Chile - Part One

Hello, everyone, and greetings from Santiago de Chile!  In order to get a new, necessary visa for staying in Bolivia, I had to leave the country and apply for it somewhere else (fingers crossed that it is ready this afternoon!).  It's kind of a pain, but it also gave me a good excuse to visit some friends in Santiago, which has been awesome! Here are some pictures from the first half of the trip....

Cerro San Cristobal

These are pictures from a huge hill in Santiago, topped with a big statue of Mary, a little church, and lots of beautiful flowers.  It's a little like the Cristo in Cochabamba, but with a smaller statue and more of a garden...

...and a view of a much bigger city.  I remember being at the top of the Cristo in Cochabamba and thinking it seemed huge - but that was nothing compared to Santiago!  While I was walking up the path to the Virgen, I kept looking out at the view and being amazed how huge the city was - going on at least three times farther than Cochabamba.  Then I got to the top, where the path circled around, and realized I'd only been seeing one little sliver of Santiago.  The city goes on forever in 360 degrees, right up to the Andes mountains.

This is the inside of the little chapel near the Mary.  It was really pretty.  It was built in the 1930s but seems even older, with gray stone and pretty murals of scenes from Mary's life.

Outside, there was a wall filled with plaques, all saying things like "Thank you Mary, for the miracle that you gave me," or "Thank you, Mary, for saving the life of our daughter."

This is mote con huesilla, a traditional Chilean summer drink sold in all of the snack stands at the top and bottom of the hill.  It's like the sweetest sweet tea ever, poured over fresh, squishy wheat and peaches.  Not something I'd drink every day (I think I got a sugar coma from it), but worth trying and very refreshing after a long, hot hike!

Museo de Arte Precolombiano

The next day, I took a trip to the Museum of Pre-Columbian art.  It was small, but really cool - filled with sculptures, pottery, and clothes from all over Central and South America from thousands of years.  This is me trying to take a selfie with this guy quickly (the guard was giving me a weird look).

These are wooden sculptures from Easter Island, that used to go on top of people's graves.  The people who carved them believed that, when they died, warriors and chiefs would go to roam the volcanoes in the West; everyone else would go across the sea to "eat bitter potatoes for eternity."

 

This is the way the Incans kept records, with elaborate systems of knots in ropes.  No one has quite deciphered it, but it seems like they used them to keep track of things like censuses and taxes - knots in different places meant different numbers of different things. 

American Brands

Chile is a huge, international city, filled with banks, shops, and restaurants from all over the world.  I've been trying to mostly do and see the things that actually are unique to Santiago...but, it's also the first time in 2 months (and the last time for the next 7 months) that I have seen anything American besides the one Burger King in Cochabamba.  So, I may or may not have gone to Pizza Hut with John my second night...

...and I definitely got Taco Bell for lunch my first day!  My one true love, reunited after far too long apart!  Soooooo good!