Sunny in Santiago

We're in a bit of a blogging rut at the moment, so are going to try to catch up. It's not really that we've been all that busy, though I guess we could use poor internet access as an excuse. Either way, we're currently in Mendoza, Argentina after earlier today taking a bus up and over the Andes mountains from Santiago. We spent only 3 days in Chile but really enjoyed Santiago. Sure, there isn't anything all that famous or even very interesting to see, but it had just what we were looking for - a clean, safe city with just enough "American" feel to it to shelve any homesickness we were feeling. To be honest I'm not sure how we might have felt about it if we had come straight from the US, but after spending a month in "dangerous" and often dirty cities, it was nice.

One thing we need to get better at when visiting some of these cities is to learn some history, culture...something. In three days exploring the city we unfortunately did very little learning - no museums, art galleries or shows. We did walk around and see some really nice buildings and monuments, but we have no idea what they were or meant. They sure were pretty though.

appears to be some government building

another nice official-looking place

Let's see...one day we walked all around the city but forgot the camera. The next day we walked around the city some more, went to a real cool park on a hill (Charles Darwin had even been there before), but did bring the camera. The next day we went to a giant shopping mall. I know this doesn't sound that great, but we liked it. Santiago is surprsingly clean, modern, and the weather has been much better (read: warmer) than expected. We've covered a large part of the city and have only seen nice parks and plazas, old buildings that have been restored into offices and department stores, lots of pedestrian-only streets, and street vendors that sell delicious sugar-coated almonds instead of whatever weird animal parts they prefer in other areas of South America (ok, there were also vendors selling some strange drink that looked like beer with beans in it). We even felt safe enough to venture out at night! It's probably hard to imagine what it's like to not constantly be worried about getting mugged or pickpocketed. Sure, I am still paranoid of getting pickpocketed, but at least I'm  not so worried about getting mugged.

Steph at the park with some nice fountains

view from park over Santiago

looking back up hill in the park towards old castle that serves as lookout

some "street art" near our hostel

Like I said earlier, we are now in Argentina, but I'll leave the journey here plus Mendoza for a later post. We'll need to do a 'Best of' for Ecuador' and a budget, but again I'm going to procrastinate. Be well.