Santiago! The Good, the Bad, the fUgly
In an effort to do a more rounded job of reporting on our time in Chile, I’ve decided to break this post up into three small sections focusing on our time in Santiago – the capitol of Chile.
The Good
Chile truly does have some fantastic sites. While in Santiago, GL and I climbed to the top of a hill which has been set aside as a public park. The hill was some sort of fortification in the past and was also adorned with magnificent water features, sanctuaries, staircases, plazas and vistas.
The first photo is just past the first stairway. The second photo is about 2/3 of the way up the hill where there is a magnificent plaza overlooking large stretches of the city.
The Bad
Santiago is set at the foot of the mighty Andes mountains. While this technically could/should be a “good” the smog and desert dust in the air made the visibility very low and the mountains remained almost invisible for much of our visit.
Everytime I tried to capture a decent picture of them it wouldn’t turn out. It’s a shame because they truly look magnificent and *very* close…The one time I was able to get a shot (from the top of the aforementioned hilltop park) there was so much junk in the air, it makes them look a lot more distant than the reality.
The fUgly
This is admittedly a scrappy picture….taken from a moving bus window. I wanted to capture this though:
Cookie-cutter cul de sacs sprinkled with identical stucco sh*t-boxes — sigh…. For those that don’t speak Spanish “ventas” means “sales”. Basically, just more overbuilding of stucco boxes in the middle of the desert in the outskirts of the capital and within view of the freeway. Don’t we have enough blight like this covering the *North*American desert? Did we really need to go and overbuild the *South*American desert too?
ciao for now,
fuBarrio
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