Life in Chile: Update 5

It's been over a month since I wrote my last update, so now feels like a good time to write a little bit about the things Claudio and I have been up to lately!

It's now the middle of winter here in Santiago, and the mountains surrounding the city are completely covered in snow, which looks incredible. Of course, everyone here wants to spend a day or weekend in the snow, and there have been big traffic jams up the mountain roads in recent weeks, so we haven't been yet. But we're hoping to go within the next couple of weeks to enjoy some time in the snowy scenery, and perhaps even try a bit of snowboarding!

In the meantime, we've been exploring some other places in and around the city. Here are a few highlights!

Cerro Calán

This park up in the hills of the Las Condes comuna is free to enter, and is our new favourite place for going running, though it's also good for dog walking and walking in general. It has a 2 kilometre circuit with amazing views of the mountains and the city, which make the workout much more entertaining!

Plaza Tailandia

We recently visited Plaza Tailandia for the first time. It's a little garden located in Parque Araucano and designed in a Thai style, with a pagoda and statues of elephants. Although it was a lot smaller than we were expecting, it was still a pretty place to look around.

Los Trapenses

One rainy weekend, we went for a coffee in the Los Trapenses neighbourhood of Lo Barnechea comuna. Its's a really attractive place with great views of the mountains.

Chicureo

We recently came back to Laguna Piedra Roja in the town of Chicureo, a short distance away from Santiago, over two years since our last visit in March 2020. It was nice to have a coffee and a walk around the lagoon, and also interesting to see how different it looks in winter compared to in summer.

A Little Bit of Snow!

On Saturday we went looking for some snow on the road that goes between Santiago and Chicureo, because Claudio had seen some videos on Instagram of that particular area covered in snow. Unfortunately, by the time we got there, there was more mud than snow! But at least we had some great views from up there.

El Mundo de Dalí

Yesterday we were back at our favourite cat café, El Mundo de Dalí. As always, the food was delicious and the cats were adorable! One cute little kitty sat on my lap for a little bit, and then on Claudio's lap for the rest of our visit!

Parque Bicentenario

After our trip to the cat café, we went to a place neither of us had been before: Bosque Santiago. This was a place that really surprised both of us, and I'll actually be writing an entire post about it, because we were so impressed by it.

Then we finished off our weekend with a little walk through Parque Bicentenario, which is one of our favourite parks in the city. It's always nice to see the flamingos and swans there, as well as some amazing views of the city and the mountains.

In other news, I'm happy to say that I've booked tickets to go back to the UK next month! Unfortunately, Claudio can't come with me because of his work, but it will still be great to spend a few weeks seeing family and friends. And hopefully I'll also do a bit of travelling while I'm there!

Exploring the Arica Province

On the last day of our stay in Arica, Claudio and I had planned to drive to Parque Nacional Lauca, which is a little under three hours away. However, the car we'd rented the day before had a slight problem, and we didn't quite trust it to cover that sort of distance, especially on desert roads in the middle of nowhere. So we decided to have a more relaxing day exploring some sights closer to the city.

The first place we went to visit was San Miguel de Azapa Archaeological Museum, which is located in a small village a short distance away from Arica. Here you can see many of the Chinchorro mummies, which are even older than the Egyptian mummies! They were made by the Chinchorro people, who lived in Arica and the surrounding area thousands of years ago, and some of them date back to around 5000 BC. They have remained intact because of the desert climate, and it's really incredible to see them in the museum today and to think that they were created so long ago. 

The museum also had lots of information and artefacts from the era of the Inca, another group that was present in the area. That was also really interesting to learn about, and it made me even more eager to visit Machu Picchu than I was already. I think this part of the world (the north of Chile, Peru, and Bolivia) is really fascinating, with history and cultures stretching back for so many years.

It was also nice to look around the garden of the museum, which was a little green oasis in the middle of the desert. It even had some petroglyphs, which made up for us not seeing the ones in Miculla two days earlier!

Next we drove back in the direction of Arica to see some more history: the Cerro Sombrero geoglyphs. Initially, we parked at an area with signposts which seemed to indicate that this was the place to see the geoglyphs. There was a pathway going up a very steep hill, which we followed up to the top. Unfortunately, the geoglyphs were nowhere to be seen from up there! However, there was a viewpoint with amazing views over the desert and mountains.

There was also a huge bird of prey, circling around and waiting for his or her chance to grab some leftover food people had dumped up there. We had seen several of these birds at Morro de Arica the previous day, but not as close as this one. I thought they might be cóndors, but a Google image search showed me I was wrong about that. In any case, it was amazing to see such a big bird so close up!

It turns out that in order to see the Cerro Sombrero geoglyphs, you just have to dump the car on the side of the road and quickly look at them from there. Unfortunately, there are fences ruining the view a bit, but it's still amazing to see these shapes of llamas, humans and other creatures that were drawn onto the hill in ancient times.

Although the Atacama Giant was more impressive to see, partly because it was in the middle of nowhere with nothing but desert for miles around, I would definitely still recommend paying a quick visit to Cerro Sombrero if you're visiting Arica.

After lunch in Arica, we visited the final destination of our trip: Anzota caves. These caves are located 12 kilometres south of the city, and are one of the places where the Chinchorro people lived. Entry is free, and you can do a short trekking there and even go inside some of the caves. Supposedly, lots of wildlife lives there, including sea lions, but we didn't see any of them. However, we did see some big lizards, which can be spotted in the following photos!

The caves are an incredible place of natural beauty, with amazing rock formations and stunning views of the Pacific Ocean. Exploring them was a great way to finish our trip!

To sum up, we had a really wonderful few days celebrating our anniversary in the north of Chile and south of Peru. During our time away, we discovered beaches, cities, beautiful nature, and plenty of history and culture. This is a special part of the world, and we would definitely go back in the future.

Next up on this blog, I'll probably be writing about some new places we've been to in and around Santiago, but I'm hopeful we'll go on some bigger travels again soon. We have a few ideas, so watch this space...