We arrived in Santiago apple free at around 9:30pm and hopped onto the metro, noting that going down stairs with a giant backpack on makes you walk like a Lemming...good game. Got to hostel and met up with the lovely Lawerence, an LA native, and a friend that Pip had made a few weeks earlier. Also met another fellow American named Zeb in our dorm room and with Pip surrounded by Yanks we all headed off for ceviche and beer, and to pick out our spirit animals (my work colleagues will appreciate that one)! Next day Zeb, who hadn't had his hair cut in something like 4 months was heading out to find a place to get it cut, so obviously we tagged along. The condition in choosing a place was the hairdresser himself had to have terrible hair, and boy did we succeed! Pip and I also asked the lovely hairdresser to give Zeb a classic Chilean haircut and who knew the New Yorker would suit a small rats tail so well!! Showing off Zeb's new "do" we walked around the city for an hour or so and then Pip and I decided that more walking was in order and did a 4 hour walking tour. It was one of the best tours I've been on!! There were empanadas, fish markets, bizarre cafés, a history of the dictatorship, and Terramotos ( a disgusting drink of ice cream, white wine, pisco, and grenadine!). Afterwards we hobbled back to the hostel to get ready for a party at our sister hostal a few blocks away. This can pretty much be summed up as we got drunk and stayed up late. The next day was very clearly a write off at the pool. Surfacing only to go to a sushi place that played 80s metal music, obviously. Went back to hostal with intentions of an early night until...Pip found a guitar...then a tambourine...then a bongo drum! With other talented members of hostal a band was born! I was in charge of googling lyrics and terrible back up singing, and we specialised in Tom Jones covers! Needless to say, once again we got drunk and went to bed late. I decided the best cure for my hangover the next day was a little hike on my own up a mini mount in the center of town in 34C (something like 90F). Unsurprisingly not my best idea. After this self harming, I treated my self to a stint at the pool. Started chatting to another Californian (Taylor, who Pip knew from Bariloche), with a truly impressive beard, about Peru and Bolivia trying to gather info on our next countries. Later, Pip and I decorated said beard with flowers. We all migrated back to our hostel where Pip lead another evening of jamming at the hostel this time including our unbeliebly talented bartender Gato Mambo. Oh, and there was a magician somewhere in the evening. Beer was drunk and went to bed not quite as late as before. Feeling proactive the next day, Pip and I laced up our hiking boots and climbed Cerro Cristobal a large hill in edge of town that overlooks Santiago. Unfortunately it was so smoggy you could only barely make out the Andes and kind of looked like LA. Continuing in our civilised day we decided to cook dinner at hostal with Taylor and Joel (an Australian we'd met at the pool). We drank beer and stayed up late chatting...seeing the theme? The next morning, Taylor missed his bus to Argentina reminding us all the golden rule of not booking bus tickets in advance as you will probably go out have some beers, have fun and then miss your bus the next day! So the 3 of us took the obvious next step of going to the Museo de Memoria, the museum dedicated to the sufferers of the Pinoche regime. After being truly humbled and saddened by this this experience we went to recover by lying in the park staring up at the trees and telling stories of previous travels had. That night we decided to shake things up! Cooked dinner, DIDN'T get drunk and went to bed looking forward to a recovery detox in our next destination, the colorful seaside town of Valpariso... I arrived in Mendoza at around midnight and got a cab to hostel feeling pretty tired and covered in bus dust, as I'm paying for cab I see this tipsy girl coming towards me and am thinking "She's been enjoying the wine country" when I realise it is my good friend Pip coming back from dinner!! We had a good catch up and then I finally crashed. The next day we took a tour up to the hot springs in the mountains and laid out in the sun feeling totally relaxed...a little too relaxed, I fell asleep and ended up with a pretty stellar sun burn! The next day was pretty much a write off as I was sore and just exhausted from Buenos Aires. In the evening we met Martin the Canadian who was in our dorm room and Ryan a fellow American who Pip knew from her travels down South. Dinner was had and we all decided we would have an early night as we were doing a wine tour tomorrow... This meant staying up till 2am drinking wine on patio of course! After some much needed coffee the next morning the 4 of us headed off to do a bicycle wine tour outside of Mendoza. While trying to find the bus stop we met Fredrick and Sija who joined us on our little gang of wine tasters and the 6 if us got a a bus for the comically named Maipu, pronounced like you think!. After getting our bikes (Pip and I needed the child sizes) we headed off on a 10k ride through the country side to the first winery. After the tour we got some wine and had a picnic on the grass out front with the winery dogs. In the end we only made it to 2 wineries which was more than I thought, but it was sunny and we were all full on cheese and wine with our new friends. The next day Pip and I left for Santiago, an 8 hour bus that felt like nothing after the last one. It was one of the prettiest bus rides I've taken. Through the Andes and into a much greener Chilean landscape. All was pretty uneventful until the border crossing into Chile. They are very strict about bringing any kind of food into the country and scan your bags at border. Pip had a massage ball in her backpack and before she knew it was being accused by the customs officer of trying to sneak in an apple (as something round had shown up in scan) and which is quite funny because she is allergic to apples. After trying to explain massage ball in spanish and a back in forth of "Manzana!" "No Manzana!" They let us through and we continued onto Santiago and what we didn't know at the time was a crazy, fun week which would probably take a year or two off my life... |