Kurt Johnson

Just another mountain view – near the metro station in El Golf.

I came to Santiago with low expectations (“nothing to do there…don’t spend more than 24 hours”) but was very pleasantly surprised.  Buenos Aires is very European, but it’s a European influence from 1880-1950.  Santiago’s European influence feels more 1970-present.  Walking around El Golf near my hotel there were Starbucks, Brooks Brothers, TGI Fridays, etc.  Parts of Vitacura felt almost German – Bauhaus buildings, porsches, contemporary furniture stores, etc.  Presumably Chile’s trajectory of rapid economic expansion since the 1970s brought expats and foreign influence at the same time as Argentina was relatively stagnant and unattractive for foreign investment.

Santiago just feels more vibrant than Argentina; walking around BA, Mendoza, or Rosaria (Argentina) on a weekday gives the sense of pretty low asset and labor productivity – storefronts not open for business, equipment idled, people moving slowly or without purpose, etc.  Santiago has a sharp contrast between the high rent European neighborhoods and the rest of the city but it’s still noticeably more active.  Or perhaps my impressions were skewed positively by getting gorgeous weather in Chile after a week of rain and clouds in Argentina.

As with Buenos Aires it seems the Southern Cone’s days as a cheap weekend getaway are over.  You can get by on $30 per day but to get out and have a good time you’re spending $150/day – cabs and meals are a little cheaper than Texas (especially on the high end) but not much.

I’ve kept my perfect record of encountering youth protests on every visit to South America – tuition hikes in Chile (2011), something undetermined in Mendoza (2011), socialist party rally in Cusco (2007), and cracking down on crime in BA (2006).  I’ve never really felt threatened but I wish I spoke a little more Spanish to understand the context of what I’m walking through and when to GTFO.

Specific travel suggestions:

• Take the free walking tour of the downtown area that meets at the Plaza de Armas around 9am (check google).  It’s great to get your bearings and the tour guides are quite engaging (because they work for tips!)
• Consider taking a bicycle tour of neighborhoods beyond downtown.  TripAdvisor has some suggestions (but TripAdvisor is really getting AstroTurfed these days, so do your diligence)
• The W Santiago is fantastic if you’ve got points to burn…but be sure to get out of that neighborhood to get a feel for what the other 98% of Santiago looks like
• Cabs are really expensive ($15 for a ~10 minute ride) but the metro is awesome.  Figure it out quickly and save your money
• The university area (Bella Vista) has a really coo vibe (a little gritty – but high energy).  I love walking down the street and seeing all the sidewalk cafes with folks sharing liter bottles of beer at lunch.  The single best corner for budget food in South America might be at Constitucion and [    ].  There’s an amazing sandwich bar (‘sangucheria’), a good casual chilean place (Galindo), and a higher end seafood place – plus others nearby that look promising as well.
• Take the funicular (or hike) to the top of Cerro San Cristobal to get a fantastic view of the city.  You can eat in Bella Vista at the bottom of the hill, walk it off by spending the afternoon on the hill, and descend to eat again in the same great neighborhood.
• Beyond Santiago, Valparaiso is a coastal city and UNESCO world heritage site about 90 minutes away which offers a nice 1-2 day side trip, and Villerica (lakes district) and patagonia look awesome if you had enough time to make a second leg down south.

I’d like to go back and spend more time there, although I’m not sure when it’ll happen.

Ice in the water, Kenai Fjords National Park

• Driving (first) and then riding the bus through Denali; almost hitting a moose and her calves; seeing grizzlies and caribou near the road
• Braving the mosquitoes at Wonder Lake to bushwhack across spongy tundra, almost run into another moose, and realize that even if sunset is technically midnight it never really gets dark
• Taking a shower and drying our gear out at the Sheraton after a couple days camping in the rain.  Finding pizza and beer at Glacier Brewhouse in Anchorage
• Hiking Bird Ridge just outside Anchorage on the Seward Highway; watching one of the world’s highest tides go out of the Turnagain arm – with incredible mountain views, blue skies, and black bear + bald eagle sightings on the trail
• Kayaking through Kenai Fjords National Park; listening and watching glaciers as they calved small icebergs into the water we paddled through (something dropped every 5-10 minutes!!).  Pulling the kayaks up on an empty beach in the park to camp for the night and cook steak fajitas
• Climbing the trail up to the Harding Icefield – the massive (300-1000 square miles) ice field that feeds all of the glaciers in Kenai Fjords National Park.  Recovering from the hike in Seward with savory crepes from the Belgian chef at Le Barn Appetit
• Relaxing at the Anchorage Museum’s excellent exhibits on native people and the transformation of Alaska into a natural resource economy (gold, then fishing, then oil)

• Go flight seeing  over Denali.  The park is generally overcast and visitors might only see the mountain on a few days out of the summer.  Had it been clear I’d have booked a flight seeing trip in a second
• Go backcountry camping.  I’m a sissy – tents and sleeping on the ground are fine, but hiking around all day’s more fun without 35 pounds on my back. In any case much of the terrain we did walk on was either wet, rocky, or spongy so allow plenty of time to keep a safe pace if you’re going off trail
• Go fishing.  The fishing is amazing, but none of us are passionate about it and we decided to put the funds to work somewhere else
• See Wrangell St. Elias National Park (beautiful, remote, and just a little too far away for us to justify driving to on this trip) and cross the Arctic Circle (again, would have been too much time in the car)
• See brown bears feeding on salmon at Brooks Falls (books up a year or more ahead of time, requires another $1k or so in airfare from Anchorage)

Other tips

• The weather is hit and miss.  We had an awesome time kayaking but if it’d been raining we probably would have done a day cruise instead of kayaking for 2 days.  If you’re OK with risking things you can defer making reservations until a day or two before the trip and adjust your plans based on the weather
• Get the books Milepost (for driving) and 55 Ways to the Wilderness In South Central Alaska (for hiking)
• Pack some decent rain gear and binoculars in addition to the usual hiking/touring kit

Hikers descending from the Harding Icefield

 

Kayaking through Kenai Fjords National Park (Aialik Bay)

More of my photos on Flickr:

Next Page ›

‹ Previous Page

From reading Wikipedia on the 8 hour (!) domestic flight.  My favorite sentences:

1. Alaska has a longer coastline than all the other U.S. states combined.With the extension of the Aleutian Islands into the eastern hemisphere, it is technically both the westernmost and easternmost state in the United States, as well as also being the northernmost.
2. Mount Shishaldin [an occasionally smoldering volcano that rises to 10,000 feet (3,000 m) above the North Pacific] is the most perfect volcanic cone on Earth, even more symmetrical than Japan’s Mount Fuji
3. Alaska is tied with Hawaii as the state with the lowest high temperature in the United States [100 degrees, recorded 8 miles inside the arctic circle in 1915]
4. At the height of Russian America [i.e., pre-Alaska Purchase by the US], the Russian population reached 700.
5. The oil and gas industry dominates the Alaskan economy, with more than 80% of the state’s revenues derived from petroleum extraction
6. The state capital, Juneau, is not accessible by road, only a car ferry
7. In 2009 there were 6,000 Jews in Alaska (for whom observance of the mitzvah may pose special problems)…In 2010, the local Muslim community broke ground on the first mosque in the state

Crossing over the Andes from Argentina to Chile in July (i.e., winter in the Southern hemisphere).  The pass is about 10,500′ and had just re-opened after 4 days closure for weather.  More photos from my trip are on here and here.