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Santiago May 08
We were really looking forward to arriving in South America, it felt like proper travelling again, although we absolutely loved New Zealand it is very similar to England (culturally) and obviously they speak English so it´s just a bit too easy. When we arrived in Santiago we got into a taxi and immediately started to practice the little spanish we had learnt. "Que Tal?" I asked the driver but he didnt reply ´bien gracias´ like it says in my phrase book so already I was lost, not a great start and my spanish has barely improved since then!
We decided that as we were really short on time we would just spend one day in Santiago and then make our way into Argentina as so many people have raved about the place and also it is supposed to be cheaper than Chile. We did enjoy our brief visit to Chile though. As with anything when people put something down you dont expect much from it and then end up liking it. This was the case with Santiago, our hotel was expensive really for the quality of it but it was right in the middle of the
city so we couldn´t complain about the location. We got there at 3pm and literally slept all the way through until 6am the next morning. The flight from Auckland had been the longest day of our lives, we took off at 5.30pm had a 11 hour flight and then landed at 1pm the same day, very strange ! We got up and had our free breakfast which is the same breakfast we have had everyday since in South America, coffee with croissants or bread with ´dolce de leche´a kind of caramel spread. Booking a bus was our first thought so we headed on the tube to the main bus station and sorted out our bus across the Andes to Mendoza, Argentina. We booked it for 3 pm that day so we had chance to see the mountains in daylight. This left us about 5 hours to see as much of Santiago as we could. We started by heading to the centre of the city which has the plaza de ..... ( guessing ......centrale ? can't remember ! ) . It has a really good mix of old and new buildings, we stopped off for a coffee ( well I had
a coffee, Gill had a hot chocolate being a coffee and tea hater) it looked like a normal coffee shop, but when we went in and ordered it obviously wasn´t. We first noticed that all the customers were men and then that the waitresses weren´t exactly wearing the longest skirts in the world, infact they could hardly be called skirts they were obscene! Gill felt a little out of place so we didn´t stay too long, although it was 9am we were half expecting the waitresses to start pole dancing at some point. Shame we had to leave so soon..... just joking
We also wandered by a quality looking bar/restaurant called ´El Aleman´ unfortunately it wasn´t a stag do and it was too early for ale. We had ticked off the city centre and next headed for a little park near the city centre. It was quality with great views and a small church in the middle. We had heard about another park and made a dash over there. It had a zoo and a gondola upto a statue ´El Virga´ . we were pushing our luck for time (as usual) but decided to take the gondola to the
top. El Virga was nice and the views were awesome. From that height you could really see how much smog was covering the city, it was just a huge thick grey strip on the horizon and then blue skies above it. We took some pictures and rushed down for a taxi, picked up our bags and headed for the bus.
The bus journey itself was very good. A huge winding road slowly lead us over the Andes the views were beautiful (apart from all the other buses and lorries on the road)
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