Part 8: Santiago

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The Torre is quite imposing and totally dominates Santiago's skyline.

Directly across the street from our hotel was Parque Peru.  This park is a small neighborhood green space that also hosts flea markets on the weekends.

From the funicular we hiked to the loading area for the cable car. Kathleen was having fun despite the heat.  We were both pretty tired from hiking around so we found a cab to take us to our hotel and became victims of an interesting scam.  The cab driver had a big stack of counterfeit Chilean bills.  He told me I could not pay with my credit card, so I gave him a 20,000 peso note (about $20).  He took the note but rejected it as being torn (it had come directly from a teller machine).  He returned the torn bill to me after having substituted the fake for the good bill.  I had not inspected the bill prior to giving it to him, so it could have been torn.  But no matter, I gave him another good bill and we went on our way, now with a fake bill.  Kathleen attempted to exchange the bill at the hotel and they told her it was counterfeit.  A good counterfeit, but counterfeit nonetheless.  Lesson - ask before you get into a cab to pay with a card or call Uber which uses a card by default.

We went back to the hotel and sat in the bar and slugged down cocktails and then dinner.  Next day, we decided to hang around the area rather than attempt to see local sights.  We hiked to a local restaurant for Chinese food.  It was interesting, but nothing like what we get in California.  One thing we have noticed is that the Chileans like their food bland.  You will have a salt shaker at your table, but not pepper.  Salsa or anything chili-based is nowhere to be seen.  The menu listed the Kung Pao shrimp as "spicy" but it was far from what we were used to.

We finished lunch and stopped in the Ritz for drinks.  The Ritz has a nice, cozy, old-school bar.

The Ritz was on a large boulevard that had plenty of noisy traffic.  The Santiago Metro was underneath the street unbeknownst to us.

We went back to the W and then later went out for dinner at a nearby restaurant.  After dinner, we returned to our room in time for a sunset shot.  We were a few minutes late.

We went to the roof-top bar on the 21st floor for a long-exposure night shot of Santiago.  The shot above was taken with my Sony A1, Voightlander 35mm manual lens, f/5.6, 5 seconds at ISO 400.  Tomorrow, we would visit the tall structure in the photo above: the Gran Torre Santiago.

Land-line wiring always presents challenges.  But, here in the new area of Santiago (read "high rent district") the wiring was orderly.  Dense, but orderly.   That is a lot of copper hanging up there but if you look closely you will see the steel support cables that provide the mechanical strength for this setup.

This was our last day in Chile and we wanted to do something nice and if possible, unique.  But, we had plenty of challenges.  First, it was New Year's Eve.  Second, it was hot - 32 degrees C, sunny and clear.  Finally, checkout time at the hotel was noon and our flight was not until 0100.  We entertained the fantasy of finding a really nice restaurant for dinner and heading straight to the airport, but discovered that unlike the U.S., most things are closed on New Year's Eve.  I was accepting the likely fact that we would be having a sandwich at the airport when she discovered that a very nice place was open until 2PM and then closing for the balance of the day.  We booked a 1PM seating, got an air conditioned Uber and headed out.  The place was called Calma and it exceeded every hope we had.  Excellent food, awesome (although pricey) wine and great ambiance.  Above is a Chilean Sea Bass fillet (here they just call it "sea bass") and fideo noodles cooked in squid ink with a spiced mayonnaise dressing.  The food was outstanding.

For dessert, they had a fresh baked cheese cake that was perhaps the best we've every had.  And trust me, if you saw my waistline, you would know that I "know cheesecake".

We got another air conditioned Uber to take us to the Gran Torre Santiago (previously known as Gran Torre del Costanera).  The tower is the tallest structure in South America and has a multi-level observation deck at the top.  There was a fee, of course, but it was modest.  The impressive thing, however, was the six-story mall at the base of the building.  It was packed with shoppers looking for items ranging from jewelry to clothes to electronics.  It took us awhile to determine that the lift to the top was on the -1 level, but once we solved that puzzle it was a short ride to the top.  The mirador had thick glass windows and no open areas to get an unobstructed photo of the city, but the glass was pretty clean.  The shot above is looking to the east-northeast and has a view of our hotel, the W, in the foreground.  The W is the building with the cantilevered helicopter pad.  These buildings are in the high-rent district and the streets are wide, green and clean.  This was a welcome contrast to barrio viejo (old town) in the center of Santiago.  Also, look closely on the skyline of the distant peaks and you will see snow, hidden by the smog.  The Andes are tall mountains (the tallest peak is Aconcagua at 22,841 feet about 100 miles northeast of Santiago) and the upper peaks retain snow all year around.

Looking to the east, the size and proximity of the mountains become obvious.  The large, green boulevard visible in the foreground is a linear park that follows a substantial stream that flows year-around from the canyons of the western Andes.

Looking to the southwest (the sun-side), the nose prints on the glass became apparent.  Another large river flows through the city and is surrounded by a linear park.  As you can see in the photo above, Santiago is a big, big city with plenty of tall buildings.

The highest portion of the observation deck was open to the elements and the superstructure of the tower was visible.  Lots of steel.  Notice the pivot joints on the beams - this handles the stresses that will happen when the building is deformed due to wind pressure or a seismic event.

Due to the high volume of people around the Torre, we elected to walk back to the hotel on foot.  This was a suspect choice due to the heat and the full bottle of wine we had at lunch, but we prevailed.  We spent several hours hydrating in the bar and then decided that since nearly everything was closing down, to get an early ride to the Santiago airport.  We holed-up in the business class lounge until midnight and then boarded the 11 hour flight back to the U.S. which arrived at dawn in L.A.  LAX lived up to its reputation: long, slow lines at customs, broken equipment, confusing signage, huge crowds, etc.  We waited in one line for about 30 minutes only to be told that the baggage transfer mechanism was broken and we would have to haul our stuff to another terminal via a sidewalk outside the building.  This, of course, meant another painful trip through the TSA security screening.  Then, we had to wait another 5 hours for our flight to be called.  The only good news in this cluster fuck that is called "air travel in America" is that we had access to the business class lounge for the 5 hour layover.  When our flight to San Diego was finally called, we headed to the gate and we were presented with the scene above: a seething mass of humanity attempting to get from point A to point B on New Year's Day but thwarted by a combination of inefficiency and traffic volume.  Amazingly, and to their credit, our luggage made it through unscathed and showed up on the baggage belt when we deplaned in San Diego.  One more short taxi ride and we were home.

We enjoyed Chile.  It was far more "civilized" than I had expected, but my expectations were based on old information.  The southern part of our travels in Patagonia was very beautiful - dense, lush fields, clear air and plenty of lakes.  Central Chile, particularly the central valley, was very much like Southern California in terms of intensity of farming and vegetation.  Chile is a very long country and we saw perhaps 20% by distance.  It is surely worth of further travels.