Cerro San Luis

I was pretty nervous heading to Santiago - were the news reports true about the intense rioting happening in the city, or were they exaggerated? I wasn’t sure. We got our first glimpse of the answer right when we got to our hotel in Providencia, one of the nicest neighborhoods in Santiago - the front door was boarded up and we had to use a nearly secret entrance through the garage “for our safety.”

Once inside the hotel, all seemed safe and normal. We headed out to an early dinner across the street, being told it’d be best to be back before dark. Our nice meal on the patio of a Japanese-Peruvian restaurant was cut short when hoard of people started appearing on the nearby street, with flags, masks and bandanas, clearly ready for the night’s protest. We were ushered inside quickly, finished our meal then headed back to the hotel. From our window, we saw giant military trucks drive by covered in spray paint and people throwing rocks at the police cars and heard chanting and banging on pots and pans. Exciting for our first night.

The next day assured it was nice and calm during the day, we headed out for a walk. The streets are beautiful, lined with massive trees. But also you can see the distress - political graffiti on most businesses, nearly all shops on street level had boarded windows, either from being smashed or in precaution. It felt both safe, especially seeing the locals go about their days, but also you could notice the tension.

Then as we walked down the street by the largest skyscraper, our eyes started to water and throats felt on fire. Everyone around us put scarves over their mouths. Tear gas. We’d just been hit by tear gas, well not really hit as much as we felt the effects from last night’s tear gas. Still pretty potent.

After that we were more apprehensive but continued on, happened upon a great cafe for lunch, a swanky mall to buy a couple last minute hiking things, and a nice spot for dinner and drinks. We still managed 8.5 miles of walking around the city and no other issues.

Our last day was the most uneventful with a walk in a large beautiful park, some tasty ice cream to cool off from the hot temps and even our hotel’s front door back open.

Overall thankfully it was a much easier trip to Chile’s capital than I feared. But also more of an experience!Read more