Um...so where do all the people run off to on Sundays? Like, all those people who crowd the downtown area near where I live? Where there are so many pedestrians, that it takes me a whole five minutes to make a right turn ANYWHERE?
And the taxis? The buses? Just - poof, gone! Seriously?

For a country, like most Lat Am ones, where close to 50% of the population resides IN THE CAPITAL, it's mind boggling to me where these people go on Sundays. Do they head for the hills??!! The Andes don't particularly look that welcoming or endearing this time of year actually... so what's the deal?

The stores that line the busy streets are all closed, the kiosks are shut down, most Starbucks are closed, no one's selling fruit/artichokes on the corners and even the guy who sits there and juggles apples, or what have you, at every intersection - gone! It's actually rather spooky. Kind of like that short story by Stephen King called "The Langoliers," where passengers on a cross-country red-eye flight from Los Angeles to Boston wake up and find that the crew and the rest of the passengers who weren't asleep, have disappeared. Creepier yet, is that THEN they discover that they're the only people remaining on the planet - PERIOD. (Very eerie story, check it out!)

Yeah, Santiago on Sundays kind of feels like that. If there are about 16 million people TOTAL in this country, and about 7 million or so live in Santiago, are they all just sitting at home? If so, then MY WORD they take this "day of rest" bit seriously...