Grouchily I slunk out for a coffee! Late night stargazing playing havoc with our inner time clocks, fortunately we had til 10am for our ride to Calama airport, so plenty of time to pack. Everything was grubby, covered in red sandy dust!
Driving along the highway passing empty desert, mountains and salt flats, not much else except surprisingly, solar and wind farms. (I don’t know why I was surprised as everyday was sunny and the wind picked up every afternoon!) The Chilean buildings and housing seemed marginally better than Peru and Bolivia as well.
Amusingly Latam airlines and staff were completely decked out for Halloween; Chile celebrating US style. An easy plane ride, following the Andes range, a quick transfer and we were in the centre of downtown Santiago, the capital, not far from the Mapocho river; a very much depleted fast flowing stream, mid river bed. Sitting in the hotel courtyard sipping tea, we planned our sight-seeing day tomorrow. Having enough of pre-Incan civilisation, we decided on the cable car and views in the morning with a visit to the main square and historic sights tomorrow afternoon.
Being back at 500m above sea level from 3160m scrambling our systems, we ate dinner early in the vegetarian restaurant opposite; I chose better than Simon luckily as I was hungry.
Strolling along the river we wandered through the sculpture park; strange we for it to be spring! Sadly no trick or treaters either.
Views on way to Calama airport
(Atacama desert; wind farm; wind & solar farm; Calama outskirts)
Plane journey to Santiago
(Airlines Halloween; our plane landing at Calama airport; Atacama desert; map showing salt lake at Uyuni down Chile to Santiago; Andes mountains; Near Santiago airport)
Views from airport transfer to hotel
(Near airport before a massive road tunnel into the centre of Santiago)
Mapocho river & sculpture park
(Courtyard garden; river Mapocho with Sky Costanera; sculpture park; sculpture of Pachamama; river Mapocho)
We stayed at Le Rêve, Providencia area, Santiago, Chile.
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