My name's Charlotte and I have a passion for travelling and documenting my adventures through writing and photography. Having lived in several countries and visited 30, I've seen a lot of the world, but still have much more left to explore! Here on this blog, I do full recaps of all my trips - big and small - and write about a range of travel-related topics. Hope you enjoy and find plenty of travel inspiration!
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Tuesday, 27 December 2022
Rio de Janeiro: Day One
Thursday, 1 December 2022
Life in Chile: Update 7
Following several posts about my recent trip to Peru, it's now time to take this blog back to Chile again!
I'm feeling happy at the moment, because it's definitely become summer here over the last couple of weeks, and I'm really enjoying the warmer weather. It's going to be like this until March or April, so we'll have lots of time to make the most of it! My summers growing up in the English countryside were much shorter, and either rainy or uncomfortably humid, so I'm really excited to experience a long, dry summer like this! It will also be the first time Claudio and I will spend the whole summer together, and we've got lots of plans to spend weekends visiting nearby beaches, and to take one or two longer trips as well.
As for what we've been up to over the last couple of months, we've been discovering and rediscovering some more places in and around Santiago, and experiencing new things! Here are some highlights:
My walk through Santiago Centro
At the end of September, I decided to go on a trip down memory lane, by taking a walk around Santiago Centro, which is the comuna where I lived when I was studying in Santiago in 2018. I really liked living there, because it's where most of the city's main sights are, but unfortunately it's become quite run-down over the last few years, and crime has risen there. This is most obvious in Plaza de Armas, where I started my walk. This used to be a nice square and a popular tourist spot, but it's now an area where you have to be extra careful. However, it is still a beautiful place, and it was nice to return there and see the city's cathedral again.
On my way to my next destination, I passed by another one of the city's important churches: San Francisco church, which is also in dire need of a clean-up.
The next place I visited was Barrio París-Londres (Paris-London Neighbourhood), whose name comes from the fact that it has picturesque cobbled streets and European-style architecture. This was actually where I stayed when I arrived in Chile for the very first time, spending the night at Hotel Fundador, before moving into my apartment the following day. I still remember well my feeling of amazement at being on the other side of the world for the first time, and how excited and nervous I was about the semester to come.
Fortunately, the neighbourhood is still as pretty now as it was back then, and I really enjoyed walking around it and feeling a bit like an international student again!
Then I passed by La Moneda presidential palace and the wide avenue of Paseo Bulnes to get to the next stop along my tour: my old apartment!
I stayed in the Livinn Santiago student residence during my semester abroad, and actually lived in two apartments there; I had to move out of the first one due to a plumbing issue, which came about at a very low point for me in the semester. Moving into the second apartment felt like a real new start, and the weeks I spent there turned out to be some of the best of my life. (This was when I met Claudio!)
On my walk, I also stopped to look at this old colonial building, which I had been able to see from my window in the first apartment. (The second apartment overlooked an inner courtyard.)
It was very nice to go for this walk around my old comuna, which brought back lots of memories. I liked living there a lot, but I'm also very happy to now be living in the comuna of Ñuñoa and to be making memories here!
Iglesia Ortodoxa Griega de los Santos Constantino y Elena
After visiting a Russian church recently, I decided to go and see this Greek church, which is appropriately located on Avenida Grecia, next to Estadio Nacional. The church is small but very pretty, and it would almost give you the feeling of being on a Greek island, if it wasn't for the busy traffic and overhead cables!
MIM (Museo Interactivo Mirador)
One weekend I decided to surprise Claudio with tickets to Museo Interactivo Mirador, better known as MIM, which is Santiago's biggest science museum. The surprise didn't work, as I wasn't able to buy the tickets online before going, but we still had a great time there! We'd both enjoyed going to the science museum in Quinta Normal back in 2019, so we'd meaning to go to this one for a while, and it was a really entertaining afternoon out. Some highlights included lying on a bed of nails (it doesn't hurt like you'd expect it to!), experiencing a recreation of the 2010 earthquake, and looking at various optical illusions.
Hiking in Parque Natural Quebrada de Macul
One of Claudio's colleagues told him about this park on the eastern edge of the city, where you can hike to a waterfall and then swim in the pool created by said waterfall. We had the impression that it was a hidden gem of Santiago that very few people knew about. We also had the impression from online reviews that the hike was so easy, that it was more of a walk.
So we decided to get up early one Sunday morning at the end of October to have a nice day in nature. However, once we got there, we realised that all our preconceived ideas about how this hike was going to be, were completely wrong!
Firstly, it was randomly one of the last colder days of the year (even though the day before and the day after were both hot), so swimming was out of the question. Secondly, we arrived at the entrance to the sight of a completely full car park and a huge queue to get in - apparently this place is very popular, even though neither of us had ever heard of it before. And thirdly, we realised that the hike is definitely a hike and not a walk! Okay, so it's definitely not as challenging as other hikes I've done (Cerro Manquehue and Machu Picchu come to mind), but it is a long, uphill and at times, steep route to get to the waterfall.
On the positive side, the hike is very scenic and takes you past lots of little waterfalls and native trees and plants. It was extremely misty and quite cold on the way up, which really made us feel like we were in the south of Chile.