My experience in Chile was everything I had hoped and more. I can say I definitely received the culture immersion that I had desired and included everything from language to food. This was especially apparent when I walked into a restaurant for lunch the first day and nobody there spoke any English. I will say, the Chilean people were very patient with us “Gringos” and our broken Spanish. Also, I noticed a large part of Chilean cuisine was either very meat or fish heavy, this was fine by me as I am relatively open-minded when it comes to food.
The one thing that really stuck out to me about Santiago and Valparaiso was their proper use of all the land available to them. Santiago was the most expansive city I have ever seen, I don’t think I was able to see all the way to the end of it even at the top of the Costanera Tower. And in Valparaiso, with the steep landscape, they were able to build up to use all the space they could in a very dense landscape.
Even with all this dense urban environment, the idea of a natural landscape was never lost on the Chilean people. This is an idea that I think needs to make its way to America more, it seemed like everywhere I was in Santiago, I was only a short walk from the nearest park. There were numerous parks all throughout the city, some with wide open areas, and some with much more condensed space. The important thing was that there was a space for everyone’s wants and needs in these parks.