Santiago de Chile and around

A short introduction...the last two weeks Ross and I spent in Argentina were great and a lot of fun. From Agrentina(Mendoza) we took a bus to Santiago de Chile which was an 8h bus ride. We drove up to 4200m crossed the border to Chile and drove all the way down again to Santiago..

Santiago is Chiles capital and with a population of 5.5 mio people a really big city. We spent 4 days there which was just enough to see the most common sightseeing places. One of them was a Hill in the middle of the city where all the chillians ride up their bikes on sundays, we hadn´t had bikes, so we took the funicular up to the top...Once you reach the top you´ve got a really nice view over the city. On the very top there is a statue of Maria, where most of the locals walk up to get rid of some coins for their wishes(by donating it to Maria), pray or just search for some shade under the big Maria statue...
But the hill offers way more than just the statue, a really big park for the whole family or a Zoo, which was our choice, to look at or enjoy. We saw some Lamas, Flamingos and Tigers, quite nice, but not comparable with our ZOO in Stuttgart!!!
The second and third day we walked through the city, visited some museums and just relaxed...I really enjoyed that weekend without party, but that doesn´t mean that I wouldn´t be up for it the next weekend(regards to my mom at this point)

We spent the following 3 days in Valparaiso and Vina del Mar. These two cities are just 15 min away from each other, but totally different!!

Valparaiso is on a hill, has got a habour and many many steep streets up to the housing areas on the hills. For really steep bits, it has got 14 little cable cars goin up approx. 60 or 70%...and they are pretty old, which makes it a really nice experience using one of them. It is a pretty poor city with a couple of areas we were supposed to avoid because they seemed to be too dangerous..
Vina del Mar in contrary is nice and clean a has got more money, beaches and beautiful parks...
Both cities were nice and in some way special...the 3 days we spent there they had a bush fire around the corner, which was in the news over and over again. It was pretty big, because as soon as u left the house u had ash all over the place, additional to that every afternoon the sky turned grey, nearly black. That gave us the opportunity to watch a abnormal sunset at the beach...

Next stop was then San Pedro de Atacama which is in the north of Chile and it is so famous because it has got the driest dessert in the world...
It took us 24hours and51 min to get there with the bus...and we hadn´t had a propper lunch or dinner or breakfast the whole journey...what a shitty company....
see u soon
simon