Santiago de Chile

After so much love for home, we were ready for the jump to Santiago - on a very comfortable Flixbus overnight. We were initially pleased with the much cheaper ticket prices compared to Argentina.

In Santiago, we rented an affordable apartment on the 19th floor to consolidate ourselves again - washing all our clothes properly (the laundries were expensive but not good), cooking for ourselves, having a bit more privacy than in hostels, and getting back to good health (Marike's cold was quite persistent).

The heat (35 degrees and above) and the poor air quality were quite challenging for us, quite a change after all the wind and generally cooler temperatures! The amazing view from our balcony meant we never made it to any of the viewpoint hills in the city. We took it easy and thoroughly enjoyed shopping at the market and cooking.

Otherwise, we strolled a lot through the city and visited some museums: the Chilean Museum of Precolumbian Art really sparked our enthusiasm for the further journey north and made us marvel at how diverse the culture on this continent was before colonization. The Museo de las bellas Artes seemed as if it was curated by first-semester art students, including their own artwork. Impressive and sad were the exhibitions at the Museo de la Memoria y los Derechos Humanos and the memorial site Villa Grimaldi, which focused on the crimes and torture during the military dictatorship. We think that Chileans have found a pretty good way to deal with their past, even though there are still different factions in the population and much work remains to be done.

Here, once again, a few Germans play a strange special role with an unpleasant aftertaste. In the Colonia Dignidad, a German sect in Chile, they were very close with Pinochet and systematically tortured and disposed of opponents and critics of the military regime. And the site still exists today and is run by sect followers, incredibly you can even vacation at Villa Bavaria!