Life in Chile: Update 2

Well...when writing my previous post, I fully expected the next place I'd be writing about would be Parque Nacional Conguillío. But unfortunately, things didn't work out as planned!

On Friday evening, Claudio and I put on our trekking clothes, finished our last bit of packing, and took the metro over to the meeting point for our trip to Conguillío. Then we showed our mobility passes to the tour guides, and got on the bus, very excited for the weekend ahead. And then 15 minutes later, one of the guides announced that the trip had to be cancelled - there have been some problems with protests involving lorries blocking the road down in the south of Chile, and although an agreement had been reached between the government and the protesters the previous day, it was reversed more or less just as we were getting on the bus. So that was a little disappointing!

But fortunately, we've been able to reschedule our trip for the end of the month, and hopefully, things will work out fine next time, and we'll be able to finally visit this beautiful part of the world.

Even though we didn't get to go on a "big trip" this weekend, I still wanted to post on this blog, as we've been to several new places in and around Santiago in recent weeks, and they're definitely worth a mention here...

Municipalidad de Providencia

Since we moved into our apartment in Ñuñoa one month ago, we've been enjoying exploring our new local area on foot. It turns out there are many interesting historic buildings within walking distance. One of the first ones we went to see was Municipalidad de Providencia, which is kind of like the town hall in Providencia, a neighbouring "comuna" to Ñuñoa. The building has a Spanish/North African type of architecture, and has beautiful, ornate gardens. 

Casa de la Cultura de Ñuñoa

On another of our walks, we discovered Casa de la Cultura de Ñuñoa, a grand old house which has been converted into a cultural centre. It's free to look around, and it even has a really nice old library inside.

Dirección Educación Carabineros and Corporación Cultural de Ñuñoa

A bit further down the road from Casa de la Cultura de Ñuñoa, we found another two beautiful historic buildings next to each other. These two were ones we'd seen from the car, and which we'd wanted to go and visit, so it was nice to get a closer look at them.

The first one is Dirección Educación Carabineros, a police training academy, which has the look of a castle.

The other building is a Arabic-style palace, which houses Corporación Cultural de Ñuñoa. The actual building itself is only open to the public on certain days of the year, but its gardens are always free to look around. We saw some lovely green birds there eating grapes from a vine!

Countryside near Paine

Now that we have all the essentials for our apartment, we've been able to start focusing on the fun part - decorating!

One day last week, I had a long gap between my morning and evening lessons, so we decided to go and pick up a set of nesting tables for our living room area from a seller who lives near the town of Paine, in the countryside of the Santiago Metropolitan Region, close to the border with the O'Higgins region.

We only spent a very short time there, but it was nice to get out of the city and drive through some different scenery for a couple of hours. It's a totally rural place, and so different from the city of Santiago, so I made sure to take a picture when we were there.

Viewpoint by Cerro Manquehue and Cerro Manquehuito

Last weekend we didn't do much, due to a problem with our stove that Claudio and his cousin had to fix. So on Sunday evening, once it was working again, we decided to go on a little drive up to the mountainous east side of the city. We got out of the car on Vía Roja, next to the entrance to the trail to hike Cerro Manquehue (Santiago's highest mountain) and Cerro Manquehuito (which is a little smaller). Here you can find one of the best viewpoints in the entire city - it really gives you a sense of just how big Santiago is.

La Casa de la Gata Horacia

The final place I have to write about in this post is La Casa de la Gata Horacia, one of Santiago's cat cafés! We'd been to El Mundo de Dalí (another cat café) a couple of times before, and I'm sure we'll be back there again soon enough, although sadly, our favourite cat from there recently passed away. But we love meeting new kitties, so La Casa de la Gata Horacia had been on our "to-visit" list for a while. And in order to make up for our cancelled trip to Conguillío, we felt the need to do something a little bit special with our weekend, so this Saturday we finally went there!

The food isn't quite as good as in El Mundo de Dalí, but there are lots of gorgeous cats! We spent a really lovely afternoon playing with them and enjoying their company. My favourite was the fluffy orange and white cat who I took a selfie with, as he was so friendly and affectionate, but I also really liked Horacia herself (the little orange and white cat with the unusual face), and the black cat who jumped on our table! And Claudio made friends with a little grey and white cat, who loved playing with him.

Cat spam incoming!

So, overall, I have to say that life in Chile is pretty good at the moment! Although the country has its problems - more so now than when I was living here four years ago - I'm still really happy to be back here again and to be settled in the apartment with Claudio. There are lots of things to see and experience in this city and beyond, and we're going to try to do as many of them as possible over the coming months.

At the moment, our next stop is still Conguillío, now at the end of this month, but maybe I'll write here again before then. We'll see!