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Pretty piccy...
not sure if this is mine, or a randoms...I don´t recognise it. Maybe I´ll go. It looks nice! Airplanes...You can´t beat them. We had the worst air hostess man ever, but did get some nice Chilean vino and watched some films that I´d wanted to see for a while. Then I broke the computer thing and had to entertain myself with my own thoughts. During the flight we magically crossed the international date line so arrived in Santiago, earlier than we´d left NZ. This confused us signing the documents to let us into the country. I was also totally unprepared in the mind to speak the spanish again. It threw me. I got stopped at customs for trying to get a suspicious looking item into the country. I claimed as convincingly as I could that I did not in fact have any fruit in my bag...but I couldn´t exactly remember. Turns out I didn´t.
We faced the barrage of taxi drivers, beating them off with our excrutiatingly heavy luggage. It was kind of beautiful in a ballet kind of way. We got a bus and tried to pay with a note 10 times in excess of what was required. Silly money with all those zeros. Arrived at hostel and sat with guide book trying to decide what
Beach
tis indeed we wanted to do now we were in America Latina. A walking tour was considered the best way forward. Off we toddled. We discovered that everything in this country is cheap as chips...cheaper! This meant market fun. It´s too early in the trip to be buying this sort of thing, but I was very tempted by a bread bin.
Next day a museum. Having lunch afterwards, Angela´s bag got swiped from right underneath my nose. This means I feel very bad and it contained all of her money, passport, credit cards (which they got an excessively large sum of money from seeing as they were cancelled within an hour!) and the lonely planet.
Police stations and phone calls followed, but we were meant to be getting on a bus out of Santiago that night. No bus for us. The British Embassy required her presence the next morn. Because we´d checked out of our hostel that morning we had to go and find somewhere else to stay. It was annoying because we´d been forced to watch boy films for the last couple of evenings there, and they´d just put on Dream Girls.
New hostel, new people. There are
a remarkable lack of girls in Chile we have noted so far, and so were the only girls in the dorm. The other thing we´ve noticed is the amount of smooching that goes on here. It´s quite ridiculous and makes me feel very British. Whilst we´re on the subject, I´ve also noticed that there are a lot of dogs, and there are not many tourists...we might see 2 gringos outside of the hostel in a day - these are just some side thoughts though. Anyways, the dorm...1 chap came in that night and literally fell asleep within 2 minutes whilst the rest of us were having a conversation across the dorm. It was not normal. He also started snoring excessiviely loudly. That is another thing I have noted...Snoring is much more common than one might think. Angela was prepared for such an occasion and magically pulled out enough ear plugs from her bag for everyone in our dorm to have a set of (thanks for those Mr G). It was a special moment.
British embassy and the international police station were visited the next day. The police station was interesting with our Spanish, but we most definitely know the
Santiago...a city of crime
Lucky we have some friends to protect us. I think we´ll be obeying the laws here. verb ´robbar´ (to rob). At the embassy I was expecting...well...butlers, scones, crumpets and a heck of a lot of tea. I was disappointed. It was nothing like as fancy pants as I thought it would be. I did get to sign the back of Angela´s new passport pictures to vouch for her as a ´professional´. Apparently being nearly a trainee teacher is a profession in itself. That was cool.
We got the bus that night to Pucon, having giving the address of a hostel to the embassy for her passport to be sent to. Pucon has a volcano. Unfortunately it has chucked it down since we arrived, and there was even power cuts. Angela and I were the only people in the hostel (it´s off season). It was a weird feeling as we read by candlelight. A chap called Dan whom we´d met the previous evening in santiago came to meet us that evening and then there were 3. Another guy called Rob joined us the morning after and now we all go on hostel outings together. Yesterday we went to buy Dan a towel and myself a tube (in Spanish tubo...there was 1 in the entire town after
Santiago...a city of art
This original piece of artwork, was not done by Angela, and can be found in the plaza being shown endless bits of drainpipe...but the important thing is that we got it!). We also went to hot springs that night which were amazing. Drank a bottle of wine which we´d sneaked in and then were dragged onto the town, well the 1 place open in town, which remarkably remained open until 4am. We´ve discovered the local cocktail and measurements are hand poured until they look big enough in the glass. ´Nuff said.
Today it´s still raining. We are considering going outside to buy eggs for lunch, but no one´s volunteering. A Spanish soap opera is on in the background. In this town there´s like a random air raid noise that seems to happen a couple of times a day. Originally we hit the deck, but no one seems too concerned so we´ve stopped. It´s like a proper holiday, and we might stay here forever...or until Angela´s passport arrives and our new guide book which we had to order on line because we couldn´t find another in English. Then we can pretend to plan our trip again...
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Ruthie
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So what was the suspicious item in your luggage? It wasnt a sleeping jelly baby again was it?