Santiago

After our Everglades visit we flew 7.5hrs down to Santiago to start our 11 day tour of Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego. We had some nice views of the Andes on the way down and enjoyed our two night stay. We visited most of the sights during our visit and thought it reasonably well organised with a good metro system. Here are some pics....

We used an online guided walk for historic Santiago and thought it quite grand in parts. Most buildings of substance were late 1800's to early 1900's, including the stock exchange and town hall which appear below....

The Royal Palace is in one of the main squares, with two Westies in the gardens!....

The Pre-Columbian Museum was fantastic. It had great architecture being a modern adaptation of one of the oldest buildings in Santiago (established with gift of huge collection owned by an architect/archeologist many years ago). The explanations were interesting and lighting fantastic. I was particularly taken with the funerary figures (quite large) in timber and the amazing, very old hat collection (dating from 1100's)...

The population is about 7 million, living in quite a dense configuration. Compared to LA's 7 million it is clearly more condensed. The Andes provide a great backdrop too...

There are a few nice character precincts. Not too large and not too many, but attractive and vibrant with markets on weekends...

We stayed in a more modern part of the city, linked well to the balance by an efficient metro. Opposite our hotel was a very impressive multi-storey retail centre around a central open square...

On the second day we visited the local zoo, which is free and sited on a pretty serious hillside in the middle of the city. A funicular and two gondolas provide transport across the hills and are very well used. It was a great outing...

Ocelot...

A major waterway is engineered through the city to carry the water from the mountains. The hills in the background are where the gondolas and zoo are located....