just a nice quiet little temple. So, from here I'm going to head back down the hill. It's actually quite a climb down to the cable car. Then I'll take the cable car back into the city and keep exploring it.

Well we're heading back down again, lower into the city. We've got another car approaching us. The track actually splits up. It's done quite cleverly here. There's the other car with the counterbalancing weight going past. So that means we are half way down a nice steep mountain that we don't have to climb down to save our legs.

I'm walking back through the city centre back to the hostel. It is very very noisy here after six weeks of travelling through Antarctica and Patagonia. It's quite a culture shock having to come back to such a busy city. But fortunately, I fly out to another remote place tomorrow.

I'm closing off today's diary walking past the presidential palace once more. The hostel's just a couple of blocks away now. I've walked across town without any map. It was actually quite easy. I'm pretty good with navigating cities. Just a couple of blocks to go and then have a very early night because I have a very early start tomorrow. Over and out.

 
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