May 7th: Santiago

After a later night partying with the Chilean students, this morning it was a little difficult waking up for the early bus ride to Santiago. Almost all of us fell asleep, as the bus ride from our hotel in Viña del Mar is about an hour and a half. In Santiago, our first stop was the stock exchange, or bolsa de valores. One of the representatives there explained the Chilean stock market and we were shown a video which explained the system. I do not know the intricacies of the stock markets in the United States, but one thing we learned that I found interesting was that the Santiago Stock Exchange (SSE) has shares available for anyone to purchase, although they are very expensive. To become a broker, you are required to own a share of the SSE. Our visit concluded with a visit to the trading room which can still be used for trading on the computers that are set up, but most traders do not actually come to the trading room to conduct business anymore.

 

Our city tour guides then took us around part of the city to get to the history museum. I am sure it is an excellent museum, but everything was in Spanish and my vocabulary is not coming back as quickly as I has hoped. Seeing the pictures and artifacts, though, was very interesting, especially a copy of the book that Salvador Allende wrote (La Realidad Médico Social de Chile) that I had read about when I was researching for our group's company presentation.

 

For lunch, we ate at a seafood place in the central market. I had Chilean sea bass with a creamy seafood sauce which had scallops and shrimp. The food was delicious, and definitely worth the slightly higher meal cost.

 

This afternoon, our group as well as our Chilean guides were given a tour of the presidential palace. Compared to the security at government buildings in the United States, it was much easier to enter the palace than I expected. For women, they only search through purses with a wand and for men they require a pass through a metal detector. After passing through security, one of the guides that works at the palace led us through and explained the function of several of the rooms. Both the president and the first lady work in the presidential palace as do their cabinets. I was intrigued to learn that the first lady in Chile has a similar role to the first lady in the United States in the fact that she helps to try to improve social conditions.

 

To conclude our excursion to Santiago, we rode the funicular up a mountain to see the view from there and also walked to the summit of the mountain where there is a giant statute. I did not expect there to be as much smog as there was over the city of Santiago, and the view of the mountains was partially obstructed by it. Nevertheless, the view was stunning and provided a good idea of the size of the city.