Santiago, Chile
Our final stop on the trip. We took a bus through the Andes to Santiago from Mendoza. On the way, we went past Acongaua, the highest mountain in the Americas. Unfortunately we couldn’t figure out how to get on a bus that would stop in the park and let us hike around a bit before moving on, but we did manage to get a picture of the mountain from the moving bus! We also had a ridiculous 3.5 hour delay at the border, even though there really weren’t that many people in front of us. We only had 2 days in Santiago, so we basically just walked around the city as much as we could. We went to the pre-Columbian museum, and up Santa Lucia park, and Cerro Cristobal for the views…which showed how much smog there was around. For me, Santa Lucia park was the highlight - I thought that it would be a grassy hill, but it actually had series of stairs, fountains, and buildings built into it.
Santiago is also famous for its Lapis Lazuli, a blue stone found only in a few places on earth. Theresa really likes it, so she bought a necklace there.
The pictures from Santiago are up here.