Climbing Cerro San Cristobal

We did only the very first part, the green section below the word "Cultura"

Today we explored Santiago a bit more. It is a huge city, so we are taking it bit-by-bit. Overall, Santiago is very flat and wide, but there are a few big hills, including Cerro San Cristobal. This is a big hill very near the heart of the city, and it is part of a larger nature area comprising a zoo, a statue of the virgin, and a very long hike that we might do in the future.

It has been much colder than we expected here, like in the 60s most of the time, occasionally going into the 70s or 50s. By the time we got started on our hike, it was already late afternoon so it was getting chilly. Fortunately, we had plenty of energy thanks to some delicious deep-fried empanadas that we had.

33 types of empanada fillings! Wow!

This was part of my eat-unhealthy-foods diet

(Oh, in case you are wondering about currency conversions, it is approximately 500 pesos to 1 dollar. This means that 1,000 pesos is a very typical quantity, and is roughly equivalent to $2.00 US. In the picture above, you can see some prices around 1000 pesos. You can call this "un mil pesos" or common slang is "un luca" which means the same thing)

On the hike up, we stopped many times to appreciate the good view, which kept getting better and better as we got higher up. At the very top, we saw the statue of the virgin, and got a great view of the city.

From the top of the Cerro San Cristobal

By the time we got to the bottom again, it was pretty dark. We found a good bike path through a city park and took that most of the way home. You can see the rest of the pictures from today right here: