Santiago - 17-19/1/11

We finally set foot in Santiago at about 6am. With a little trouble finding the address of where we were staying and some help of a taxi driver we were on our way to Sergio's (a family friend) apartment. We hadn't done much research on Santiago and weren't to sure what to expect but we first noticed the pollution was very bad and it was hard to see the Andes surrounding the city. To our luck the apartment we were staying in was right in the city centre. We set off almost immediately to explore the city and were surprised at what we discovered. We found many beautiful buildings including old colonial buildings and a fortress on top of a hill overlooking the city. Our long travels from medellin to Santiago finally hit us and we ended up crashing. We awoke the next day excited to explore more of the beautiful city. We caught a tram up a hill where the Santiago zoo lies. It was very strange going to a zoo after we had been to the amazon, felt really strange seeing animals in cages. What was especially hard was seeing a condor (the largest bird) in a cage where it could barely open it's wings to the full capacity with no room to soar like we had seen them do at colca canyon in Peru. However we were very much amused by a baby baboon. After we looked at all the animals in the zoo we took the tram to the very top of the hill where a large statue of Mary looks down over Santiago city. Very impressive in size along with amazing views, we were very much satisfied and headed back home to prepare for our early flight to Uruguay the next morning.