The Flight
The first weird thing that I noticed on this journey was that there were a lot of german dudes going to Santiago de Chile with me. In a glimpse at one of them I saw that they all had their names and Bayern International on the card that was dangling around their necks on a leather lanyard. Definitely something political going on there.
I had a good long nap on my 14 hours flight to Chile. It must have been 10 hours of sleeping or something because I stayed awake for Dinner and woke up to breakfast some 4 hours prior to landing. The interesting thing about the route to Santiago de Chile is that the plane has to cross the andean mountain range on the way and because Santiago is surrounded by mountains they can’t just fly right at it but have to cross further north and turn south to do the landing approach. This means that as a bonus during descent the plane flies past the highest mountain in the americas: Aconcagua. It is very strange to be in an airplaine and be on the same height as a mountain. It feels like that ground should not be so close at that moment.
Leaving the Airport
After landing around 11:00 and passing customs, leaving the airport turned out quite a bit harder than it should have been. I refused to take a taxi or Uber to the city center and wanted to get there by public transport much to the dismay of all the taxi drivers there that wanted to convince me to ride with them. One of them was however nice enough to tell me how to get to the city by bus. I would not have found the bus without him because there were no signs leading the way or indicating that these were in fact public buses to the city.
So after I withdrew some cash from the airport ATM (and discovered to my dismay that I pay an almost 10€ fee for withdrawing ~200€ of cash – which did not change with other ATMs) I made my way to the Bus and rode to the closest Subway Station (Terminal Pajaridos). There I got a rechargable prepaid card for the subway and navigated the subway lines to Plaza del Armas (the town square). Navigating the subway turned out to be quite a bit easier after I discovered that they indeed have a birds eye view plan of the thing instead of incomplete parallel lines with numbers indicating the interchanges between the lines.
The subway cars themselves were also interesting: they did not drive on rails. Instead they are basically cars with tires that drive within rails.
At the plaza del armas I did some people watching while I waited for my time to enter my Airbnb at 16:00.
To not waste any time I soon went to request my RUT number which I needed to buy my car. The RUT (Rol Único Tributario) seems to be the tax number that every chilenean has. I seems it is used in many other ways, too. You can use it at many supermarkets to collect bonus points, for example.
You request the RUT number at a notaria. A notaria is not a super expensive lawyer like in germany but rather they replace the municipal management officers. Basically they don’t have a “Stadtverwaltung” or KVR like Munich does but the management is all privately handled by these notary companies. Not something I have seen before but it seems to work out for them.
The RUT process was done in 20 minutes. I basically just had to give the person at the counter my passport and wait outside for 20 minutes and got my passport back. The RUT was sent to me later online.
Having done that, I made my way to the AirBnB. It was not quite the time yet so I got myself some lunch at the Patio Bellavista a backyard with lots of bars and restaurants. My choice did not quite fall on the right one because my first meal in Chile turned out to be a bit disappointing:
But I also got a Pisco Sour with that, which was quite good on the upside. After a final espresso and the slow realization that Chile was not going to be a cheap country to stay in, I made my way to the AirBnB.
My AirBnB was in a nice part of town called bellavista. It is a very artsy district even though there is a law school and a private university there. It has many clubs and restaurants, too.
The AirBnB itself was a bit different than the pictures make it seem. The most noticable of which is that the height of the kitchen’s surface is lower than usual. As if the kitchen was made for a very small people. It was fine for cooking but my hopes of using it as a workplace were dashed. Instead I proceeded to work remotely from the couch with one of the cussions to prop me up. The Wi-Fi was excellent – at first…
The Power Problems
On the third day at noon, I was in a meeting at that moment, the (front desk) phone rang – the place was a hotel, too. I did not pick up because I could not leave the meeting but shortly after it stopped my internet cut out. I did not think much of it and expected it to come back soon but after the screen-sharing burned through my 2GB of mobile data that I had within half an hour and I could not recharge it because the carrier blocks all traffic outside their portal – including the payment serivces’ pages that are required to pay for more data *facepalm*. For that day my worktime was over anyway because to start work at 10:00 German time I needed to start work at 06:00 Chile time which means that I was basically done at 14:00 anyway. At least the water was still working so I could still shower … in the dark.
The next day I started working from the Starbucks that was just one block over – next to the hospital. I would have had to go there anyway because without power I could not have made myself coffee. Very important.
Working from Starbucks worked out quite well and the background noise did not seem to bother anyone. There were only initial issues with the VPN because for some reason the VPN did not connect in the morning but worked again later in the day. To fix that issue initially I tunneled work’s OpenVPN protocol through a Private Internet Access server in the Netherlands via the Wireguard protocol which was not blocked. Of course my connection quality was not the best that day and I had quite the delay in my actions. But I spent most of that day in meetings anyway so it was fine in the end.
After internet still has not returned that day I talked to the front desk and they told me that the electricity company had shut down the power because there was some kind of short circuit going on in that flat and that I needed to contact the landlord. Of course it took us a while until I understood that because with my limited spanish and utter disbelief of this happening it needed to sink in first.
Luckily, the landlord managed to send an electrician quite quickly and power came back the same evening. Problem solved, I thought.
Until the power got cut again the next afternoon. Luckily a Saturday this time. Same reason. So I wrote to the landlord again and this time they seemed to fix it properly because when the power came back the next day it stayed for the rest of the week.
Supermarkets
I was very surprised by the selection of things that the supermarkets have. It seems very western and especially german in most parts. They have whole shelves full of Maggi stuff and even a ton of stuff imported from Germany directly.
It was very hard to find anything that does not exist here. I even found german dishwashing soap (Frosch).
Cerro San Cristobal
In the middle of Santiago towers Cerro San Cristobal a 300m tall hill which is encircled by the city and has the usual Maria statue on top. The path snakes up the mountain in two long serpentines and is frequented by an astonishing amount of cyclists and joggers. There is whole sections of the road marked out for cyclists and pedestrians only get a narrow sidewalk.
From the top you have a very nice view of the city and its outskirts as well as the surrounding mountains.
On my way down I did not want to walk the long way again so I looked for alternative routes on my maps. Google did not show any but there was a trail marked in OpenStreetMaps. I decided to take that one:
70% of it was fine until I got into the burned down forest section where the trail just disappeared (I of course only noticed that after crossing the point of no return). So after making my way through the sandy reed covered hillside, lots of Kletten (eng.: burdock) and a rockslide by twilight I finally came out at the bottom of the hill. The route turned out to be a downhill mountainbiking trail which was confirmed by the gang of mountain bikers chilling by the wayside.
Buying the car
I did not do a lot of shopping around for cars because one of the cars that the dude had already there was a 2011 Honda Pilot which ticked all the boxes that I needed albeit being a bit on the expensive side. I just bought this one because I figured that I would not be able to get a better deal for any third party car and also it came with a bunch of camping equipment – table, chairs, stove, tent, sleeping bags, matts etc. – and a bed platform conversion from the previous owner which I would still have to pay for with any other vehicle.
For buying the car I converted 8000 US Dollars into chilenean pesos and paid the rest with my credit card. I also let the car be equipped with an auxiliary battery with DC/AC inverter that is charged while driving. In total the car cost me around 15.000€. I hope to make most of that back when I sell it again at the end of my tour in august.
For transferring the ownership of the car we had to go to a notary again where I had to sign multiple papers with my signature and my fingerprint and pay another 140€ for the notary service.
I went to a fotocopia (a copyshop) to have all these documents replicated (I made 7 copies, just in case they take some at the border checkpoints) and the old chilenean at the copyshop was so cool. Not only did he staple the sets of copies together for me but when he learned that I was german he was super happy and showed off his (humble) german skills and even gave me a little souvenir.
The Good Food
I also went to a good restaurant called “Viva la Vida” which was nearby.
Coffee
Of course I also enjoyed some good coffee and bought some coffee beans. I think Espresso Tonic is my new favorite summer coffee drink.
Honorable Mentions
Rap Battle
Graffiti everywhere.
During protests about chile’s constitution in 2019 a lot of the city center got covered in graffiti. Seems like they did not manage to clean it up since then.
Read more here:
Empanadas are great
I tried many different ones.
- Pina Picante
- Jamon y Queso
- Carne y Queso
- Camerones
- Chicharron
All of them were great! They come in as many variations as we have pizza variations.