Mass and Mote (Con Huesillo) on Cerro San Cristóbal

The Virgin Mary

We woke up early one Sunday morning to spend the day at Cerro San Cristóbal, the largest hill in downtown Santiago. Instead of walking to Bellavista (the neighbourhood where the hill is located), we opted for a short subway ride and a much shorter walk to the hill.

Only in South America

Lost in llama

On our way there, we passed by the still closed stores of Bellavista, the street vendors with their value souvenirs, and even a llama. It was pretty awesome. We stopped for a brief photo shoot with the cute thing: As you can see, even Brian was impressed!

We then continued our walk towards the hill, which ended at the entrance of the gondola that would take us past the zoo and some way up Cerro San Cristóbal. Here we were met with some good old mayhem: Although there was a line for both the ticketing booth and the gondola, groups would butt in and around us just to get ahead. It was chaos, and I hate to say it, annoying. In that moment, I missed the organization of home and was definitely peeved, but it was such a minute inconvenience that both Brian and I let it go.We waited our turn and were soon on the steps of the waiting area for the gondola.

A view of the city on the gondola

Of course, our first thoughts upon happening on the steps and the gondola itself were "where are the safety railings?" and "wow, this looks unsafe". As you may be able to guess, the steps were tall and open to the tracks of the gondola, and the gondola was worn and unstable. On our way up the hill, we joked that something or other would break, like the cable or perhaps the gondola itself.

By some miracle, we made it to the top and was just in time for the 12:00PM mass. Typically, the mass is held outdoors; however, that weekend was a long one for Chileans, so it moved inside the church.

The altar

Mass in any language is beautiful, and the one that we attended was no exception. Although it wasn't my first time hearing mass in Spanish, it was the first time that I had heard hymns in the language. It was heartwarming. Mind you, my comprehension of the language is still very poor, so I could only understand one in every four words. Hahaha. Brian has a more advanced understanding of Spanish and could follow the service quite closely. Lucky B.

Coffee and wafers in the sun

The church offered coffee and some wafers after the mass, which we happily indulged in. (Inevitably, they also became our lunch. Hahaha!)

Who dis?

Once we had finished our coffees, we looked for the famous statue of the Virgin Mary, which was located on the highest point of the hill (see the first photo in this blog post). Below her statue were benches occupied by tourists and Chileans alike. The view from those benches was unobstructed and magnificent. It was lovely sitting there for a while.

We then made our way back down to the church and checked out the crosses stationed around it. Each one was painted with a unique design: See Brian's photo above for an example of one of these crosses. 

Yum, yum, yum!

At some point, we bought mote con huesillo, a traditional Chilean drink that comes with mote (wheat) and huesillo (apricot). It was quite tasty and very refreshing on that warm October day. We drank our motes as we looked into some of the souvenir shops located on the hill. They sold everything from key chains to alpaca coats. I was quite tempted to get one of the latter for myself.

We spent a good chunk of our day at  Cerro San Cristóbal before we made our way down the hill on the gondola. To board it we were, again, met with a line; however, it was much more organized than the one from the morning--much to my relief! After around twenty minutes or so, we were comfortably standing on the bottom-most section of the gondola and admiring the view that it gave us.

Once down, we looked into getting some hats for our trip to San Pedro. But the problem was everything was too small! Brian guessed that it was because the stores catered to the zoo-goers, and I agree! So we decided to get some hats at some other time and went home to rest up before Henri's birthday dinner.

Our evening was spent as well as our day: We dined on Henri's lovely cooking and heard stories of friends' diverse childhoods, stories that were not only funny but also heartwarming in nature. After lots of great food and many hearty laughs, we went home and packed for our early flight to San Pedro de Atacama.