Tuesday, 22/07 - CHILE! CHILE! Hablemos de Santiago...

I have decided to tell this story in English so more people I know could understand it. I apologize in advance for the mistakes the text WILL have, but whatever, my intention is also to improve my written English aside from telling what happened in this fantastic land called Chile, a country so diverse and sooo thin! Can you believe it is an incredible 4300 kilometres long and is on average 175 kilometres wide? But that is only the start for many oustanding curiosities about this amazing and so familiar country.

My story with this beautiful and stretchy piece of land has started with my brother Beto, who fell in love with Paula, a Chilean from the capital Santiago, and decided to live there and stay away from the crazy heat of our native Rio de Janeiro - a kind of 40C degrees hell in the summer which he was never used to. Now I have a niece and a nephew who are Chileans, and this is the 5th time I come to this so diverse country. Chile has the spetacular views of the glaciers from the South and the driest desert of the world in the far North - the Atacama Desert, which I will talk about a little later. Wineries, glaciers, sand, sun, snow, modernity, antique, history of one of the world´s most bloodiest dictatorships in the world and nowadays the most developed country of Latin America. This is Chile.

We have arrived in Santiago on a cold night - temperature around 2C degrees. After a long flight which had an unexpected connection in Sao Paulo instead of a simple stop over, we were received my my dearest brother Beto and my sister-in-law Paula, and of course, 4 bottles of amazing wine from Chile. On the next day, we and our not-so-regretted headaches went to the city of Santiago with my 11 yo niece Isabella. We headed to the metro by cab, and when we got there I must say that I was quite impressed with the number of routes and the extent of the metro of Santiago. It covers a huge area of the city and with 5 lines, it is considered the most modern one in South America.

We bought out tickets for 380 pesos each - 270 pesos is equivalent to 1 Brazilian real, so it means around 1,3o reais - and stopped at Baquedano station as our destination was Cerro San Cristoban, one of the highests places of Santiago therefore a good place to have a panoramic view of the city. Inside the park area there is also a Zoo and a cable car which goes along through its extent. When we got there we found out it was a bad idea for a vacations week - a long queu was forming outside the ticket office and aside from that there was a big smog throughout the city. We decided to postpone the visit to the Cerro and, hungry as we were, we headed to the Mercado Central de Santiago, a centenary place with a bunch of fish markets with some kind of seafood I have never seen before. On our way to the Mercado we stopped to check the Patio Bella Vista, a modern and trendy place closed to the Cerro with restaurants, bar, exhibitions and little stores.

Once we arrived at the Mercado we decided to go straight to a restaurant called Donde Augusto, a recommendation from my brother Beto. As an entree we ordered the Machas Parmesana, which is clams gratinated with Parmesan cheese (I still have dreams with it) and the Centrolla Ajillo, pieces of King Crab with garlic... well I think the word amazing is not enough to describe it.

After this marvellous seafood lunch, we went for a walk at the Paseo Ahumada, a street closed for pedestriand in the very heart of Santiago which it seems also has the most expensive square meter for offices in Latin America. It was a freezing afternoon, a record of cold temperature in many days, and there were many sales people trying to sell scarfs, gloves and beenies throughout the way. I bought a pair of gloves for 500 pesos, which is around 1 Australian dollar. Don´t need to say the quality is not the best either...

At night, more Chilean wine to heat us up on one of the coldest nights of the year in Santiago. My great friend Natalia and her husband Carlos came to meet us at my brother´s house and we headed for my 3rd time to Puerto Peru, a restaurant specialized in Peruvian food. The highlight was, as always, the Cebiche, a dish made with mixed fresh, raw seafood of mussels, scallops, fish, calamari and prawns marinated in lime and coriander. Very very yummy. The taste still in my mouth!

After an all day gorg of seafood and wine, we went to bed late and happy, ready to wake up at 3 am to take a flight to the misteries, coldness and vastness of the Atacama Desert...