Exploring Santiago

We spent two full days in Santiago after arriving from Córdoba. We were pleasantly surprised when we got there. Many people during our travels had mentioned that they weren't particularly impressed by the city itself, but we thought that the streets were clean and safe, and both of us were taken by some of the architecture. During our first day there, we visited a beautiful park downtown called Cerro Santa Lucia & Jardín Japonés. The entrance is a neoclassical archway, and a hike up the staircase to its summit presents a lovely view of the city. The park itself has many stairs and gardens, and we could have easily spent more time there sitting and relaxing. We wandered the streets, visited the main square, and watched the many Chileanos engaged in their regular routines. For dinner, we ate at a small hamburger diner and afterwards sampled various locally brewed beers at a small bar and played some chess. The next day, we passed through the Centro Artesanal Santa Lucia (outdoor craft stalls) and I ended up buying another instrument (surprise surprise). This instrument is called a kalimba (African influence) and it is classified as a percussion/rhythm instrument. It makes lovely sounds and is a perfect campanion for my guitar and quena. After the market, we visited an excellent museum called Museo Chileno de Arte Precolombino that chronicles 4500 years of of pre-Colombian civilization throughout the Americas with ceramics, textiles, and Chinchorro mummies (which predate their Egyptian counterparts by thousands of years). Shortly afterwards we walked to the Parque Metropoliano which overlooks the entire city (very impressive, and very smoggy). We took a cable car up the hill and a gondala down (I didn't feel as afraid of heights - must have been the skydiving). We had dinner and went to the bus station to catch our night bus to La Serena.