Chile & Antarctica, Day 3: More Chilean than a Mote con Huesillo

The bad news was that we had some time to kill at the Holiday Inn and no breakfast in the morning, but the good news is that Grandpa Poncho was picking us up from there.  We met him and his partner Nelly in the early afternoon, and they drove us to their apartment for lunch.

They had the most beautiful view from their balcony! Oh, and they also had a maid...which is only notable because I've never known anyone that has had a maid before, LOL.

Francisco's cousin, Catalina came with her boyfriend Mauricio to join us for wine and snacks on the balcony, and then we all had lunch together. We had humitas (similar to tamales), salad, bread...we left there stuffed!

I have loved meeting all of Francisco's family - they are all such great people!

After lunch, Catalina and Mauricio offered to drive us to the AirBNB apartment we had reserved. This was our first time booking with AirBNB, so we weren't entirely sure what to expect. It was a little challenging just getting checked in because the concierge didn't exactly speak English, and the room wasn't reserved under Francisco's name. He finally tossed out Alejandra's name, who was the apartment manager, and this finally got the process moving. We took the elevator up to the apartment, and it was an oven in there! So, we had only completely booked an apartment without air conditioning in the middle of summer, and this room faced the hot afternoon sun. We didn't hang around there long, since I wanted to get some fresh air instead of sweltering inside. Other than our oversight there, it was exactly what we had expected, an efficient, modern apartment fairly conveniently located - and it was only around $50 a night!

We decided to just start walking and see where we ended up, and we ended up somewhere we'd planned to visit at some point anyway. And saw tons of wild dogs along the way.

Cerro Santa Lucia (Santa Lucia Hill) is a small hill in the center of Santiago, a remnant of a volcano 15 million years old. We climbed all the way to the top to take in the view of the sprawling city. The mountains in the distance were partly obscured by the city smog.

On the way down, we stopped at a small vendor cart to try Mote con huesillo, a traditional Chilean summertime drink made from wheat and peaches. It is a sweet clear nectar-like liquid made with dried peaches (huesillo) cooked in sugar, water and cinnamon, and then mixed with fresh cooked husked wheat (mote). So, it kind of looks like a brain is floating in the middle of your drink, but it doesn't taste half-bad!

We stopped at a bread/pastry shop on our walk back, and picked up a couple things to munch on at the apartment.