New Continents - Part 2

 

Our first leg of the tour was to Chile and the capital city of that country, Santiago. The flight across Argentina and the Andes mountains from Buenos Aires took just over two hours and the whole thing was done with the seat belt sign illuminated! Apparently this is in the top handful of most "turbulent" flights in the world, although we were lucky and didn't really experience a single serious bump! Anyway, it was a crystal clear day and the views of the mountains were spectacular, I was fortunate enough to have a window seat, it was slightly disconcerting as some of those peaks seemed to be level to or even above the altitude of the aircraft! (see below)

In this shot you can see the famous "Aconcagua" peak (in the background) it's the highest mountain on the American continent and entire Western and Southern Hemispheres, at 7000 metres it's a beast of a hill! Around three people a year die climbing this mountain and I heard from someone who has climbed it that when she did it there was a dead body visible on the trail up to the summit, serious stuff! 

Luckily our passage of the Andes was uneventful and we landed in Santiago in the early afternoon, greeted by blue skies and bright sunshine. After picking up our luggage we made our way to our hotel in the Lastarria district, not the posh part of town, but one with a good reputation for bars and restaurants being close to the main University. Check in done we unpacked our bags and headed straight out to explore our new neighbourhood!

Santiago is in a bowl, surrounded by mountains, on the edge of our district is a park with an old Spanish fort on a hill. We climbed the hill and this is the view from the top (above), the taller of the peaks were behind me but even in Summer there's still plenty of snow on top of them.

Of course I couldn't come this far across the world without seeking out some local brews and we lucked out finding a rather unlikely named bar called "El Honesto Mike" just around the corner from our accommodation. We were slightly skeptical at first but this little bar turned out to be a diamond in the rough, the beers were varied and spectacularly good, as tasty as you could find in any European city! I opted for a pint of "Micro Dosis" a session pale made by the "Hasta Pronto Brewing Co" in Santiago with American hops, all the tropical fruits and depth of flavour you could want and delightfully chilled in the searing Southern Hemisphere heat. 

Our first day in the city had been a success, flights on time, no lost bags a clean and tidy hotel and great local craft beer! After a tasty (and incredibly cheap) meal in a local restaurant and a couple of beers we turned in for an early night, we had a busy schedule the next day and an early start!