Santiago

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Santiago is fantastic. There are huge supermarkets where you can buy pretty much anything you could want (fruit, meat, brown bread and cold milk), very good public transportation, the drivers are super polite and let pedestrians go ahead of them and because we are at a lower elevation it is possible to go for a run and go to the gym!!! It is def a place we could live if we were ever going to live in S. America. Walking around, you feel as though you could be in any European city.

We didn´t originally plan to come here but as Chile is so long we thought it might be a good place to stop off at to break up what could be a 36 hour bus journey. To get here from Atacama it was a 24 hour bus journey and it actually wasn´t that bad. We were armed with books, ipods, cards and plenty of cards, And, we actually got a pretty good nights sleep. The buses are very very nice!

The first night we were here we met up with another couple we had met in Atacama and went out for a "Big Night Out"! The girls were fairly well behaved while the boys were not so good (to be fair before santiago we had not been drunk at all in the last 6 months). It was really funny. We went to an area called Bellavista which has streets lined with bars. While drinking we tended to be chatted up by the local people--who tended to be very drunk but happy to talk to the tourists. The funniest was very late in the evening when Rob was sexually harassed by a local guy. The guy literally kept trying to make-out with him while rob (in fits of giggles because it was after several beers) protested "no senor no". Eventually the guy left but not before asking us for money. Very Random. Santaigo seemed to be a very late town (at least on Sat nights) as we didn´t go out to eat until 10:30 and the place was packed. And, it was a nice steak restaurant, not a drinking hangout.

The rest of the time spent in Santiago was taking it easy and looking around town which was actually very nice. We had heard negative things about the city, that it was dirty and the smog was very bad, but really liked it. The smog didn´t seem bad at all especially when you compare it to Beijing. There were loads of parks, a nice cathedral, colonial buildings, modern offices and it was all surrounded by mountains. We felt really safe the whole time we were there.

The only part we didn´t like was our overnight trip to Valparaiso which is supposed to be a highlight of Chile as it is UNESCO World Heritage Site and was recommended by other travellers online. We were not so impressed. It was very very dirty with trash all over the streets and we didn´t feel safe even in broad daylight. We were even stopped by a police officer and told the part of town was unsafe---even though we were still on the tourist map. We had plannd for seafood for dinner (as it is a seaport town) but ended up cooking at our hostel because we didn´t think it would be safe to be outside at nightime. The hostel we were at was very ncie though but besides that the only good thing we found with Valaparaiso was that it was only 2 hours from Santiago and there were buses about every half hour!

In other news, we officially started our marathon training with a 45 minute jog along the river and we both felt really great. And we also managed to go to the gym where we weighed ourselves for the fist time in S. America. Both of us had lost 3-4 KGs!!! We are sure it was 100% Bolivia as we lost a lot of weight in the toilet there. The lady at the gym actually gave rob a lecture (in spanish) about how he need to gain weight (he has lost about 10kgs since we left aus)---she didn´t seem to think I needed to gain weight! Not to worry though, we are eating loads in Chile and I´m sure we will be back to normal before Christmas.

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Photos

Us in Valparaiso
we had just taken a boat ride around the harbour