Santiago
My next stop after Pucón was Santiago. I had heard a lot about Santiago from people who were heading south, and it seemed to me that people either love it or hate it. I would probably fall in the “hate it” camp, although really that’s too strong a word. Santiago felt very comfortable to me, and I realized that it seemed just like a big American city…say, Dallas. Lots of new buildings with tons of glass, kind of sprawly, wide streets, everyone seemed to have a car, and fast food and malls everywhere. It seemed like the opposite of Buenos Aires, which is older and more classical, with taller buildings, more narrow streets, everyone seems to use the bus or taxis, and with more one of a kind businesses.
Santiago Fish Market
Still, there’s nothing negative to say about Santiago. It’s perfectly pleasant. I had the misfortune of spending most of my time there with a toothache and searching for a dentist. I spent all day Friday on the bus coming from Pucón, then Saturday couldn’t find any dentist open including the emergency dental clinics. Finally on Sunday I went to an ER, and was promptly seen by a maxilo-facial surgeon, who took and x-ray and said “yep, it’s infected.” He drilled a little hole in the back, flushed it out with some saline, plugged the hole with cotton, and told me to come back on Tuesday for a root canal. If you’re curious, the cash cost of an hour with a surgeon in the ER plus an x-ray at a private hospital in Chile was about $130, and a root canal is $65 (for the first of 3 necessary appointments). A few Chileans I mentioned this episode to gave me funny looks and asked why I didn’t go to the free hospital. Both Chile and Argentina have free state operated hospitals that are by most accounts decent…I just went to the place I saw walking down the street.
In the end I didn’t do much in Santiago, so all of this combined has probably affected my view a bit. In the end I went to the central market, which is a huge and very cool seafood market with little seafood restaurants packed into every corner of the building. Around the edges are huge piles of slimy fish and squid for restaurants to buy from. I stopped by the President’s mansion, which is big although kind of boring looking. And I went to Cerro San Cristobal, which is a tall hill that has nice views of the city and lots of stairs and terraces to hang out in.
Entrance to Cerro San Cristobal
One nice thing about Santiago is that if you love it you can just stick around, but as soon as you get bored you can get a bus at any time to Valparaiso and Viña del Mar since they’re just an hour away.
