Santa Lucia on a Smoggy Day

After work this morning, I had nothing to do. It was a cloudy day, threatening rain, and I really wanted to get out of the house. So, I thought, what better than to go for a walk?

Jus over three miles away from my house is Cerro Santa Lucia, a municipal park on a cerro--hill--whose centerpiece is a flambouyant castle built with steep, slick rock stairs leading up to it. The walk there is loud and urban (Santiago is a metropolis, after all), through Providencia, into Santiago Centro, along streets full of bundled up Santiaguinos, walking briskly from wherever it is they've just left to wherever it is they have to be next.

(This is Santiago: I walked from the rightish side of the middle to the middle of the middle)


Along the way, I passed through the Parque Forestal, a park that stretches for blocks through downtown, and is filled with statues of national heroes and Greek gods, and with couples smooching intensely everywhere. On the benches, in the grass, against trees, on the statues: Santiaguinos are given to public displays of affection, and parks are prime affection-displaying real estate.

I got to the cerro around 4 in the afternoon, and walked around in the greenery at the bottom of the hill for a while, taking it in. Then, I gave the security guard my passport number (you have to if you want to go up to the vista point), and started climbing.

(The last set of stairs to get to the vista point--already most of the way up by now)


(Views of the city from halfway up the cerro. Already impressive.)




Cerro Santa Lucia is a surprisingly quiet place in the middle of a very loud city. From the hill, you can still see the city, the cars, the people walking too quickly. But the cerro is somehow totally separate from all of that, a little haven right in the middle of the ruckus. The path that leads up to the top of the Cerro was lined, of course, with smooching pinguinos (high school students, so called because of their black and white suitlike uniforms), out of school and with nowhere to go but home or the park. It must be terribly romantic to bring your pololo to the cerro to make out after school; I suppose that's why so many couples do it.

[as a sidenote: I recognize that I have no right to judge the pinguinos for making out in all the parks--after all, at home, high schoolers faced with the same dilemma used to trek down to the creek and hide in the bushes there. It's the total lack of shame about it that is different here--at home, when you heard someone coming down the path, you jumped apart as soon as possible, putting at least three feet of space between each other, and pretended that you were just, you know, chilling by the creek in the brush after school totally innocently. No funny business there. No hanky panky. Here, that's totally different--the couples are totally engrossed in one another; groups of friends go out together, and the couples lie around kissing while their single friends talk. This, for me, is totally confusing--have you no shame?!]

Aside from the smooching pinguinos (whose photos I did not take, because it would have been rude and more than a little creepy), there was the gorgeous view from the top. You can see the entire city up there, and the mountains. Even though the day was smoggy, the tops of the mountains peeked through--the smog actually gave the mountains a floating effect, like they were other-worldly, and floating in the clouds above this manmade monster of a city.







I stayed up top for a while, taking in the view and the peace, thinking about how big it all seems (and is) sometimes. Then I climbed down, perspective gained, and made my way back home.