Santiago, Chile

Santiago is a huge city with nice areas. I generally found it to feel much busier and wilder than Buenos Aires. Poverty was very visible here. One thing that was nice was you could really cover a lot of ground on foot.

I happened to go to Santiago during the weekend of Lollapalooza, and there was a major marathon as well, so the city was in a festive mood.

One of the best moments of my trip happened not 30 minutes after I arrived to the biggest city in Chile. It was a moment of spontaneous unbridled enthusiasm, a convergence of unmitigated positivity. I arrived at my hostel at about 9:30pm and went out to find something to eat. After I found a cheap hot dog loaded with guacamole (palta) and mayonnaise (a standard fast food, a "completo,") I saw some street performers doing an act I would learn is pretty common, however, this particular performance was not so common. There was a marching band-type group of 10-15 people playing traditional music with horns and drums, and three dancers dressed in traditional garb. When they began playing their traditional music and dancing their traditional dance (really cool music & dance, has a somewhat modern feel to it), there was a crowd of maybe 5-10 people watching. When they finished the first song, chants of "otra, otra, otra (another one, another one...)." The group obliged and kept playing as the audience grew to maybe 20-25 people. After every song, more chants of "otra, otra"; the band kept playing as the crowd kept growing. As more and more audience members joined the crowd the band kept playing. There were so many people that the dancers couldn't perform their part of the act anymore because the street was getting so crowded. By the 6th or 7th song, maybe half an hour in, the entire street was filled with a mob of dancing, jumping, yelling revelers. Picture a major city street spontaneously filled to the brim, a concert hall to go. No cars could pass on this major city thoroughfare as the music raged. The band would have kept playing, but the police showed up to disperse the flashmob crowd, the line of cars that had piled up, blocked by the spectacle, could now pass. 

I got a lunch at the Mercado Central, a place packed to the brim with fish mongers and restaurants.

This is chupe de marisco, a shellfish pure kind of:

I took a little tram up to the top of the highest mountain peak in the city, then walked down:

More pictures of Santiago:

Ridiculous street performer in Santiago:

I tend to like Chilean empanadas better than Argentinian ones, they're usually bigger with tastier fillings, from my experience. This place has 33 empanada different fillings to choose from: