Six Days in Santiago, Chile

My flight to South America is out of San Jose, Costa Rica and arrives eight hours later in Santiago, Chile after a quick stop through the airport in Lima. All of a sudden my travels feel like an adventure again. Left behind are the American familiarities always present in Costa Rica- our 51st state ? Starting this new phase of my adventure, I feel a bit alone, like no one knows who I am or anything about me, and I like it. I look forward to getting lost and seeing which way things take me in South America. But, of course, the first stop is a familiar one in Santiago.

I am staying with Jane Hong. Jane and I, besides being connected through my sister, have also shared parts of both high school and college together- so she knows me pretty well. She also knows the city after 6 months there and has an amazingly comfortable couch, so I was perfectly content for my six day sleepover.

I explored some of the local city neighborhoods-barrios- during the day while Jane was at work. One day I tracked down the famous Casa Roja hostel that had been started in a an old run down mansion. I snuck in to read my book by the swimming pool hidden in the spacious open air quadrangle behind the house.

I spent that gorgeous afternoon finishing War and Peace, which I had been working at assiduously throughout Costa Rica. At first I had struggled to find the connection between early 19th century tsarist Russia and traveling in tropical surf hostels, but eventually Tolstoy’s universal relevance won me over. By the end, I felt no other book could have possibly been more relevant to my current time and place. Tolstoy gets to the heart of what we seek in life and explores our often unarticulated conceptions of happiness, purpose, duty, and hope.

Jane and I had a great time during our week. We ate out every night and had a great time bonding over delicious, though certainly American priced, food. We also had two nights out one the town. The first, we were joined by my former Princeton OA compatriot Alisha ‘the wizared . Though we went to a dance club in search of 80s music, we ended up primarily finding extremely strong Piscolas, local grape liquor mixed with coke, that had us staggering for a cab well before the dance floor hit its groove. The second night Jane and I flew solo to a jazz club and made up for lost time listening to covers of Bary White, Elvis, and that song from Ghost. We were the butt end of many of the crooners jokes which somehow made us popular with the local Chilean crowed and led to late night dancing and a generally good time.

Santiago seemed a very modern city. The are of Los Condes where Jane lived is the financial center and is dotted with skyscrapers and bankers in suits walking in between. It really seemed not to much unlike NYC. Since I am just getting my feet wet on the South American experience, Santiago made a good place to start



View of the pool in hostel Casa Rojo

Looking down a main street in Los Condes

A chilean BMX biker in a bark in Barrio Brasil

Out on the porch with the Wizard at Janes

Jane and me out at the bars


Dinner at a Chilean Italian place, I of course was wearing my one outfit which I purchased there to augment the wordrobe of boardshorts and t-shirts i had brought from Costa Rica