Escape

There´s a change in the air over Santiago. It´s still just as contaminated with the fumes of half a million cars but there´s a nip now. While the UK´s been basking in lovely Easter heat, we´re heading into autumn and then the chilly Chilean winter. The nights and mornings are pretty cold now but the afternoons are still sunny and warm. A lot of people find this time of year miserable in Santiago - the pollution is worse and a lack of central heating means turning on the ancient gas heaters and wrapping up warm inside. Be careful not to nod off or you may not nod back on.

It´s true that the summer in Santiago is pretty nice. Barbecues up on Cerro San Cristobal are a right good laugh. If you head up to El Hermitaño, on the north-facing side of the mountain with a stunning view of the city, on a weekend afternoon in summer you´ll be hard-pressed to nab a spot. There are built in asados (BBQs) all over the place and everywhere people are sizzling meat and swigging cerveza and piscola. Everyone seems to bring an instrument with them so it's musical vibes galore, groups bellowing out Latin rock songs or hippies beating out rhythms on bongos. There's the odd obligatory carabinero but you get those guys everywhere. Other than that, it's more or less a weekly festival. The summers up on the hill that dominates the city are pretty special.

I love San Cristobal. Sometimes I've headed up there and barely seen anybody. Even though it's slap bang in the centre of Santiago, you can easily feel out of the loop and at peace. The views are incredible and every time I go I end up wandering around some new part. I like it in winter too, when you can look across the city to the snow-capped cordillera and remember that you're nicely nestled in The Andes. The Andes. Just writing it makes me break out in a grin.

And it is this that represents the natural magic of Santiago. For a city of six million, it's very easy to escape and find a sense of isolation. In the summer I went a few times to Parque Mahuida and El Sanctuario de la Naturaleza, a couple of places reachable by micro (regular city bus) where I went walking for hours without seeing a soul (I'll blog about these places in more detail some other time). I could see the whole city but I was utterly alone. Were it not for the sprawling urban metropolis below me, I could have imagined I was hundreds of miles from civilisation. The arid natural beauty of the foothills of the mountains is a place of tranquility, like trekking a lost land. I felt like an adventurer. I even found a machete and went on my path swinging it at random weeds and dead branches.