First stop - Santa Lucia just a few blocks from the hotel, a hill in the middle of the older, historical part of the city with plazas, terraces, fountains and cannon shots at high noon. Climbing up the hillside covered with palm trees, blooming geraniums and cactus, this can't be winter?
We hike to the top for a view of the city and hazy but exciting view of the snow-capped Andes just waiting for us to come and ski!
Following the little knife-and-fork signs on our map, anticipating dining in a neat-sounding area called Bellavista, we instead get lost and very hungry. We spot a place called "Malecoi Habernero" - hey, anyplace named habernero must be good - so in we go. Turned out to be a Cuban buffet, explained in very fast Spanish(?), unintelligible to us, but we can see chicken, black bean soup, cucumbers, salad, so sat down and ate for our first meal for thousands of pesos - $3,300 pesos to be exact. That's about $6 USD. Including tip. What a deal!
2 blocks from lunch, we find the Bellavista neighborhood with dozens of dining options and, reading the posted menus, we learn that we will need to know more Spanish food terms before ordering dinner!
Parque Forrestal, a long narrow park along the Rio Mapucho, was partially under construction. The Rio Mapucho is more of a concrete levy than a river and, unfortunately, contained more trash than water. Maybe when the snow melts it washes everything clean?
San Cristobal is a small mountain (compared to Santa Lucia), surrounded by the city. At the foot of the mountain in Bellevista, there's a small souvenir market for the zoo and a guy letting you climb up on a llama and have your picture taken. (Regrettably, I didn't do this!) A funicular takes you up to the zoo, then past it, then you take a cable car to top where a huge Virgin Mary Shrine protectively overlooks over the city. Lots of Chileans here with kids, a few pray, light votive candles, post thank you notes to the Virgin.
Continuing on the cable car takes you to the next lower peak, where we ate a somewhat elegant, relaxing lunch at Camino Real con muy bonito de la vista de cordillera. I think that's what our waiter said - he was the guy on staff who spoke English, but he could not translate the menu. Unabashedly, we pulled out the Lonely Planet Latin American phrasebook, our list of Spanish food terms, and attacked the menu with a hunger. The resulting meal included pork tenderloin, pequeño camarones (small shrimp, like Maine shrimp) on lettuce, diced seafood ceviche on lettuce, an excellent half bottle Chilean white, delicious apple strudel and ricotta cheese cake for dessert.
While we ate, the morning fog lifted for a better view of the snow-capped Andes, however not clear enough for a photo.
After lunch we wandered down to the closer of 2 botanical gardens for an expansive view of the modern downtown section of the city with numerous skyscrapers and the Andes backdrop cleared enough for these photos. That's snowtop mountains in the background, not clouds.
Los Launas is an newer area of the city, with upscale shops, cafes, pedestrian shopping areas, restaurants and discos. Every disco-type restaurant in this area had hawkers out front sticking menus in your face and trying to convince you to come drink at their place until dinnertime (which really is 9:00pm, more about that later.) The discos have lavishly designed facades, some rather tacky with outerspace aliens and other such themes. We are leaving early the next morning to get skiing, so skip the nightlife.
On our last day we visited the Central Mercado to eat at the place Placido Domingo eats every time he's in Santiago. The Central Mercado is primarily fish mongers and restaurants all under one roof. A restaurant hawker spotted us entering within seconds all the guys were on us, talking over one another in perfect English, directing us to their particular restaurant.
After a nice lunch, we met one of the hawkers with a walkie-talkie - it's a network - the spotter outside radios the nationality of the incoming tourist and this guy greets you in your language - French, English, Chinese, German or Japanese - his German, French and English sounded perfect to us. He chatted a bit longer with us admiring the fishmonger's displays and identifying the fish types until "Japanese" came screaming over his walkie-talkie.
Other stuff that happened:
- We walked mostly, but took the subway between Los Launas and the San Francisco Plaza. The Santiago subway is easy to navigate, laid out much like Boston's MTA. It's clean, efficient however stops running at 10:30pm!
- The World Cyber Games, a happening at the convention center, with geeks from around the world unloading their computers on the steps. We entered the convention center to see more and, again, helpful people (speaking only Spanish) tried to explain the Cyber Game events and politely answered our questions - at least, we think we got answers?
- The number of dogs on the street - seemingly strays, but healthy-looking. The number of dogs sleeping, just crashed out on the sidewalks next to foodcarts, in the middle of sidewalks everywhere.
- The 'red scarf' wrestling teams in the park. The scarf is tucked in a back pocket of each contestant and the point seems to be to get your opponents scarf without knocking them down. It appears that you can knock them down AFTER you get their scarf.
- Jugglers and unicyclists entertained in the middle of busy traffic. Vendors selling Chilean and other flags and candy bars worked the main intersections in Santiago.
- Familiar sites included MacDonalds (of course), alongside a MacCafé, BankBoston, Kentucky Fried Chicken, Pizza Hut, Dominos Pizza, Starbucks, The Gap, Polo, Bennetton.