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Day 194: Big City Life
After a very leisurely (and filling) breakfast, I made my way back to Valparaiso bus station and caught the midday bus back to Santiago. An hour and a half of travelling across desert scenery followed (I stayed awake this time), before we pulled into an unfamiliar bus stop to the south of town. Fortunately, there was a metro nearby, and I steeled myself to brave the joys of the city's underground system. With only five lines, not too crowded and costing about thirty pence, it wasn't too much of an ordeal, and many stops later, I found myself in the Plaza de Armas tracking down a hostel that had been recommended to me. On the sixth floor of an old building overlooking the city's main plaza, the hostel certainly seems very nice. The only slightly disconcerting factor has to be that my bed is close to the window overlooking the plaza, and the nearest external object to me seems to be a statue of Jesus (or to be more precise, his bottom).
Having settled in, I dropped off my clothes to be washed, and went in search of a LAN travel agent to try
and pay for my plane ticket (flight in two days). After much queuing, for some unknown reason, they didn't want to accept my money, and told me that I should pay at the airport at check in. I'm rather nervous about the whole thing, and since Santiago airport isn't my favourite place in the world, I've got a bad feeling about it. I may go back tomorrow and try again.
My second mission of the day was slightly more successful, although rather expensive, as I went in search of a Central American guidebook. They have a nineteen percent tax on books here, and the fact that it was English too, meant that I was paying way above the odds. Still, at least I found one.
Chores accomplished, the rest of the evening was spent at the hostel, eating, drinking (non-alcoholic beverages), and watching films until bedtime.
Day 195: City retreats
Having braved the hazy smog of downtown and had breakfast at a café, I found the Museo de Bellas Artes, an impressive building housing works, largely painted or constructed by Chilean artists. As well as rooms of old colonial-style paintings, there was an interesting photography
exhibition of Chilean portraits, a whole heap of ancient and modern sculptures, and a room dedicated to modern art, which was quite entertaining! I spent a couple of hours covering all the rooms in the gallery before heading out into the smoggy streets again. Fortunately, amidst the chaos of Santiago’s downtown, Cerro Santa Lucia rises up between several main roads, providing some respite from city life. A small hill in the middle of the city, surrounded by walls and with a fort at it´s peak, Santa Lucia was a nice place to spend a couple of hours in the afternoon, feeling detatched from the high rise city below.
Back in town, I had a few errands to run ready for my impending journey to Costa Rica tomorrow. Top of the list was to get some antimalarials in the form of doxycycline. I thought this would be easy, but it turns out that in Santiago (which isn’t really latin-america, I’ve decided) and the rest of Chile, you can’t actually buy antibiotics without a prescription. I did try a couple of pharmacies, but had no luck, and I don’t think that any amount of nudging or winking would have helped me.
Further to this, attempts to buy suncream and mozzie repellent proved somewhat futile. Although I did find one industrial-sized container of suncream/body lotion, I think I might just wait and hope that they stock aforementioned items at the airport!
After the unsuccessful afternoon shopping, I at least managed to find a supermarket, and having resisted the rather strong desire to buy a bottle of wine, I stocked up on food and head back to the hostel for one last dinner on my last night in South America (for a while at least).
Day 196: Leaving on a jetplane
'It's no coincidence that in no known language does the phrase "As pretty as an airport appear"' Douglas Adams
I am officially traumatised. My second visit to Santiago airport actually proved to be worse than the time I fell asleep there and missed my flight, but more of that later. Since I was flying via the States (yes, I know it’s not a direct route, but it’s the only one available), I spent some time this morning sorting through my things, ridding my hand luggage of anything that could be deemed sharp or liquid, or provocative literature
relating to freedom of speech. All sorted, I ditched my bags behind the desk at the hostel and spent my last couple of hours visiting the National History Museum in the palace opposite my hostel (yes, I do feel that I've moved up in the world) and eating icecream (not as nice as Bariloche, but it sufficed).
Ready to leave the heaving, smoggy metropolis of Santiago, I got a taxi from my hostel to the airport, where I proceeded to check in, as one normally does when one has a flight to catch, waiting for the check in guy to ask me for my visa card to pay the balance. Although my booking was confirmed and I had a seat on the flight, there was indeed a problem in that they had no record of my dealings with British Airways or the quote that I'd had to change my flight. It was acknowledged that I would have to pay for the flight, but at that moment, noone knew exactly how much this was going to be! I was sent from check in over to the LAN desk, where I was told that I should have gone to the office
in Santiago earlier in the week to sort everything out. Speechless! I don't regret not going to the LAN office in Santiago for a second time yesterday since I really don't think it would have helped. There followed two-and-a-half hours of discussing, arguing, and waiting for the central LAN office to come up with another quote. Apparently I was lucky that they were still open. I did try to contact British Airways (I'm not sure what I was thinking, but I was getting desperate), anyway, their office was predictably closed for the weekend, and they have about as much representation in Santiago airport as they do in Buenos Aires (that would be none).
On the bright side, I was very glad that I had had the foresight to arrive four hours before my flight departure (otherwise I wouldn't have made it), and just when I was giving up all hope of leaving that evening, a quote arrived from head office. More than the initial figure that British Airways had said that I'd be charged, I didn't really feel I had much choice, and paid the balance anyway. The process of reissuing the tickets electronically took another half an hour, and by the time I was finally all sorted and ready to leave, missing my flight had become a real possibility. Jumping the long queue at the check in desk, I finally managed to get a boarding card, although not before they tried to send me to San Juan rather than San Jose, and speeding through security, I arrived at the gate with fifteen minutes to spare before boarding. Using my time wisely, I managed to spend the last of my pesos (thirty pounds worth), on various non-necessary items (including a Pablo Neruda bilingual edition), before my flight was called.
Getting onto the plane itself required a rather farcical episode of everyone having their bag searched at the gate for any liquid items (those buying duty free had been prewarned). Fortunately the cabin crew weren't taking it too seriously and generally just glanced into people's luggage confiscating the odd bottle of water. I'm all for plane safety, but we'd all already been through security, and it did seem a bit over the top.
Quite wound up by the trauma that had been getting through the airport, the plane was actually a pleasant surprise in that I had a choice of thirty-two films, my own little television screen, and a vegetarian option for dinner that didn't require me to remove the ham. After winding down and watching a couple of films, I got a couple of hours sleep, before being woken for breakfast just before four.
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