Above it all

My delightful weekend was washed away by some Chilean bug I got (I think it was the seafood mush-pastel de jaiba, however there are multiple suspects which include the Chilean national drink: the pisco sour, pictured so artistically and innocently in my previous post.) No importa. Out of commission Saturday. Day of rest on Sunday. Getting my legs back Monday morning, so that by Monday afternoon, I was on top of the world:


And so was Brooks (recovering from Cabin Fever):


To get an idea of where we are, I found a pretty decent map of the city of Santiago here. My apartment is approximately half-way between the intersection of Av. Providencia and Av. Pedro de Valdivia and the intersection of Av. Providencia and Av. Vitacura. The main activity centers of "downtown" are pretty well triangulated by La Moneda, The Museum of Precolombian Art, and The University of Chile (all marked by red squares.) However, it is all very busy and cosmopolitan south of the thin river you can see running through the city (I don't think it is a river so much as sewage water running through a cement half-pipe, it's truly disgusting.) Anyhow, the park with the hill that we are on top of is in the Parque Metropolitano which you can see is the green blob in the more northern part of Santiago. In these pictures we are looking south over Santiago, and, of course, over the Andes behind the city. Note while the Andes are south of the city, they are also west (and a bit north.) They are really everywhere. See google earth.


I know my mountain pictures are just soo boring, but it was very cool feeling a little closer to my mountains. So here is better eye-to-eye (eye-to-knee really, but better than eye-to-ankle):


Up at the top of this hill is the Virgen (i'm not spelling it wrong) [female-catholic-name] that protects Santiago by being lit all night by immense lights. Here she is:

We came up to the top of the hill on a contraption called a funicular some boxes on a very steep rail. It worked. On the way down we took a gondola to the other side of the hill. I feel like I'm doing Switzerland and Santiago a la vez:

On Monday night we went to Las Condes and found a Thai restaurant which was absolutely delicious (so good it needed italics). And then crashed, because I was exhausted. But not too exhausted to go to Valpo and Vina on Tuesday...