The last Santiago supper!

---

Hello again

it's been our last full day in santiago today, and to make it even more enjoyable it has rained nearly all afternoon, you know the really fine stuff that gets you ever so wet! Lets fill you in on our crazy goings on down here in Spainish Latin American Chile.. Meanwhile back at the 199th independence day celebrations, we Decided to do what every other English person does on patriotic days such as St Patricks day and Xmas eve.. and went to the pub! Here we got speaking to a waiter called Diego, he showed us his vast knowledge of Chile by giving us directions of places to go using google earth on my Ipod! He was to be fair quite a nice bloke, we think he got told off by his boss cos he didn't seem to be doing any work just chatting to us all night! The next time we saw him he wasn't doing tables anymore and was serving behind the bar so we're guessing he did get a bollocking of some sort. We got given some directions to where the Independence day celebrations were taking place, one was close to where we're staying at a place called Parque O Higgins, named after their love from the snooker player Alex Higgins! No it's not really, it's something to do with his older brother Bernard O Higgins, some liberating man person! So we get the tube and quickly get pushed along by the growds all going against each other, some to get in and some to get out! Once inside the park it's a real eye opener, walking through the grasses area you can see hundreds of kids playing with kites, you can also see hundreds of adults playing with their kids kites too! If you looked up into the sky you got some idea as to what it could have been like during the blitz!
Moving further thru the park we came across some stalls, some selling genuine knock off copies of expensive sunglasses, roasted nuts, candy floss, leather belts, purses, wallets, tea towels. Luckily for us we managed to get swept up in the ground and had to go round the whole park like Shaggy and Scooby Doo.. sunglasses, roasted nuts, candy floss, leather belts, purses, wallets, tea towels.. sunglasses, roasted nuts, candy floss, leather belts, purses, wallets, tea towels..he he he he he he he... Ohhhh ohhhh!
It was a bit of a toss up of the Xmas Market, Hemswell, a splash of cleethorpes and some sort of carnival thing. Half way round we saw a one man band dance/play off! Now that was interesting.. A battle of the one man bands! In the red corner..(he was wearing red).. We have a drum, a cymbol, a tamborine and a mouth organ...in the White corner (yep.. You got it he was wearing white).. we have pretty much the same! FIGHT! To be fair the red corner won cos he did this dance routine which basically consisted of him going round and round and round and round some more, followed by more round and rounds, but as he did his well rehearsed routine he was alot louder than the White corner who looked like a apprentice for the ministry of silly walks!
Moving on now to some thing more tranquil, we went up the big hill to the side of our apt called San Christobal. Here you will see a huge statue of the virgin Mary, you could walk up to it but there was no need as they had a train thingy, so we went in that! Once at the top on a clear day like we had you can see the whole of Santiago! Even our apt block! To give ambience they had soft angelic music playing in the background so you found people tended to speak very softly asthough there in church! So we took lots of photos, repented our sins.. NOT.. And moved on.. We could of course gone down the same way we came up, obviously in the opposite direction, but we found a dirty old path which was full of twists and turns, taking around 25 mins to get to the bottom, so we took that instead! Along the way we decided to have a game and see who could win on aflictions and injuries.. It was called "pains wins points which wins you nothing" game. The rules are 1 point for a slide, 3 for falling, 5 for breaking a limb and if you die you automatically win! I got 3 slides so that's 3 points.. Lisa however went all out and slid 4 times and fell over once so she got 6 points making her the undisputed winner! We haven't played that game since due to health and safety and lisa getting a splinter, but fair play to her she went all out for the win!!!!
On our way back we stopped at patio bellavista for a well earned celebratory beer, we saw on tv that they had a celebration at parque o higgins with bands playing, fly pasts and the Chilean prime minister, it looked alot better on the tv.
Today we went to another part of Santiago to a restaurant recommended by the bloke we hired push bikes from in Mendoza, we found it no problems, but it wasn't open! So we ate elsewhere! It's been great staying in chile and has been a very worthwhile trip, we've seen loads even their Nationl History Museum whichwas written all in Spanish!
Tommorrow, Tuesday, at 22.50 hrs we leave to go to New Zealand, we're travelling for 13 hours but don't land until 0415 hrs on thursday! what about Wednesday!! So they only explanation we can come up with is the Back To The Future theory, as the plane gets up to 88 mph it suddenly transports us through time, therefore missing out the whole of Wednesday!
Anyways have to go now to pick up our laundry, tune in next time for the amazing adventures of Wic & Lisab's around the world in more than 80 days!

---