Ok, so I’m now back in Texas and have been for about
4 days but….. I’ve been putting off writing this last entry. Anyway, I’m jumping on it now! The last week of my journey was spent in
Chile. Chile covers a large chunk of the
South American west coast. As I said in
the previous entry, I stayed with my friend Jean Paul, JP. We are friends from William Carey
University. We spent most of our time in
Santiago, the capital of Chile. Santiago
is a huge city that I thought was really nice.
Granted we stayed in nicer areas of the city, but from what I saw the
city is really clean and very modern overall.
There are nice parks and walking trails in the parks, police/security in
many places that were really helpful, and a TON of malls. I only note that there were a ton of malls
because I felt that they were just everywhere
J. There is also a lot of construction going on
throughout the city. New buildings are
going up all over the place. As a matter
of fact, the tallest building in South America is under construction in
Santiago right now. The building is
already HUGE, but it still has a ways to go before it is done. I enjoyed spending time in the city and
actually need more time to see it all.
The city is walled in on one side by mountains and about an hour the
opposite direction is the beach. The
mountains around the city were beautiful and many were snowcapped. There are also a few mountains (more like big
hills honestly) in the city. One of them
is called Cerro San Cristobal where on top is a large statue of the Virgin
Mary. It is a beautiful place that is
supposed to be quite, as it is a place of prayer, with some really great views
of the city. We also went to Viña del
Mar and Valparaiso which are two really nice side-by-side beach towns. One day we also went up one of the snowcapped
mountains where there is a skiing area. JP
did some snowboarding, and I opted out.
The snowboarding in Argentina was nice, but….. I was definitely reminded
for numerous days after that adventure that my Achilles tendon had been torn in
the past.
JP
and I also played some computer games while I was there. I know you might say, “why would you do that
when you are in a different country when you could do so much other stuff?” well my response is “what’s fun is fun” and
that’s just it (FYI: I also played
computer games with my friend in Paraguay and went to a movie…. I know I’m a
terrible tourist). We had a great time
so why not haha. We also saw the new
Spiderman movie which was pretty good.
One night we went out with some of JP’s friends. It was a lot of fun. I was named “Gringo” for the night J. Also, many of them wanted to practice their
English with me so that was good because the Spanish spoken in Chile is VERY
difficult for me to understand. I did ok
when someone was talking directly to me or if it was on the radio or on TV, but
when I heard Chileans talking amongst themselves….. that’s a whole different
level. I also ate a lot of hotdogs in
Chile. There is a fast food chain called
Doggis where JP and I had some pretty intense hotdogs J. I had a great time in Chile, and I can
already tell that I need to get back to South America sooner before later to
explore everything again and try to hit up some new places! That’s it for the South American part of this
blog unless I think of something that I missed big time. Thanks for reading!
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