Hiking up Cerro San Cristobal, some dogs and a fire!

Here's our next blog post, a bit of a mixed bag but hopefully entertaining anyway! 

It's been all drama at Struan's school this last week, with a student breathlessly charging into the classroom one evening to announce that there were riots close to the school! There seem to be demonstrations and protests here almost every other day, we weren't sure what this was about but they don't usually turn violent. The following evening there was a massive fire in a building across the street, the Ecuadorian School. This news video has some good footage - this was literally across the road from Struan's school, while he was trying to teach... The bomberos were out in force - what a good name for firemen!

After we posted a little while ago about dogs in coats, we've been trying to find some more good dog pics. It's getting warmer here, so there are less dogs in coats, but we had to show this beauty:

Ahem

The other comedy dog behaviour here is just sleeping anywhere, usually in the middle of the pavement:

sausages...zzzzz...

You go there, I'll go here

In the middle of a crossroads in Bellavista!

This last one just plonked himself down in the middle of the road as we were walking along. He stayed like this while this white car went past, then as another one came along he looked up as if to say "seriously, I'm taking a nap".

This weekend we hiked up Cerro San Cristobal, the big urban hill/park in Santiago. We've been up on the funicular already, but that goes pretty much straight to the top so we wanted to see the way up and explore a bit. Firstly a picture of the Cerro from the roof of our apartment building:

Spring is on the way - you can just see the city poking through the trees

Hillside and the city

This one and the one below are contrasts - the smog over the city makes the sky look washed out and grey...

...facing up the hill, this is the actual deep blue colour of the Chilean sky

Struan with some flora

View looking east from Cerro San Cristobal

Anna and los Andes

Heading back down on the funicular

Once we got back down into the city we rewarded ourselves with coffee and sandwiches at another great cafe we found:

Anna outside Cafe Laboatoria

This cafe is just round the corner from our apartment, here's the aerial view of the little square that this cafe is in, taken from the roof of our apartment building:

View of the little plaza from our apartment building

So while we were down there we thought we'd take the opposite picture:

The tall building in the background is our apartment building!

chao!