I wanted to start the story with the image of landing in Santiago and the feelings the first breath of air in South America, the continent of my dreams from as early as I read ¨The Children of Captain Grant¨, arrose. However, this story has a life of its own and it is not in my hands to control it. And so... I was sleeping in the plane from Miami when suddently i woke up, opened the window to meet the first rays of light with my still closed eyes and saw the Andes... the undending chain of mountains, some covered with snow, their peaks fading in the horizon, others resembling a desert with no life but some bushes and villages clusttered around small streams of water, tiny rivers, flowing out of nowhere in the orange or light brown landscape. And then we landed. Santiago is hot, sunny, smoggy and very dry. Somehow I remember the interesting conversation with Randy about Chileans willing to take Bolivia and Peru´s water supplies... Even the taxi driver (i didn´t mean to take a taxi...) was complaining about that. But later on he switched to a more interesting topic of Chilean wine, nice guys I should find to marry and pisco or pisco sour, the traditional brandy-like drink with lemon juice, according to Randy, also taken from the Peruvians. But let´s leave politics aside at least for the first day I am here... I should go sight-seeing, like the normal tourists do.



Therefore, I am waiting for Diego at the very cozy hostel in Barrio Bellavista, a neighborhood built by artists, somewhat similar to Uzupis in Lithuania... listening to some relaxing jazz tunes in the presence of Che Guevara and Merilyn Monroe´s photos on the red walls... and thinking which of the books to take... travellers leave a lot of them here... Umberto Eco, Truman Capote, Milan Kundera, Paolo Coelho... there is also a small black dog, sleeping in the shade and running around welcoming every guest. And, sure, there is a Christmas tree, just by the doorway to a blossoming garden. It´s summer in the other end of the world, but still with Santas...



So this is what Diego´s (who is native of Santiago, but normally has little time to explore it) and my day was like in the city of 5 or 6 million inhabitants founded by the Spanish in 1541...



Because of the smog, which stays here forever as the Andes block the winds, the snowy tops of the mountains are not seen in the distance. The ugly modern buildings are from the 1970s. The view from Cerro Santa Lucia, the beginning of Valdivia´s town...



Museo de Bellas Artes...



On the way to Universidad de Chile...



Catedral Metropolitana in the Plaza de Armas, also the first to be populated by the colonists...







Palacio de la Moneda, where president Michele Bachelet resides. Still guarded, but visitors are welcome after Pinochet´s era...







Even the dogs were lazy in 36 degrees Celsius.