Life in Chile: Update 6

It's been a couple of months since my last update about life in Santiago, and there's a fair bit to write about! I've had more free time recently, as I'm finishing my job and starting a new one, so I've been taking advantage of that and going for walks to different places around the city. This month, I was also lucky enough to celebrate my first Fiestas Patrias, which was a lot of fun!

First of all, here are some of the places I've visited recently...

Paseo Metropolitano

This long walkway up in the city's hills is something that Claudio and I had seen many times when visiting Parque Bicentenario, and we'd been saying since 2019 that we should visit it someday. Now we've finally done it! We walked all the way from the Pasarela Pirámide entrance of Parque Metropolitano to the Japanese Garden and back again, which is about 10km in total. It's a nice scenic walk to do, and it has amazing views over the Sanhattan business district of the city.

Parque Inés de Suárez

This park within walking distance of our apartment is one of my favourites, because of its huge avenue of palm trees.

Río Mapocho

One of the most attractive areas in Santiago is this long green space on the banks of the Mapocho river which stretches out for several kilometres. I went for a walk there recently, and saw photogenic sights including Sanhattan and Pagoda Dabotap, a Korean pagoda that was gifted to Chile from South Korea.

On another walk in this area I saw a couple more interesting sights, including the famous lion statues near Los Leones metro station and this cool llama sculpture made out of recycled waste.

Barrio Lo Castillo

Claudio and I recently discovered the neighbourhood of Lo Castillo in the Vitacura comuna of Santiago. Here you can find Plaza República Popular China, which has a statue of Confucius, and Plaza Turquía, which has a statue of a whirling dervish. The neighbourhood is very upmarket, and has a very posh shopping mall called Casacostanera. I thought Parque Arauco mall was posh, but this one is on another level!

Plaza Los Domínicos

This is where I used to get off the metro to take the bus when I was studying at Universidad del Desarrollo back in 2018. So it was a bit of a blast from the past to come back here again!

Iglesia Ortodoxa Rusa de la Santísima Trinidad y El Icono De La Santísima Virgen De Kazan

I really like Russian architecture, so earlier this week I went to see this Russian church with a very long name, which is within walking distance of our apartment in Ñuñoa. It was nice to see something a little bit different from the usual architecture here in Chile. There's also a traditional Greek church elsewhere in Ñuñoa, which I plan to go to see soon.

Parque de la Familia

Today we went to a park that we hadn't visited before, Parque de la Familia in the Quinta Normal comuna of Santiago. I was impressed by how picturesque it is - it has lots of palm trees, purple flowers, a big lagoon, and an island of native fauna. It even has a giant sculpture of a troll, designed by a Danish artist!

Fiestas Patrias!

Now it's time to talk about my first ever Fiestas Patrias here in Chile! This was something I was very excited to experience, as my previous times living and visiting the country had never coincided with the National Day celebrations. We were given a four-day weekend from Friday 16th to Monday 19th September, so we were able to really make the most of it.

On the Friday, we went to two fondas, which are like public parties. During the day, we went to one in Parque Araucano, which had lots of stalls selling food and gifts, and in the evening we went to one in Parque Pucará, where we listened to a concert and danced a little bit of cueca, the Chilean national dance.

We spent the other three days at Claudio's family home in Maipú, celebrating with all the family. The Fiestas Patrias are famous for food and drink, and over the course of the weekend we had pisco sours, terremotos (pineapple sorbet with grenadine and white wine), mote con huesillos (a non-alcoholic drink made from peaches and wheat), empanadas and asado (barbecue). It's a great time of the year to try all of the traditional Chilean cuisine! (Pictured below are the terremoto and mote con huesillos).

It was a really fun few days, and I hope to experience Fiestas Patrias again at some point in the future!

That just about sums up everything we've been up to in Chile recently. Next I'll be writing about Peru, where I'll be heading off to in less than two weeks time, which is very exciting!

After I get back, the weather should finally be getting warm again, and we're looking forward to enjoying the sunshine and spending some weekends at the beach. I really want to make the rest of this year as memorable as possible!

I'll be updating again soon! 😃

England Recap & General Update

My three weeks in England are now coming to an end - the time has really flown by. I'm sad to be leaving, especially as I'm not sure when I'll next be coming back, but I'm also looking forward to being back in Chile and seeing Claudio again.

I've really enjoyed my time here, and have made the most of it by spending lots of time with family and friends, visiting nice places, and seeing lots of lovely cats and other animals in my neighbourhood and beyond!

Travel wise, it has been a good trip! Although we didn't make it to the beach in Wales because of the weather, I had a nice swim with my mum at the open-air pool in Cirencester yesterday. At the beginning of my trip, I had a great day in London visiting the Greenwich Meridian, and we've also spent time in Oxfordshire, Neigh Bridge Lake, Dyrham Park, Ecchinswell in Hampshire, Swindon, and Bath. (You can check out some pictures on my Instagram page.) Aside from that, we went to Jennie's Kitchen café in Ashton Keynes to see the donkey and alpacas there, and Malmesbury Animal Sanctuary to see the emus there - they recently became world-famous for attacking a drunk driver who was fleeing from the scene of his crime!

This weekend, I'll be arriving back in Chile, and I'm thinking of it as a bit of a new start, in a way. I'm going to finish my current job this month, and I'll be starting a new one soon which involves both teaching and interpreting. Interpreting was one of my dream jobs when I first started studying languages, so I'm excited to begin this new challenge!

Reflecting on the first half of my year in Chile, I have to say it's been hugely challenging at times. My job has been the main disappointment, but we also went through a difficult time finding and furnishing our apartment at the start of the year. Overall, I've had to pay out huge amounts of money to set up my life in Chile, and my "salary" has only covered a small percentage of what I've spent.

I do feel that my priorities have changed since the pandemic began; I got this job within six months of graduating university, and at the time I hated the idea of "settling down" and having a "boring" job - I just wanted to use my languages, do something fun and fulfilling, and travel the world. For these reasons, TEFL was perfect for me. But two years passed before I could actually start the job, and now I'm feeling more of a need for stability; I'd like to earn a decent salary, own a property, have a cat, and maybe have a baby in a few years' time. Because of this and other reasons, Claudio and I are hoping to move to somewhere in Europe next year - we're thinking about Vienna or Barcelona as potential places to live, but we'll see what happens!

However, making this move to Chile has still been the most amazing experience. I'm so happy that we now have our lovely apartment to live in, and that Claudio now has a job he enjoys in a global company (with hopefully good opportunities for relocation). We've also had a great time travelling to some incredible places across the north, south and centre of the country, and even visited Peru for the first time.

Which leads me on to some other news: next month I'm going to Machu Picchu! It's one of the places I most want to visit in the whole world, and I'm really really excited! I'll be spending time in Cusco and different places around the Sacred Valley too, so it should be an amazing trip. Unfortunately it's unlikely Claudio will be able to join me, as he has to work, but he encouraged me to book this trip in order to make the most of my year in South America. Of course I will share the trip with him as much as I can through photos, videos and the internet. And I'm hopeful that we'll be able to go somewhere special together at the end of the year.

Next we have the long weekend of Fiestas Patrias to celebrate when I get back, which I'm looking forward to experiencing for the first time. I'll be writing about that, and the other things we've been up to, soon!

Hasta pronto! 😃

London: Part Eight

My last blog before leaving the UK was about London, and it turns out that my first blog since coming back is also going to be about London!

I'm only going to be here for three weeks, so I want to make the most of it. For this reason, I decided to spend a day in London, which is one of my favourite cities in the world.

This time I chose to visit the borough of Greenwich - an area I'd never been to before and which I'd wanted to go to for a long time. And now that the new Elizabeth Line has opened on the tube, it's much quicker to get there. I took the tube from Paddington to Canary Wharf and then took the Docklands Light Railway to Cutty Sark station, where you can find the famous ship of the same name.

I had a quick look in the ship's gift shop, but I didn't buy a ticket for the museum, as time is always a bit tight with an off-peak return ticket to London.

Next to the ship, you have some nice views of the Thames and an old tunnel that goes underneath it.

After having a coffee, I walked to the place I was most excited about visiting: Greenwich Park. Here you can find the Prime Meridian, where the western and eastern hemispheres of the world meet. You have to pay to visit the actual line, which is located in the Royal Observatory (pictured below).

I didn't visit the Royal Observatory this time, as it's expensive, and my time was limited, but perhaps I'll go at some point in the future. However, the whole area of the park is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and there's plenty to see there for free.

The first thing I did was walk up to the viewpoint next to the observatory. Here you can find what I would say is the best view I've seen in London, and probably up there as one of the best views I've seen in the whole world. You can see the beautiful old building of the Old Royal Naval College down below, with the modern skyscrapers of Canary Wharf rising up behind it, and other landmarks such as the Gherkin and the O2 Arena further away. It's just incredible.

I also enjoyed seeing the sights of the rest of the park, including the bandstand, the rose garden and the flower garden - it was amazing to be in this huge space of nature in such a big city.

I was also lucky enough to see not only a tame squirrel, but also a beautiful fox! He stopped on the pathway, about 5 or 10 metres away from me, just long enough for me to get a photo of him. I couldn't believe I'd seen him so close up - it was really an incredible experience!

Greenwich Park definitely turned out to be one of my favourite places I've visited in London. It's a little way off from the usual tourist sites, but it's really worth going over there, if only to see that fantastic view.

My day in London, as usual, felt too short. (Thought at least I didn't have to go to the Chilean Consulate this time!) There are still many more places I want to visit in and around the capital, and there's a big part of me that really wants to live there. What with the cost of living there, I'm not sure how possible that will be, at least for the time being, but maybe someday it will happen... We'll have to wait and see what the future holds!

Read about London: Part One here!

Read about London: Part Two here!

Read about me and Claudio's trip to London here!

Read about London: Part Four here!

Read about London: Part Five here!

Read about London: Part Six here!

Read about London: Part Seven here!

Rapel Lake

In the middle of August, there was a three-day weekend in Chile, so Claudio and I wanted to make the most of it and go to a new place. Our original idea was to stay in a cabaña with a jacuzzi in Termas de Chillán, but it seems everyone else in the country had the same idea, as all of the cabañas in the area were fully booked. (Hopefully we will get to go there some other time!)

In the end we decided to go on a day trip instead. As we'd been to the snowy mountains the previous weekend and to the beach the weekend before that, I had the idea of going to a lake in the countryside, in order to do something completely different. So we chose to go to Rapel Lake, which is actually an artificially-created reservoir located in the O'Higgins region, the next region down from Santiago Metropolitan Region. I had actually never visited anywhere in this region before (I'd only ever passed through by bus) so it was nice to get to know a new area of the country. (Now I've been to 10 of Chile's 16 regions - I hope to explore them all some day!)

The journey took longer than we expected, but after a few hours, the stunning blue lake finally came into view. Unfortunately, actually getting access to it was more difficult than we anticipated, as a lot of the area around it is private. So we went to have lunch at a nearby restaurant and had a look at Google Maps to figure out where to go next.

First we ended up going to a small amphitheatre on the shore of the lake. It was nice to have access to the lake at last, and there were nice views of the mountains and trees from there, but the actual area itself was a bit swampy and unattractive.

Next we went to a beach that was mainly being used for fishing. Again, this area had some nice views, but it was quite run-down looking with lots of rubbish on the ground.

Up to this point, Rapel Lake had been a bit of a disappointing experience. But then as we were driving across the bridge that goes back in the direction of Santiago, we noticed some people offering boat rides. We got out of the car, and found out that we were just in time for the last ride of the day, which was very lucky!

The boat trip really was just the experience we were hoping for. It was amazing to sail around the lake at sunset, seeing the different birdlife (including herons and pelicans) on and around the water, and enjoying the views of the mountains, palm trees, forests and cabañas. There were even some over-water cabañas that reminded me of pictures I've seen of the Maldives - I think they would be a great place to stay in summer.

Overall, our trip to Rapel Lake was a nice little adventure, and we're thinking of going back there in the summer to go swimming.

Right now I'm actually back in England again, and I'll be here for the next three weeks. Although I was really happy to move to Chile, it's definitely nice to be back here for a holiday! I'm hoping to do a bit of travelling during my time here, including trips to London and to the beach in Wales. So watch this space!