South America ’23

Today started with a big city walk. By city walk, I just mean the central area, because Santiago is massive area wide.

The best location to begin was at Santa Lucía Hill, this iconic hill was here the Spanish conquistador founded Santiago. Talking this from the indigenous of this region unfortunately, who also cherished this hill for their rituals. It is a panoramic view of the city as you walk around it.

Next we moved to the Plaza de Armas (Which most Latin American cities have) which is a large square surrounded by government buildings and cathedral. A very lavish cathedral at that. We did have a little laugh at the arrangement for confessional here in Santiago. The cathedrals have multiple confessional areas around the walls facing inwards to the church. But the priest and person are literally completely visible and within earshot of anyone walking past. There is even a row of chairs just in front for those waiting.

We went around to a museum for the fascinating eras of Pre-Columbian history. We have been listening to a podcast on the History of Latin America for the past 6 months, and we've found it so interesting. But the pottery, woodwork and fabric of this era is so unique and unusual.

We walked though a lot of markets, everywhere people are selling things on the streets. One of the things we saw was the size of the hot dogs (Completos) and Hamburgers they have here. Every store has these in the window and they were gigantic, and the one labelled as gigantic was more epic. I asked if it was for one person, and my mouth dropped to hear yes. Lunch is the most important part of the day.

This weekend is Chile Independence Day. They take that very seriously here, so everything was covered in the flags of Chile. Buildings, people, cars and pets. Czytaj więcej