Last full day in Santiago; fortified by breakfast on our terrace,
a three-museum day...
First stop is on the square, the Museo Historico (sadly too early to go up the tower)
with interesting models of the city, paintings of battles for independence, and a copy of the eventual declaration (signed by improbably-named general Bernardo O'Higgins)
and a range of historic artefacts
Next, another underground ride (they're very cheery with their greetings
and enormous inside)
four stops westwards to an area called Quinta Normal, where there's a park and the (rather sad - mainly mangy stuffed animals) Natural History Museum
We'd been lured here on the promise of Easter Island moa figure but that proved to be wrong; there was however live taxidermy (an oxymoron?) going on.
Last: the 2010 Museum of Memory and Human Rights, dedicated to and commemorating the victims (alive and dead) of the appalling human rights violations of the military regime between 1973 and 1990. The Pinochet coup started with the bombing of La Moneda on 11 September 1973, and the museum traces the atrocities of those tortured and the 'disappeared' through to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and seemingly endless investigations which ever eventually unearthed the truth about what actually happened to the +40,000 people (some of whom seemed chosen at random, not particularly 'opposed' to the regime all all). Horrifying, of course (an 18 year old student got on her boyfriend's motorbike in summer 1986 - timing sound familiar? - and vanished; their bodies were found in a ditch but it was only after years of denials that an investigation discovered that the local police had abducted and tortured them) but enlightening.
Time to clear up the apartment for a quick getaway tomorrow morning (see, I said you can see the cathedral from bed!)
and a wander through the plaza - here's Pedro Valdivia, who founded the city.
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