We arrived in Santiago and spent 3 days exploring the city. The first day we explored the downtown area, wandering through shopping streets and plazas, and taking the typical tourist photos of the churches and theatres. We enjoyed the bustle and smells of the traditional fruit and veg market, and bought some dried fruits and strawberries for $1 per kilo. The smaller central market has now become more touristy, but still sells fresh fish at great prices. Inside are many restaurants, so we had lunch here – a reinata (bream) ceviche for Creed and a fried merluza (hake) for me. My battered fish was quite reminiscent of an English chip shop meal, except it came with a free pisco sour. After some relaxation in a shaded spot in the park, we headed towards Santa Lucia Hill with waterfalls, terraces and a viewpoint at the summit.

The following day we visited the Museum of Memory and Human Rights, which covered the military coup and subsequent dictatorship in Chile which I previously knew nothing about. The descriptions were all in Spanish, so it was a good opportunity for me to practice my reading skills, but my speaking is still not up to scratch. Creed is an excellent translator having studied here 14 years ago. After a Peruvian lunch (they have a better cuisine than the Chileans) we wandered through Barrio Yungay, the most historic district, and then artsy Barrio Brasil. In the evening we headed to lively Barrio Italia with the intention of going to a jazz club, but the bar we found for dinner on the way ended up having the best selection of cheap drinks out of every bar on the street, so when the Jazz turned out to be elevator music style, we just went back to where we came from.

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On our last full day in Santiago we took the funicular railway up San Cristobal Hill, which is more of a mountain than a hill, with a large statue of the Virgin Mary at the top. The views from the top were epic, overlooking the entire city and the mountains beyond, snowcapped even with 30 degree heat in the city. We purposefully saved this mountain for Monday so that we could descend on the other side and end up close to Decathlon, where we needed to get some camp gear for further along in our trip. But it just so happens that the cable car which goes down the other side of the hill to the funicular is closed on Mondays. So we hiked across the top of the hill instead, sweating in the midday sun, missing the correct path and scrambling down through a wooded area, then following the winding road down and being overtaken by the free airconditioned bus that was replacing the cable car route. After months on inactivity it was good for us, and at the bottom of the hill we continued our walk along the river through a sculpture park, to arrive at the tallest building in Latin America. We skipped the viewing platform at the top having just seen the same view from the mountain, and instead shopped in the mall at the bottom. Decathlon ended up being more expensive in Chile than in the US or UK, so we didn’t buy anything, and could very easily have done the trip the previous day when the shop was closed and the cable car was open. Never mind!

On Tuesday we headed to Valparaiso, the coastal town built on a series of hills. We had the most incredible hotel in an old building on Bella Vista hill, and the owner kindly upgraded us to the balcony room with a view of the whole city and the sea beyond. It was perfect.

On Wednesday we walked the colourful hills. Each has its own small funicular, which, instead of being a tourist attraction like in Santiago, is a form of public transport used by the locals who live on top of the hills. In classic Creed and Ros fashion, we chose to explore the hills on the one day of the month that all of the funiculars were closed for maintenance. It wasn’t too much of a hardship though, because all of the streets are completely covered in bright coloured murals and beautiful works of street art, and you’d miss some of the best without walking up the hills. We spent a few hours wandering through Allegre and Concepcion hills, which were previously inhabited by English and German settlers. Now the area is fairly touristy, with many walking tours, cafes and jewellery shops. I wanted to buy some artwork but I never know how to carry such things around for the next unknown number of months before I can get it home. I took about a thousand photos to make up for it.

After a siesta in our beautiful room, we headed back out and further up our own hill towards the house of the Chilean poet Pablo Naruda, which we only glimpsed from behind some other houses. We then completely changed our plans and got on a bus to Vina del Mar, the town further up the coast where Creed lived during his study abroad here. We had a drink at the pub he remembered, which was due to have live music so we hung around. The live music was in fact a very weird 10 person band of mismatched instruments, and the first song was a flute solo with sound effects, and so we decided to move on. At the next place we had a famous drink from the area, the terremoto, meaning earthquake, which consisted of white wine, grenadine and pineapple ice-cream, and was delicious but too sweet to have more than one of. We took the last bus back to Valparaiso and continued our night at another bar with music, this time a fantastic piano and guitar duo playing typical Spanish styles. Unfortunately we only caught the last song of their set, and up next was a drag lip-syncer. At the last bar we tried, the live music was again more our style, and again we managed to watch only one song before they said their goodbyes. They did at least do an encore, and then it was karaoke, so we called it a night at that point.

Our final day involved a very lazy morning. We had lunch at a hidden restaurant that resembled a grandma’s living room with trinkets everywhere, that had only one thing on the menu: chorillanas, a pile of fries with shredded meat, caramelised onions and egg on top. A musical duo came into the restaurant while we were eating and absolutely raised the roof with a couple of songs that all the locals knew all the words to. They got such a great reception that they stayed for another few songs, and then played the Zorba the Greek song while dancing around collecting tips. It was our most successful live music experience of the week. The evening was Halloween, which is apparently a big thing in Chile, with a parade of rollerbladers, a plaza filled with costumed kids and bouncy slides, and families trick or treating the cars on the streets rather than the houses.

Thanks for following along on my crazy adventures!

 Ros ♥

If you’re interested in how I got here, or where I went next, check out the rest of the story!