Our favorite parks in Santiago

While we are used to having a yard to play in, living in an apartment in Santiago hasn't been so bad because the city is filled with public parks, green spaces and places to play. From where we live, we can walk to more than six play parks within 15 minutes -- and we do so regularly.

Trippie plays on the Spiderman webbing at Parque Bicentenario

Parks here are places to relax. At lunchtime, people have little picnics in them. In the afternoons, you can catch yoga classes at the park, and there are various skateboarding parks and running and biking trails.  Additionally, you find loads of snuggling couples throughout the city's green spaces, as well as multi-generational families strolling after lunch on the weekends.

Trippie plays with his brother Gavin at the park next to our building

Situated right next to Trippie's day school, we certainly frequent Plaza Peru the most. This is a neighborhood park for our area, and Trip loves it because he knows he'll see a little friend there (and because of the sand).

Little Trip plays with blocks at Plaza Peru

Ready, set: Slide!

Another park we love to visit is the El Golf park, in front of the San Francisco Catholic church. A little longer of a walk, the El Golf park is nice because it is shaded -- which is a must during the summer.

Playing on the up-down next to our building

Just a couple of blocks from our apartment, Parque Bicentenario is one of our favorites because there is a ton of room to run, multiple play sets and lots of public umbrellas and chairs for lounging on a nice day. Additionally, Parque Bicentenario tends to host neighborhood events, such as the fonda celebration during fiestas patrias, wine and food events, and even outdoor movies.

Parque Bicentenario on a beautiful fall day

Near my office, we love to play at Parque Araucano, which houses multiple play sets, a skatepark, rose garden and stunning views. Trip calls this park "the roundy park" because the play equipment is circular, and many times the boys go here while they wait for me to get off work. Parque Araucano  hosts similar events for the Las Condes neighborhood, and on Wednesday mornings, there is a feria that offers farm-fresh veggies at prices less than the grocery store.

Parque Araucano with the snow-topped mountains in the distance

Street dogs of Santiago

Moving to South America meant leaving out sweet puppies behind. It was such a hard decision because Beetsie, Brindy and Bonnie Blue were family. Thankfully, our sweet family took our girls for the time we were gone (but sadly, they have all passed on since we left).

Beetsie and Baby Trip in 2010

Nonetheless, we are able to get our puppy fix with all the dogs around Santiago (and Chile in general). Adding to the culture of the city, Santiago is filled with street dogs -- everywhere you look, there are street dogs dotting the landscape.

Snuggled up at the entrance to Tobalaba metro station, Santiago

Going for a ride at la vega

In Valparaiso

Guarding his artist on Cerro Alegre

Even if the cabbies pass me by for petting them, the street dogs pull at my heartstrings every day. And I'm not the only one who loves them; there are droves of people who care for these dogs, from neighborhood sweethearts who leave out food and water to commando groups who clothe the pups when it's cold outside. Additionally, there are a ton of pet rescue groups.

Wheels on the go

Cat nap in Viña

Patrick began capturing the city and our adventures from a dog perspective, and it has been a fun pastime to collect these images as we explore our new home. In that, Patrick started a group on Facebook called Santiago Street Dogs, and the city paper, El Mercurio, interviewed him and published a piece about it.

On the beach in Pichilemu

In Portillo

Santiago is beautiful in the winter

Parque Araucano, Las Condes Santiago Chile

Santiago is breathtakingly beautiful in the winter. When the sun breaks through the clouds, after it's snowed in the mountains, Santiago is so gorgeous it surprises me.

This park, Parque Araucano, is just a couple of blocks from my office. Trip plays here often, and I've practiced yoga on its green grass. It's a quiet urban park in an area they call Nueva Las Condes, full of open space to run free or lounge the day away. Parque Araucano boasts a lovely rose garden, basketball and tennis courts, a skate park and plenty of play equipment for little ones to explore.

Now I know why they positioned the pope just so. It's a view that elicits gratitude and faith in God's hand.

I've heard Chileans explain why they are so reserved, and they say the mountains have kept them humble, that the mountains remind them that they are just a small part of the big wide world.

The mountains have also served as a natural protection. They say that the indigenous Mapuche evaded being conquered by the Europeans for so long because they would retreat into the mountains where no one could follow. Beyond its location al sur del mundo (the south of the world), Chile is even more remote because the nation is sandwiched between the Andes and the Pacific, with miles of glaciers to its south and miles of desert to its north.

I've never lived near mountains. The Rio Grande Valley, New Orleans and Houston are all Gulf Coast locales that are as flat as a pancake. Santiago is something completely different -- a huge city of nearly 7 million people, nestled in a valley of the massive Andes mountain range. Living here, so far from home, can be scary at times, lonely at others, but I think the mountains are a reminder that we are small, but certainly significant.

Visiting Chile's national cemetery

Known as the Cementerio General de Santiago, the national cemetery in the borough of Independencia is one of the largest in Latin America and makes for a lovely day of exploring if you're looking for something different to do in Santiago -- as we were.

A procession of women to visit the cemetery

The Cementerio General de Santiago is filled with hundreds of family tombs

We actually discovered the cemetery, with its inticate entrance, on another mission; so we returned the next weekend to stroll the urban park. With nearly all of the Chilean presidents interred here (minus two, according to Wikipedia: Gabriel González Videla and Augusto Pinochet), as well as many important military and political figures, the cemetery was created by national hero Bernard O'Higgins in 1821.

Behind the Salvador Allende monument, there was a small bouquet of
flowers with a hand-written note saying,"You are still remembered and still loved."

While it does serve as the national cemetery, what is unique is that many "normal" Chileans have found their final resting place here; and on our Sunday visit, we saw that there were many who had come to maintain their family plots, watering and replacing flowers and plants, and spending time in general with their loved ones.

A mausoleum for a comercial union

While there was a lot of exploring, Trippie did have a hard time keeping quiet during our time here -- though he lasted longer than most four-year-old boys would, I think.

I told him, "We have to be quiet here because this is a place for remembering."

He asked, "Why?" as he does now a great deal; and I replied, "Because it's hard to remember if you're talking."

That worked for a couple of hours, but then he declared, "OK, I'm done remembering. Let's go home."

And we did.

One of the avenues in the cemetery

Nonetheless, it was a lovely time, and gave some intimate insight into families and history in Chile.

Discovering an Oasis: Valle de Elqui

In the two years we've lived in Chile, we have always traveled south from the city, or right around the city (or out of the country), but just recently we decided to check out Valle de Elqui in the north of Chile.

Trip "fishes" in Valle del Elqui

 

Getting There: Elqui Valley

Although they have direct flights to La Serena, which is nearby, we drove the eight hours north to Valle del Elqui. The trip was very pretty because Ruta 5 north travels alongside the coast most of the time, offering great views of the beach towns and ocean, and we got to stop along the way at a very famous cheese and papaya roadside store.

The trip from Santiago to Valle de Elqui
(map courtesy GoogleMaps)

Hacienda Huentelauquen is a roadside restaurant that sells papaya juice, canned papayas, mantecoso cheese (a light, white, creamy cheese) and fried cheese empanadas. Now with the most expensive mantecoso in the grocery stores throughout Santiago, Hacienda Huentelauquen was really just a humble roadside store, but now it has a huge line of cars waiting to park, and a huge line of Chileans waiting to eat empanadas by the kilo.

It was a perfect stop along the way to take us to the coastal town of La Serena, where we hit the grocery store (thankfully because goods were hard to procure once you entered the valley), and basically turned right towards the mountains, and headed toward Valle de Elqui.

 

The Juice on Valle de Elqui

So, Elqui Valley was a huge surprise to us. We had heard to go there, and we had heard that the sky is so clear at night that you can see multitudes of stars, but we didn't know much more than that.

Stark Contrast: Green vineyards in the middle of the desert

In fact, Valle de Elqui is a narrow valley between the Andes mountains that was formed by the Elqui River. The mountains on either side of the valley are dry and desert-like, but because of the river and very smart irrigation, the valley is filled with bright green vegetation.

In Elqui Valley there are fields and fields of perfectly manicured vineyards, and the grapes are mostly used for the local favorite, pisco, which is a grape-based brandy and the main ingredient in pisco sours. They also cultivate papayas, which are different from the ones I grew up with in the Rio Grande Valley, as they are smaller and sweeter, and the meat is yellow instead of salmon-colored. It looked like they also had a fair amount of olive trees and avocado trees, which are also very popular throughout Chile.

Morning clouds dancing on the mountaintops

The main town in Valle de Elqui is Vicuña, but the area is dotted with a number of tiny little pueblos that seem to be built into the sides of the mountains -- whereas the prime real estate (the valley floor) is allocated to the vegetation.

What to Do

The valley is supposed to be very spiritual, with many people saying it has healing powers. I don't really know about that, but I can say that it is breathtakingly beautiful, truly an oasis, and when the sun goes down, the sky becomes so bright with millions of stars.

Nonetheless, there are a ton of interesting yoga, meditation, massage places and retreats, as well as many observatories where you can take a tour of the stars.

Patrick fly fishes in Elqui River, Valle de Elqui

In addition to the star-gazing, my favorite thing about this trip was the river. We spent a splendid afternoon playing in the river just steps from the cabins where we stayed. Trip and I "swam" (basically waded), and Patrick and our friend Judy fly fished.

Interesting to note: Famed Chilean poet, feminist, educator and diplomat Gabriela Mistral (aka Lucila Godoy Alcayaga) is from Vicuña, and she serves as the only Latin American woman to have ever won the Nobel Prize in Literature (1945).

Life is good

What an Adventure: Visiting Lima, Peru

So this post is a tad bit late coming, as we went to Lima, Peru more than a year ago, but beggars can't be choosers, and at least I've gotten around to it now.

My company, BNamericas, had an event in Lima focused on energy, and as an old oil writer, I got to go to check out our events and cover the event, too. Because of that, we decided to wrap a little family trip together and stayed over the weekend. It was a quick trip, but I fell in love with Peru in about a minute and a half, and I can't wait to go back!

Plaza de Armas (or Plaza Mayor) was founded by conquistador Francisco Pizzaro in 1535.

Let me give you some quick take-aways from Lima, and then we'll get to some of the great spots we discovered. First off, while Santiago is decidedly European, Lima is exactly what you picture when you think of Latin America -- hot, sweaty, amazing foods, lively music spilling from windows and the friendliest people you could ever have the priviledge of meeting.

Kitties hanging out with the Virgen Mary.

While Santiago is filled with stray dogs, Lima is filled with stray cats, and they lounge throughout the parks and add a bit of character to the city. Additionally, Peru has an ancient dog that was the pet of pre-Inca cultures there. While the people seem to be extremely proud of their hairless ancient pets, I have to say, they are quite ugly.

Trippie doesn't seem bothered by their looks.

We stayed at this lovely and inexpensive bed and breakfast in the San Isidro district called Casa Bella B&B. The hotel is boutique (read: just a couple of rooms) and has been transformed from an old mansion. The people there are extremely helpful, the grounds offered a lovely patio garden where we could sit and let Trip play outside, and the location was a great jumping off spot for exploring Lima.

Ancient Huaca Pucllana pyramids in Miraflores, Lima.

The capital city of Peru, Lima is on the coast of the Pacific. While Miraflores is one of the most upscale neighborhoods overlooking the waters, this modern city is juxtaposed with ancient relics and pyramids from the native people who lived there centuries ago sprinkled throughout the city.

Loads of surfers come to the beaches of Lima to take advantage of the gnarly waves.

One of our favorite discoveries in Lima was the neighborhood of Barranco, which hosts a lovely mix of old buildings, beautiful vistas, bohemian artists, inexpensive B&Bs and lots of bars and restaurants. Founded in 1874, Barranco reminded me of a less commercialized San Antonio River Walk, but exchange the river for the ocean.

Phaedy and Trip on the Bridge of Sighs in Barranco, famous for granting wishes

Also, we got to go to the amazing Magic Water Circuit, which is in Reserve Park and a definite must-see. We didn't really know what we were getting into, but had just heard to go, and boy were we in for an amazing surprise. The public park transforms at night with all the fountains showcasing water, lights and music. It was breathtaking to watch lights transform over the fountain into ice skaters dancing and beautiful cultural dances.

The Troys at the Magic Water Circuit.

Although it's decidedly touristy, we booked an afternoon on a tour bus that drove us around Lima and stopped at the beautiful Museo Larco, which houses one of the largest collections of pre-Columbian art in an amazing 18th centrual mansion.

Museo Larco

I really enjoyed getting to sit in the open-air double-decker bus and see all sorts of neighborhoods and hear the history while Trip napped, and he woke up just in time for the museum, which also had a lush garden that he enjoyed playing in.

Not too shabby! The Troys get to see Lima in a couple of hours (and not get lost)

Truly, you can't talk about Peru and not talk about the food (which is exquisite) and the pisco sours; nonetheless, that is a post for a different day because I could go on an on about the culinary experience that is Peru. So I leave you with a shot of us enjoying a Peruvian pisco sour at Museo Larco, and I definitely will drink to your health!

¡Salud! A happy family enjoying pisco sours at Museo Larco in Lima, Peru.