Photos from Chile (I)

Below, I wrote a bit about Santiago and the smog problem. The night we arrived, however, it was raining, and so the skies were clear the next morning. Here's the view from the apartment window--quite spectacular. But you can see that the snow level comes almost down right to where we were, which tells you that things were quite a bit colder than they were in Argentina. Chile reminds us a bit of a squished California, narrower and taller but with many of the same geographical features and running from Pacific coast to cenral valley to eastern mountains. You might compare the climate here to the base of the California sierra, a bit below the Tahoe area. It's quite rare for it snow here in Santiago proper, but as the upper classes have begun to inhabit higher ground, they get snowed on.