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!

Our Atacama Desert Road Trip

After spending our first day in Iquique exploring the sights of the city, we decided to make the most of the SUV we had rented, and take a trip deeper into the Atacama Desert on our second day. 

In general, people think of the Atacama Desert as being the area around San Pedro de Atacama (where we went in 2019), because that's the part most people visit, but in fact, the desert covers the whole of the far north of Chile, and by some definitions, the entire north of Chile, as well as parts of Peru, Bolivia and Argentina. So there's a lot to discover there!

One of the places in my guidebook that intrigued us the most was the Atacama Giant, or Tarapacá Giant, a prehistoric geoglyph drawn on a mountain. So that's where we decided to go first.

It took us about an hour to get there, first driving up the steep mountain roads of Iquique, and then through the vast, remote desert. When we finally arrived at Cerro Unitas, the mountain where the giant is located, we were disappointed at first - there was a sign giving information about the giant, but we could only see some random lines etched into the earth, rather than an actual figure. For a minute, we thought that perhaps that was all that could be seen of the giant from ground level, and we wondered why it was so different from the picture in the book.

But then we saw another car going round the corner, and we decided to follow it - and there we found the giant! Although it's hard to believe it's really 119 metres long (the largest prehistoric anthropomorphic figure in the world), as perspective makes it look a lot smaller, it was still incredible to see it. The part of the desert where it's located is completely silent - the most silent place I've ever been to - which added to the mysterious atmosphere. It was amazing to think that this figure was created so many thousands of years ago, and it was also amazing to be so many miles from England, but to still be reminded of places closer to home, like the Uffington White Horse and the Cerne Abbas Giant, which are somewhat similar despite being on the other side of the world.

Claudio and I both believed that the giant was a representation of some kind of alien because of its antennae. However, we found out later that it was actually an astronomical calendar, which I suppose is a more logical explanation!

The Atacama Giant is certainly not the most popular attraction in the Atacama Desert (only a couple of other cars arrived during the hour or so we were there) but I would highly recommend visiting it. Seeing it in person felt like a very special experience.

Next we went to visit another historical place, the Humberstone and Santa Laura Saltpeter Works, which is one of only seven UNESCO World Heritage Sites in Chile. This is not such an ancient place as the Atacama Giant, as the mines were operational in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, but it gives you an interesting insight into what life was like for people living in this part of the world at that time.

Humberstone is like a ghost town, that has been preserved exactly how it was in the past. It was really a complete community, with a school, church and theatre, as well as houses. There you can find lots of artefacts, such as toys and tools used by the people who lived there.

Santa Laura is a few minutes away by car and receives much fewer visitors than Humberstone. It also looks far more derelict and abandoned.

Neither site is exactly beautiful, and it's a little hard to see why they have this UNESCO status, whereas places like San Pedro de Atacama, Torres del Paine, and some of the other stunning national parks in Chile do not. But I suppose they are significant because of the role they played in one of the most important industries in the history of the country. In any case, they're definitely worth a visit if you're travelling around the Iquique area.

Afterwards, it was time to return to the city, give back the SUV, and head for the airport. It had been a truly amazing couple of days, filled with even more adventures than we had expected to be able to fit in. I would say it was one of the best trips we've been on together, even better than our trip to San Pedro, because we could relax a bit more and take things at our own pace.

After such a brilliant time away, being back in Santiago has really felt like coming back down to earth with a bump. Although I love this city and am really happy living here, the last two weeks have been filled with bureaucracy and various little stresses.

So it's a good thing we've already got another trip booked - next week we're going to be visiting Parque Nacional Conguillío in the south of Chile. During my recent visits to Chile, we've seen quite a lot of the north of the country, so we feel like exploring some more of the south, which has completely different landscapes. I really loved my previous trip to the south in 2018, and the photos I've seen of Conguillío look incredible, so I'm sure that we're going to have a great time there. I'm looking forward to writing about it shortly!