In early March we went over to Chile from Mendoza our third trip across the border into Chile (the others at Barriloche and Torres del Paine, not counting the border crossing on our way to Ushuaia). The border is less than three hours away from Mendoza and you can get to a beach in five hours or so. This is the Chile side of the road from Mendoza to Santiago which is a lot steeper (some pictures of the Argentine side are in with the pictures from Aconcagua).
None of the guide books says anything nice about Santiago (mainly because it has a pollution problem similar to Los Angeles California where prevailing winds trap smog between the ocean and the mountains around town) but we really liked it. This is Santa Lucia , which use to be a monastery but is now a public park in the middle of town.
We also went to a really cool museum of pre-Columbian art and history (Museo Chileno De Arte Precolumbino) in Santiago, one of the coolest museums I have ever seen. The quality of the artifacts was really impressive, from all over South America, some dating back 10,000 yrs and hundreds of different ingenious cultures. It also really made the case that the Incans and Mayans were truly advanced civilizations before the Spanish showed up (they pointed out that 8 million indigenous people died in the mines in Potosi digging for gold and silver for the Spanish crown). The museum had a hat collection with hats as old as 3000 yrs in a really cool exhibit explaining the historical and cultural significance of head gear for the Incan people and their predecessors and neighboring groups. We were not allowed to take pictures but here is something from the internet. http://www.precolombino.cl/es/expo/temporales/2006/gorros/www/index.php
Another hat.
This is from Santa Lucia also. In the background you can faintly see Aconcagua in the background through the haze (but you have to look hard!).
The city is actually very modern and clean, with a large number of colonial buildings in very good, restored shape. The subway is new, the bus system efficient, everything we saw was pretty nice, not at all what they said in the guide books.
Chile is famous for its seafood, this is in the central market. Argentineans don't eat as much seafood so we really chowed down on the seafood while we were there.
This is also in the central market where you can buy fresh anything (including the fish above) and there are very good fish restaurants (we had lunch there). The building is a protected heritage site.
This is from our hotel in Valparaiso on the coast, about two hours from Santiago. We did not care for Valparaiso but it is an interesting place, built on the hills at the ocean as the port for Santiago with a large amount of South American history associated with it. The roads here go every which way up and down the hillsides and are impossible to navigate, even with a map.
This is in La Serena, on the coast, seven hours north of Santiago. It also has a lot of restored colonial buildings, this one serving as a middle school (which had just let out). Miriam is trying to blend in, which was hard, the people here are much more indigenous than in Argentina. The culture is very different in spite of a parallel history and being close neighbors.
More of La Serena. It was really a neat little town.
We actually stayed in a hotel on the beach, about two miles from the center of town. There were miles of very nice beaches here. It was the end of the season so we got low rates but there was enough afternoon sun to sit and enjoy the waves.
In addition to the usual commercialization the beaches here did have one feature that was different than most of the beaches we are familiar with at home, a feature that gave us pause...
