After the nice 8 hour ride to Santiago,
we arrived in what immediately looked kind of like a dirty city, not
overly appealing....however, my mind would soon be changed over the
course of the next few days, except for the terrible air quality. We
arrived at the bus station, and I tried unsuccessfully to withdraw
money from the atms, welcome to my annoying world of having a
terrible bank I guess! After having no luck, we moved on to the next
terminal where there were more machines, and where Linh-Lan could get
her cash transfer from her Mother at a Western Union. I was able to
withdraw all of $20 from a nearby bank machine, whoopity whoop! The
other Frenchies we had travelled with from Mendoza had booked into a
different hotel, so we said a goodbye to them, and found a metro that
would take us near our hostel in the Bella Vista neighbourhood of
Santiago.
We arrived at the Hostel Casa Mosaico,
which I had selected specifically for its pool table, and found a
rather charming and old mansion that had been converted into a
hostel, similar to my hostel in Montevideo, Uruguay. The guy working
at the front desk was from Portugal, but spoke French, and we had our
first funny misstep, as the booking name was under LL's name, so they
found a sheet with a French person and the last name Bao(instead of
Dao), and we all assumed that it was a misspelling of her name, so we
began the check in process with that sheet, with the guy scratching
out the misspelled name and rewriting hers on it, and then asking for
my name to confirm the second bed. Well I gave my name, and the
second bed associated with the first reservation was that of someone
with a very Eastern European name, so we were now quite confused. It
wasn't until they looked around a bit more and found our actual
reservation papers, so we had a good laugh over the proximity of the
French Asian reservations. We received a few tips of places to eat
and drink and various other ideas for the city, especially valuable
since LL didn't have her precious “Le Retard” for Chile. After
making our check-in, we got a hold of our friend Dario, whom we had
met in Buenos Aires, and he wanted to meet up for a drink and a bite
to eat if we were up for it, so we finished our check-in and went off
to meet up with him in the nearby Patio Bella Vista, which is a cool
area with a bunch of bars, restaurants, and music, and also happens
to be the only area that is alive every night of the week.
We met up on the corner, and headed to
a bar “with a name like a famous city” that Dario couldn't
remember....so after making a few guesses of what the city name could
be, he asked a security guard, who mentioned “The Dublin Bar”...of
course it was that city name! So we stopped by there, and spent the
next few hours chilling out, eating some delicious hamburgers, and
getting some more local tips about Santiago from Dario. The majority
of the conversation was in Spanish, as he hadn't spoken English since
BA and was a bit rusty, which was both good and bad for me, as I was
pretty tired, and after an hour or so of listening to Spanish when
I'm not well rested, I start to lose interest and stop paying as much
attention, as it requires too much thinking. We finished our tasty
meals and juices, and decided to head back a bit early, as we were
tired and Dario had to work the next morning. After arriving back at
the hostel, another friend of mine from Santiago, a guy named
Alfredo, whom I had met in Croatia in 2011, messaged me and said he
wanted to come pick me up the next day after he was done class and go
for a quick tour of the city, so we agreed to meet up around 1:30 pm
the next day, giving me plenty of time to sleep in and catch up a
bit. LL decided she was going to go on an early walking tour with
Felicia, who was also in Santiago, so they made their day plans
seperate from me, and we called it a relatively early night.
It was nice to sleep in and while
laying in bed, I heard a familiar voice speaking in the room as she
checked in, and found that Nivine, the Syrian girl we had met in
Argentine, had arrived to check in. After finally getting up out of
bed, and debating whether to eat lunch or not, Alfredo told me to
hold off and that he would take me to a place he liked to eat lunch.
While waiting around for him, LL and Felicia showed up, and said they
were interested in tagging along as well, so once Alfredo dropped by,
we had our quick reunion, and I introduced him to the girls, and we
all piled into his little car and were on our way. Rather than
stopping by the place he had initially wanted to eat, we went to
check out a fairly famous place called Fuente Alemania (German Fountain), which is sandwich restaurant located in the city centre, and
fairly famous amongst Chileans and Foreigners alike. We took a little
while to find the place, as Alfredo actually was a little bit lost
driving in his own city! We finally arrived,and found a very very
busy place with no free spots to sit, especially for 5 people, as
Nivine had also joined us. Eventually the girls found a spot for the
three of them, and Alfredo and I grabbed another spot, and we spent
the next hour or so enjoying the delicious and fresh Lomito con
Tomate y Palta (a type of shredded pork with tomatoes and avocado
sandwich). The women in the restaurant made the sandwiches fresh from
scratch in front of everyone, and they were huge and decently priced.
After the awesome lunch, and practicing Spanish with Alfredo, he
wanted to take me for a drive up Cerro San Cristobal, which is a
large hill making up a large portion of the Parque Metropolitano of
Santiago, and which happens to be one of the largest public parks in
a city anywhere in the World. On our way back to Alfredo's car, we
ran into Francois and Anais, the French couple, who were wandering
the streets, and the rest of the Frenchies decided to go up the hill
by walking instead.
 |
| Entering the famous Santiago restaurant, home of the Lomitos |
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| My first Lomito Sandwich with Alfredo |
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| Interesting skyscraper that's designed to look like a mobile phone |
So Alfredo and I were off in his car,
making our way up the large hill, passing numerous cyclists and
runners and walkers, arriving at the top, where there would normally
be some amazing views of the city, however, because of it's location
in a valley, the smog of the city is absolutely terrible. Some of the
worst smog I've seen anywhere, which is really too bad, as the city
landscape is quite beautiful, with the mountains (Cordillera)
surrounding the city. We made our way up to the giant Virgin Mary
statue that looks over the city, or Mary the Redeemer as I liked to
call her, before stopping for a local snack that Alfredo was quite
fond of, a cup of peach juice, peaches, and small pieces of
wheat....it reminded me a little bit of a Ukrainian dessert that my
friend Richard's Mom used to make, called Kutcha. It wasn't overly
sweet, and nice to eat, plus it was quite cheap. After chatting some
more, and wandering around the hill a bit, seeing the surrounding
areas, we saw the French group, and sat down with them for a little
bit, before making our way back down the hill. The girls decided to
hop into Alfredo's car with me for the ride down, as he was more than
happy to drive us all back to the hostel. We arrived back, said
goodbye, and made arrangements to meet up again later on.
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| Virgin Mary the Redeemer? Take that Rio! |
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| random head statue...wonder who it is |
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| the amazing smog of Santiago ha ha |
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| the smog almost looks like a sheet of water |
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| Down in the streets, the smog isn't so noticeable :) |
The girls and I wandered down towards
the city centre and found a very nice little coffee shop that ended up
having amazing coffee, and incredible sandwiches, which I would later
find out. We settled in there, and enjoyed coffee and tea, and
desserts for the girls. Felicia was staying at a nearby friend's
place, and invited us to come over and have dinner that night, so the
girls went off to have a drink and buy some food for dinner that
night, while I went back towards the hostel to try and sort out a ski
day for the next day, as there were two American girls from my dorm
room who were going, and I figured it would be nice to finally get
back on the hill, after going more than 2 years without. There was a
whole group of people from the hostel heading out for some drinks and
a bite to eat, but I had to resist the urge and go sort out ski
rentals, finding a nearby store that I had passed by the previous
night, close to our hostel. After getting my rentals and
transportation sorted out to Valle Nevado I wandered back to the
hostel, until I heard from Felicia to drop by the apartment, as they
were preparing dinner. She gave me some directions, and I was on my
way. Unfortunately, she gave me the apartment number as 271 instead
of 371, so I was wandering around for quite awhile on the very small
street where it was meant to be located, unsure of what exactly to
do. After asking a worker at a nearby cafe, who also had no idea
where to go, I just took a shot at it and rang the bell for the
apartment building with 371 and was pleased to be buzzed in. I
entered the tiny apartment, and found a cute new girl in the kitchen
with the rest of the girls, who introduced herself as Kendra, but
didn't sound very Chilean when she spoke Spanish. After some
contemplation, and hearing that her Spanish actually wasn't that
great, I soon realized she was American, but nevertheless, we spoke
for the nearly the rest of the evening in Spanish, as it's a little
less intimidating to speak with people who are at the same level as
myself.
We waited for awhile, while the girls
cooked Risotto for dinner, enjoyed some Chilean wine, and listened to
some pretty old and funny music via the American girl's iPhone. We
tried to wait for her sort of boyfriend (she described their
relationship as open but that it had been a bit more open on her
end), the guy who's apartment we were in, to arrive back from work,
but he was taking forever, and we were all hungry, so we had our
risotto, and finished up, before playing some Jungle Speed and
passing the time. It was getting pretty late before he finally
arrived, and I had to be up early the next day to head out to the ski
hill, so I just got to briefly meet him before deciding to head back.
Felicia was leaving the next day for the North of Chile, so we said
our final goodbye to her, and wandered back to the hostel for the
night.
I didn't get to sleep a whole lot,
maybe about 4 hours before getting up to head off to the ski shop for
my bus to the hill. I had to laugh, as the girls were told to arrive
at 7:30 am at the same shop, while I was told 7:50 am, so I had a bit
more time to grab a bit of breakfast and take my time getting there,
arriving to find them just sitting around, with the staff not having
helped them in the 20 minutes they had been there. On top of that,
they had been required to leave their passport to rent equipment,
while I was allowed to rent without leaving anything. We finally
packed up the van, which was full of mostly Brazilians, as they
apparently love to come to the ski hills, and were on our way. The
drive was quite nice for the time I stayed awake, although I napped
most of the way, through the hairpin turns of the mountain range,
arriving at the hill around 9:30 am. The hill was located in an
absolutely gorgeous spot, tucked in the middle of the Andes, with
breathtaking views all around...awesome! After trying to figure out
where we could get our lift tickets, and running into a British guy I
recognized from the hostel in Mendoza (who hilariously enough, had
been so drunk on a wine tour there that the police had to drive him
back to the hostel hahaha), I found the prices to be a bit expensive,
as it was about $80 for a lift ticket. It was really a shame, because
if you had a Movistar cell phone, one of the local cell providers,
you could receive 2 lift tickets for the price of one that day, and
the British guy had a Movistar cell phone, but it was out of battery
so we couldn't get the deal, damn!
We grabbed our lift tickets, and were
on our way up the hill, and it was just awesome to go rip. The snow
wasn't the absolute greatest as it was still early in the season, and
not all of the runs were open, but it was definitely a good enough
day. The weather was awesome for the first few hours, and we enjoyed
skiing for the next 4 hours, until the sun disappeared and the wind
really picked up, making things pretty cold on the hill. After a very
expensive and typical ski hill meal ($14 for a hamburger and fries,
ouch!), we called it a bit of an early day, finishing up around 3:30
pm even though we were meant to be picked up at 5 pm and could
continue on until then. It was a fun day chilling out with the girls,
and felt great to do some winter sport for a change. The bus
surprisingly showed up on time, but of course, since we had lots of
Brazilians, several of them were about 20 minutes late getting back
to the bus...damn Brazilians. We made our way back to town, sleeping
most of the way again, and arriving back at the hostel around 7 pm.
Dario invited LL and I to a Spanglish party, where locals go to
practice English and foreigners practice Spanish, but I wanted to
stick around the hostel area for the night, tired from the day on the
hill, so she went off on her way, but not before we stopped by a
nearby “Completo” stand, which is the Chilean version of a Hot
Dog. There were two guys eating these absolutely monstrous things, so
I ordered one of them, finding out it was an As Italiano, which is
shredded beef in a hot dog bun, with mayonnaise, avocado, and tomato
(Italian flag colours). After wolfing that down, and heading back to
the hostel with a nice bottle of Chilean wine, I met up with several
of the girls from the hostel, a few of whom were Irish, and just hung
out there for the next few hours, thinking we would all go out but
finding no one really keen, so it was another relatively early night.
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| Welcome to skiing in the Andes! |
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| Beautiful location for a hill |
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| The first Chilean completo! |
The next day after sleeping in a bit
again, LL and I decided to head out on a free walking tour at 3 pm,
so we just kind of bummed around the hostel for awhile, playing some
pool on the table that ended up being pretty crooked and not so
great, although better for making it fair for LL when she played me
in games. Her and Nivine went for a quick bite of ice cream at a
famous ice cream shop in Santiago called Emporeo Rosa, where you
could buy an ice cream made out of Rose Petals...strange but
apparently quite good! I met up with the very small tour group in
front of the nearby Bella Vista Museum, which is itself quite a
lovely building, before starting our tour. We passed through one of
the nearby parks called Parque Forestal, where our guide mentioned
that many young people of Santiago go to kiss, touch, and sometimes
even more with each other, as most young people live at home with
their parents until their 30s...we didn't see anything too risque
fortunately! We passed through the park, then through a somewhat
hipster neighbourhood called Lasterria, where our guide pointed out a
few spots such as a Peruvian/Asian infused restaurant, an Opus Dei
church where most of Chile's wealthiest and famous people belong (and
therefore create a fairly strict Catholic government structure such
that only 2 or 3 years earlier a Birth Control pill was approved),
and a wine bar called BocaNatriz, before arriving at the Centre of
Arts building, which had once been the Ministry of Defense during the
Pinochet government. It had been an old building, and rebuilt through
the aide of volunteers, and had a really unique mixture of old and
new, as the steel of the building had a rusted and ancient look,
while the glass structures were modern and vibrant.
We witnessed several dance group
(Chilean Backstreet Boys perhaps!), were pointed out a recyling
donation spot called an “Eco Ladrilla” (Eco Brick), as people
could stuff plastic bags inside of their plastic bottles, and if all
air was removed, they could actually be used as bricks to construct
homes and what not. We then entered the Centre of Arts, but didn't
get to stop by any exhibitions, just a quick pass through the hall,
including stopping at what had been a ministry chamber door, and had
door handles with fists imprinted on them. Initially they were
upwards fists, to signify Communism and the worker, but when Pinochet
took over, he changed them to downward pointing fists to demonstrate
the Facism, but once he was replaced, they were changed back to their
original design. We then made our way our to the major street called
La Almohada (although it's real name is Avenida Libertador B
O'Higgins) and wandered along there, stopping briefly at Cerro Santa
Lucia, which had once been simply known as the rock, but then an
ambitious Mayor took it upon himself to beautify the area, planting
numerous trees, plants, and constructing a castle at the top. We
didn't wander up to the top of it, as we didn't have time that day,
but I would later return to find a rather lovely view of the City
Centre, as well as some other nice charms. We continued our walk
towards the centre, then being told about the story of Completos,
which are the Chilean version of Hot Dogs, and how they came to be in
Chile, and were recommended a restaurant chain to sample them, called
Dominos, which ended up being a fantastic recommendation.
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| Red hot deals at the Soviet shop |
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| Opus Dei church, where some of Chile's most powerful people attend |
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| The Eco Bricks, great concept! |
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| The Chilean backstreet boys are up there practicing |
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| Former Defense building, now an Art Centre....was built with volunteer labour and it took a very short time |
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| Door handle that has been changed a few times, first like this, then facing down, now facing up again |
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| The bell has rung |
After wandering along La Almohada, we
made a quick stop down in one of the metro stops, at the Universidade
de Chile, which had some fantastic murals painted inside the metro
station. This station also happened to be near the main building of
the University, which had been taken over by students, as a form of
protesting the prices of tuition in Chile. At the moment, students
are unhappy with the prices it costs to study in Universities around
the country, as it costs around $10,000 US per year, similar to
Canadian prices, in a country where the wages make it difficult to
pay for such fees. However, the biggest issue at hand, is that the
Federal Government doesn't control the Education system at the
primary and secondary levels, it is controlled by local Governments,
and if a city or region has a poor financial state, their Government
can't afford to provide decent enough education, so the students then
suffer, and make poor grades, which prevents them from entering to
study at the Universities, which makes for an unequal system....the
rich obtain good primary and secondary education, continue on to the
Universities, and thus continue to succeed, while people from the
poorer regions never really have a chance to go much further. Hence,
the large protests going on at the moment, and one form of the
protesting, is to actually lock out all the University staff from the
buildings! We would find out a little bir more about the actual
protests a day later. We then made our way towards San Francisco
church, which is Santiago's oldest building. Inside we were pointed
towards a shrine of San Francisco, and noticed many photos of
people's pets and prayers....apparently San Francisco is the patron
Saint of animals, and thus, Chileans are great lovers of animals
because of this. One really begins to notice this while walking the
streets of Chile, and seeing stray dogs being fed by people, people
putting clothing on stray animals to keep them warm, and even
constructing little animal shelters for the stray pets. It's actually
quite an interesting phenomenon, as all other Latin countries treat
their stray animals with contempt and often kick and abuse them.
After the church, we wandered a bit
through the London and Paris neighbourhood, that is a rather classy
area of the city, with winding roads and cobblestone streets, very
much resembling something one would find in Paris or London. One
unfortunate and fairly well hidden secret of the neighbourhood, is a
building where members of opposition parties to Pinochet's Facist
Government were taken, tortured, and sometime executed. It was the
first of several detention centres opened up around the country
during the 1970s, where several thousand Chileans disappeared or were
murdered. Ironically enough, I was told to not wear my Communist
t-shirt by Alfredo in Santiago, but then found out that in fact it was
Communist associated people who were the ones tortured and executed
by the Government, although I respected his wishes for me to not wear
it. After that slight sombre area, we were next on our way to the
Palace de Moneda, which was the former Government House, where the
President Allemande, whom was in charge of the Government during
Pinochet's coup, barricaded himself in and refused to give up his
government, and was then found dead in the building, apparently of
suicide. He was supposedly offered the opportunity to fly with a
plane to Cuba if he gave up willingly to Pinochet, but most people
believe that he would have been killed either way, so he choose to
hole up in the building while the military attacked and bombarded the
building. After a quick wander through the lower level of the
building, which now houses art exhibitions, we were then on to wander
through the Financial District and business core of Santiago. Here we
were pointed out several interesting spots, including a wealthy club
that working class individuals weren't allowed to join, so they
opened up a restaurant and bar right across the street from the club
where anyone could have a drink.
We then wandered through one of the
many little malls, and were told about another interesting Chilean
thing called Cafe con Piernas (Coffee with legs). Most Chileans are
tea drinkers, not coffee drinkers, so some clever businessmen decided
that it would be a great idea to attract clients to their coffee shops
if they hired beautiful women and put them in little or even no
clothing! The Cafe con Piernas cafes range anywhere from pretty women
with nearly full clothing to fully naked women, whom may also provide
more than just their time, or so I'm told. We didn't stop in any of
the cafes, but made a note of where they were to check them out
another time. After the cafes, we made our way to one last final
Cathedral, on the Plaza de Armas, before coming out onto the Plaza
itself, which is a bustling area, where many Peruvians and Bolivians
entertain and meet up with fellow ex-pats, plus there's numerous arts
and crafts sales booths, musicians, etc etc. A quick wander there and
we were on our way up to a nearby hostel, that offered an amazing
view of the city core, and a pretty nice sunset to boot. Thus
concluded our walking tour, and we were provided with a few more
restaurant and beer tips by our kind guide, before making our way out
to grab a bite to eat. Since we had been recommended Dominos for a
completo, we made our way to a nearby one, after stopping to buy some
shoes at a place that was having a large sale. After 5 years of hard
core travel and numerous adventures, it was finally time to say
goodbye to my colourful and smelly Reebok ERS Racers, that I had
bought several years earlier in Melbourne, Australia, with my friend
Nico, whom at the time described them as “horribly ugly and shoes
I'd never buy”, although he did like the name of them and said he
would name a child Dash one day in honour of the shoes...I'll still
hold him to it.
Anyway, we found the Dominos to be
completely packed, but were fortunate to find a spot on the outside
patio, and perused the giant list of Completos....I think there were
about 14 of them, so I picked one, and damn was it great! So great,
that I decided I would try and return there and eventually try every
single type before I finally left Chile. After our nice and cheap
snack, we made our way back to the hostel, where we decided to go
meet up with Dario for dinner and a drink at the Asian/Peruvian
restaurant in the Lastarria neighbourhood, called Tambo. We met up
there, and the prices were a bit pricy, and I tried the Tokyo
Ceviche, which ended up being just okay, nothing too special. After
some more Spanish practice and dinner, it was a bit cold outside, we
wandered back to the hostel, grabbed one last drink there, before
calling it a night.
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| Another Christ the Redeemer, they're everywhere! |
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| Nice mural at Cerro Santa Lucia |
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| Cheese! |
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| Nice spot to read a book and soak the feet a bit I guess |
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| A distinguished Gentleman who dresses superbly |
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| San Francisco church |
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| Shrine of Animals...pray for your little friends here |
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| Impressive murals in the Metro Station |
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| Students protesting...they actually looked themselves inside the University, and professors can't enter to teach |
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| La Moneda....but where's the money?? |
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| a dodgy cafe con piernas...that I later visited...it was terrible |
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| Priests offering open confessions...I didn't do mine, would have taken far too long |
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| Plaza de Armas |
 |
| Plaza de Armas Sunset |
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| First completo from Dominos...amazing! |
The next day, I had made arrangements
with Alfredo to have my teeth cleaned at his clinic, so we were on
our way on the metro the next morning, all the way to the end of the
1st line, in the far East of Santiago, where Alfredo met us and took
us to the clinic he worked at, that was owned by his Mother. It was a
brand new place and it was an easy going experience, as the new
equipment made for a less painful than average cleaning, and we were
able to have a bit of fun, goofing around, taking photos, and meeting
all the other members of his family that worked there. After the
cleaning (both LL and I had 2 cavities each, but small ones that
could wait for repair), we were ready to go for lunch, and decided to
hop in Alfredo's car and head over towards the centre with him, as he
had afternoon classes. While waiting for him, I had to laugh as his
brother, who was just there to help out a little bit, went around
offering chocolate and soda to people in the office....what kind of
a dental office does that! As he joked, it made sure that people
would be coming back for more work. We hopped in Alfredo's car, and
were on our way to pick up a friend of his before making our way to
the centre, however, his friend had fairly recently moved to Santiago
from Colombia, and didn't really know that city all that well, and
ended up in the wrong meeting spots, which ended up adding a lot of
time, such that we wouldn't be able to grab lunch with the guys or
they would be late for class. Alfredo wanted to drop us off right by
our hostel, however, the exit from the underground roadway was
closed, due to a huge student protest going on that day.
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| Infamous plastic bag man of Santiago |
 |
| 2nd tallest building in the Southern Hemisphere |
We had to be dropped off in another
region, and decided to check out the market that was there, to grab a
snack and wander around a bit. Shortly after entering, we started
noticing a lot of young and old people running around in the streets,
in a bit of a panic, and then the security of the market suddenly
started shutting all the exits and locking them....curious, we made
our way over to the barred exits, and could see the main street, a
large amount of people quickly running, and then boom! A huge police
vehicle chasing all the people, with a huge water cannon spraying to
disperse them...crazy!
Then we could hear the bangs of tear gas going
off, and more and more people coming and running towards the market,
while the vehicles continued to chase them. Then, protesters began
hurling rocks at the police vehicles, causing them to stop and
several officers coming out in gear, putting a little beat down on
the culprits, and throwing them into the vehicles and taking them
off....it was kind of entertaining to be honest, but we made sure to
keep our distance. After the juice at the market, we wandered off
towards the hostel, and found ourselves to be in sort of a mini Asia
town, and found a Korean restaurant to eat at, since I'd never tried
Korean before. The food was pretty good, and the serving was huge,
but there must have been a little something extra in the food, as I
was super tired after eating, and when we arrived back at the hostel,
I promptly fell asleep for the next several hours on the couch in the
common room. After snoozing for quite some time, we decided to go
meet up with Simon and Johnathan, an Israeli and Australian pair that
we had met in Argentina. After a quick stop at a Falafel place, we
met up with them at the BocaNariz, the wine bar in the Lastarria
neighbourhood.
After a very delicious Cardignan wine
and an okay Carmanere wine, the place was starting to die down a fair
bit, and the boys, or at least Simon, were wanting to go out a bit
more and find a spot, so we wandered over to the Patio Bellavista
area near our hostel, and wandered around, trying to find a cool spot
for a drink or a party. After meeting some local guy, who had
overheard us making comments about him pissing in the streets, he
invited us to some party, but we never did join him, so we continued
wandering, finding a few little rock bars, which ended up being dead,
until we found another place that must have really wanted a few
gringos inside, as they offered us all free entry. We checked that
place out, which was more of a club scene, and it was alright, with a
couple of cute babes, and some very drunk dudes to laugh at, but we
only stayed for about an hour, as the guys still wanted to check out
some nearby Reggae party. We left that, and wandered around for quite
a long time, trying to find this Reggae party, and ended up back at
the same nightclub, as the address written down by Simon seemed to
correspond to the same place, however, he was adamant it wasn't the
right party, and we continued to wander, eventually finding the right
spot. By this point it was already 3 am, and LL and I didn't really
feel like continuing on, so we just made our way back to the hostel
for the night.
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| I don't think it's the real name of the street, but who knows! |
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| Wicked Bella Vista graffiti |
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| Goodbye to my travel companions for several years, they've seen a lot of Kms! |
The next day, after sleeping in a fair
bit, I wanted to go check out the Museum of Human Rights, but first
we stopped by an absolutely amazing sushi restaurant called Kintauro,
which was right by the Bella Vista metro station. After an amazing
sushi, I dropped off my leftovers, and we decided to make our walk
towards the metro station where we could head to the museum. Well, as
we were making our way down one of the main streets, we suddenly felt
a very strange sensation, and soon realized that there was some tear
gas in the air, perhaps from earlier in the day, or that had drifted
over from another location.....well damn, it was a small quantity,
but it felt awful. After getting away from the nasty cloud of gas, we
found the metro station, and arrived at the museum. It was a fairly
interesting spot, as it documented many of the international human
rights inquistions, their results and findings, and then had it's
main focus on the issues that plagued Chile over the Pinochet time
period. As with pretty much all Latin American museums, it was pretty
much only in Spanish. After about 2 hours of wandering around and
exploring, the place was about to close, so we made our way out, and
back towards the hostel. We ended up making plans to head out that
night with Dario and Mariana, another Chilean that I met in Buenos
Aires. About 45 minutes before they were too arrive at our hostel, we
made a quick run back to the centre to try and get some more
Completos from Dominos, but unfortunately they were closed, so we had
to settle for some other not so great ones at the Plaza de Armas. We
arrived back at the hostel, and I had one of the hostel bar's beers,
which ended up being fantastic, and thus began my new appreciation of
the beer in Chile. Over my course of time here, I've had several
fantastic National and craft beers, that are so much better than
anything I've had anywhere else in Latin America.
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| An interesting exhibit at the Museum of Human Rights, t-shirts to represent people who died |
After finishing up the tasty beer, with
Dario arriving, and then Mariana shortly after, we hopped in her car
and were on our way to a Cumbia party. Cumbia is a form of Chilean
dance and music. I had mentioned to her that I still hadn't tried a
Terremoto, a fairly famous Chilean drink that has red wine, peach ice
cream, and soda...very sweet...and very good! She decided we should
go to this party, so we were in her car and on a long long long
journey to one of the far out neighbourhoods....all I could think was
wow, a taxi home from here is going to be pricy! We arrived at the
large gymnasium where the party was being held, and I was surprised
to see that her male friend wasn't joining us, and found out that he
was actually her brother, and that he would return to pick us up when
the party ended at 5 am...great sibling! We entered into the large
building, and found a massive party...probably 1000 people or so,
awesome! Another great thing was that Terremotos and other drinks
were only 1000 pesos or $2..great. So we got to spend the next few
hours listening to some great music, having some cheap drinks, and
enjoying the young atmosphere. By about 4 am, LL was tired and ready
to go back, so we called it a bit earlier of a night, and Mariana's
brother kindly picked us up, and took us back to the hostel for the
night.
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| Cumbia Party...it was awesome and huge! |
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| First Terremotto with a lovely Chilean friend |
The next day was a fairly quiet one, as
we just wandered down to the fish market, to a restaurant called Tio
Willy's that had been recommended. The seafood soup I had was okay,
nothing special, but the eel soup that LL had was pretty tasty. After
our large and filling lunch, we didn't really have much else to do
but wander around a bit, before going to look for some costumes for a
party we were invited to that night by Dario. They list of costumes
included Glitter, CyberPunks, Drag, Glam, Androids, Large Eyelashes,
Rockers, etc etc. I probably should have known by the costume
requirements that the party might be a bit different than one I might
normally attend, but didn't really realize it at the time. We found a
market open in the nearby Asian area, where we were able to find some
costumes for the night, and I came across a few funny sights. One
store was selling hats and toques of sports teams that were nowhere
near the right colour schemes...I couldn't help but laugh about the
toque or knitted cap of the Philadelphia Flyers that came in San Jose
Sharks colours. I tried to take a sneaky photo of it while the worker
wasn't looking, but he heard my click and turned and asked if I was
paparazzi, so I couldn't help but laugh and say yeah, so then he
introduced himself as some person that made all the other vendors in
the area start laughing. Then he started pointing out other vendors
and telling me their names, which further made everyone else
laugh...unfortunately they were all Chilean names, so I had no idea
who he was talking about, so once I mentioned I was Canadian we
started talking about ice hockey a bit, which he really had no idea
about, but it was still good for a laugh. He was a friendly enough
guy, and gave me a hat for a few dollars less than the other guy in
his shop had told me I would have to pay, so with my little deal I
was on my way back to the hostel, as I had lost LL.
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| An example of how people love the animals in Santiago...most of the dogs have coats, even the strays |
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| Museum of Bella Artes |
LL had found some restaurant named
Galindo recommended by TripAdvisor and some Irish girls that had been
at our hostel, so we wandered over there for a bite to eat, and
ordered the Choclos, which ended up being not really that good at
all....I also noticed a couple that weren't all that impressed with
their food and barely ate any of it before leaving...ah well, can't
always trust the reviews I guess! After our dinner, we were back to
the hostel, grabbed a beer, and played some pool with an Aussie
fellow before Dario came to get us and take us to the party his
friend was having.
Fortunately it was really close by,
only about 100 m away from our hostel, so the walk wasn't far. It
ended up being on the top floor of the apartment building, providing
a fairly decent view of the city skyline. It took me about the first
15 minutes of starting to meet the party guests to finally figure out
that it was a gay party, which I should have figured out based on the
costumes alone, but no bother, the whole group ended up being super
cool and fun. There was a large supply of Rum, and that was the only
way to keep warm at the top of the apartment. We ended up partying
most of the night outdoors, before finally moving indoors around 3 am
or so. It was a fairly drunk and sloppy night, but pretty interesting
meeting some new people, including one of the guys who somehow knew
about Saskatoon...random considering most South Americans have no
idea where Saskatchewan is, let alone Saskatoon. I think I left the
party around 6 am or so with a girl I had met at the party much to LL's disappointment and walked her to her house but just sat outside talking before she decided to go to sleep, and I made the long trek back to the hostel, finally arriving back to the hostel
around 7 am to crash into a deep slumber. I didn't manage to get out
of bed until 6 pm the next day damn! After looking for my leftover
sushi and choclo, and not finding any, I was stuck having to go look
for food again, as someone at the hostel had helped themselves to my
leftovers..damn! So myself and the Aussie guy went to a nearby cheap
Pizza place that he and several others had raved about...it was
pretty damn tasty pizza, although it appeared they ran out pepperoni
for the one pizza and substituted cut up pieces of hot dog
hahaha...the beer tasted good, the pizza was filling, and we had an
interesting time conversing entirely in Spanish, much to the surprise
of surrounding locals, hearing two gringos speaking in Spanish. After
the dinner, I was still pretty tired even though I slept a lot, and
just went back to the hostel and crashed.
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| Costume party fun! |
The next day LL and I went for a wander
around the city, heading back to Dominos for more Completos....this
time with a bit more of an appetite, I was able to put away two of
the absolutely delicious snacks, including the Rodeo, which came with
bacon and some tangy barbecue sauce...a great way to start the day
off! After a few of the delicious dogs, LL and I wanted to go check
out one of the Cafe con Piernas, which ended up being a rather
interesting experience. We went to the one we had passed by on our
walking tour, and wandered inside to a very dark and strange
place...some man at the door had seemed a bit timid about going in
himself, but when he saw us thinking about going in, he wasn't so
timid after all. We arrived inside, and ordered our drinks, where we
were given poker chips for, to trade to the server at the standing
counters. She was a tall and pretty Colombian woman, who was fairly
friendly, and purposely flirty with me, even though LL was there. She
even asked if we were together in a relationship or not and when she
found out we weren't, she was more than happy to rub my arms and talk
to me closely...it was kind of funny to watch the other old men come
into the place to talk to their favourite girls (there were 3
Colombians and 2 Chileans working in the place), and our server said
she often received marriage proposals from lonely clientele....what a
life.....they basically just sit there, talk to you, rub your arms,
flirt, and listen to your problems...when LL went to get some gum,
the girl was especially flirty with me, but after about 20 minutes of
the somewhat strange experience, I was ready to leave. Since I hadn't
yet gone up Cerro Santa Lucia, I went for a walk up there, to enjoy
some lovely views of the City. After checking out the scene, and some
cute girls, I made my way back down and towards the hostel. There was
a Spanglish party that night, and I was tempted to go meet up with
Dario for it, but first ended up grabbing a drink with a Chilean lady
friend that I had met at the party on Saturday night.
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| My friend who lives in Colombia said they have bad food and that you never see a Colombian restaurant anywhere in the World...well I guess that's not true anymore! |
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| More amazing Completos! |
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| Making the hike up Cerro Santa Lucia |
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| a nice view of downtown Santiago |
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| Being a nature photography geek |
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| How'd he get up there! |
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| love 31 minutos...so hilarious |
To give you an idea of what 31 minutos are all about here they are:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jbRYAc9I0jE
We ended up at a nice bar called Don
Rodrigo, owned by a cartoonist, and with a very old and traditional
restaurant/bar feeling to it. It felt a lot like an old hotel
bar/restaurant that my dad used to take me to when I was younger,
called the King George, that burned down a few years ago. We enjoyed
some nice cocktails, a live piano act, and some extremely delicious
parmesan clams, while I used my Spanish dictionary to help me
converse throughout the hours. After a few hours of hanging out, I
just made my way back to the hostel, as it was too late to meet up
with Dario for the Spanglish party, so I called it a night.
It was a religious holiday the next
day, so most things in Santiago were closed. I tried to make a run to
Dominos for more completos, but being the holiday they were closed,
as were pretty much every other restaurant in the area. Fortunately,
La Barra Cafe, where I had been going for coffees recently, was open
that day, and LL and I stopped there for a sandwich as they looked
quite delicious. Well, wow, they were definitely worth it, incredibly
fresh and tasty bread, and ingredients...one of the best sandwiches
I've had in a long long time for sure. After the sandwich break, we
just wandered back to the hostel, hung out there for awhile, before I
headed back out to grab a drink with another friend, which took a lot
longer than expected, but was still a nice quiet evening to relax.
The next day LL planned to go check out Valparaiso, and I was up for
the same thing, so after heading back to Kintaro for some more
delicious sushi, we were on our way to the bus station to buy our bus
tickets, and head off to Valparaiso.
My only real knowledge of Valparaiso
was from the movie the Motorcycle Diaries, and I knew they had a
famous cable car to get up one of the hills, but not much else. We
arrived in the late evening, and there weren't any maps to take from
the hectic bus station, but I had an idea of where we needed to go,
based on the written instructions that were given by the hostel, so
after finding a mini bus to drop us off near the square we were
supposed to get off, we were on our way. Of course we ended up going
up the completely wrong street, and I saw a giant green house, which
I assumed was the hostel, since it was called Casa Verde, however, I
would soon realize that practically every house in Valparaiso is
coloured. After wandering up some steep streets, and having to cut
through some back passage ways that made LL a bit afraid and leery,
we were on the street where the hostel was located and arrived not
too long afterwards. After finding the lovely but cold hostel, we
decided to head out and grab a bite to eat at a nearby Thai
restaurant that was absolutely incredible. Sanskara was the name of
the place, and although it was expensive, it was probably the best
Thai food I've had outside of Thailand...absolutely amazing. I had
also won a bet with LL that the kitchen would still be open there, as
we went there around 10:30 at night, so I even won a tasty Belgian
beer out of the deal. After the smashing good food, and warm
atmosphere, we made our way back to the hostel and stayed there for
the rest of the night.
The next day after sleeping in, we
decided to go check out the walking tour offered by the same company
that we had gone with in Santiago. On the way to meet the group, and
even the previous night, I was already in awe of the absolutely
amazing graffiti covering nearly all the buildings in Valpo. We made
our way down to the main square where we found a group of 7 waiting
to take the tour. The “main square” wasn't exactly much of an
organized square, as there were no traffic routes outlined, so
vehicles would just drive along it as they pleased. There were two
guides for the tour, both American women who had moved to Chile to
study, and decided to stay. We were shortly after joined by a stray
dog that apparently follows the tour every day, but one that is also
kind of a pain in the ass, as it barks at random people too often,
but you couldn't get rid of the thing, so it just followed us along.
We made our first stop over by the docks where we learned a bit about
the history of the port city, about how the California gold rush
caused many immigrants to come through town on ship, and a lot of
them decided to just stay and set up businesses instead of continuing
on towards California, thus making Valparaiso one of the most
important ports in South America, until it was literally chopped off
at the head by the construction of the Panama Canal, rendering the
port less meaningful. We were told to take a boat tour to see the
city from a better angle, but after having done enough boat tours, I
didn't really feel like spending the extra money, and neither did
Linh-Lan.
We then made our way back towards the
main square, and down a street that was once one of the wealthiest
streets in all of South America, with it being the first street with
a paved road, and many beautiful and expensive houses constructed. Of
course, with the fall of the prosperity of Valparaiso, the wealth
disappeared, and now the street is full of old and neglected, yet
still beautiful homes, and full of beggars, drunks, and street
dogs....a fall from grace indeed. We continued down the street to see
our first telecable car, as Valparaiso is surrounded by hills, and
the city constructed about 23 telecable cars for the citizens to use,
over the years. Unfortunately, the government ended up selling most
of them off, and the private companies didn't put much work or repair
into them, causing the majority of the cars to cease operations, with
only about 7 of the cars still working in the city. However, the
government has decided to purchase them back and get them back in
order, as they are a sort of iconic item of the city. We continued
our walk, with stray dog in tow, to another cable car, and we took
that one up to where a large 5 star hotel, as well as a few museums
were located. We arrived at a large house that was built by a wealthy
Croatian man, and heard about the strange tale of him and his sister,
as they lived in the small basement of this rather large and complex
home.....and apparently the sister wasn't allowed to leave or
something, so it was kind of a twisted back story...especially since
all the windows remained closed, and nary a neighbour ever saw them.
After some nice views of the city from up above, we made our way
through some back alleys, checking out some amazing graffiti, and
stopping at the home of an older Chilean man who made homemade
alfahores, which are a Chilean or Argentine cookie. He gave us all a
free sample, which was well appreciated, as LL and I hadn't stopped
to grab breakfast or lunch before the tour and were starving.
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| Meeting point for the Walking Tour, the sort of main square |
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| Headquarters of the Navy |
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| The port of Valparaiso, once the most important port in South America |
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| More of the main square |
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| Once South America's wealthiest street |
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| One of the many staircases leading up the hills of Valpo |
 |
| Valpo from above |
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| Creepy Croatian house |
After seeing some more amazing street
art, talking about the crazy mountain bike race that's held in Valparaiso each year (
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GxwVXp0uEIg), and talking a bit about the problems of house fires in the
hills, and how it was nearly impossible for fire fighters to get
their equipment near enough to save houses, we continued our walk
through the hills, ending up coming down the street near our hostel,
and being pointed out to a few restaurants and bars in the area that
were recommended by the staff. We arrived back down at the main
street, where we waited for quite some time for one of the few
trolleys that were still working in the city. After waiting around
and having numerous buses pass us that would take us to our next
stop, the guide finally gave up and put us all on a bus instead.
Hilariously enough, when we arrived at our stop and got out of the
bus there were not 1, not 2, but 3 of the said trolleys all backed up
at the spot we wanted to go to, just mocking the guide. We wandered
around the area for a little bit, checking out an Indigenous art and
jewellery shop, before ending our tour with a Pisco Sour, and a few
more recommendations for the area.
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| Some of Valpo's wicked street art |
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| It's like a huge open air art gallery, except it's all for free :) |
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| One of the streets through which the mountain bike racers drive |
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| A classy cat |
After the tour, we wandered back
towards the hostel with a quick stop at the supermarket, and I was
goofing around a bit, being sarcastic about how an 18 year old would
talk, as LL had told me I somehow act like one, and she apparently
didn't appreciate my imitation talk and ended up slapping me in front
of numerous people...probably the 2nd or 3rd time in my entire life
I've slapped...in shock, I just went straight back to the hostel, to
wonder why the hell she would do such a thing. Apparently she thought
I was mocking her in some way, and eventually apologized, and I guess
we made up. We ended up heading to a nearby restaurant for some
Chorrillana, which is kind of like the Chilean equivalent of
Poutine...or maybe Poutine is the Canadian equivalent of
Chorrillana....not too sure! Anyway, it's large, greasy, and damn
delicious! After the nice dinner, and some more amazing Artesanal
beer (Chile has the best beer in Latin America by far). After the
dinner we just retired back to the hostel and relaxed for the night.
 |
| Chorrillana, Chilean Poutine! |
The next day we decided to go wander
down to take a ride on the famous telecar, that is a Unesco World
Heritage site, so we began to wander down there. We cut through a
side street with more amazing graffiti, and I heard some catchy music
that sounded like a Caribbean drum crew, and turned to realize it was
the local gas supply company driving, and the guy in the back was
playing on the propane tanks with a stick to draw attention to make
sales...incredible! I couldn't help but laugh and enjoy his skills.
We then continued our walk down to the cable car, stopping for some
large empanadas (not as good as Argentine ones), and arrived at the
car, which had a healthy lineup. After the 15 minute wait, we were on
our way up and the classic relic. The view wasn't anything special,
but appreciating the age of the car was worth the short trip up. We
arrived up top, and wandered around a bit, checking out some nice
view of the port, as well as some more beautiful and colourful
houses, before stopping at a cafe for a nice view of the city.
Unfortunately, the coffee was absolutely terrible, but at least the
view was nice, and we did get to watch a crazy fire from a far, which
was somehow brought under control by the fire department, even though
it was up in one of the crazy hills..... After our bland coffee, it
was back to the hostel to grab our bags and head off to the bus
station to catch the next bus back to Santiago, as there was a
barbecued scheduled at my hostel that night, that I wanted to catch.
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| Street art behind our hostel |
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| Creeping out the cablecar |
 |
| The top of the cable car |
 |
| Another Valparaiso fire to deal with |
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| If there's not graffiti to liven up the buildings, then they just paint the houses lively colours |
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| The World Heritage Cable Car |
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| Making the walk down to save ourselves the $2 price |
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| Drunken man square, where all the drunkards hang out |
We arrived in Santiago, and made the
quick trek back to the hostel, but found that the barbecue had been
cancelled due to lack of interest...bummer! So we ended up heading
off for a bite to eat at a nearby seafood restaurant, that was a bit
pricy, but had a nice atmosphere. After the small but delicious
Ceviche and another fantastic Chilean beer, we made our way back to
the hostel, where it was fairly quiet, as per usual. We had thought
to try and meet up with Dario, but he was busy with the evening, so
we ended up just spending the night in the hostel, playing some pool,
and hanging out watching movies, a rather quiet Friday night indeed!
The next day Linh was meant to be heading off by bus to Buenos Aires
where she would be catching a flight back to France, so we spend the
early part of the day getting those plans ready, unfortunately, there
was a snowstorm in the Chilean-Argentine mountain pass, and the
border was closed! So now all the buses were cancelled, and she was
in a bit of a pickle. She now had to fly, but of course she didn't
have a credit card to book her flight back, so fortunately her mom
was still awake, half way across the World to book the flight for
her. After that was finally all sorted out, we went back to our
favourite Sushi spot for another delicious lunch, before spending the
rest of the afternoon just hanging out around the hostel. LL had
actually moved over to her friend's nearby house, but kept sneaking
back to sleep at the hostel, however, this was the night when the
staff finally took note and asked her to leave. She finally broke
down and paid for a night, after having spent close to 4 nights
sneaking into my room and spending the night..sneaky French people!
We had a pretty quiet night in.
The next morning we made plans to go
meet up with Dario for lunch, before LL was to leave, so we wandered
down to Cafe de La Barra another time, and tried to get the lunch
special, which we were about 15 minutes too late to order, so we had
to pay normal prices. Unfortunately I had already made plans with my
friend Alfredo to go over to his house for lunch with his family, so
I just took a coffee and had the last hour and a half together with
LL before having to say goodbye. We got back to the hostel and
Alfredo was already there waiting with his gf, so it was kind of a
rushed goodbye, which is more of my style, but wasn't so easy for LL,
as she was crying and having a hard time saying goodbye after being
together for more than a month. I guess I'm just used to saying
goodbye, it just doesn't affect me the same way anymore. I did feel
kind of bed with the rushed nature of the goodbye, and Dario and I
hopped into Alfredo's car, we dropped Dario off at his house, and
were on our way to La Reina, a wealthy neighbourhood in Eastern
Santiago, where I found myself in the colonial style home of Alfredo.
His brother and him spoke English, as well as the gf of his brother,
but that was it, as his g/f, his sisters, and parents, and nephew and
niece, didn't speak any English. The first thing I was offered upon
entry was a pisco sour, and then the subsequent tour of the house.
The first thing I noticed that really stood out was the large mantle
of pictures and army related memorabilia, with none other than
Pinochet displayed prominently. Apparently Alfredo's step father had
served in the military and had been a huge supporter of Pinochet, and
a friend. Kind of an interesting change from the monster he's
portrayed as in the Human Rights Museum, as well as other stories
about the man and the genocide he implemented in the country.
After the tour, we settled into the
backyard, around the big asado, sampling the various meats on the
grill, before the actual lunch started...well by the time that
actually happened, I had already eaten a fair bit, but of course they
insisted on a big plate of food to be served, so we sat around the
giant table, with various questions being asked of me, although most
of the time the dialogue was a bit too fast and hard for me to
understand at times, but they were a jolly and friendly bunch, and I
had a great time with the family, trying to joke around a bit, but
mostly stumbling along. After the tasty dinner...er lunch... we went
for a little tour, heading up a nearby hill for a stunning view of
the city and sunset. It was a bit cold, but still nice to enjoy the
beauty of the surrounding area, with less smog visible than the
viewpoint from Cerro San Cristobal. After the quick tour, it was time
to head back to the hostel, as Alfredo was off to his g/fs place to
celebrate their 1 year anniversary, and she lived somewhat in the
direction where I lived. After dropping me off, it was a quiet night
in the hostel, without LL for the first time in nearly a month. I
ended up hanging out with a French and Mexican, alternating between
chatting in Spanish, French, and English over various topics of the
World, including the drug wars going on in Mexico. Eventually after
several hours of conversation, it was late and time to go to bed.
Unfortunately the Asian guy who slept above me was one of the worst
snorers I've encountered on my trip, and I couldn't sleep without
putting on some loud music on my laptop, which made it about 5 or 6
am before I finally sort of fell asleep, but with not much sleep at
all.
The next day after pulling my tired ass
out of bed, I spent most of the time just wondering around the city a
bit, stopping in the centre for another dose of Dominos completos,
knocking another two off my list, before settling into my new
favourite cafe for a few hours of Spanish newspaper reading and
translations, killing time. I soon returned to a full but boring
hostel common room, where there were 7 people sitting around all on
iPhones, not intereacting whatsoever. It's kind of the depressing
reality of travel these days, where people spend more time on their
smart devices instead of socializing. Other than making small talk
with a French guy for a little while, it was a pretty quiet time just
watching others play on their devices, and all I could think about
was how it might be a good idea to buy some stock in Apple!
Eventually the French guy said he was hungry and wanted to go grab a
bite to eat, so we wandered down to a nearby restaurant where they
had a huge plate of Chorrillana and 2 beers for about $14, so we went
and split that.
 |
| Fun times in the hostel....nice meeting all of you guys! |
After the nice dinner, we ended up back
at the hostel, had a bit of wine, and had a quiet night. I tried to
get to bed early, but the Asian guys were so loud downstairs until
about 3 am, and then when they finally called it a night, they were
again snoring so loudly that I couldn't sleep until about 8 am when
they got up and left...ughh...so at that point I decided to change to
a different room to get away from the terrible noise. After checking
into the new room, it was off to my new unofficial headquarters, Cafe
de La Barra for another lunch and coffee which dragged on for several
hours, until it was time to head down to a weekly event called
Spanglish night, at a pub a few metro stops away from where I was
staying. The party started at 8 pm, but by the time I finished the
special in the hostel restaurant, a tasty pizza and two beers, it was
already past 10 pm when I arrived. I found Dario shortly after, and
wandered upstairs to start meeting some people. I arrived upstairs to
find about 85% guys, with each and every girl surrounded by about 3
to 5 guys talking to her...sausage party! I didn't even know that it
was meant to be the hour where we conversed in Spanish, and was
talking to the Turkish guy I had met in Argentina who also happened
to be there, in English, when the organizer came by and fined me for
not speaking Spanish! I didn't pay the fine and plead the 5th, and
she let me be. We ended up outside meeting a few friends that Dario
had met at other Spanish nights, and one of the more stranger
occurrences happened to me, as some women I had briefly said hi to
earlier came outside, inquired if I had been with a Chilean woman
yet, and if I wanted to go with her right that instant, off to a
hotel room...talk about direct! Unfortunately, she wasn't that
attractive, so I gently said no, and she ended up leaving shortly
after...that's a first in Latin America! I ended up meeting a few
other people, but mostly dudes, since all the girls were occupied..ah
well, such is life! The place closed down kind of early, and a few
people including all the girls were going to a nightclub with some
American guy who was an investment banker there, but again, it was
about 3 guys for every girl, so I just decided to call the night
short and do the walk back to the hostel.
I walked alone the 1.5 or 2 kms,
without problems, and for that I started to develop a sense of
security in Santiago, which would later on be challenged. After
arriving without incident, it was off to bed, sleeping in the next
day, finally having a decent night's sleep after escaping the loud
Asian snorer. The next day was another relaxing day, spending the
next several hours eating delicious salad and drinking amazing coffee
until Ignacia, the Chilean woman I had been out with a few times,
came along to meet up. After another coffee we went for a walk to
check out the neighbourhood before stopping over at her place to
spend a bit of time there hanging out there. I had planned to try and
go to a party called Miercoles Po that evening, but by the time I
left the house and arrived back at the hostel, it was a bit late, and
no one was around in the hostel to go to the party with. Apparently I
missed out, as the one Colombian guy in my room had gone and said it
was a really great party, so I made sure to at least try and go once
before leaving Santiago. The next day was another sleep in day,
before heading out grab lunch, this time stopping at a nearby
restaurant called El Calafate, that had a curry lunch special, that
had a decent enough price, although the taste wasn't really anything
all that special. After lunch there, I went back to my favourite
cafe, and spent the next few hours there, once again, doing
translations and killing time. I ended not getting up to a whole lot
that evening, once again, as the hostel was still fairly quiet.
The next day I figured I would go ahead
and check out the Bellas Artes museum, but found out that it was free
on Sundays, so scrapping that plan, I wandered around the streets a
bit, enjoying some of the characters of Santiago, including the
numerous street performers, which are mostly made up of jugglers, but
there do happen to be a few other random performers you will catch
along the way. Another one of my favourite local characters is the
“crazy bridge lady” whom I see nearly every 2nd or 3rd day near
the bridge that I cross to walk towards the city centre, who is fun
to watch and listen to, as she wanders the sidewalks yelling and
screaming things to herself...life with crazy people is just so much
more fun :) After stopping again at the Cafe, having another tasty
lunch and coffee, and spending a few hours more doing translations, I
made some plans with Ignacia to go to a party that night with her.
After stopping by the apartment, and getting ready to head out, we
arrived at a Cueca party, which is a traditional Chilean dance that I
had actually witnessed once in Buenos Aires, not knowing what it was
at the time. Here's an idea of what it looks like.
Basically the idea of the dance is to
walk hand in hand at the start, and then when the music starts, it's
a flirtatious dance that sort of mimics a rooster and hen courtship
through dancing, and at certain key points of the song, the dancers
have to spin and walk past each other, changing positions...We
arrived at the small restaurant/bar, where two of her co-workers were
already sitting with a small table and some wine. After some tasty
pizza and other snacks, the band kicked off and the dancing
began...it was really entertaining to watch, and to attempt to
participate in the dance itself, even though I couldn't quite figure
out the rooster foot clucking part ha ha! We enjoyed the next few
hours immensely, and ended up staying until close before one of the
girls had her husband come and pick us up and drive us back. I was
invited to spend the night and thought it would be my lucky night,
unfortunately that was not to be the case, as things are a lot more
conservative here, or so it seems! It was a nice night nevertheless,
and I woke up to breakfast in bed the next morning, bonus! After
breakfast, we were still pretty sleepy, so went back to sleep for
awhile longer, before getting up and heading out to find something to
eat, and to go to the produce market. We ended up heading to a new
Vietnamese restaurant that opened up near my hostel, where I had a
nice big bowl of Pho soup for the first time in nearly a year, yum!
The entrance of the place was kind run down looking, but once we were
shown into the spacious back room, it was obvious that the owners had
put a lot of time and money into the place, as it was absolutely
stunning. After the pho and Vietnamese coffee, we were on our way to
the market.
The market was pretty hectic, as it was
a Saturday, but Ignacia managed to find all the ingredients she had
wanted to buy, and I helped walk all of her stuff back to the
apartment, where we spent the next few hours hanging out. It's been
the first time I've been with someone who doesn't speak any English,
so it has been kind of an interesting and fun challenge, with many
lost in translation moments of course, but still a valuable and fun
learning experience. She was going to have a quiet night in, and I
had talked about meeting up with Dario or Mariana that night, so I
made the walk back to the hostel, and found it to be fairly quiet. I
was just sitting down, trying to make plans, when I saw two familiar
faces, the two Swiss girls that I had met down in Ushuaia, Argentina,
who had just arrived and were going to head out on the pub crawl that
evening. I hadn't been on the pub crawl yet, and they invited me to
go along with them, a British guy, and a Mexican guy, and since I
wasn't really doing anything I decided to tag along. I happened to be
hungry and was worried about not getting anything to eat, but
fortunately the pub crawl even came with free pizza, although the
price tag of the pub crawl was a bit pricy at $20, but so be it. We
arrived at the nearby club where it started, a place called Mansion
Po, and found it to be pretty empty and quiet...in the end, maybe 15
people came on the pub crawl, including a larger group of Brazilians
who just stayed to themselves and didn't socialize at all...typical.
After several beers and lots of pizza
(one advantage of a smaller crowd) we were on our way to the next
bar, some tiny place with a table where they set up some beer pong,
but I didn't get a chance to play, as there was only enough time for
one game, before we had to move to the next place, another quiet
place where there was karaoke night going on. It was kind of
entertaining to hear some Brazilians attempt to sing a song in French
(wtf!), and butcher it terribly. We were there for an hour or so, and
participated in exactly 10 seconds of singing (myself, unexpectedly,
as I was reading the Spanish lyrics out loud and one of the hosts
stuck the mic in my face). After the karaoke bar, we made our way to
some other bar, that seemed kind of night club like, but very
small...we were thinking it was the actual nightclub stop on our pub
crawl, and it didn't seem all that impressive, but no worries. I had
to laugh as the one English guy was off kissing some terrible looking
Chilean girl, and seemed genuinely quite pumped about the
endeavour..eww...fortunately, the bar wasn't our last stop, and after
50 minutes there, we made our way to the final stop, which was a
pretty decent nightclub.
The place had an entrance area with a
live band, and then several other large rooms for bands, djs,
etc...and was packed...pretty great place all and all...after dancing
with the Swiss girls forever, and realizing it wasn't going anywhere,
they left to go back to the hostel, and I was on my own, chatting
with some Chilean guy in the smoking area, in English, which drew
several girls attention...unfortunately, it also drew the attention
of other guys, including Che Guevara's cousin!!! He was born in Cuba,
but now is living back in Argentina, and happened to be in Chile. We
had an interesting chat, unfortunately the girls that kept coming by
and chatting weren't as interested in the conversation and would
leave quickly..ah well...still interesting times. There was one
particularly drunk girl who really really wanted to talk, but then
left quickly as I was surrounded by others wanting to practice
speaking English. I eventually found her and her friends in the other
side of the bar, near the end of the night, and ended up chatting for
awhile with them, and they invited me to an after party..sure why
not! Then when we were outside trying to figure out taxis, they had
enough to put everyone in one taxi, except for me...so I wasn't so
interested in going myself, and was ready to walk back to the hostel
when 2 of the others got out of the other taxi and grabbed me and
went into the 2nd one, and we were off. It ended up being really
expensive to get to the guy's house, around $20 in total fare....and
we arrived inside and one of the girls was so drunk, and the guy's
whose house we were at was trying to feel her up, which made her
friends quite angry. They were so angry that within 8 minutes of
arriving at the place, they were already leaving...so here I am,
stuck at some guy's house in the middle of nowhere, and all the girls
are leaving, and I don't have any money to take a taxi back so I'm
stuck there until the morning when the metro opens up...great! Worst
Afterparty ever! So the awkwardness of the night fully kicks in, as
it's just me, the house owner, and his neighbour sitting there, and I
really have no idea what to say to them, or talk about, and they're
so drunk that they just end up passing out...so I ended up spending
the night on the couch, woke up in the morning and quietly showed
myself out the door without saying goodbye.
On my way back to the hostel, there was
a hat shop that I really wanted to check out, so rather than going
all the way back near my hostel, I stopped off in that area, which
proved to be a bit of a mistake, as the hat shop was closed, and I
was having bank troubles to withdraw money, so I didn't have any
money to continue on with the metro back to my hostel, and ended up
having to walk the remaining 4 kms or so...fun times! There was a
nice little market and puppet show going on in one of the parks on te
walk home, so that was a nice diversion for awhile. After arriving
back, and finding the English guy in the bunk next to me hadn't
arrived back yet..and this was 2 pm in the afternoon..lucky guy found
a Chilean girl who was a lot more open than most Chilean women and
spent the night with her, I spent most of the day just relaxing in
the hostel until going out a bit later in the evening for some pizza
with the English dude. I had made plans to hang out with the Chilean
girl that night, but didn't quite understand at what time exactly,
other than around sunset...well when I had spoken with her earlier in
the evening, she said she was still off studying, so I figured I had
time to go eat dinner and left, came back to make plans to meet up
and she was furious with me, saying I ditched her! I had no idea what
was going on, and didn't understand it, one of the unfortunate parts
of language barriers when seeing someone who speaks another language!
Since she was mad with me and didn't want to talk it was a quiet
night in, as Sundays are pretty quiet in Santiago.
 |
| Nice day for a walk in the park |
The next day after sleeping in yet
again, there was a Peruvian sandwich restaurant that had been
recommended to me by our tour guide in the early days of Santiago, so
I found the place called Donde Guido, and had an absolutely massive
and delicious Peruvian sandwich...damn, the Peruvians know how to
cook! After the delicious beast, I figured it was time to actually do
some active research into finding some work taeching English in the
Santiago area, so after a few hours of posting advertisements, and
applying with various companies that were looking for English
teachers, I spoke with the Chilean girl who was quite apologetic
about the lost in translation moment and we agreed to meet up again
another time. I returned back to the hostel to find the place to be
pretty quiet as per usual, except for some nice Brazilians that were
hanging out, drinking some wine, and who invited me to join them for
awhile. It was kind of fun to attempt to speak a bit with them, as
the one guy couldn't really speak English but could communicate in
Spanish, while his friend could speak in English but not in Spanish,
so it was kind of a weird conversation circle, but interesting
nevertheless...after a few hours of hanging out with them, and
helping the guy with his English a bit, it was already nearly 3 am,
so it was time to get some sleep!
 |
| Amazing Peruvian sandwich! |
The next day I met a super cute
Dutch/Afghanistan girl who had just arrived in town to study, and
chatted with her awhile, before making my way out to have some lunch
and coffee at my usual cafe, where I'd spend most of the next few
weeks, eating, drinking, and translating newspaper articles. After
killing a few hours there, it was time to head on down to Spanglish
night once again, this time being held in a Japanese restaurant. I
was hoping to meet up with Dario before the meeting and grab a bite
to eat, but he had a date beforehand, so I just ended up heading
there alone. It was kind of a bit of a disorganized place to hold the
event, as there was a bar in the back and a large lineup of people at
the front of the restaurant, waiting at a till. I found out it was
the line to order drinks without having to order them from servers,
after waiting about 15 minutes in line without it moving anywhere, I
decided to go to the back bar and order a drink there, but then after
another 15 minutes waiting there, I was told that I could only order
from the front till in the restaurant, so it was back to that line
for another 25 minutes..arghhh....what a way to waste time I suppose.
I did meet a nice American girl who was from the Boston area, and
looked a lot like my friend Kaisa, also from the Boston area, but the
World wasn't small in this case, and she didn't know her. After
chatting awhile, Dario and his date arrived, whom happened to be a
cute French girl that I had met at the Spanglish party the week
before, but I guess she just wanted to remain friends, nothing too
serious...ahh poor Dario!
After finally being able to buy 2 whole
beers, it was time to go and socialize in the larger and now very
full back area, meeting several new people including a really cute
French Canadian girl and some hipster/preppy looking American guy.
After chatting with them for about 10 minutes, and kind of getting a
bit of a bad attitude out of the American, they just left mid
conversation to go find other people to talk to, apparently we are
boring conversationalists ha ha ha. After that, I ended up meeting a
cute French woman and chatting with her for most of the night,
getting along great. We ended up spending the next hour and a bit
together, and I thought there might have been something there, and I
ended up walking her home, but then she said she had a b/f, so there
was no luck there..darn! I made the long walk back to the hostel,
which took about 35 minutes in total, and arrived after stopping for
a late night Completo on the street, when I found out that the
McDonalds had just closed...darn. The next day was just spent
wandering around the city, and spending time in the cafe until my
friend Mariana picked me up to go for a dinner date to a nice Thai
restaurant that was really really far away, taking us about 25
minutes to drive there. The food was pretty good, although not as
good as the restaurant in Valparaiso, and we had a nice chat and some
tasty craft beers to wash down the Thai food. By the time we left the
restaurant, it was already after midnight, so I had her drop me off
at the Miercoles Po party, as it is the biggest party on Wednesday
nights in Santiago, and free for foreigners. Unfortunately for guys,
it's only free before midnight, so I had to end up paying, but it
wasn't terribly expensive, considering Chilean men have to pay 3
times as much to enter the party (apparently to keep them out and
encourage more foreigners and Chilean women to meet!).
I was meant to meet up with the English
guy from the hostel, but he was on his way out back to the hostel, as
he didn't like the nightclub like atmosphere of the place. So it was
off to the club solo....and that lasted about 15 minutes or so before
a Chilean woman came over and grabbed me to save her from some guy
who was trying to dance with her....well I thought this would go
alright, but after about an hour of dancing and meeting her friends,
trying to kiss her and getting the cheek, I was ready to move on and
find someone else. Of course, as soon as I broke away and started
trying to talk to other girls, she came back and found me and took me
back...well this went on for the next 2 hours or so, without any
resolve...Chilean girls are tough! I should have just given up, but
being a sucker I spent the rest of the night dancing with her, until
the place was shutting down. I was a bit surprised when she asked me
to accompany her and her friends to her car, but then she just said
goodbye and got in and drove off ha ha damn! So being 4:15 am or so,
I wandered back to the hostel, walking the streets alone without
problem.
The next day after sleeping in, I
chatted up the English guy, who hadn't yet experienced Cafe con
Piernas, so I talked him into going off and finding one with me.
Before stopping there, we made a stop at Dominos so he could try one
of the Completos, as he hadn't yet tried one, and it was well worth
it. After that we searched for quite sometime, trying to find one of
the more seedier Cafe con Piernas...we eventually stumbled upon one I
had seen earlier in my days, walking around, and decided to check it
out...well we walked inside and it was quite overwhelming on the
senses as there was a large line of girls just yelling and screaming
at his, really quickly in Spanish...very overwhelming indeed,
compared to the previous place where you could just show up and
settle in for a coffee....unfortunately it was so aggressive, we
didn't really get a chance to walk down the line and pick out a girl,
as the two at the very front just grabbed us and took us to a
chair...we soon realized they were terrible looking and
fat...ewww....while there were two younger and much prettier ones in
the lineup..shoot...so after basically ignoring the girls and
pretending to not speak any Spanish, we were hit with a ridiculous
charge for the coffee....5000 pesos...yikes! That's like $10, and we
didn't even have a nice girl....to be fair, it apparently was a Cafe
con Piernas and a little bit more, as the one girl did ask if the
English guy wanted to go downstairs for something extra...oh
boy.....so after paying the ridiculous amount for the coffee, and
having a laugh at some really old guy who popped in, had a dance or
two with one of the girls, then paid and left....we were asked to
leave unless we would order something more...damn....after paying
that much we should have been allowed to stay...needless to say,
don't bother going to the Tsunami Cafe con Piernas...waste of time
and money!
After the odd experience, we stumbled
out of there and into a big group of 5 transvestites who were eyeing
us up...yikes! So we avoided them and made the walk back towards the
hostel, with a quick stop at a bookstore to look for some Portuguese
books as I decided I wanted to start trying to learn Portuguese,
while the English guy wanted to look for a Spanish book to start
learning some. After searching around a bit, we found a decent store,
but unfortunately they didn't have any Portuguese grammar books, as
that's what I like to start with to learn the language, just
dictionaries. I didn't end up buying anything as a result, and we
wandered back to the hostel. He had mentioned something about a very
local Chilean bar where they had Terremotos (one of the special
Chilean drinks), but when I was in the process of inviting myself
along, I found out that he was actually going with his Chilean girl
on a date, so that was out of the question..bummer! After hanging out
in the hostel with a few others, and enjoying some craft beers from
Southern Chile that were absolutely phenomenal, the Englishman
returned from his date at this very traditional Chilean bar, where he
was the only gringo, and apparently every time he went to the toilet,
the local guys were coming over and trying to steal the girl he was
there with...they didn't appreciate a gringo taking one of their
girls I guess! Eventually they left and he came back and wanted to
head out to some “crazy bar” that the Portuguese worker at the
hostel had recommended we check out. So, we made our way down there
after midnight and it seemed to be a fairly normal pub with very few
tables in the downstairs area, but once we went upstairs to the
second level, we found out why it was a crazy bar...needless to say,
there was more than just drinks being served there...quite a sight.
After spending some time chatting with a 40 year old businessman who
spoke about 10 words of English, and acting as a translator for the
English guy, we had a few beers and enjoyed the somewhat unique
nature of the bar for a few hours, of course, being the only gringos
there. Around 3 am or so, the English guy was really keen to go out
and party and find girls, but unfortunately, being Santiago and a
Thursday, that wasn't really much of an option....the businessman
said he knew a spot we could go that had after parties, and took us
in a cab to some restaurant several blocks away that ended up just
being a restaurant, not a party location at all......
I had to laugh when we entered and
there was a table with one geeky and chubby Chilean guy with 2 girls
who were average at best, but the English guy was on a mission, so he
immediately went over and asked if they spoke English, the guy
replied yes, and the English guy told him to move over and that he
wante to sit down...well the guy decided he didn't want him sitting
with them, so they got in this funny argument where the guy just
reverted back to Spanish and was swearing at him, while the English
guy kept trying to get him to move over so he could sit at the table
and talk to the girls...finally he relented and came back and sat
with us for a bit, but as soon as the Chilean guy went to the toilet
or for a smoke, he immediately ran back to the table, sat down with
the girls and tried to take a crack at them with no succcess....gotta
give the guy credit for trying I guess! After being shut down and
having the Chilean guy return and get more angry with him, he came
back to her table to finish his drink and lament how he needed to
learn more Spanish to talk to people....suppose that was a good
start, but probably working on the general approach might also work a
bit better! We said goodbye to our new random friend, and walked back
to the hostel, arriving back around 5:30 am.
The next day the English guy decided to
head off to Valparaiso, so I was down one partner in crime, and had a
pretty relaxed day once again, just wandering around the city,
eating, and practicing Spanish translations with the newspapers in
the cafe. Eventually I made my way back to the hostel and found that
a really cute Slovakian girl, whom I had met the previous day, needed
some help buying a bus ticket to the city where she was going to do
an internship at a hospital, so I offered to help her out since I had
nothing to do anyway. We made our way to the station, having a lovely
chat and getting to know each other...it was somewhat ironic as the
topic of being robbed came up somehow, and she had mentioned she had
never been robbed before, whereas I've had a few experiences in my
travel life. We made it to the station, got her bus ticket all
sorted, and wandered back to the hostel, continuing to flirt a bit.
We arrived back and decided to head out on the pub crawl again, as it
was student night, and half price for students....well I dug up my
old university ID card from 2002, and went with the Slovakian and a
Brazilian girl to the pub crawl, and surprisingly enough, my card
actually worked! The pub crawl was way more busy this time around,
with about 40 people or so, mostly Americans. I had to laugh when I
saw the signup sheet, as everyone was 20 years old, except for me and
the Slovakian girl, who was 25 years old. There was a fair bit of
sexual tension between us, but I also didn't want to just spend the
whole time with her and exclude the Brazilian girl, so I tried to
balance it all out. When we arrived at the second bar, we started
having some fun with the Slovakian, who didn't speak any Spanish, so
I told her to go up to one of the Americans working on the tour and
say “Estoy caliente”, which means I'm hot, but is translated as
“I'm horny”....we had quite a laugh, as he understood, but it
also caused a bit of a problem, as he now wanted to chase her for the
rest of the night, resulting in a bit of a competition! Anytime I
would leave her for a bit, he was over talking to her and flirting,
but I could tell I was winning the battle, take that America! We
ended up at a few more bars, finally ending up at the big rock bar,
where we continued to flirt..I was actually quite liking the girl, as
she would run off and come back with a beer for me...great Eastern
European hospitality...eventually a few others from the hostel showed
up but we were kind of ignoring them and talking amongst ourselves,
eventually losing everyone and just spending the next 2 hours dancing
and enjoying the live rock music. After some making out, and a few
shots it was time to head back to the hostel...and that's when things
got interesting.
Over the previous few weeks I had
walked alone throughout Santiago, at night, without a single problem,
but this night...two drunk people, one tall and blonde girl who
doesn't speak Spanish, made us a target...we were probably about 2
minutes down the road from the bar, walking hand in hand when a man
comes running up from behind us and punches me in the neck and knocks
me to the ground, then begins trying to steal the purse from the
Slovakian girl.....so she's on the ground trying to prevent him from
stealing her purse, and I get up and in a stupid and valiant drunken
move, run over and kick him as hard as I can in the face...well this
doesn't knock him out and he obviously doesn't like this and then he
pulls out a knife and slashes at my leg! I jumped back in time to not
receive any major cut, but my pants were cut open! So once I see the
knife, common sense kicks in, and I tell the girl to hand over the
purse, but she's never been robbed in her life, is drunk, and is
stubborn and refuses to give in...so I'm stuck hovering over them,
not knowing what to do, pleading for her to give over the purse,
while she kept screaming and crying no, no no...in the end, it was
starting to draw some attention obviously, so the thief just cut the
purse off her shoulder and ran off! Wow what an experience.....so now
I'm sitting on the ground trying to console her, when a few Chilean
girls stop by and ask what happened, we explain, they summon the
police, who say we should go to the police station the next day to
file a report, put us in the police van and drive us back to the
hostel.....what a crazy event! We get back in the hostel, and the
girl is still in hysterics, crying, and we're in the dorm room and
I'm trying to calm her down.....she calmed down a little bit when she
realized that she had nothing important in her purse, other than a
Czech-Spanish dictionary, a little bit of money and a mobile
phone..the way she fought for that purse, you would think her
passport or something was in it, but fortunately all her important
documents were in the locker at the hostel....but it was still about
1.5 hours of loud crying and trying to console her, waking nearly
everyone up in the hostel rooms....eventually she fell asleep, and I
did the same.
The next day I didn't get up until
about 4 pm, and went to check on her, and she was fine, but in
typical female fashion, didn't remember nearly anything! We
eventually agreed to head out to Puente Alemania to eat dinner
together, with a few of the other girls from the hostel, as most of
them hadn't eaten there yet, and Helder, the Portuguese worker at the
hostel was always pimping the place out....well we wandered down
there a few hours later, and had dinner there, but it wasn't really
that great again...still not too sure why he loves the place so
much...I have found way better places to eat in Santiago than there,
but I guess it was on the tv show with Anthony Bourdain for example,
so many many people end up there. After dinner it was back to the
hostel, where everyone was tired from the previous night, and didn't
want to venture out, so I was on my own again. I thought about doing
the same thing as well, but then one of the French girls whom I had
met at Spanglish earlier in the week said she was going out with a
few other French people, and invited myself and Dario to join them at
a nearby lounge, so we decided to head over and have a beer with them
at the minimum. I showed up with my still torn pants, a bit of blood,
and a hat at the extremely fancy lounge, and was surprised to be
allowed in, as the bouncer looked at my pants, and only made me take
off the hat....well we definitely didn't fit in at the place, as it
was mostly suits and wealthy people. We found the group of French
people, as Roxanne had brought along 3 others, and we had a few beers
with them, before they decided to call it an early night. After 2
beers and some music, I wasn't quite ready to go back home, and Dario
mentioned that he had a friend who was having a going away party at a
nearby bar, so after being a little lost, and him forgetting the
actual name of the bar, and asking several people along the way for
the place, with no one having any idea of what bar he was talking
about! We finally arrived at the place, which ended up being a salsa
bar.
After battling through the packed dance
floor, we found Dario's friend, and 2 other guys....not much of a
going away party! We grabbed a seat with them, and spend the next few
hours hanging out, having some Pisco Colas (PisCola), complements of
one of the guys at the table, who was obviously trying to impress the
girl who was leaving. After about 2.5 hours of chilling out, I was
tired, and we said our goodbye and were on our way to grab a quick
snack before heading home. This time, I was a little more leery about
my walk home, and a bit more observant than previous nights, amazing
what one incident can do to your general sense of being! The next day
was a pretty quiet one, as most of the hostel had checked out, so I
just went for a 2 hour wander around the city before spending the
next few hours having dinner and coffee while working on Spanish
more. Dario and I had made plans to go bowling that evening, and I
invited along Ignacia to join us, and even though we invited several
other people, it only ended up being the three of us going. We had a
nice time bowling, and checked out the skating rink but it was
getting late and the metros were about to close, as the mall was
quite far away from where we lived and we didn't want to be stuck
taking a taxi, so we headed back towards the city centre. At this
point I had kind of given up on the Chilean girl, as it was just too
much of an emotional battle with her, and really not worth all the
effort, so I was treating her more as a friend than a g/f. She called
me out on it the next day, which lead to one of the little fights
that we had, as my lack of Spanish made for a difficult time
expressing myself accurately, and she would get mad about stupid
little things...as they say, the juice just wasn't worth the squeeze
unfortunately.
The next day was a fairly tranquil day,
especially as I was still kind of feeling the effects of a head cold
that I had once again caught.....the past few hostels have just been
crawling with germs and it now seems that every 2 or 3 weeks someone
brings another new strain in and everyone gets sick ugh! I wandered
down to Cafe de La Barra and spent the next few hours working on
Spanish and Portuguese a bit, which is a surprisingly similar
language to Spanish, making for a steeper learning curve I'd say.
After a few hours of listening, combined with a knowledge of Spanish
and French, one can start to formulate simple sentences and have
small conversations within a relatively quick time frame. After a few
hours the Chilean girl started probing me about whether I liked her
or not, whether we were just friends, why I didn't express enough
interest in public, etc.....I really can't embrace the overly
affectionate Latin culture, as it kind of bothers me when people are
kissing in all places and practically laying on top of you in crowded
metros, kissing away....just not part of my culture, so I try to keep
it a bit separate, the whole affection thing. Anyway, she was a bit
mad about that, and then apologized for bothering me, and I told her
that she wasn't bothering me at all, that I was alone and quite
enjoyed talking to her at the moment....well she took this as if I
said she was my only option to talk to or something along those lines
and got all angry with me about that! Ahhh damn Latinas...too
difficult....so after trying to explain what I meant, she eventually
calmed down and invited me over for a bite to eat and some coca leave
tea, which is apparently quite good for head colds and what not!
After the nice dinner and tea, we chatted for awhile, before I headed
back to the hostel after the usual making out and nothing more in the
bedroom!
The next day was another pretty routine
day, spending some time in a nearby Italian restaurant, enjoying a
tasty lunch and coffee, while working on Spanish and Portuguese
further. Most of the day was just spent bumming around until it was
time to head off to grab dinner at a hamburger restaurant that I had
found out about on the internet. I was looking for the World's best
hamburgers, and a list popped up that included one from a restaurant
called La Burguesia, here in Santiago, so I decided to go check it
out and Dario decided to tag along before heading off to Spanglish
later on in the evening. We met up at the place which was close to
Los Leones metro station, and had some chili fries, which were
awesome, and then two of the hamburgers, which were absolutely
massive and incredibly delicious! Well worth the trip! Check them out
on Facebook at
https://www.facebook.com/pages/La-Burguesia-Hamburgueseria-y-Bar/273614622729743
 |
| Italian coffee, great way to start a day of learning |
After the delicious feast, we were on
our way over to the event, which was held quite a bit further away
than the previous weeks. We arrived and found the place to be
absolutely packed, and everyone had name tags this time around,
except for us two. I tried to chat with an English guy for a bit, who
was kind of a bit of a wanker, as he got upset when I spoke in
English with him, saying he was only there to learn Spanish, and once
I started speaking Spanish with him, he was still kind of being a
weirdo and said he had to leave...he was just there to meet girls I
think but whatever! After meeting a few more interesting people and
some cute girls, it was nearly 12 am, and the Metro was closed, and
it was a long ways away from the hostel, so I got a start on the long
walk home....this took over an hour this time...but a good way to
clear the head a bit, and I still felt safe wandering the streets.
After sleeping in the next day, and heading down to the nearby
Italian restaurant and enjoying some delicious food and working on
Portuguese for a few hours, with a handy free language website called
www.busuu.com where you can meet
other foreigners and practice speaking to them and writing with them,
as well as performing several different exercises.
After the few hours of language
practice, I tried to find some people to go to Miercoles Po with me,
including the cute receptionist at the hostel, but was unsuccessful
in convincing anyone, so I was going to have to go alone once again.
Unfortunately I waited around too long for a taxi to pick me up and
head to the party, so once again I had to pay a cover charge instead
of getting in free, being a foreigner. I met a few guys in the lineup
who were from France, and after bs'ing with them and an Aussie for
awhile, we tried to sneak their Chilean friend into the party using
my ID, as he sort of looked a bit like me, and the cover charge for a
Chilean man was $24, and $10 for a foreign man...but the girls at the
booth were actually observant enough, and didn't fall for that trick.
We arrived inside the Teatro Caupolican, which was an absolutely
massive venue, and I soon ran into one of the American girls from the
previous night at Miercoles Po, as well as a few others that I knew
from there, and they were heading over to some VIP area or whatever,
and asked me to come along with them...well I arrived at that door,
and they all passed through since they had some sort of stamp, but I
was of course left behind, sin stamp, so it was back to being solo.
That was fine, as I ended up wandering into the “commoners” area,
and meeting several pretty cool and nice people there, making new
friends and dancing around. After scaring off some beautiful Peruvian
girl, I ended up meeting two really cute other girls, a Mexican and
Chilean girl, and had a fun time with them for the rest of the night.
Unfortunately, as the night was ending they went to the bathroom, and
I lost them, as I was hoping to get their contact information to go
out and party with them again..bummer! So after wandering outside,
finding a cab that sort of ripped me off, I was back at the hostel
for the night.
The next day was just another language
learning day, spending more time in the coffeeshop before heading
back to the hostel to call home and wish my Dad and Sister a Happy
Birthday. I had to laugh at my Father was showing me his backyard,
where there was a large female deer and her two fawn, eating roses
from his rosebush, while their cat was trying to creep up and pounce
onto the large deer, meanwhile my Father is trying to unsuccessfully
scare off the deer...entertaining times in Canada! After catching up
a bit on the home front, it was a fairly quiet night in the hostel as
per usual, so not too much happened, other than some pizza and a
beer.
The next day was spent wandering around
a bit more, and eating and practicing languages further, until the
evening when there was a party that Dario invited me to go attend. We
were supposed to go there around 9 pm, but in true Latin fashion,
that was pushed back until about 10:30 pm or so. Although to be fair,
he was exactly on time at the metro station where he told me to meet
him, while I was about 10 minutes late, as I've absorbed the
tardiness part of the culture in my time in Chile. We went to the
apartment of a German girl that he had met at the Spanglish nights,
as it was her going away party...or a going away party to celebrate
her leaving for all of one month before returning again....these
going away parties in Chile are a bit odd to me! We arrived at the
apartment, after going on a lengthy search for a bottle shop to buy
some beers, as the bottle shop that Dario had thought was a bottle
shop next to the apartment, was in fact a pharmacy. After wandering
around the slightly dodgy backstreets to find a place, we made our
way over to the apartment, and pretty much immediately after
arriving, another German girl there came right over to me and started
speaking...it was as if I had some strong draw that night. We ended
up chatting for quite sometime, practicing Spanish and a bit of
English as well, before the party really started to fill up. The
German girl arranged some sort of mini game where the lights had to
be turned off and a guest would be brought up and given a gift, so
she asked me to turn the lights on and off for her....the first time
I've worked in 2 years or so I would later joke about, much to
several people's laughter. We were meant to leave the place by about
midnight and head off to the salsa bar that I had been to the
previous weekend with Dario (what is with going away parties and
salsa bars??), but it was pretty hard to get the whole group to leave
as a whole, and it wasn't until 2 am or so that we finally made our
way over there, losing much of the group along the way.
We arrived and unfortunately the cute
German girl didn't come along, as she was off to hitch hike to
Valparaiso in the morning. We arrived with about 8 or 9 people, and
waited outside before entering to see if anyone else was going to
join at the last minute. In Chile 1000 pesos is called a Luka, so
it's common to hear a place or salespeson say the price in Lukas. At
this point I couldn't resist making a joke about this, as the
entrance for the bar was 4000 pesos, or 4 Lukas, so I went about
asking people in the street if their name was Lukas, as I needed 4 of
them to enter the bar...apparently no one had thought of this joke,
as the whole group found this to be rather hilarious. I wasn't able
to call upon the Lukas' that I do know from different parts of the
World, so I had to settle for paying the entrance fee with real
money. We entered inside the very busy bar with about 8 or 9 of us in
the group, and I tried with little success to dance some salsa with
one of the girls from the party, but she gave up on me shortly after.
I just spent the rest of the time hanging out with Dario, as he
couldn't seem to find a dance partner either. Near the end of the
night while waiting in line for a beer and speaking English, I turned
around to see a cute girl trying to speak very poor English, so I
began chatting her up, and we ended up getting along pretty great.
Unfortunately for Dario, her friend wasn't attractive, nor single, so
he kind of got shut out on this one. After about 25 minutes of
flirting, the place was closing so we had to make our way back. The
girl lived really really far away and at home with her Aunt and
Uncle, so that wasn't an option, so I figured we would try the hostel,
as the dorm room had lots of beds free earlier in the night, and it
would actually be cheaper for her to stay in the hostel and take the
bus in the morning, rather than spend all the money on a taxi, so we
went back to the hostel, but the night guy, whom I had begun to
dislike, was an idiot, and wouldn't let her come stay at the hostel,
even though she was willing to pay for a bed. He told me that the
room was full, so I had to say goodbye to the nice girl and send her
home in the taxi.
Of course when I arrived in the room,
there were 4 beds free, so I went downstairs to let the idiot know
that he was costing the business money and he said some stupid
response about not knowing that the room wasn't in fact full..idiot.
So I just went to sleep and that was that. The next day our friend
Alex, whom we had met in Buenos Aires was meant to finally be
arriving in Santiago, after having said she was coming “soon”
over the previous 2 weeks. Well, apparently this was finally the day
she was meant to arrive, but I had no idea what time she would be
getting there. I had made some plans for the afternoon to go for a
bike ride with Ignacia, the one Chilean girl I had been seeing, but
by the time I finished my lunch, it was already nearly 4 pm, so there
wasn't much time to get a bike. We ended up just wandering around her
neighbourhood, doing a little walk to get some fresh air. After
stopping to watch some kids in the skate park, and being offered
Marijuana since people always seem to think I look like someone who
smokes it and always ask if I want to buy some, we stopped by another
little park with some exercise equipment, had a quick little workout
there, and then stopped by a nearby cafe where she often studied.
After spending 45 minutes or so there, enjoying the tranquility of
the park, and chatting away, it was getting close to the hour where
Alex had said she might be arriving in Santiago. I went back to the
apartment with the Chilean girl, and tried one last time for
something more than simple making out, and again got nowhere, damn
frustrating women! After the continuous failure, I wandered back to
the hostel, and waited for Alex to get back, to see if she was up for
going for dinner or something. She arrived a few hours later, but was
pretty tired after 3 straight days of bus rides, and wanted to just
sleep, as she had a seminar the next day on Orca training ha ha....I
guess she's a dog trainer back in Spain, and had met some other dog
trainers from Chile, who were going to a 2 day seminar on animal
training that included Orcas, so she was going to check it out. Once
again, the hostel was pretty quiet, and since Alex wasn't up for
anything, and everyone else that I knew in Santiago was having a
quiet night or wasn't responding, I figured I would just head out for
a bite to eat and then probably have a quiet night in.
 |
| Nice day in the park with a Chilean girl, drinking coffee and people watching |
I wandered over to a restaurant in
Patio Bellavista called Casa Vieja that Dario recommended to me, and
sat down at the bar next to a Swiss-German guy, and ended up chatting
and having a beer together. He was in Santiago finishing up his PhD
on a system for predicting earthquakes, and was a structural
engineer. He was a pretty interesting guy, and after the beer and
sandwich, he invited me to go along to a nearby bar that had some
live music, and since I didn't really have any other plans on the go,
I figured why not. We ended up at a place called Stage One, that was
full, but we were able to get a small table to enjoy the live music
there. After a few very tasty Old Fashioned cocktails, and a few
hours of live music and practicing Spanish, it was already 4:30 am,
and it was time to head back to the hostel for the night. After
crawling out of bed around 3 pm, since I had continued with my bad
sleeping habits, and not falling asleep until 7 or 8 am at times, I
wandered down to the Cafe de La Barra again and decided to start to
try and figure out my upcoming plans, and after some brief thought, I
decided I would try and get over to Brazil to meet up with Henrique,
who had just returned from Africa, and wanted me to join him and
travel in the Bahia with him in September....after not much
reflection, I made up my mind, found a somewhat decently cheap
flight, and booked it without thinking too much. After a few hours of
practicing Portuguese, I wandered back to the hostel to find Alex and
head out for a bite to eat. Once again Helder, the Portuguese guy had
been pushing the idea of eating at Fuente Alemania on us, but I
wanted to check out a nearby Peruvian restaurant, that had some
pretty flashy neon lights, and since most things in Santiago are
closed on Sundays, it seemed like a good bet.
We arrived there and found the
restaurant to be empty, and the kind older man working there seated
us underneath this ridiculous picture that they probably put up in
the restaurant just to watch people's reaction. It took about 5
minutes or so to actually notice the picture of the Bull that was
above our table, and we really couldn't stop laughing for quite a
long time, especially after looking around the restaurant and seeing
all the normal pictures, and then this particular one. Alex caught
the guy working there looking over several times to see our
reactions, so it had to have been some sort of a joke. We ended up
ordering two very tasty plates, that came with some amazing sauce and
bread. After the hour and a half long dinner, we wandered back to the
hostel and called it a night. The next day I woke up late again, and
found that Alex's boyfriend had arrived in the morning, so they were
off seeing the city, and I wanted to go check out the nearby Museum
of Fine Arts, as I had been meaning to do so for quite sometime,
unfortunately, it was closed as Mondays seem to be the new day of
closure for museums Worldwide. With that plan down the drain, it was
back to the City Centre for another Completo, and a 4 hour walk
around the city centre, stopping at every single bookstore I could
find, in order to try and get some sort of Portuguese grammar book to
help me learn. I found that buying a grammar book in Spanish helped
immensely, so that's what I set out to search for, and was told of
several different places to check....all of which ended up not having
anything, damn! So after several hours of wandering for nothing, I
cut my losses short, and headed back to the hostel where I got to
meet Alex's bf Nico, who was a nice Argentine guy who didn't speak
any English...so that meant all the conversations would have to be in
Spanish, but all good. They ended up making dinner that night, and we
spent the evening in the hostel having dinner and some wine and
catching up, before calling it an early night.
 |
| Absolutely ridiculous photo that we had to look at while eating! |
The next day I finally made it down to
the Museum of Fine Arts, and spent the next 2 hours wandering around
there, admiring the large exhibition of Chilean Rock music that they
had put together. Apparently it was the 50th anniversary of a very
famous Chilean band called Las Jaivas, coming up soon, and for the
occasion they were going to be playing a huge concert on the upcoming
holiday, on the Thursday, as well as several other bands. After the
nice tour of the museum, and seeing some rather impressive paintings
and other cultural artifacts, I made my way back to the hostel first
to see if the Chilean girl I had met on Friday still wanted to go
hang out for the evening, but since she lived so far out of town and
had to work the next morning, the timing wasn't going to work out and
we rescheduled for Wednesday instead. After that fell through I
checked to see if Alex and Nico were interested in heading out to the
Spanglish party that night, but unfortunately they weren't up for
much, as they were going to head to Valparaiso the next morning
instead, so I went on my way to have another hamburger at La
Burguesia, although I had to have it to go as they were absolutely
packed full of people (good thing the others didn't join me) before
making my way over to the Spanglish party.
 |
| Las Jaivas playing in the middle of nowhere apparently |
 |
| I was quite impressed by this painting |
 |
| Modern Art, I guess? |
I was actually lost for quite awhile,
but eventually found my way there, and arrived a bit late. As soon as
I entered I had to laugh when two guys in the beer line were talking
to each other in English and asking where each of them were from, and
they both responded Chile...it's always kind of funny when people
speak in a second or third language to someone with whom they can
speak in their native tongue, and until they realize they can do
that, the reaction is always fun to watch. After chatting with those
guys for awhile, I met some beautiful American girl who was with her
Chilean bf and they chatted for quite awhile with me, until some cute
German girl kind of butted in to talk to me, scaring them off....I
thought that was going well, until her sort of Chilean bf stopped by
and took her away..drats...no luck for me! In the end I did end up
meeting a pretty cool Chilean girl, who had a strange love for ice
hockey, and we ended up having a great time together chatting the
night away, until about 2 am, when I walked her about 4 kms back to
where she had to take a collectivo taxi to get home where she lived
with her parents...surprise surprise...no luck with Chileans! So
after that epic walk, it was another long walk back to the hostel to
call it a night. After sleeping in once again, since I probably
didn't fall asleep until about 8 am or so, listening to Portuguese
lessons until all hours, I made my way over to yet another bookstore,
where I had to settle for purchasing a Portuguese-Spanish dictionary
to get me started, as there weren't any English-Portuguese ones to
select...after the minor purchase, it was off to the cafe for lunch,
coffee, and chilling out for a few hours until my date later that
evening.
I met up with Susana and we went to the
Dublin Bar, where I had met Dario the first night I arrived in
Santiago, for a small dinner and a drink. She was also interested in
going to Miercoles Po that night, as the holiday the next day meant
it would be a huge party. But first, Alex and Nico wanted to grab a
drink with Dario, as they were planning on leaving in 2 days time,
and had plans for the next day, so it was her only chance to catch up
with him, so we all agreed to meet up around 10:30 pm for a beer
before I was to head off to the Po party. We met up with them, and
they had brought along two Brazilians from the hostel, as well as a
Chilean guy that was friends with Alex's roommate back in Barcelona,
so we had a bit larger of a group than expected, which meant it was a
lot harder to find a table to sit down at for all of us, since the
streets was absolutely packed with people. We eventually found a
spot, and had 2 beers before trying to run off and make it to the Po
party before Midnight so that I could still get in for free, plus
Susana had a friend who was going to be meeting us there. We made it
over there and found that the place was an absolute zoo, with several
hundred people outside not being able to get in as the place was
already over capacity! It seemed like it was quite a lot of
foreigners who were the ones that were outside and not in the party,
which kind of defeats the purpose of the Po party, as it is organized
for foreigners....so once we realized we weren't getting inside, we
just went back to Bellavista to find the others and continued hanging
out with them. The one Brazilian got really really drunk, and could
barely stand, let alone find money to pay his huge tab when we were
finally all ready to clear off the tab and head some place else, so he
fortunately decided to just head back to the hostel, however, the
others decided to escort him back since he was in rough shape, and
Dario had a girlfriend who wanted to meet up with him and go to the
Maestra Vida salsa bar another time, so we figured we would go ahead
and do that.
So it was Susana, myself, Dario, and
his lady friend at the bar for the next hour or so, as we did arrive
kind of late, and I continued to embarrass myself trying to dance
salsa....I just don't have the Latin hips or rhythm! After an hour
there, one drink, it was shutting down, so we went our separate ways,
as I walked Susana back to where she would take a bus to get to her
friends place to sleep for the night...so again, just making out,
nothing more...and I made the walk back to the hostel for the night.
The next day being the public holiday, I went for a bite to eat at
the cafe and waited there for Dario to show up, as we were going to
the park to check out the live concerts and events going on the
celebrate the holiday and 60th anniversary of Las Jaivas. The park
area was absolutely packed with people, and I had to detour quite
heavily to get around and get over to the cafe to have lunch, and
waited for about an hour for Dario to arrive, before we headed over
to the park. We wandered around there for about an hour, buying some
beers, and hanging out with some locals for awhile, before passing by
a vendor that was selling “special cakes” in the
park...yes....right out in the open, there were marijuana
cakes...crazy Chile! We found a spot somewhat near the music stage,
and took in about 1.5 hours of live music before Dario had to head
back home as he had work to do, and I just hung out by myself for
another hour, listening to Las Jaivas play, and meeting a few more
random people, including a group of Chilean-Canadians, who were born
in Canada due to their parents leaving during the Pinochet coup, and
then eventually returning when it was safe to do so again. After
hanging out with them for awhile, and admiring some pretty women, it
was time to head back to the hostel.
 |
| crazy party in the park, hundreds or maybe thousands of people |
 |
| Perhaps the only gringo |
 |
| Chileans start drinking beer at a young age! |
 |
| My crazy friend |
It was a bit late, and they wanted to
go grab a bite to eat around 11 pm, so after more pressuring from the
Portuguese hostel worker, I said I'd walk with them over to Fuente
Alemania, however, we arrived too late and it was closed...although
not all that surprising considering all the ladies that work there
and serve the food are about 60 years old! Since that was shut down,
we returned back to the Patio Bella Vista to try and grab a bite to
eat there, and had to settle on Completos...fortunately for me, some
kind Chilean girl had ordered one too many and gave me one for
free...win! Meanwhile Alex and Nico went to some corner restaurant
that had pretty bad service and took forever! After the terribly
long wait, we were back to the hostel for the night, and they were
going to be taking off early the next morning. Since I didn't fall
asleep until quite late, I didn't have a chance to get up and say
goodbye to them, as they were heading back to Argentina the next
morning. After waking up and heading off to have lunch, I had a few
hours to kill and found out from Dario that an Israeli electro band
was playing that night in Santiago. I had first heard of Infected
Mushroom from my Israeli friend Guy when I stayed with him in Norway
a few years ago, as I had been talking about how awesome Deadmau5 had
been at a concert, and he told me about Infected Mushroom starting to
whole music scene in the mid 90s. I had heard them a few times and
liked them, so I agreed to go along with Dario to check out the
concert that night, which was held at a formerly gay club called
Blondie. After running out to grab a very quick bite to eat at Donde
Guido with one of the Brazilians from the hostel, I barely managed to
catch the very last train of the night and meet up with Dario near
the club. We headed to the bar, but it was quite empty, so we stopped
at a nearby pub for some beer and Terremotos, as drinks were way
cheaper there than in the club. After an hour or so, we went back to
the show and it had really picked up. The music drew a lot of Chile's
hottest women, which made for a pretty nice time at the concert. I
ended up meeting a few, but of course it never went anywhere with
them, but no matter. We thoroughly enjoyed the next few hours of
wicked Electronica, although the place was very very loud, so it was
hard to talk to people. After the wicked show, it was nearly 5 am,
and we tried to flag down a bus, but because there were quite a few
drunk people, the bus drivers were kind of being ignorant and passing
by the stops! Eventually one stopped, we caught a bus, and I made the
10 minute walk back from a nearby bus stop, and called it a very late
night.
 |
| Big and cheap Terremottos to prepare for the party! |
One of the really cute girls that
worked at the hostel had kept bugging me to come out to her family's
house for a barbecue or a party while I was staying at the hostel,
and so I agreed to head on out there on the Saturday morning.
Unfortunately I agreed to meet up at the Metro Station which was the
furthest station on the outskirts of the city, taking about an hour
to reach. To make matters worse, I arrived about 5 minutes late, and
didn't have a phone, nor the phone number of the girl, and after
searching around the metro station for 35 minutes and not finding her
anywhere, I had no idea what to do. After finding an internet cafe
and sending messages and trying to somehow track her down, I was able
to get a skype address for her, and managed to get a hold of her. She
had been at the station, but said she couldn't find me anywhere, so I
missed my ride to the house, as it was still quite a bit out in the
country. Fortunately, there was a collectivo van that could drop me
off somewhat close to where she was at, and she told me to grab that
and that she pick me up there. Well after arriving at the corner of
the road, and spending the next 30 minutes there wondering if I had
gotten off at the wrong stop, she finally showed up.....now that was
true Latin style, being late! So I hopped in the dirty Mercedes,
stopped at a market to grab some beers, and was off to the small and
cozy home of her family, tucked away behind a nearby vineyard, and
with a lovely view of the surrounding country side. I was her only
friend to come to the party, and no one spoke English, but it was
still a nice experience to spend some time with a family and close
friends, chatting away in Spanish, and sampling some delicious meat
and vegetables. A more people eventually showed up, and after a fun
and relaxing night of beer, pisco, Chilean Spanish, and asado, I was
exhausted from only having slept about 4 hours the night before.
Being too far off from any public transportation, I crashed in the
attic for the night, and somehow managed to sleep all the way until 2
pm.
After finally getting up, we went for a
little cruise around, stopping at a nearby Maipuche Artesenal
village, where we could sample some food, drinks, and of course buy
crafts, clothing, etc., however I didn't feel like buying any of
that, but going there with 2 girls lead to a lot more time spent
looking at things than I really wanted to. Once we were finished up
there, we went back to the house for a little while, trying some of
the rabbit and vegetables that her parents had cooked up, before
taking a coffee and hanging out for a bit longer. I was a bit
surprised to see her pull out a gun out of her closet and pretend to
shoot the chickens that roamed the front lawn of her house, saying
that she really disliked all of them because of the noise they
make...it was the first time in my life I've actually seen a hand gun
in a house! After another hour or two, it was back into town, as the
girls wanted to go do some shopping, and I had to head back to the
hostel for the evening. I arrived back in time to catch up with the
Brazilian guy who was still sticking around the hostel, and mentioned
I was probably going to head out for a bite to eat if he wanted to
join. He mentioned that he has a small business in Brazil, and that
his two partners had gone on really expensive vacations the last 2
years, and it was his first vacation in 8 years, so he was expected
to use the company credit card to pay for his holiday, including
expensive meals, and mentioned that he would pay for me if we went
somewhere expensive..win! So we went off to the awesome sushi
restaurant for dinner that night. After the wicked dinner it was back
for the night.
 |
| Traditional Maipuche home |
The next day I slept in a bit, and ran
into the Brazilian guy who had mentioned he had gone to a special
massage parlour in Chile, that he was telling me about the previous
night, where you could get some fairly special massages ha ha! He
seemed to be pretty happy looking after the ordeal, so it must have
been good! After wandering off for a bite to eat and some more
Portuguese and Spanish practice, I came back and had a pretty quiet
day in. The next day after wandering around the city for a few hours
and doing a lot of nothing, I went for a bite to eat with Mariana, to
a Peruvian restaurant that happened to be the same chain of
restaurant that was located near the hostel, and after a tasty
Peruvian chicken dish, we went for a long wander trying to find an
atm that would work for me to take money out, and after about 25
different atms I was finally able to get some cash, so we stopped by
a hidden bar in the Lasterria neighbourhood that had hookah
pipes....it happened to have a pretty catchy name, Hookah
Troopa....clever Mario play I say. After the hookah stop, and
watching a very poisonous spider wander around near our table, it was
back to the hostel for the night, as it was too late to go down to
the Spanglish night. The next day was spent doing more of the same
before heading off to the Miercoles Po party that evening....I
arrived by myself as the hostel was quiet again and I couldn't find
anyone to go with, so I rolled up by myself.
As I was walking towards the place, I
spoke with a really cute girl who had just gotten out of a taxi in
which the guys were arguing over the fare. After asking what was
going on, we got to chatting a bit and went inside together, but then
her friends dragged her off and I didn't think much of it. I went
inside one of the many dance halls that the place had, and was
surprised when she came over and started chatting me up
further....well this chatting eventually lead to some dancing and
then she made her move...nice! She was half Australian half French,
and a very cool girl....after about 2 hours of dancing and making out
she mentioned she had to go home because she worked the next morning,
and I figured that was it, but she told me to come along with
her....so much easier than dealing with Chilean emotions! She
apparently was quite drunk, which I didn't realize until after, but
should have realized sooner when she gave an address to the taxi that
actually didn't physically exist, so he took us to the nearest point
to that address and she was trying to argue with him that he took us
to the wrong spot! Eventually she realized she was wrong and we made
the quick walk over to her gorgeous apartment, which she had
apparently been living in with her Chilean bf that she came back to
Chile for, and subsequently broke up with 3 weeks later...oops! We
spent a nice night together, but had a very early morning as she had
to head off to work, but exchanged contact details....it was kind of
too bad that I had decided to go to the Atacama Desert that day, as I
really enjoyed hanging out with her for only one night, but I needed
to go see some other parts of Chile before leaving for Brazil. After
returning to the hostel, sleeping a bit more, it was off to the bus
station to buy my ticket for that night.
 |
| One last Completo for the road |
 |
| Lazy dog days in Santiago |
After packing up my things, it was
finally time to say goodbye to the Casa Mosaico hostel, and head off
to the bus station to take the exciting 24 hour bus ride to the
Atacama Desert...the driest place on earth (supposedly!). After the
long trip, witnessing some beautiful scenery along the way, when I
wasn't sleeping of course, I arrived around 9 pm at night in the
surprisingly cold desert, and having memorized a rough map of how to
arrive at my hostel...well fortunately for me there happened to be a
guy at the bus station who was checking for people who needed a place
to stay, and happened to be going to my hostel to advertise for a
party that night, so he gave me a lift. This was fortunate as what I
thought was the bus stop on the map, was in fact the ticket office
for the bus company and I would have been completely lost, as there
was no tourist information booth that was open at the time..
 |
| "Green Waters"...not too sure where the water is though! |
I arrived in the cozy hostel and found
a massive group of about 13 German students taking up most of the
spots around the fire, and met a few Brazilians in my room. After
making my first attempt to speak in Portuguese, they were quite
impressed and even gave me some free dinner and drinks, to
demonstrate Brazilian hospitality. After the dinner, I grabbed a beer
and started meeting a few new people, but an unfortunate part of the
hostel is that they close down the common area at Midnight, even on
the weekends, as San Pedro is kind of a sleepy town, and they don't
want to offend the neighbours. After not much sleep, no shower in
nearly 3 days, I somehow was convinced to go along with all the
Germans to the party that the guy who drove me to the hostel was
hosting. He had a hotel a little ways outside the city, and thus
would host parties there after the bars and such closed. They picked
us up in a shuttle van that they told people would be free, and when
we arrived they told us it would cost a bit of money for the
gas.....I had to laugh as the Germans immediately changed their
minds, and said they wanted to go back to the hostel immediately
because they didn't like the fact they would have to pay for gas to
go to the party.....well after the host said it was fine, they
wouldn't have to pay, the grudgingly stayed....it wasn't much of a
party, as we were the only ones there...the drinks were a bit pricy,
and the music a bit too loud, but I guess we couldn't expect too
much. After chatting with a few of the Germans, and meeting one
absolutely stunning German girl who unfortunately had a bf, they all
wanted to leave after an hour and a half, but I had just bought a
beer, and had just met some cool English girl, so I decided to stick
around. If I had known there would only be one bus leaving, I
probably would have gone with them, but I didn't, and ended up being
stuck there until about 5 am...oops! It didn't go anywhere with the
English girl, as the hostel worker that she came with was all over
her, so I just spent the rest of the night chatting with some Spanish
guys and a few other people I met at the party, before the organizer
gave me a ride back to the hostel.
I was obviously pretty tired, and slept
in the next day, and woke up to find that it was RAINING!! Driest
place on earth, and there's rain?? crazy.....I didn't have many plans
yet, but found out that the Germans were all going Sandboarding and
for a tour of the Valley of the Moon that afternoon, so I signed up
for that and we were on our way. I've snowboarded twice in my life
and was terrible at it, I've tried surfing 13 or 14 times now and
have been terrible at it, I can barely stand up on a non moving
skateboard, and have fallen off a stand up paddle board the only time
I tried that, so needless to say, board sports are not my forte, but
why not try sand boarding I guess??! So we arrived at the hill, and
got some quick information on what to do, received our snowboards,
and candles to provide the wax to the bottom of them...yes...candles
ha ha. So trudged up the sandy dune, taking the more labourous way
rather than the more simple way along the side, and were all
exhausted when we reached the top...there we began...and I fell a
lot...as per usual! Many many many falls, but at least falling in the
sand isn't so rough, and I was smarter than my last trip to a sand
dune, and didn't have my camera in my pockets (I broke a camera in
Vietnam last year when sand got inside of it, after going to some
sand dunes). The day was really really windy, and I had a large
amount of sand flying in my eyes at times, which really hurt, and it
wasn't until 3 quarters of the time was finished that one of the
guides mentioned they had googles for us...thanks! With the googles it
was definitely a lot better though, but we still had sand everywhere.
 |
| San Pedro de Atacama...a simple town |
 |
| Sand boarding! |
 |
| Yup, it's a big desert! |
After the boarding was all wrapped up,
we made our way over to do some hiking around the Valle de Luna, or
Moon Valley, so named because it apparently resembles the Moon....I
think Craters of the Moon National Park in Idaho resembles the Moon a
lot more, however, it was quite beautiful and had some amazing
scenery. We hiked around there for some time, including through some
caves which we weren't really well prepared for, considering no one
told us to bring flashlights..thanks! After nearly tripping several
times and bumping my head, we made our way out to some spots where we
could view a nice panoramic view of the rock structure and area a
bit, before returning back to the vehicle and taking another 15
minute drive and hiking up high to see the Sunset...unfortunately it
was cloudy, but it still was absolutely amazing to see the
surrounding areas, and have some pisco sours up top! After it was
starting to get dark, we made our way down the hill, and back to the
hostel, arriving late. After grabbing a bite to eat and a shower, I
ended up heading out with a Brazilian guy to check out a bar where
there were a lot of people the previous day, and upon arrival we had
a few Chileans that wanted to meet us since we were foreigners. After
talking with them and having a laugh, the bar was closing, but they
invited us to tag along and go to another after party, so we began
the long and cold walk to find this supposed after party.
 |
| A small hike |
 |
| bumping our heads in the dark caverns |
 |
| Beautiful and quiet desert rock formations |
 |
| Gorgeous views of Valley of the Moon |
 |
| Tacky tourist pose |
 |
| Kind of reminded me a little bit of the Grand Canyon |
 |
| A not so great sunset, but what can you do |
Apparently it's prohibited to have
after parties in the city, so they are kind of an underground thing,
and the first place that was supposedly having one was shut down when
the police arrived, so then we talked to some other people that
recommended another spot, and we followed them....we arrived at some
garage type structure with a hole in a fence and two guys casually
allowing people to pass through.....and inside this garage was a
massive party full of Chileans and a DJ.....myself and the Brazilian
were definitely the only gringos there! One of the girls we went with
seemed to take a liking to me, but in typical procrastinating style,
I didn't really do anything with her until she was about to leave,
when she made the move and started kissing me...but of course they
were leaving...so we walked with them, back towards their hotel, with
both myself and the Brazilian hoping we would be in for a good night
however, it didn't happen, even though the girls had their own
rooms...Chileans are tough! So we made the rest of the freezing cold
and long walk back to the hostel, arriving around 6 am or so. With
the late arrival, I slept in until the afternoon, and was surprised
to find that it had snowed...yes....the driest desert on earth, and
the first day I was there it rained, and the second day there was
snow. The added moisture made a mess of the streets, and wandering
along in my flip flops to grab some lunch was a disaster, with mud
getting everywhere. I talked to some of the local shop keepers and
they said they'd never seen snow in their lives...what a weird
occurrence. Of course, with this snow also came the cancellation and
delays of any excursions around the area, due to poor roads. This was
a bit of a bummer for me, but I could wait out the weather a bit to
go on my tour of the geyser, but I did feel sorry for the Germans who
only had one more day and were hoping to do a tour, but were unable
to, so they missed out on seeing all that they wanted to.
After finding the amazing empanada
stand and getting covered in mud, I made it back to the hostel where
I made a huge mess in the shower, trying to clean off all the mud,
much to the disdain of the cleaning lady, so I tried my best to help
her out a bit and clean up as much as I could, who said Canadians
weren't nice! After that, since the weather was kind of blah, I just
spent the rest of the day hanging out with the Germans at the hostel,
before several of them ended up leaving back for Santiago. A few more
of them eventually wanted to go out for dinner, so I joined up with
them, and we ended up finding our sandboarding guide from the
previous day, so he tagged along as well. It was hard not to admire
the beauty of the one German girl the whole time, and she was quite
flirty with me, but unfortunately she had a bf so there was nothing
going to happen there, but we still all had a nice time enjoying a
few drinks, some live music, and some tasty food, before making the
walk back to the hostel, that was absolutely freezing cold...must
have been about minus 5 or so..brrr. We arrived back at the hostel,
spent a bit of time around the fire before calling it a night. The
next day my Geysir tour was still cancelled, so I didn't have a lot
to do, other than wander around the town a little bit and grab some
more of the tasty empanadas, stopping by a football pub to watch a
football match, and then hanging out the rest of the day at the
hostel chatting with some French people, working on that language a
bit, before heading off to dinner with another French guy at the
hostel.
 |
| A very rare sight, the mountains with snow |
After dinner at the same place as the
previous night, we arrived back at the hostel, and again just spent
some time around the fire until the fire nazi, the night worker, came
to put it out at exactly midnight as per usual. There happened to be
a few cool Chilean guys and a super amazing Dutch girl that had
arrived that day, so we spent most of the night chatting away. The
next day was a lot nicer and warmer, but because it was still damp,
all the tours were again cancelled, which caused some problems for
quite a few people, as there were several people that also wanted to
go to Bolivia and weren't able to because the border was closed due
to snow, so they were kind of stuck at the hostel, not being able to
do anything really. I just spent most of the day wandering around the
town and hanging out at the hostel, being a lazy traveller, and of
course arranging my transportation to Santiago for the next evening,
since I wanted to get back in town for Thursday to go to a moustache
party.
After getting my bus tickets all sorted
out, I had a rather quiet day, trying to get to sleep at a decent
hour since my geyser tour was confirmed for the next morning at 4
am....well because of my crappy sleep patterns, I didn't even manage
to fall asleep before I had to get up and go on the damn tour...so it
was into the early bus, and I tried to sleep some of the way, but the
roads were far too bumpy and it was far too cold to sleep at
all..damn. At one point we came across another bus that was actually
stuck in the snow, so our drivers had to help push them out. I later
found out it was actually the bus of a few of the other guests of our
hostel, that was run by a much cheaper tour company...guess you get
what you pay for! We arrived at our first stop, and when I got off
the bus, I could barely breath because of the altitude...what a
change from 2 years earlier in Nepal, when I didn't really have any
problems with altitude! Also, it could have been a result of not
sleeping at all, who knows! We wandered around the area, had a very
cold breakfast, and checked out the pretty lame geysirs....they
definitely didn't compare to the ones in Iceland! I tried to take a
funny video for my friend Roger's stag party, but it turned out
pretty bad, so I came up with a different idea on the fly for later
on that day. After touring the geysers, and having the one German of
the group wander off from the group, get lost, and causing us to be
delayed (after the guide had told us to all stick together), we
finally found him and were on our way over to some natural hot
springs. After some contemplation, I decided to jump in and swim
around, even though it wasn't really hot at all....there were a few
others that joined in, but it was definitely hard to keep warm in the
pool, considering the outside temperature was about minus 10..brrr!
 |
| Cold but beautiful |
 |
| Simple facilities |
 |
| The geysir field....they weren't very big |
 |
| Smoking! |
 |
| Animal with the most expensive fur in the World...a close relative of Llamas |
After the brief swim, we were back in
the bus like a herd of cattle, and stopped by a small village for a
coffee and bathroom break, checking out the tiny and simple way of
life in the Andes. It was a rather charming little village, with
about 15 inhabitants, very simple, probably no internet or wifi
there, that's for sure! After a quick goat cheese empanada, we were
back on the bus and on our way back to San Pedro, making one more
stop along the way to see some nice stream and some animals, and
continuing our drive past animals that resembled llamas, but were
some other type of animal, that have very slow growing wool, and
provide very very expensive fabric. We also did see the World's 3rd
largest salt flat from a far, with only Bolivia and the US having
larger salt flats, before arriving back in San Pedro 2 hours later. I
managed to sleep a tiny bit on the bus, but was still pretty
exhausted, perfect for my upcoming 24 hour bus ride I guess! We
arrived back in town, and I convinced the cute Dutch girl to come
help me film my new video idea for Roger's stag...I thought it was
funny, but I have a much different sense of humour than most. Here's
a link.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8i-b9j2UJpk&feature=c4-overview&list=UUBNXsiU27cHBjcuOevuHIpQ
 |
| Small desert village |
 |
| The simple life |
 |
| Of course they have a church! |
After the quick video, I just hung
around at the hostel until my bus was leaving, said my goodbyes, and
trekked over to the bus station, arriving a bit earlier than need be,
although Chilean buses seem to leave relatively on time! I was on the
bus, and greeted by some odd and drunk Russian guy who spoke terrible
Spanish, and not very good English, but seemed to be entertaining the
other Russians on the bus by pretending to be a flight attendant or
something. After settling into my seat, I promptly fell asleep,
waking up in the next city where I had to change buses. Grabbing a
quick and dirty fried chicken at a restaurant across the street, I
wandered back to the station, hung out with the two Chilean dudes
from the hostel who were waiting there for their bus, before getting
onboard the 2nd bus and on my way back to Santiago. I slept decently
enough, and the movies weren't too bad, even the pirated version of
Iron Man 3, gotta love bus companies with no care for anti piracy
laws. After a few quick stops to refuel, we arrived back in Santiago
24 hours later, and it was on my way back to the Hostel Mosaico for a
few more nights.
I had been told about this moustache
party that was going on that night, and convinced the cute Aussie
girl that I had met the previous week to go, and also knew that some
of the staff from the hostel would be going, but unfortunately there
was a house fire at the one worker's house, with whom I had stayed
the previous weekend for a barbecue, so she was obviously not going
to the party, and the Portuguese worker was nowhere to be found.
There was a nice Brazilian couple that were there, and who were
planning on going, so I figured I'd tag along with them, but after
eating some dinner and hanging out, I couldn't find them anywhere,
and decided to head over to the party solo and try and find the lady
friend, but I couldn't find her anywhere, and not having a phone or
device with wifi sucked for getting in touch, so I just wandered back
to the hostel to hang out a bit longer and check my messages, but
didn't see anything back from the girl. I did find the Brazilians, so
we ended up going together, and I took my first small attempt at
speaking Portuguese, but it was pretty poor...the girl spoke good
English, but her bf didn't speak any, so it was a lot of just
listening and trying to figure out a word or two, but they were nice
enough. After about an hour and a half at the party, and not seeing
my lady friend still, we ended up going back to the hostel, as the
Brazilians were actually quite drunk from drinking in their room
beforehand. We got back to the hostel, and I checked my messages
again and found the girl had messaged me saying they had changed
bars, but wasn't sure which one she was going to be going to, but
this point I just gave up on the night and called it an early one.
The next day I was meant to go meet up
with the Aussie girl and her friends for lunch, so she gave me the
name of the place and the street it was on, but when I arrived at the
metro station where I was supposed to get off, I took the wrong exit
and ended up fairly lost. The google map I had looked at showed the
restaurant to the North of the metro station, but it was in fact
located to the South, and after wandering around lost for awhile, I
found some lady who knew where the street I was looking for was
located, so I followed her directions, and found the street where the
restaurant was supposedly. Well, it wasn't actually on that street,
as I wandered back and forth all along the street going into several
different cafes and asking if they were called the Cafe Melba, or if
they knew where the place was. One of the cafes, I guess the worker
didn't understand me so well, as she said yes it was the Cafe, and I
wandered all over the place looking for this girl I was supposed to
meet, but she wasn't anywhere to be found...after waiting awhile, and
asking a different worker if it was called the Cafe Melba, she told
me no, it was called something else...great...so by this point, I'm
already about 20 minutes late, when I finally find a nearby street
that has the Cafe located on it....the girl gave me the wrong
street...so I arrived there, and of course she was nowhere to be
found...damn! So I wandered outside and asked several people to
borrow their phones to make a phone call, offering money, and none of
them would help me out..damn Chileans! Finally, a Bolivian girl
stopped and helped me out by lending her phone...of course there was
no answer though..damn! So I just ended up having breakfast alone in
the restaurant, and it ended up being pretty crappy...nice start to
the day!
While being lost for awhile, I did
happen to come across a Juan Valdez coffeeshop, and since I've been
missing their delicious coffees since my time in Colombia. After
another hour or so there, it was back to the hostel to try and figure
out what the hell happened with the meetup with the girl, and I
eventually got a hold of her, found out her friend had given the
wrong street address, and that she was at least sorry about the whole
event and wanted to meet up later on that evening. So we set a
meeting time of midnight to head out to a bar with her and some of
her friends. After killing several hours eating, having a drink, and
hanging around the hostel, it was time to head off and meet up with
her. I put the odds at about 60-40 that she would actually be there,
after the two previous failed meetup attempts, but sure enough, she
was there, even a few minutes early, and looking very beautiful.
After meeting her two friends, one kind of whiny American girl, and a
quiet French girl, we were on our way to some nightclub nearby, that
ended up being a pretty cool spot. It was about $10 for guys to get
in, girls free, so after paying the cover, we were on our way inside.
It was kind of awkward between us, as I didn't really know if I
should be affectionate towards her, and she wasn't acting like she
had at the previous party we met at, but she wasn't drunk like before
either. So after grabbing a few beers, and meeting a few new people
while she was off dancing with her friends, I decided to go chase
after her and was met with kind of a neutral response....so of course
I didn't know what was going to happen....then after only being there
for about 1.5 hours she said she was tired and wanted to go
home...but was more than willing to have me come along, so we were on
our way back for the night, and a lovely night it was.
 |
| One last Friday night party with the lady friend |
After spending the night, we slept in a
fair bit, and went for a nice lunch and then a wander around the city
for a few hours, stopping in a few thrift shops and having some
laughs over some of the things that we could buy....I found this
incredibly tacky and amazing robe that was so tempting to purchase,
but in the end, I just couldn't quite bring myself to doing it. After
a few hours of wandering around, and checking out Barrio de Brasil,
we walked all the way back to her place, grabbing some tea and
hanging out a bit more, before I headed back to the hostel to rest
for a little bit. She had an Electronica party that night that she
was going to, so I didn't think we'd see each other again that night,
but told her to give me updated if there was an extra ticket or
anything. I was meant to hang out with another friend that night, but
in the end the venue was changed for the concert thing, so they
offered everyone a free second ticket, so she offered me that and we
arranged to meet up later on. After getting some directions to where
we were to meet up, I popped by her Australian friend's apartment
building, met him and a few more of her friends, had some drinks, and
then were on our way to the Electronica party, which was really
really far away. It took a metro, and then some bus to get us to the
club where it was located. We arrived there, and the guys at the
door wouldn't let me enter in with my hat on, which seemed rather
ridiculous as I got inside and saw about 7 other people wearing hats,
and one part of the bar had New Era signs behind the Djs...it seemed
that they were sponsored by a hat company! The party was alright, but
we waited forever to see this band that was supposed to be playing
there, but they never showed up to play...so maybe the organizers
forgot to tell them that the event moved or something? Who knows!
After buying the lady friend two drinks
and myself two drinks, I was completely out of money, great! Plus she
wasn't being overly friendly towards me, so I was kind of confused by
the whole evening. Any time I tried to dance with her, she was
avoiding me...strange night. In the end, we were all there until 5 am
and I was tired and ready to leave, and fortunately the party ended,
we piled onto a bus and were on our way back to the metro station
that still wasn't opened. From there we were able to catch a bus, but
I didn't have any money to pay for that, so it was time to sneak on,
great! We were all dropped off at the Baquedano Station, and I was a
bit surprised that she didn't invite me over again, but I figured I
had another 2 days in town so I would be able to catch up once more
before leaving. I just walked back to the hostel for the night, still
a bit confused about the whole night, and was off to sleep. It was
the next morning that I double checked my flights, and realized that
I in fact had to fly out the next day, not two days later, oops! So
it was time to make some last minute plans to see some people before
I had to head out. I grabbed coffee with Mariana at a very cool
restaurant that used old antique furniture and various trinkets to
decorate the place, which made for a super cool atmosphere. After the
coffee break, we were off to grab a bite to eat at a sandwich place
that had ridiculously sized sandwiches for a cheap price. After the
large and impossible to finish sandwich it was time to say goodbye to
a very kind and lovely girl, and make a bit of time to meet up with
one other friend.
 |
| Not too sure if it's owned by Macy's or not ha |
 |
| Wicked cool cafe and restaurant called The Garden |
 |
| Killer sandwich! |
I met up with Dario around midnight for
one last beer with another great Chilean who had spent a lot of time
with me throughout my time in Santiago and had helped me immensely
with my learning of Spanish. It was a nice final goodbye before
heading back to the hostel, and trying to catch some sleep before
heading to the airport at 5:30 am...well unfortunately I couldn't
sleep at all, and ended up catching my taxi without any sleep,
arriving at the airport, tired and sad to be leaving such an amazing
and wonderful country. At the same time, I was excited to be meeting
up with one of my best travel friends, in his homeland, and starting
my next adventure of learning Portuguese. I made the quick flight
over to Montevideo, where I had a very very hard time equalizing my
ears, which I cursed the Australian girl for, as she had some head
cold and passed it on to me. After spending the next few hours in the
Montevideo airport, spending most of the time sleeping on the comfy
chairs, I realized that the time was in fact one hour ahead when I
woke up and heard the last call for my flight to Brazil! Nearly
missed another flight because of time change, damn! After spending
the previous few hours trying to equalize my ears, my jaw was now in
pain, but I was on my way, arriving in Rio de Janeiro!
Final thoughts on Chile are: amazing
beer, well developed and organized, timely people, shy but friendly,
difficult Spanish to learn and understand, funny slang words, great
food, and very diverse landscape.....I thoroughly enjoyed my time
there, and would love to go back again!
Because of twindling readership, and general laziness, I'm not too sure if I'll continue on from here...but if I do, it will be from Brazil!
Adios,
Rye
