Picture of an average street in Providencia
Today was our first official day in Santiago, after the very long 9 hour flight it was nice to spend the day getting acclimated to our environment. Coming to Santiago, the first thing that I noticed from the airport were the mountains and the luscious palm trees. Also another surprise were the amount of street trees in the city, the tree canopies covered majority of the street and I’ve never seen that in a big city.
Watermelon and tunas that I bought from a street vendor.
Lunch was great. For lunch we split up in groups and walked around Providencia. We ordered food from Juan Maestro (ordering food is the biggest hassle ?), we got papas fritas y empanadas; later we found a woman selling fruit on the street (I’ll be going back). I also tried a new fruit called tunas, it had a lot of seeds and looked like a kiwi but really was a native fruit to Chile that comes from a cactus.
The statue of the virgin Mary on Cerro San Cristobal
We also visited Cerro San Cristobal, I was not expecting the view. It was amazing, you could see the entire city and the Andes from the cable car. From the bottom of the mountains you really couldn’t see the view of the Virgin Mary at the top but when you walk to top of the hill the statue is complimented by the beautiful landscape places for people to sit. After seeing everything today, I’m excited to see the other locations, we’re going to this week.