Wednesday, April 9 – Day 114
Chile’s geography is very unique. The country’s length is about 3,000 miles, but it’s only an average of 115 miles wide. The distance from LA to New York is less than 2,500 miles. The estimated population of Chile is around 16 million, and about 5 million live here in Santiago. The city was founded in 1541, just a few years after Buenos Aires.
I’m in the center of the city in an area called Bellavista, and am just a few blocks from Cerro San Christobal. It’s a wonderful viewpoint that rises about 1,200 feet above the city. It has a big statue of the Virgin Mary, which is Santiago's equivalent of Christo Rentador in Rio. I found that visiting this spot was a much more powerful experience than Christo. Everyone has seen pictures of Christo and you expect it to be much larger and more impressive than it actually is. And once you get there, there are too many tourists, and not much else to do.
Atop San Christobal, the statue of Mary isn’t very big either – maybe 30 or 40 feet tall. But it has a small open-air theater for church services right at its base, and the view over the city is stunning, especially on days when the smog isn’t so bad and you can see how the foothills of the Andes surround the city. The coolest part, I think, is that off to one side there is a little prayer corner with racks of candles that people light when they are praying for a favor, and a bunch of thank you signs for the prayers that have been answered. One of the signs in these pictures says thanks for making our baby healthy again, and the other says thank you for giving me such a beautiful family. It’s attached to the fence with a little girl’s hair clip. There are hundreds of these.
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