SANTIAGO, CHILE

After a quiet overnight stop, we woke to, reassuringly, find ourselves still in Valparaiso.

Fortunately, we were down for escorting the ‘Doing Your Own Thing’ tour to Santiago, an eight-hour tour featuring a two-hour coach trip there, a two-hour coach trip back, and four hours of free time in Santiago, the capital city of Chile.

Escorts were instructed to meet in the terminal at 7:30am, which meant setting the alarm extremely early, in order to catch some breakfast before setting off.

Unfortunately, the bistro doesn’t normally open for breakfast until 7:30am, with what they call an ‘early bird’ from 7am until 7:30am. Today, though, they started the early-bird at 6:30am, with full breakfast due to start at 7am. This still wasn’t early enough for all the passengers that had risen early, and who were booked on the Santiago tours, a few impatient passengers who didn’t understand the concept of what the ‘early bird’ breakfast is supposed to be (pastries and croissants) simply stormed the serving area for bacon, cereals and whatever they could get their hands on, as the poor old staff were still trying to prepare and put food out.

We left the ship at about 7:15am, in time to catch a shuttle bus to the terminal. UNfortunately, we and a growing queue of passengers, all of whom were in exactly the same boat, were stood left standing for almost 15 minutes for a shuttle to turn up (it seems no-one had thought to tell the port staff and shuttle bus provider that there would be tours starting at that time in the morning).

Eventually, we were on our way, Tracey in charge of one coach and me on another. In total, there were four coaches of about 40 passengers each, heading to Santiago.

The two hour drive passed without incident. We had a brief bathroom stop at a little services area, and were dropped off in the central square in downtown Santiago at about 10am.

My coach arrived first, with Tracey’s coach arriving just ten minutes or so after that. Once our passengers had all been dispatched, with instructions to meet back at the square at 2pm, Tracey and I went off for a walk. First, we took a look inside the cathedral, situated along one side of the square, then we headed towards the river.

Santiago is a city like any other. It was early enough for the streets not to be too busy initially, but it was also Saturday, so we didn’t expect the same sort of rush-hour as in the middle of a working week. In fact; our walk took us through some quiet, slightly run-down-looking areas, to a large park, which was getting quite busy when we arrived, with locals.

Parque Metropolitano features a large hill with a statue on its summit, and a funicular railway to carry folks up there. In retrospect, taking the railway might have been a good idea. Instead, we chose to walk up the footpath, which was busy with locals, walking or running, some by themselves but many in family groups.

We didn’t quite make it to the top, though. We were about halfway up the hill when we decided to turn around and head back down. As it happened, it didn’t take us long to get back down to street level, but we were a little worried about running out of time had we pressed on, and escorts in particular have a responsibility not to be late.

Back at the base of the hill, in the area close to the funicular railway, there was a real weekend atmosphere. This part of the city, known as Bellavista is full of bars and nightclubs, and as we walked back towards the centre of town again, there were many street vendors and folks enjoying themselves in the good weather.

We walked back through another smaller park, located by the side of the river which runs through the centre of Santiago. The river isn’t much to look at; it’s fast running, but looks muddy and not very pleasant at all. The park, on the other hand, was very pleasant to walk through (providing you didn’t look too closely at the homeless people living in cardboard boxes and old tents dotted here and there).

At the end of the park, we came to the National Art Museum. Since entrance was free, we decided to take a look inside. Large bags are not permitted inside the museum; rucksacks and the like are to be placed inside a locker at the cost of a small Chilean coin, which we didn’t have. The security guard took pity on us and loaned us the use of a coin out of his pocket, so that we were able to enter… there really are still some good people in the world (and Buenos Aires could take a leaf out of Santiago’s book, and make their museums free entrance…).

The exhibits were a bit of a mixed bag. Some of it we liked, while some of it was the worse kind of strangeness and slapdash rubbish, masquerading as modern art.

We picked up snack food from a supermarket and arrived back at the central plaza in good time, ready for the two-hour return drive back to Valparaiso.

We quite liked Santiago. It’s big and sprawling, as you would expect a capital city to be, but the bits we saw of it were attractive enough, and the people seemed perfectly friendly.