Santiago

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Well...the 26 hour bus ride was rubbish. Despite being the same company we had comfortably travelled for 90 minutes from San Pedro to Calama with, the bus was not half the standard it was previously, and we managed to get the two seats directly outside the toilet, which as you can imagine can get a little funky after 26 hours. The location did set up what made us laugh for hours though. Although Craig is used to women falling at his feet (stop laughing), it is not usually when a bus goes over a speed bump and she comes flying out of the bathroom. This time it was.

We planned to head to Valparaiso, 90 minutes northwest of Santiago where we had originally planned to spend new year. Unfortunatly we couldn´t find a hostel there so we have spent the last three days in Santiago, and plan to head to Valpo when we return from Londrina, just before we leave South America completely.

Arriving late on the thursday night we only managed to find our hostel and a chinese, which was the first time we had eaten such food since leaving England. We washed it down with the a drink along with the other festive drinkers in the bars and street around our hostel. The next day consisted of exploring the city...armed with a map and nothing more we set out into the centre of Santiago. We saw all the usual attractions including numerous musuems, cathedrals and of course the national library, all interesting stuff. We decided to have a look around the musuem of Bellas Artes which was extremely interesting and included a great exhibition by Robert Frank, with some amazing photos of the great city's, spanning many a decade. We also went to a local park, planned the next days activities and visited the shopping centre and golf course before heading back as night set in and our legs would take us no further.

On our final day we headed to San Cristobel hill, which is situated right in the middle of Santiago...a bit like their answer to central park!. The stautue is not as grand as Christ in Rio and is a female, and we are not 100% sure what it is all about as all the info was in Spanish...and noone else seemed to know either! A short cart ride up the side of the mountain soon had us at the top where the panoramic views of the huge city below were amazing. After a few snaps we took a cable car a little way down the side of the mountain to the swimming pool. There are two located on the mountain but this was the most accesible and therefore our choice for the day. As the evening drew in we headed back to our hostel to start on the backlog of blogs we had created for ourselves!

Tomorrow we set off for Londrina, Brazil, to spend new year and Jake´s birthday with Carla, Kez, Aline, Sue et al.

Love JC

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