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Published: August 29th 2008
Polly:
We´ve been in Santiago since Sunday, and have generally been relaxing. It´s a big city, but unlike Rio and Buenos Aires, everything shuts much earlier and is a lot more sleepy. Even KFC was shut at 10pm! It´s a fairly clean city and because the weather has been sunny with a gentle breeze, it hasn´t been very polluted. What really makes it special though is the snow capped Andes which frame the city. On the other side it´s quite close to the coast, but we haven´t ventured that way yet.
We spent the first night in Hotel Riviera with the GAP Adventures tour, but as that was ending, and the hotel was full, we set out to find somewhere else to stay. We had a hostel in mind, but most of the hostels are on the edge of the city, and those in the downtown area were pricey. In the end we stumbled across Hotel Kapital, a cute little hotel a couple of blocks from Riviera. The room is fairly basic, double bed, TV, dressing table, but the bathroom is AWESOME. It´s massive, with a big glass wall & huge black jacussi. I´ve had a jacussi every day.
It´s costing us 25 GBP a night for the room with breakfast, but is well worth it.
On Monday 7 of us took the open-top bus tour around the city which was a good way of making some ground. We stopped of at "el mundo del vino" for a bit of wine tasting which was both cultural and fun. We purchased a few souvenirs then went on our way.
We said good bye to the GAP group on Tuesday, as some of them went home and others continued on the trip to Bolivia, Peru and Ecuador. Met some really sound people and will hopefully hook up with them on future jaunts around the world.
As Santiago is close to the sea, the culinary focus is much more towards seafood (as Pucon & Puerto Varas was). We´ve had a few really great fish meals. The best meal, however, was something Ross ordered the other day. It´s a big pile of home made chips, strips of beef, slices of chorizo sausage, fried onions and fried eggs all in one big mountain of yumminess.
Yesterday we hiked up a big hill in the city. Most people go to see
the statue of the Virgin Mary via fernicular railway, but we just fancied a walk. The statue was ok, but after Christ's statue in Rio, they all look a bit small. The view over the city was great though.
We´re going to Portillo tomorrow morning for 8 days skiing so well excited about that. They had serious amounts of snow about a week ago which shut the road. The roads is now open and the weather is sunny so we should get some great skiing. I think it´s due to snow again on Wednesday so we should get a bit of fresh stuff. Woo Hooo!
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