We got up in the morning and got ready for the day in Santiago. We packed our bags and left them at the front desk before heading out. Our plan was to take a taxi to the nearest metro station and buy a bip! card, which we would subsequently use on the metro and/or bus.
We booked an Uber from our hotel to the Pudahuel metro station, but I made an error in choosing the destination, so the ride ended short of where we wanted to be. Since we didn’t have a bip! card, we couldn’t take the bus, and we were not sure if contactless credit cards would be accepted on the local buses (like they had been in Buenos Aires). We had to walk about 20 minutes to get there and saw a bit of the local neighborhood on the way.
We bought a bip! card and loaded it with balance for a total of CLP 5000. This would be enough for 4 rides on the metro. One unique thing I noticed about the metro is that it had wheels in addition to rails. I had not seen this before. Researching it later, I found out that the trains on the older lines (1, 2, and 5) use rubber tires to run on rollways or guideways, which are separate from the steel rails used for grounding.
We got off at Plaza de Armas, and the exit brought us into Plaza de Armas de Santiago right next to the STGO sign. This square is surrounded by buildings like the Correo Central Building and the Museum of National History of Chile, and it features statues and fountains such as the Monument to Pedro de Valdivia.
We also visited the Metropolitan Cathedral of Santiago at one end of the Plaza de Armas.
We walked along the Paseo Ahumada and reached a Tourist Information Center at Barrio La Bolsa. The staff there was very helpful and gave us an overview of the places we could visit along with a map with all the details.
Next we headed to see the Plaza de La Constitución and La Moneda Palace. The large square had paved areas and lawns with flags in front of the office of the President of Chile.
We stopped for a quick lunch at an Italian fast food place which prepared quick pastas. The flavours were nice and the quantity was more substantial than it looked.
We walked back past Plaza de Armas and made a quick visit to the Museum of National History of Chile. We then continued our walk towards San Cristóbal Hill and saw Basilica de la Merced on the way.
We visited the National Museum of Fine Arts which had some interesting works of art. But to be completely honest, I was not impressed, or maybe I didn’t understand it.
We also relaxed for a bit on the benches around there before crossing the Mapocho River and continuing our walk through the Bellavista area. We saw many interesting restaurants on the way. Something that caught our attention was Peruvian food. But we didn’t walk back this way, so we missed the chance to try it out.
We bought round-trip tickets for the Funicular de Santiago to visit the top of San Cristóbal Hill. The Funicular turned 100 years old this year. The ride was not too long but was a nice experience.
We saw the Sanctuary of the Immaculate Conception on San Cristóbal hill with a large statue of Virgen de la Inmaculada Concepción.
The top of the hill offered amazing views of Santiago; the city appeared as a huge expanse spread over vast distances. The Andes mountains flanked the city on the east, reminding us of Almaty 🔗, where the mountains flank the city from the south.
The ride down on the Funicular de Santiago gave us nice views of the city and the surroundings. It was getting quite late so we decided to pick up some Empanadas and Cakes from the cafe just outside the gates of the park and walked to Baquedano metro station.
We took the metro back to Pudahuel metro station and our bip! card had just enough balance to cover the 4 rides we took without needing to reload it. It took some time for us to get a cab from there back to the Hilton with Cabify and Uber. Eventually we were able to get an Uber back to the hotel. We had booked the 9:00 PM shuttle originally, but after picking up our bags from the front desk we checked if there was space on the 8:00 PM shuttle to the airport as it was just a few minutes past 8:00 PM. Luckily for us, the shuttle had not left and there was space on it, in fact we were the only ones. The ride back to the airport was quick, and we waited in the international terminal for the check-in to open for our Copa Airlines flight.
There were two Copa Airlines flights from Santiago to Panama City within 11 minutes of each other, and they were both using the same check-in desks. This resulted in a long line and a lengthy wait. The check-in agent was only able to issue our boarding passes as far as Panama City and asked us to collect our boarding passes for the connecting flights back to Mumbai at Tocumen International Airport. We had valid B1/B2 visas for USA and would be able to enter Panama with that, which was our plan anyway. But I wonder how the situation would have played out had we not been able to leave the international transit area to collect the next boarding passed and if we had checked in the bags instead of carrying them with us as cabin luggage. I guess we’ll never know.
We still had the issue of the missing police verification slips to deal with. The officer asked us for the slips when we handed over our passports. We informed her that we were not given anything when we came in. She asked if we had the entry stamp in the passport, which we did. With that, she was able to complete the process and stamped us out of Chile. We went to McDonald’s at the C gates to get some dinner. We spent the remaining currency we had at one of the stores to buy bottles of water for the next day, and then walked over to the E gates for boarding.