Santiago

May 7, 2013

Today we went to the capitol city of Santiago to visit the stock exchange and take a tour of the presidential palace.  After a breakfast of biscuits from the hotel, we all boarded the bus and relaxed for the hour and a half ride to the city. 

Once we got to the Santiago Stock Exchange, we went into a lecture room, and a woman who worked there gave us a presentation about the Stock market in Chile.  There are three major markets in Chile, the largest of which is the Santiago Stock Exchange.  All of the financial instruments traded in Santiago are also traded in the other two markets in Chile, and the 10 largest companies, including LAN airlines, are traded on Wall Street as well.  What I found most interesting, is that the Stock Exchange itself, is actually a part of the stock market.  The Exchange is split into 40 shares.  Each broker who works as an employee for the Exchange gets one share, and the others are a publicly traded commodity.  We walked around the building some, and got to see the room where all of the trading was done in the past, before computers made the process more efficient and fluid.  

 The billboard in the room still keeps a running record of every transaction made within the entire Exchange.

We wandered around the room and took pictures for a while, and then we got back on the bus, and went to the presidential palace.  We had to give the guards our passports to get into the palace, but besides that, I was surprised by how light the security was.  I lived really near DC, and even going to a public event like a baseball game where the president will be is a more highly guarded affair.  Also, we got to go into the room where a lot of important meetings and legislation takes place:

 This astounded me, because if someone on a tour of the White House in DC tried to go to the Oval Office, they would get arrested immediately.  I am surprised by the differences in the security priorities in Chile versus what I am used to in the US.

After the visit with the president, we took a trip up a mountain to see the view and the statue there.  We took an incline up the mountain, and then some stairs to get all the way to the top.  The climb wasn’t too bad, and it was worth it for this view:

There was also an incredible statue, so much bigger than I expected:

After that, we headed back down the mountain and got on the bus back to Vina del Mar.  We were all extremely tired and many of us were hungry.  I doubt many people, if anyone, are going to go out tonight.