We had a good night’s sleep last night, which we really needed. We got downstairs at about 8:30 for a lovely breakfast and talked about what we would do today. Given the level of unrest in the city, we had already been advised to avoid a number of areas, which made sightseeing difficult.

Andrea in the hotel lobby.
Andrea in the hotel lobby.

Our plan was to take the hop-on/hop-off bus around the city to get a general overview. But the hotel concierge quickly talked us out of this idea, on account of the widespread unrest. So, we decided to hire a private driver to take us around for the day.

We left the hotel around 10am and our driver took us to the downtown area to have a look around. We were shocked at the level of destruction and the damage done to buildings around the city by the protesters; it seemed like everything was a target. We wondered how long all of this could go on for, with businesses closed everywhere and people not being paid.

Santiago.
Santiago.

Next we headed a little out of the city to a nice vantage point to look over Santiago.

Just outside Santiago, where we had a nice view of the city.
Just outside Santiago, where we had a nice view of the city.

We got back to the hotel mid-afternoon but we only stopped for about 15 minutes. We decided to jump back into the car and head to a local shopping mall dedicated to sports, called Mall Sport. Despite owning a lot of cold weather gear, we started to worry a bit about whether we had packed enough for Antarctica. So, we ended up stocking up on more clothing to keep us warm and dry in Antarctica. We are not really on top of the exchange rate here so we had no idea what we spent. But all of the shopkeepers seemed happy enough!

Keith at Mall Sport.
Keith at Mall Sport.

After a couple of hours of shopping we returned to the hotel to dump our stuff before heading out for dinner. We opted for a Chilean restaurant close to the hotel, called Cafe Torres. We had a very nice meal and then walked back to the hotel with a plan for another early night.

We had talked about an excursion to the nearby town of Valparaíso tomorrow but we have been warned that tomorrow is likely to see an escalation in the protests so we will likely just stay near the hotel.

That’s it for today. We’re heading off to bed now, hoping to be fully on the local time zone by tomorrow!