My flight from Easter Island to Santiago should have been on LATAM’s 787, but it was swapped at the last minute due to the 787 engine trouble affecting many airlines.
Sadly, swapped to an old Singapore airlines 777 that last saw a new interior 20 years ago, and has had so little attention from LATAM that not only was it completely unbranded:
but it also had no IFE and some broken seats. Specifically seat 11D. Guess which one I was in…
At least it wasn’t cancelled.
Santiago is quite boring, but does have nice wide roads and plenty of cycle lanes:
so you can avoid the taxi mafia and get around on one of these app-controlled, pay-as-you-go, park anywhere, sharing bikes:
Here’s mine outside the hotel:
Use one to go to the park and take the Teleferico (or something, it’s a cable car) for some nice views:
If you’ve had enough of the cycle lanes:
You can grab an electric scooter instead, and these are really great fun, as long as you ignore all the safety rules:
Use it to go to the highest observation deck in South America, the Sky Costanera:
The views are ok, but it’s hard to take photos through the dirty glass with all the reflections:
If you happen to be wearing a white T-shirt, then all your photos will be screwed, without a lot of camera fiddling:
(PS I think the above counts as a selfie. In the Sky tower, there were so many people taking selfies, including someone doing a headstand and someone filming themselves singing. There were people taking photos of themselves looking at the view. Just themselves looking. Not the view. The view was not in the shot. Just a shot of hey here I am looking at a view, aren’t I pretty. Most of these people were spoiling the view, they certainly weren’t pretty enough to justify 30 minutes of self-absorbed vacuous vanity and ludicrous, shameless posing. Obviously, they were all under 25 years old. What happened that means it’s now ok to do a fucking headstand in the middle of a crowded public space just to put on your Instagram? The world is doomed. When the time comes, there will be no revolution, there will just be pictures of people trying to look pretty next to where they thought the revolution was about to happen.)
Never mind though, because it looks better on the inside:
and the best part of visiting is riding the electric scooters through the empty financial district back to the hotel, as fast as it will go, jumping off the kerbs, and taking it at least 3 times around the block just for fun.