Santiago - The White City

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Well we have settled in to our trip ok and was only our first day of being jetlagged i.e. christmas day, but nothing that an afternoon nap didn't fix. Deb had one of the most intersting and worst Christmas dinners on record. On the menu it said it was cubes of pork with goats cheese and olives which i thought sounded rather nice. Yes, i got pork cubes, olives, cheese which seemed more like processed cheese and a heap of pickled vegetables, very interesting indeed. Oh well, one to remember.

Santiago is an intersting city with heaps of monuments, huge old buildings and heaps of fountains that the children play in on the hot summers days. We walked just about every square inch of the city. Bellavista was a lovely area full of clubs bars and scantly clad women alluring travellers to the restuarants (welcome to South America and have a nice breast ... I mean stay).
Whilst doing the walking tour that the Lonely Planet suggested we headed for the main fish market which we found seemed to be quite a tourist trap and saw another market across the river. We headed there and had our 1 taste of true Chillian food. After 15 mins of trying to order with this lovely old Chillian lady who didn´t have any idea that there was a language called "english", but had hand gestures and facial expressions down to a treat - Deb has the Casuella which is a soup broth with chicken in the middle and corn. The bill came to $6800 pesos and I pulled out a $10,000 note to pay - The woman started raising here voice at me and appeared to be saying "don´t pull out big notes here". She then started making stabbing gestures towards her torso. So we got our change and got the hell out of there... it was sureal.

On day 3 we were just about back at our hotel when we noticed an increased amount of police than normal. Down the street was a demonstration and across the road there were people standing in front of a church waiting for the bride to turn up. We walked across the street to the church and started eating our supermarket lunch whilst sitting on the edge of the fountain. Ohhh look at that ... a riot truck with water cannon comes hurtling down the road ... oh look at that ... there comes another one. A big black old car turns up infornt of us... this sweet looking bride hops out of the car and none wedding goers crowd around and start chanting something in Spanish. Then some women yells something and everyone cracks up laughing. A few more chants and roars of laughter. She went in the church ad got married. Oh look ... the riot truck heads across the medium strip knocking over a bush ... Dejan say to Deb "Hmmm this is the sort of thing the lonely planet says to avoid... lets head to the hotel. Again - so sureal!!

We had a few days in Santiago and i guess being the first city we have visited here Deb felt a little paranoid of people which considering is one of the safest cities we will be visiting is a worry, so she was looking forward to moving on from there.
From there we boarded an overnight bus for a 10 hour ride south from Santiago to Pucon in the lakes district.

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