Chilean hazing

One reality of life in Santiago is the smog (or as they say in Spanish: "esmog").  Several years ago I was in the NW in February with my piano duo partner, Jack, who had never been to that part of the world.  Every couple of minutes (or so it seemed) I was saying something like, "Well, if it wasn't so overcast right now, you'd see that there's an enormous mountain right over there."  It sort of feels like that here in Santiago.  The first day we arrived you could actually (if you really squinted) see a very tall snow-covered peak right from our living room window.  I'm assuming it's still there, but we haven't really caught a glimpse of it since then.  On the average day you might be lucky to make out the outline of the closer mountains against the sky.  Mostly it all looks pretty grey over in that direction most of the time.

Yesterday we took a family hike, and since Jonathan and I had both been up San Cristobal behind our house but the girls hadn't been up, we decided to make that our first family excursion.  We feel very spoiled to be able to walk out the front door and have a real 5-7 mile hike on actual trails, up to a beautiful view, even if it is admittedly smoggy.

This is one of the trails along the edge of the park that is still down on street level.

One of the many trails up to Santa Maria

Ahem.... this stands for Parque Metropolitano de Santiago.  

The tall tower you see on the left is Costanera Center, the tallest tower in South America.  Directly underneath it is the Jumbo grocery store where we sometimes shop.  We actually walked to it last evening, following our morning hike, bringing our mileage for the day up to somewhere over 11 miles!  (That's 25,249 steps, for my Fitbit buddies....)  As you can see, the mountains are vaguely present, and the 17,000 ft peak, which you should be able to see just to the left of the tower, is pretty much invisible.

We did get a better angle on the Santa Maria on yesterday's hike.  The girls enjoyed seeing her up close.

Just below the statue is a shrine for lighting candles and leaving momentos of loved ones.  Bugs wants to go up again and light candles for Miss Crystal and Great Grandpa.