Santiago, Chile

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Hi everyone!

Well we've arrived in santiago after a 7/8 hour bus journey across the Andes! We have spent the last 3 days in Mendoza where it's been a lovely 26 degrees. Hired some bikes yesterday and went round a massive park trying to find a monument, turns out it wasn't up a little hill as we thought, it was up a mountain! Eventually made it to the top after lots of sweating! Ric's spinning classes certainly came in useful and he sailed up! Mendoza was a lovely place to visit, very chilled out and relaxed! Anyway back to our journey here today...it was eventful to say the least!
We checked out of our lovely hotel in plenty of time to get the bus, which to everyones amazement we got with lots of time to spare! Once on the bus we were given two forms to fill in, one was for visas and the other for items to declare. Knowing that we had a 7 maybe 8 hr bus journey we stocked up with provisions a lovely cheese an ham sandwhich, an apple each and some crisps. On the declaration form we were given it said about bringing in certain items such as; fruit, plants, dairy products and not forgetting semen! I'm quite open minded but wasn't going begin where to start when declaring that one! Anyways we get to the border and all we managed to eat so far was an apple each. We had to get off the bus and being the only people on it who could speak English very quickly did the usual british thing and followed everyone else! After getting our visa (god knows how!) we then got back on the bus to go about 100 yards to the customs office. Now here one of the drivers did his best to explain that if we had any food in our bags that we needed to either a declare it on the form which was written with too many double negatives to know to answer yes or no to, so we put no, b eat the sandwhich or food before we go thru or c do nothing and get a whacking great bog fine to the sum of 80% of the total price of the cost of a 70pence sandwhich, which bearing in mind we only know words like tea, coffee, beer & the bill please! We envisaged a huge fine of about 200 pesos (that's about33 quid which would probably go in some blokes back pocket and eat our sarnies too. So we did what any traveller would do and ate them as fast as we could!!!
Once we got past customs with our stomachs churning from over indulging and pooing ourselves in case we got seen by customs, the most ironic thing happened back on the bus we got given a cheese and ham sandwhich! We eventually pulled into the bus station at Santiago after a beautiful ride through the mountains, first impressions....... DUMP! We had to get some cash as all we had was Argentinia pesos and they ain't accepted here and the only place you can get Chilean pesos from is chile! So off we went to find a bank. The lady in the information stand was really helpful and could speak any english other than NO! So followed her hand signals and went in the general direction she pointed in. For some crazy reason the banks weren't giving out any money from there so after alot of cursing we rang our bank, thinking they had blocked ours cards, no they were fine we were told, more obscenitaries later to the machine we eventually found another bank which gladly accepted and gave us our money! The taxi journey was fun as it was rush hour and saw one bloke nearly drive into a fork lift of all things! Once at our address we got our apartment key and went up 15 floors, got a knock at the door about 5 Mins later it was the bloke who owned the place. After a lot of broken English an spainish and talking to his brother we moved down to the tenth floor cos that one has wireless Internet!!! Much more conversation followed about places to see and where to go, you can see from our room a monument on a hill abit like the one in brazil only smaller!
Anyways we will keep you posted of our goings on in chile.
Love Lisab and Wic X

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