Retouched photos from our stroll down Avenida de Mayo from the Plaza de Mayo to Congresso. Click here to watch the slideshow over at flickr.

Finally got our photos from Santiago up on flickr. Most of them are from either Plaza de Armas or our trip up Cerro de Cristobal, but there are also a few that show the canal that runs through the city as well as the subway (which ran on rubber tires). Full set here, slideshow here.

Finally getting around to all the photos we took on the trip, and I just posted a gallery of the best photos from our trip over the Andes to flickr. This was truly one of the highlights of the trip, as the mountains were astonishing in their scale (to match the terror of the bus ride). Click here to view the slideshow directly on flickr, or check out the individual shots below:

One of many reasons it’s tough to get back into the swing of things — it’s been rough to go from the South American summer back to the North American winter:

After a very long trip, punctuated by another shoddy 767 flight from Miami to SFO where we had no light and no audio for the television in our seats (grrrrrr), we finally made it home! We’re still wrapping our heads around everything we experienced over the past 15 days, and look forward to sharing more in the days to come!

We’re on our layover in Miami’s horrendously designed international airport (thank god we had two and a half hours to make sense of everything), marking, incidentally, the first time I’ve ever set foot in the Sunshine State. Our flight from Santiago was so-so, as the slightly run-down 767 and last gasp of crappy South American prepared food added to our desire to just. be. home. already.

But we’re almost there, and after another 6 hours in the air we’ll finally be back at SFO and just a BART ride away from the kitties. And a sorely needed shower!

We’re just about to check out of our hotel, and while we still have most of the day to do some final shopping here in Santiago as our flight doesn’t leave until 10:20 pm, we probably won’t have an internet connection again. 

Thanks to everyone who has been visiting, and be sure to continue stopping by over the next week or two as we have many more things that we plan to talk about once we’re finally home and have a decent computer to work with: food review, more cultural observations, pics and reviews of the San Telmo antiques market, the tango show we went to, the ferry ride to Uruguay, the busses, and a bit more. Plus, I can’t wait to finally process the thousands of photos I took and finally put up some large versions.

And be sure to think of us around 12:30pm on Friday when we get to see our kitties for the first time in 15 days!

Santiago sits in a massive valley surrounded by mountains, with a couple of big hills in the center. The most famous of these is Cerro San Cristobal which sits right beside the main city center, and one of the two ways to reach the summit is via cable suspended gondola (or “teleferico”). Sounds safe!

But we figured that they must have a pretty high success rate or else they’d shut it down, so this afternoon we walked over to the teleferico station and placed our lives in the hands of Chilean engineers. We were not disappointed:

The gondolas were enclosed so things felt pretty safe, though near the summit we crossed a large gorge where we were probably 300 feet above the ground. A few wind gusts in this area gave me a few heart palpatations:

At the top of the hill is a 70 foot high statue of the Virgin Mary that was donated by the French in the 1920’s. It’s an impressive sight:

After hiking up the final few hundred feet, we were rewarded with a spectacular view of the entire valley. Unfortunately, since the entire plain is rimmed with mountains (we’re still technically in the Andes, I believe) the smog gets trapped LA-style, though today it seemed better than we were led to expect (the guidebooks say that unless you go up there after it rains, don’t expect a good view of the distant mountains). Plus, it was about 90 degrees here today:

Still obviously smoggy, but damn if it wasn’t spectacular regardless!

We had initially planned to take a day trip to Valparaiso on the coast today, but we’re both pretty exhausted at this point so we chose to stay here and enjoy Santiago at a leisurely pace instead. Our guide book goes to great lengths to push the idea that there isn’t really much to see in the city and that REAL travelers will go north or south to take in Chile’s natural treasures (which, I should note, really do look pretty awesome).

That said, we’ve been more than happy with Santiago, and for just a few days it’s giving us plenty to do. This morning we made our way to the historic center of the city, Plaza de Armas. The plaza is dominated at one end by the Catedral Metropolitana, which, aside from perhaps the Museo Chileno de Arte Precolumbia which unfortunately didn’t allow photos, was the highlight of the historic center:

The inside was pretty impressive, one of the largest churches I’ve been inside of:

At the back end was a pretty impressive display:

And the altar as well:

There are a lot more photos where these came from, but they’ll have to wait until I get back to the big computer. All in all, not too shabby!

Here in Chile, the exchange rate is about 670 pesos to the US dollar, which means we can easily lay out tens of thousands on the hotel bed like we’re vegas ballers:

All told this is about $75, so not much to brag about in the end. Plus, the exchange rate makes it a huge headache to calculate the relative worth of things (14,500 pesos is how much in dollars?), and a total nightmare to understand price quotes — I’m pretty good with my Spanish numbers up to 100, but above that it’s really tough to understand when someone verbally communicates a big number. Buying a bottle of water today for 500 pesos, the storekeeper eventually gave up trying to speak the number and just held up five fingers. Worked for me!