Tour of Santiago and final hours
Thursday, March 08, 2007
Our tour guide was a local with a good grasp of English and a 7-seater bus. We were the only ones so we were spoiled a bit. We went through the different Barrios of Santiago showing the Spanish and French influences and also found that there is a very prominent population of German people. We went through Sanhatten which is Santiago's commercial district with obvious envy of Manhatten in the US. Also saw the city from one of the many vantage points North of the city. It is quite large and diverse... also very polluted. We finished up with a bit of deja vu when he took us to see some of the 'local handicrafts' which was basically a jewellry store I would assume paying a handsome offer to any driver bringing tourists along to spend their imported dollars -- the same thing happened in Thailand :) A lot of the locals here speak english with a US accent which makes sense given the proximity but still seems a bit weird.
We got up at 5:15am on Friday morning to pack and get ready to catch our transfer... running late as usual.
Posted byAndrew at 12:00 pm