Retreat Journal: Santiago Chile

I had an opportunity to travel to South America for the first time.  I took it!

This post is a bit from my Santiago, Chile travel journal: I thoroughly enjoyed my visit to Chile and will plan to return sometime.  Here's why...

I recorded the video within a week of returning home, so I wouldn't forget.  What follows is a list of factoids, insights, impressions, and fun tidbits from my 10 days in Chile.   

• The climate is perfect.  Warm and sunny, not windy, no bugs, and on the dry side (it was fantastic not to have high humidity at 86F).  
• Santiago has a very cosmopolitan vibe, with approx 8 million people, lots of things to do, very well maintained roads and tunnels, a plethora of high rise business and residential buildings (including the tallest in South America, Costanera Center), a stable government and economy, and excellent public transportation.
• They use Celsius for temperature and the metric system for other measurements (like pretty much everyone except the USA).
• People seemed more courteous. As an example, drivers stopped for pedestrians getting ready to cross the street. Every time.  (I know, right!?!)
• Coworkers kiss or shake hands when greeting each other, often.  Possibly every time they see each other. And appear to genuinely care about each other and what's going on in their lives.

Uber is illegal. But VERY popular. Keep it on the D.L. Sit in the front!

• Restaurant waiters won't bring you the check until you ask, because it's seen as rude to rush your meal. 
• A LOT of people don't speak English. But in a group of people, usually someone would be able to speak enough English/Spanglish to muddle through - like maybe one waiter at a restaurant.  My Spanglish got us only so far...  Otherwise, Google Translate is priceless!
• Sanhattan is real. They refer to the financial district in the Las Condes/Vitacura area as "Sanhattan" (Santiago + Manhattan)
• There are uniquely beautiful things made from native copper, lapis lazuli, and alpaca yarn that you might want to buy.  I did!

• You could walk some seriously steep hills or you can take one of the many Funiculars (a type of cable car)  (but there are no cute, smelly donkeys to take you up like in Santorini).
• The Port of Valparaiso is unique! It is also chock full of artisans, every style of architecture you can imagine, painted murals, very steep, narrow, and winding streets, and excellent seafood.
• Easter Island is part of Chile and is also polynesian!  The giant heads are called moai.

Tips are essentially included for service at a standard 10%- but they still ask you if it's OK and are gracious about it.

• Police were present, but I felt more safe than intimidated. They wear drab green uniforms and appear more like military personnel.  The Carabineros are a national police force, and a smaller but decent percentage of them are women.  They drive with their flashing lights on all the time which was a bit odd until someone told us that's just their policy.   
• The wine is Fabulous! I recognized more of the vineyards than I expected, but as we learned later, they export about 90% of their wine, and much of that is to the USA.  We visited Veramonte in the Casablanca valley, and were walking/driving around the area of the city formerly held by Concha Y Toro. Good wine is quite affordable in restaurants, and especially in the grocery store. My favorites are carmenere, and sauvignon blanc.
• Businesses are grouped together.  Stores or offices are often organized together with like businesses, so when you need a dentist, you go to the dentist part of town... Or when you want a phone charger with an adapter plug, you go to the area where the mobile phone accessory vendors are clustered together...
• The food is delicious!  Try some Chilean and Peruvian options.  One of my favorites was Tanta partly since I had the best cocktail there!  I also tried the "national drink" of pisco sour and decided I'm a fan.
• It can be tricky to find an ATM that allows a foreign credit or debit card.  We found Santander's red ATMs in tourist areas to be reliable.  Shopping and eating out didn't pose a problem, but they wanted a pin code for some transactions (or their national identity number, so we presented our passport if needed).
• The exchange rate was roughly 650 chilean pesos to $1USD, but they use the same symbol "$" so I got a kick out of the price tags!  I bought a dress for $95,000 in Chile (which was about 150 US dollars).  So a lunch for $7,000 is a little over ten bucks.  In other words, One Hundred Dollars is about 65,000 CLP  and 10,000 CLP is about 15 Dollars...

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I loved that Santiago felt like a combination of many of the best parts of Mexico and Western Europe. Also an interesting combo of conservative Catholic, high-tech, and progressive culture...  There are many other things I experienced that are not included; I mean come on, how can 10 days in a country be summed up in a blog post? 

Overall, I felt pretty comfortable there, and if not for the long flight requiring a bit of recovery, I would want to visit often!

This post is just for fun...  Feel free to ask me questions about my trip though.  If you're considering a visit to Chile, I can only refer to my own experience which completely missed most of the wild, natural beauty of the rest of the country (and continent), but I say Go For It!

In the spirit of love and moxie,

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