This past Sunday (the 17th), there was another election being held. Because of that, most things are shut, so we needed something to do for the day. For some reason, I had the hair-brained idea that we should travel the Metro and go to the end of each line, take a look around, then keep going, until we had visited the end station on every line in Santiago. Somehow, I convinced Robin to come along, and so we set off from Manuel Montt (our nearest station) to visit the Metro-limits!
The Santiago Metro system:
The sequence of stops we took is outline below, with pictures taken at the end of each line. If there’s no picture, then it means that the station indicated was just a line transfer (combinaccion).
- Manuel Montt – San Pablo
- San Pablo – Los Heroes
- Los Heroes – La Cisterna
- La Cisterna – Vicuña MacKenna
- Vicuña MacKenna – Plaza de Puente Alto
- Plaza de Puente Alto – Vicente Valdes
- Vicente Valdes – Pudahuel
- Pudahuel – Santa Ana
- Santa Ana – Vespucio Norte
- Vespucio Norte – Los Heroes
- Los Heroes – Manuel Montt — We had to stop for the day because we were supposed to meet up with Jorge again, so we went home, and planned to go out to the end of the last line the next day.
- Manuel Montt – Los Dominicos
- Los Dominicos – Manuel Montt (home!)
Done and done! Here are some random observations during our riding around:
- Total cost for 2 people was something around $7000 (CLP), because we got out and took photos. You could do it for the cost of one ride each if you stayed inside the stations.
- Manuel Montt to U de Santiago only takes about 15 minutes
- Manuel Montt to the end of Line 1 (San Pablo) took around 25 minutes
- El Parrón (on Line 2) is a nice station
- La Cisterna is also nice (end of Line 2)
- The train we had on Line 4 was a smooth-riding, modern train with a TV and everything. Some other lines are still using older trains which are ancient compared to these ones
- Stations are often massive, especially transfer points
- Line 4A only takes about 10 minutes to go from end to end
- Vicuña MacKenna station is nice and very big
- Zapadores (near end of Line 2) has fancy-looking terracotta tiles on the walls so it, like many other newer stations, look almost like the lobby of a hotel!
- Lots of stairs have a clever extension on the handrails that force people using one side of the stairs to go out and around people using the other side. This creates much better flow of people during busy times.
- The Los Heroes station is confusing, and was the only place where we didn’t immediately make our transfer/know where we were going.
- I think the total time spent was somewhere around 6 hours, including getting out and looking around at the ends of the lines.
I know, this is quite random, but it was fun regardless, and gave us a chance to see some parts of the city that we wouldn’t otherwise see. I’m surprised and impressed that Robin came along as well 😉
You can find some more photos in my Santiago Metro Marathon Flickr set.