Hiking Cerro San Cristóbal
After days of looking up at the towering white statue from the city streets, we decided to ditch the funicular today and climb Cerro San Cristóbal on foot.
The morning started in the bohemian Barrio Bellavista. We walked past the colorful murals and headed for the Pio Nono entrance of Parque Metropolitano. Instead of joining the long queue for the funicular, we found the start of the Sendero Zorro Vidal trail.
The walk up was a workout in my flat-bottomed trainers, but a beautiful one. The trail is well-marked and exclusively for pedestrians, which made for a peaceful hour-long ascent through trees and cacti. We paused occasionally to watch the city of Santiago start to shrink below us.
About halfway up, we passed near the National Zoo and caught glimpses of the city's sprawl through the foliage. The final stretch was the steepest, but as I rounded the last bend and reached the Terraza Bellavista, the view opened up completely. Seeing the high-rises framed by the massive peaks of the Andes is something no photo can quite capture.