Santiago Day Three

After a wonderful day and night spent in Santiago, we decided to sleep in a little bit more because we were not in a great rush on our last day in Santiago. We were back down to seven because Eric went back home the night before, so the seven of us wandered the streets of Santiago to head to Villa Grimaldi. We started off on the metro, and then took a bus to get to Villa Grimaldi, which is a park that was used as a torture camp during the dictatorship of Pinochet. We showed up, and took a look around of the park, which has nothing more than memorials and post markings about its past. The park is done up to be more people friendly, which helped lighten the mood when reading about the torture camp. That didn't take more than an hour for us to walk around and explore, so we decided to take a bus back towards the center of Santiago. Once we got back to the center, we decided to grab a bite to eat at this food shack that had delicious, authentic Chilean food. It was so cheap and so filling!

After our nice lunch, we headed to a bakery near by to get some cheesecake and empanadas, and headed to Cerro Santa Lucia. At Santa Lucia, we got to see traditional Chilean dancing, and the dancers even went into the crowds and danced with the audience. While watching them dance, some of the performers came and grabbed a few of us from my group to dance with. After we were finished dancing, we headed to the top of the Cerro to see the view of the city. At the top, it was so breathtaking! You could see almost the whole city, on a clear day, the whole city. It was about 5:30, so we decided to head to Cerro San Cristobal to watch the sunset. Little did we know that it was going to take us a little longer to get there, and we missed the sunset from the top of Cerro San Cristobal. However, we did get to see a llama dressed up with a blanket and a hat. After that, we decided to grab a drink before we headed back to the hostel for the night. Otisa and I had pisco sours, and Ruby had a piscola. Once we finished our drinks, we went to the metro where Parker split off from us to head back to Valpo, and we headed back to the hostel. While heading back to the hostel, this is where the night took a turn. We got robbed right outside our hostel, but everything turned out way better than anyone would ever expect. We were shaken up and full of adrenaline, and tried to make the best out of the rest of our night before we headed home the next morning.

The trip overall was a wonderful experience, and I couldn't have picked a lovelier group to travel with. Although there were a couple bumps in the road, we made the best of every moment and had an absolute blast.