Santiago
Over the Andes headed to Chile
Time spent: 42 days ;1 Nov 2025 - 13 Dec 2025
Elevation: 1,706 ft (520 m)
Currency: Chilean Pesos
Lodging Cost: $20.66 per night; Airbnb
Crossing the Andes into Chile
This was my last stop on my bus tour across South America starting with Buenos Aires and ending in Santiago. Yeah, it's the narrow part so you may say it's cheating, but fuck you, I went ocean to ocean and over the Andes, so it counts.
It was about a five-hour ride from Mendoza, Argentina, and just the bus ride was a tourist attraction on its own. I made a photo album of just pictures I took from my seat. Although they do have direct flights between Mendoza and Santiago, if you are in a position to make this ride, I'd definitely do it. It's much cheaper, but even if the cost were reversed, I'd still opt for the bus ride. It is that cool of a trip.
One caveat to that though: I came in the middle of summer (and it was still damn cold when I stepped outside for the border checkpoint); however, if you are making this trip in the winter, the weather can delay your plans.
Steep set of switchbacks leaving the border crossing station.
Why Visit Santiago
I had always planned to visit Santiago, not really because I was dying to see it, but more because I generally travel by looking at a map and heading to the next city I can easily get to that has reliable internet. I'm a firm believer that any major city will have enough of a novelty factor to keep you entertained for at least a month.
I read tons of digital nomad forums saying "Santiago isn't that great," but for anyone who thinks that, I just can't understand what they are looking for in a city. Santiago ended up being one of my favorite stops.
They also have an excellent subway system. In every city I go to, there are always one or two places where I think, "I wouldn't mind seeing that museum, but do I really want to pay for a $10 Uber, ride all the way there, spend 30 minutes, and pay another $10 to get back?" So, I inevitably end up not going. But in Santiago, I took the Metro all over town. I can honestly say I covered this city top to bottom and saw every single thing I remotely wanted to see. I was never bored.
Catedral Metropolitana de Santiago. Like pretty much every city in South America, a major cathedral sits right at the heart of the city on the Plaza de Armas.
To ride the rail, you need to buy a bip! card for 1,550 CLP ($1.70). You can buy one at a machine in any station and easily refill it at the same place. The cost of the rides varies slightly depending on the time of day, but I don't think it was ever more than 870 CLP ($1.00).
Another thing I liked a lot was the grocery stores. It may seem like a non-issue for most tourists, but this is always a challenge for me.
Traveling 100% of the time like I do means not eating out every night, so I always have to do a little shopping, but finding the staples I'm used to back home can be a challenge. The simple things you always have in the pantry back home are often considered "specialty" items in other countries, so a simple can of green beans can either be hard to find, overpriced, or both.
The grocery store nearest me reminded me more of the stores back home than anywhere else I have been.
The metro rail in Santiago. This was the stop near my apartment and I used it almost daily
Walkway over the train tracks and highway. Mostly I just thought the picture came out nice.
The final food I remembered being stunned at the cost of was sushi. Now, sushi is so common worldwide that it isn't an exotic dish anymore, but it is never inexpensive anywhere you go. Here, it was freakishly cheap. Almost worrisomely cheap. There was a place near me that sold a 50-piece sushi combo for 15,000 CLP ($16.25). I'd buy it and have food for two days. Fuck it, it tasted good and never made me sick, so I didn't question it much further than that.
The Food in Santiago
I guess speaking of grocery stores, that naturally leads to what everyone wants to know about: the food.
Santiago's food scene reminded me of Buenos Aires, except I found it better in every way. Like BA, you won't find a lot of what most people picture as "traditional" street food. It's mostly modern sit-down restaurants or grocery stores, with very few hole-in-the-wall spots. You won't find nearly as many street vendors as you do elsewhere in South America, though you can usually spot someone selling cheap sandwiches near the subway entrances.
Conger Eel soup. Nearly boiling hot.
Pizza, but as I said, with a twist
A corndog with...everything.
Chicken, avocado, fries all wrapped in a waffle.
One of Chile's signature dishes is conger eel. I had this once when I got there and once right before I left, and I did really like it, but it was surprisingly expensive. A little north of the city center is Mercado Central de Santiago, which focuses almost exclusively on seafood. There are a lot of seafood restaurants in there, as well as vendors selling fresh fish. It is a really popular market, but I found it a little strange because I'm not positive who the target is for it. It is a little outside of the city center, so I can see a lot of tourists missing it, but the restaurants there were quite expensive. I can't see a local thinking it would be a nice place to go for an expensive dinner. But I do recommend checking it out at least once.
Another signature dish of Chile is the completo. Man, I had a lot of these. They are probably the closest thing to regular street food they had—little bars you could walk up to with no chairs or anything fancy, but most still took credit cards. A completo is essentially a hot dog, except it is absolutely loaded with avocado and mayo. Now, I love avocado. To me, it is like cocaine, it is just simply impossible to have too much of it. I also like mayonnaise, but damn, I think they put it on with a trowel. Still great, and a total staple of the Chilean people. It is also one of the cheapest meals you can get: 2 dogs and a drink was 5,000 CLP ($5.40).
Two completos and a cup of coffee. Breakfast of champions.
Parque Metropolitano de Santiago and Cenco Costanera
This is the biggest and most popular park in Santiago by a pretty wide margin (though I don't necessarily think it's the best). The cool thing about this park is that depending on what you want to do, you can spend a couple of hours here or an entire day. If you are into all that fitness nonsense, it is a great spot for jogging because it offers a long, gentle uphill climb.
If you want to make a day of it and do tourist stuff, I'd recommend taking the Metro over to Cenco Costanera. At 984 feet (300 m), it's the tallest building in South America.
At the base of Cenco Costanera is a massive five-story mall. I'm not a huge fan of malls, but I always check out the big ones in any city and never buy anything. This one was no different. It's fine, but at the end of the day, it's just like any other mall.
You can take the elevator to the observation deck at the top. I'll admit it's probably a bit overpriced, but you might as well check it out while you're there. It costs around 25,000 CLP ($27) to ride to the top, plus a few bucks extra if you go around sunset. You can buy tickets in advance on their official website, or if you have too much money, pay $40 or $50 to a third-party seller. Don't do any of those things. Simply buy them at the desk when you get there. I didn't even think about the weather when I went because it happened to be a gorgeous day, but definitely keep cloud cover in mind before going up.
At the top, you get a 360-degree view of all of Santiago with the snow-capped Andes in the distance.
Cenco Costanera. At exactly 300m tall I'm thinking it was built a few extra stories higher to beat those Portuguese speakers in Brazil.
View of the Andes and Santiago from the lookout deck of Cenco Costanera.
Down yonder is the entrance to Parque Metropolitano.
Next, I'd take a walk from Cenco Costanera. It is about a 20-minute walk directly, but I would take a short detour along the Mapocho River to see Museo Parque de las Esculturas. It is a narrow park along the river with several art displays.
The road to the park does go through a residential neighborhood, so it is ever so slightly hard to find. Just search for "Cerro San Cristóbal" on Google Maps and it will take you to the main entrance of the park.
Now, the park itself is free. If you want to jog (ugh) or walk through it, you can just bypass any lines you see and walk on in.
But to ride the cable car, there is a small fee. You will see plenty of people lined up in front of a few touchscreen kiosks, and all will be having trouble because 1) the kiosk is strictly in Spanish and 2) it is a little confusing with what options they give. See, you can buy a cable car ticket (teleférico) up and the train (funicular) down or vice versa, or buy a one-way or two-way of either. There will be a couple of English-speaking employees there to help, but apparently not enough, because it seemed like every person at the five or so kiosks needed help from the two or three employees.
I don't know the cost of all of them, but I just bought the round-trip teleférico ticket for 4,500 CLP ($4.90). You can also buy any other ticket you need later. If you get to the top and want to take the train or walk, you've wasted $2.
The views on the ride is worth the $5
Close to the top
When you do make it to the top, it is quite crowded. There are also a ton of vendors selling snacks and drinks. There was one drink I saw a lot of people holding, so I decided I needed to try it too: mote con huesillo. Supposedly, it's a pretty famous drink in Chile, though this was the only place I happened to see it. It was pretty refreshing, tasting kind of like a very sweet peach tea—almost, but not quite, as sweet as the syrup from a can of peaches. It also had a whole chunk of huesillo (peach) floating in it. The weird part was the layer of chewy husked wheat kernels at the bottom. I didn't really get the appeal of those, they tasted like flavored wax to me. The drink comes with a long spoon to scoop them out, but I didn't care for them, so I just drank the juice and ate the peach.
There is also a 46-foot (14 m) statue of the Virgin Mary at the top. This was a bit unusual, because almost all the Latin American cities I've been to have a Cristo Blanco, a large white statue of Christ with his arms outstretched, sitting on top of a tall hill somewhere. Santiago went against the grain and put a large statue of his mother instead. You can actually go inside, but that had the biggest throng of crowds, so I skipped it.
Mote Con Huesillo
There are some amazing viewpoints up here, but also quite a few dickhead tourists with zero common courtesy. Unlike Sky Costanera, the top isn't an open 360-degree view because of all the trees, but there are several lookouts built out that look kind of like castle turrets. Now, I would assume people would have the common sense to spend a minute or two soaking in the view, take a photo, and then move the fuck out of the way. But no, they would just sit there sipping their peach beverage or cuddling with their date right at the ledge. Not to worry, though. Since they didn't have manners, I had no problem standing with my crotch in the face of a cute couple while I snapped some photos over their heads of the city below.
Waiting in line to get a peek up the Virgin Mary's skirt
Not pictured: The couple below me hogging the viewpoint
After drinking my peach juice and intruding on a date, I was ready to head back down. I was originally thinking about abandoning my round-trip cable car ticket to take the funicular down instead.
However, my mind changed quickly when I saw the setup. The cable car system has tons of individual cars and moves fast. The funicular, on the other hand, only has one car moving slowly, and you have to wait for it to go all the way down and come back up before anyone else gets on.
The line was ridiculously long and the car moved so slow.
Since I didn't want to just ride the exact same cable car route back down immediately, and I wasn't quite ready to leave, I decided to walk. It's a long paved road, but it gives you some great unobstructed views of the city as you head down. The cable car line actually has a stop in the middle, so I walked downhill for about 45 minutes to get to it. There are a few things to see around that mid-station area, but nothing spectacular. I grabbed an ice cream, hopped on the cable car from there, and headed back down to go home.
Just a few hours prior I was in that tall building taking a reverse angle of this shot
Check your tickets with the kitty cat.
Great name. Didn't seem that fun.
I will never tire of city views from the top of a mountain
Cerro Santa Lucia
This is another much smaller park in Santiago, and honestly, I have no business comparing it to Parque Metropolitano. It has nowhere near as much to do, nor will my write-up be nearly as long, but I just loved this park, and I'm calling it my favorite in the city.
It sits right in the heart of the city center, which is what makes it so cool. It feels like a smaller version of Central Park in New York City, if Central Park were built on a mountain.
This place is essentially a giant wooded hill rising right out of the concrete. And did I mention that like all good mountains, this one has a fucking castle sitting on top of it?
There isn't much of a step-by-step walkthrough I need to give you. You will probably find the entrance organically along the fork in the road at Calle Merced. From there, you just wander through it, climbing higher and higher above the street level. Unlike Parque Metropolitano, where you look down at Santiago from a distance, here you get an elevated viewpoint right from the middle of the city.
This is one of my favorite photos I have ever taken. You can see Cenco Costanera and the Andes in the distance. The pigeon just happened to be there, and it made the shot even better.
If you keep heading roughly north to south through the park, you will emerge at Terraza Neptuno, home to a monument dedicated to the Roman God of the Sea. Why is there a monument to a Roman God of the Sea in the middle of a South American city you ask? Usually, that's the kind of random history I like to look up and explain, but in this case, I prefer to just think "why the hell not?" In all seriousness, though, it's a pretty impressive setup. The full walk up the hill is kind of a tough hike, so if you don't feel up to climbing the whole thing, you can just scoot around to the south side and check out this fountain.
This is the main entrance to the park at Calle Merced
The turret at the very top of the hill. You can climb up to get a 360 view... provided there are no kids on field trips.
This is Castillo Hidalgo. It was closed before I went and at the time of writing is still closed with no planned reopening in sight. It is unfortunate, because due to the high walls you don't even get much of a view from the outside. But don't confuse this with the tower in the other picture because that is still very much open and very cool.
Terraza Neptuno. I guess if you are in the mood to build a massive fountain, dedicating it to the God of the Sea is a helluva good choice. Just covering all their bases in a city that is 65% Catholic , in case the Roman gods decide to make a comeback.
This trip is the absolute definition of mediocre. It's the most generic tour you could possibly take. It's fine if you have plenty of time, but if you're even slightly on the fence, don't bother. Hell, if you have just one extra day in Santiago, message me and I'll give you a full day's worth of better stuff to do in the city that I didn't cover here.
There are about 12 of these authentic statues around the world. All the countries that hold them claim they were "gifts," but for most, that is a rather dubious assertion. This one stands in front of the Fonck Museum in Vina del Mar, but even the veracity of this gift is in question, as it was given during a period of extreme hardship for the Rapa Nui people.
Valparaiso and Vina del Mar
Santiago doesn't have many day trips you can take, but it does offer a lot of multi-day trips to the South or North. Jesus Christ, have you seen the shape of the country? You can go thousands of miles in either direction and never be more than 50 miles from a beach. It's like they were founded by surfers, and during wars and conquests, they said, "Bro, take whatever you want, just leave us our waves."
There are some amazing tourist destinations outside of Santiago. You have the Atacama Desert, which is on my bucket list and I will see the next time I go to South America, and you have the Patagonia region, which is on my "probably not happening list" because it is way too fucking cold and I don't really carry much cold-weather gear in my suitcase.
Another thing that I didn't know (simply because I never put too much thought into it) is that Easter Island, you know, that island with all those big-ass buried heads (actually, most people don't realize they are full bodies that have been buried over time by erosion), is technically a part of Chile. It is mostly in name only, like Chile's military defends them and gets a slice of tourist dollars, but it is about 2,300 miles off the coast, so it is quite a jaunt for a weekend tourist.
The one day trip I did find was to Valparaíso and Viña del Mar. Since my visa in Chile was for 90 days, I originally considered doing six weeks in Santiago and six weeks in Valparaíso.
Boy, am I glad I didn't.
The way I travel, I rarely look too much into the city I'm going to. Does it have an easy way in and out? Is it developed enough to have an ATM and reliable internet? If so, I'm on my way and I'll figure out the fun stuff later. That philosophy has bitten me in the ass once or twice, but it generally works for me.
The one interesting thing about the colorful town with a bad postal system, the descriptions almost became an address. "Yeah dude, I'm the red house next to the yellow house across from the whale mural"
I'm told this is art
What makes Valparaíso cool is 100% based on the murals and street art. It looks like a wave of talented hipsters flooded the city and vandalized everything.
I say that cynically and mostly in jest. I'm not the type of guy who looks deep into art, but I know a pretty picture when I see one. And there are tons of pretty pictures here.
Kudos to every artist who created a mural, and I'm sure they had deep meaning behind them, but it just wasn't really my scene. I saw a few hostels around, but I don't think I would have liked staying here long-term at all.
I only spent a day here, but the food scene didn't seem great, and I saw almost no street food vendors.
That said, it's a town of about 325,000 people, and I know I only saw a tiny fraction of it on the tour, so don't @ me if you stayed here and loved it.
I thought this was very cool, very simple and very creative. I'm honestly surprised it hasn't been copied on stairwells 1,000 times over across the world by no talent graffiti artist.
Once your tour ends here, you'll hop back in the van and head to Viña del Mar. If anyone reading this has ever played Final Fantasy VII, this place reminds me of Costa del Sol. I genuinely wonder if there was any connection to this place while making that game.
I grew up in Florida, so I never understood the appeal of the beach as a tourist destination. Of course, I'm not stupid—I get that landlocked places may find it interesting, but it being a piece of real estate worth twice as much as anywhere else has always baffled me.
Maybe that's why I wasn't impressed with Viña del Mar.
The tour doesn't do much in the town because, honestly, there isn't much to do besides look at the beach.
The first stop is a clock made of flowers. This is the kind of mildly interesting thing a town has that you should just drive by, but there were tons of tour buses and vendors here, and we spent WAY too long admiring the clock.
Then we were taken to a restaurant for lunch, and I was a little annoyed at this part. Some tours include lunch, some don't. The ones that don't usually drop you off somewhere and say, "Find somewhere to eat and be back in an hour."
This one took us to an overpriced and frankly shitty restaurant with a remarkable view. It had terrible service and even worse food. But we had plenty of time, so if you end up on this tour, I would recommend just leaving the restaurant and walking down the strip. I can't confirm, but I'd bet you find something better.
After we ate, we did have a while to see the strip and the ocean, so I used it to "officially" complete my journey. I went from Buenos Aires to Santiago by bus and considered that crossing South America, but since Santiago is actually about 50 miles inland, I took the opportunity to touch the Pacific Ocean and say I did it.
It's neat I suppose. I liked it. I didn't love it
Final Thoughts on Santiago Chile
I could go on and on about every place I visited in Santiago, but I know listing every detail makes for a less interesting page. However, if there was ever a place I'd love to give more feedback on, it's Santiago, Chile. I simply love this place.
If you read negative things about Santiago, I honestly believe it comes from budget travelers expecting $2 meals who are surprised that Chile is more expensive than they anticipated.
Now, Chile is not cheap, but it is FAR from expensive.
This was the 5th country in South America (8 if you count Central America) that I visited, and an unexpected pattern started to emerge that I want more travelers to be aware of: lodging doesn't seem to correlate with other prices like it does in the United States.
Chile, Guatemala, and Argentina all had roughly the same prices for groceries and restaurants as the US, but in all of those countries, I found places to stay for under $21 a night. And I'm not staying at hostels or shitholes—I need a place to myself with a good workspace. You can find these too with a modicum of effort. Hiltons and Marriotts aren't the only options, and you don't even have to dive deep into a Spanish-speaking Facebook group to find them.
Anyway, for my final dinner, I went to a weird restaurant I walked past all the time: Ocean Pacific's Buque Insignia (which translates to Ocean Pacific Flagship).
Of all the shit my readers see me eat, I bet a dozen raw oysters still makes them cringe
It's like 80% museum and 20% restaurant, but the food was delicious. It was so strange, though. The check-in counter is right at the front, just feet from the street. When you ask for a table, they lead you a LONG way back through several different corridors of cool shit without mentioning a single thing. I don't exactly know what the deal is here. Can you see the museum without eating? Is there a charge? I don't know.
Now, this isn't the most PC thing to point out, but it was slightly awkward when I went. After I told the hostess I wanted to eat, she called someone over to lead me to my table. The person she brought over had cerebral palsy or some sort of disability that gave him a severe limp.
When I say this place is big, I mean it. The walk from check-in to your table is probably a good 100 yards through the museum. I didn't have any complaints following him no matter how long it took, but I just felt bad for the dude having to make that walk for me, a single customer. Like, shit, can't he and the check-in girl switch jobs?
Either way, the place was an excellent final dinner in Santiago. I got oysters and a few IPAs for an appetizer and had some conger eel to bookend the trip.
Fried conger eel. The first time I had it was in a soup. This was better
Just one section of the museum I needed to traverse to get my grub on.
From Santiago I headed back to Peru, if you saw everything there, skip ahead to El Salvador