We landed in Santiago on the first day of the biggest civil unrest that Chile had seen in years, sparked by an increase to their metro fares.
The plan had been to spend a couple of days in the city before trekking in Patagonia for my 40th. We never left the city and were placed under military control with a night curfew, got tear gassed, found nothing open & unable to get food for days (after our first day when it all kicked off). Karen fell ill, too.
With nothing to do, I mostly sat in the hotel lobby as one by one, other guests started to leave - at least once flights started running again. After a few days, we managed to get a taxi to take us to a park we thought might have been open, but they refused to let us out as it was where the height of the troubles started each afternoon - as there was a high risk we could be killed.
Eventually we were able to get a flight out, back home.
