DAYS 32-33; Santiago, Hostel Sammy

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So because the woman had only just managed to squeeze us in, we had to find a new hostel for the next night. We jumped onto the metro and made our way to where we had booked the previous night- with the idea to head straight to the festival. We´d got our tickets online and we needed to pick them up from the festival itself.

We headed to the new hostel and the man seemed surprised to see us. He had a little look in his reservations book and said ´Hmm, I actually have no room for you, it seems there´s been a mix up online with this festival going on...everywhere is overbooked´. We panicked thinking that we have bought these tickets now and possibly nowhere to sleep afterwards...He said he´d see what he could do.

After 10 minutes he came back and said he´d found us a hostel right near the festival park with a private room (a novelty when you´re in 6 and 8 man dorms all the time) and said his Dad could give us a lift. So we waited for about 10 minutes and this tiny old Chilean turned up in his little banger and sped round the roads of Santiago to take us the the hostel.

We got there, dumped our bags, got changed and walked to the festival. On the way we got talking to Claudia and Carolina who were also staying in our hostel and we headed to the queue together. When we got there we couldnt believe it, not only was the line huge but it was chaos- no electronical system...just 7 people searching through several cardboard boxes which were filled with thousands of tickets in alphabetised order. We waited almost 4 hours. About half way through this time the police turned up to try and put procedures in place to organise the crowd. Everyone was going mad and shouting and swearing in Spanish. We got our tickets at about 3pm and the queue was still a mile long, I reckon people were still there at tea time. We also met Greg in the queue so the five us finally made our way into the festival.

We cracked open the vodka and diet coke mixer and sat in the sun watching the bands before making our way into the indoor arena to watch Empire of the Sun and Fat Boy Slim. It was a brilliant day and definitely worth the spontaneous spend!

The next day we got up and took the metro to the centre of Santiago, which is a bit of a dump actually. We were stood by the river (well, its almost dried up and is occupied by stray dogs rather than fish) and just as I was looking in my bag for the map a bird pooed on Jenny´s arm, catching her sunglasses and a bit of hair too. We decided that maybe this area wasn´t for us so we headed to the tourist information centre who told us to head to Bellavista and suggested we take a funicular up the hill to see views of Santiago.

On the way home we headed to the supermarket to make something for tea. It was here that we developed the Double B plan...Budget and Bellies...i.e. trying to avoid the empanadas each day (basically pasties) and make more packed lunches and eat at the hostel rather than eating out, which will also benefit out depleting funds!

That night we ate in the courtyard and had some more wine (common theme I´m realising!) and then turned in around 11 to get the bus to the Chilean coast in the morning.

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