Chile - Santiago

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David here...

We sadly left our wonderfully comfortable room in Valpo. There was an issue with the card payment connection, and most hotels wouldn't let you leave until you found another way to pay. At Puerta Escondido however our host just said she'd ring it through later on and let us know if there were any issues. This highlights just how relaxed and laidback the place is.

We walked down the hill to the nearby plaza and jumped onto a Trolebus that took us to within a couple of blocks of the bus station. We spotted a Pulman bus waiting in a bay that was due to leave for Santiago in 5 minutes. Within 2 we had bought tickets, managing to get seats together, and stowed our luggage. The bus left on time and about 1.5 hours later we arrived at Santiago's Pajaritos bus terminal.

We went straight down to the metro, bought 2 tickets and were soon racing under Santiago. This whole journey was easy and smooth, like all of the travel in Chile has been really. We stepped out into Providencia with some time before we could check in so we popped for a coffee at a Starbucks before heading to the apartment. Brizen Apartments was small compared to some places we'd had, but was well laid out and very modern. We felt quite comfortable, which was handy as we had booked 5 nights.

After relaxing and settling in we walked to the supermarket and stocked up on supplies for the next 24 hours. The area was full of nice looking bars and restaurants. But we got an apartment so we could save some money and cook for ourselves again. It can be hard to strike the right balance between cooking and going out to eat. Back at the room we had toast and butter, which we'd not had for ages and was very nice, before relaxing a little. For our evening meal we had 2 cuts of steak, grilled tomatoes and jacket potatoes, again something we'd not had for a long, long time. It was lovely.

The evening was spent trying to book flights from Quito to Washington on our mobile devices, which proved very time consuming and frustrating. At least we had beer, pisco and wine to help sooth our fraught nerves before settling down for the night. By the time we got to bed, we still had not received Suzanne's flight confirmation. That would have to be the first job of the next day.

After a decent sleep and breakfast of fried eggs on toast we contacted JetBlue and finally got everything sorted. The Quito - Washington flight has been hanging over us for a while as the prices kept going up and up. We finally just had to accept that we needed to get it booked at a more expensive price. If I'm honest, we've done pretty well with cheap flights so this just offsets that slightly.

For the first time since Brazil in May, we woke up to rain. We looked at doing a couple of museums, then remembered seeing that the Gutter von Hagens Bodies exhibition being advertised. Sure enough it was currently in Santiago and was right next to a shopping centre with a cinema. We've not been to the cinema on this trip much as we've been too busy. This seemed too good to miss as there were 2 films in English being shown at a good time of the day.

We hopped onto the metro and were queuing outside the tent exhibition within 30 minutes. The exhibition cost C$4,000 each and is the now famous collection of 'polymer preserved' bodies where segments have been cut out so you can see the organs, nerves, veins and muscles. It is quite gruesome but equally fascinating all the same. Everything was in Spanish, and the videos and presentations were all aimed at kids. However, it was well worth the entrance fee and we were glad to have seen the exhibition, though we were constantly singing Drowning Pools song 'Bodies' for the entire day. "Let the bodies hit the floor, let the bodies hit the floor, let the bodies hit the floooooooooor". We later found out that the exhibition was not actually the von Hagens exhibition, despite his face being plastered everywhere, but one of his protégées. The bodies are not supposed to be as good quality as the von Hagens exhibitions but it was still interesting.

We then headed into the shopping centre and managed to get a few essentials and some supplies for the evening (a bottle of the same wine we had with pizza in Valparaiso as it was so good). We failed in our quest to get me some new footwear. We had read that anything above size 44 (Euro size) you will struggle to get and this is turning out to be true. I'm a 46.5 and have not got close yet and I'm getting desperate as my walking shoes have got holes in them.

We bought our cinema tickets and had a Taco Bell lunch. We'd always wanted to try Taco Bell but never got round to it. It was alright, Del Taco or Barburitto are better in our opinion. After wandering the centre for a bit we went to watch War for the Planet of the Apes, or Planeta de los Simios: La Guerra. The film was alright, enjoyable enough but still not as good as the first in this series of remakes. It was just nice to be doing something normal.

By this time it was nearly 18:00 so we headed back to our apartment on the now very busy metro and picked up some potatoes and pino empanadas for dinner. Pino empanadas are a specialty in Chile and consist of beef, boiled egg and an olive, usually unstoned. We had one of these each with potato wedges smoothered in cheese and hot sauce, a new bottle for me to carry everywhere with us. Then it was another evening in relaxing before bed. The next 2 nights promised some interesting Heavy Metal bars, or so we hoped.

We woke to bright sunshine today and after another tasty breakfast (toast, eggs and chorizo sausages) we headed out. As the sun was shining we decided to go to one side of Santiago centre and walk back, taking in as many sights as we could. We saw many nice buildings, the palace (La Moneda) that was bombed in 1973 during the military coup, old government buildings and the rather less than salubrious Plaza de Armas which was full off homeless people, police and prostitutes.

We spent about 2 hours in the Santa Lucia hill park, a rocky outcrop where the city was originally founded. It was landscaped in the late 1800's and is now a park full of winding stairs, turrets and panoramic views across the city scape. To highlight this we were shocked to find Santiago surrounded by snow capped mountains, the first time we'd noticed them. It took us an hour to walk back to the Provedencia area where our apartment was. We stocked up with beer and relaxed for a few hours, getting our route planned for Ecuador and organising car hire, hotels and Amtrak tickets for the first part of our USA leg of the trip.

We wanted to try out a Rock bar so chose to eat out, at Juan y Medio which was in the same area as Conspiracy bar. We had a big artisan beer each and Suzanne had just a steak and I ordered the steak with chips and 2 fried eggs. We shared the chip and eggs and it was more than enough for both of us. Suzanne's steak was a bit tough but mine was pretty good. Not an amazing meal but not bad really. We got to Conspiracy bar and found 3 stories. The 2nd floor had Heavy Metal playing but quite quiet. The other floors had nothing playing. We were soon settled with a big beer. The bar was strange. It felt like a youth club with flocked wallpaper and no decoration. Plus it was very bright. Eventually another speaker was switched on and the music got louder, which was good. We ordered another beer but found we would also have to order some food to get the beer. We ended up with some fried cheese empanadas to get another beer. We're struggling to understand the stupid Chilean licensing laws, it really is a bit of a mess with this whole having to order food as well.

We decided we'd had enough so got the metro back to the apartment and spent the rest of the evening listening to music with beers. The next morning we woke to find it had snowed a little, for the first time since 2007. It was much colder today so we decided to go to the Museum of Human Rights. We spent 3 hours in there, much longer than anticipated however it shows in great detail the military coup and life in Chile under General Pinochet until the dictatorship was removed in the 1990's. We forked out for an audio guide for once. Then got a second one as we realised there were 72 passages of information to listen to. It was all very interesting, moving and disturbing as we learned of the atrocities and murders committed under the junta. And this was a free museum, the audio guides costing a very reasonable £2.50 each.

We then walked back into the centre and visited Mucky Rock shop to try and get me a new long sleeve shirt as my Battlestar Galactica one was shabby and full of holes. There we met the owner, Jesse, who directed us to what we wanted and I bought a Testament long sleeve. Jesse also gave us some recommendations for Rock bars to try. After this, we hopped on the metro and got a laundry load done back at our apartment block. A nice clean pile of clothes and a powerful hot shower are travelling luxuries that you must take advantage of when you can and give you immense satisfaction.

After chicken fajitas for tea, we headed out to Taberna Rock bar, in the hope of finding a true Heavy Metal bar. One with decoration and dark lighting and loud music. We got off the metro and as we were walking to the bar a gentleman asked us if we were going to Taberna Rock, to which we replied yes, which made him give us a big smile and say 'Heavy Metal'. Turns out his name was Antonio and he is a drummer in a black metal band. We spoke to him a number of times over the evening, at one point he loaded the jukebox up and gave us his final 5 credits and said to us that we were his guests in Chile. He was very friendly and we were glad to meet him.

The bar itself was great. Very heavy music, dark lighting, cheap beer and some decent decoration, we loved it. We had 3 big beers and I also treated myself to a bottle of Trooper before we rushed out to get the metro back to our apartment before it shut down. We even heard Manowar, but as we put it on ourselves it doesn't really count.

The next day started with a leftover breakfast of potato, tomato, pepper, onion, chorizo and tortillas and was very tasty. We first of all went to the Museum of Pre-Colombian art, which was small but had some great artifacts before walking through Parque Forester (not very green or foresty at all) and popping into the free Belles Artes museum, which was alright seeing as it was free. We then took a slow walk back towards our area and an Indian restaurant we had picked out for a late lunch or early tea. We had wanted to have a nice evening meal out as it was our 2nd wedding anniversary however it seems that the bulk of places shut really early on a Sunday so we had to improvise and change our plans slightly.

On our way to the restaurant, we passed what must've been a couple of thousand people queuing, some in Venezuelan caps and with flags draped over themselves. At first we though it may be related to football but we since found out that it was to vote in the unofficial referendum in an attempt to put pressure on the Venezuelan government for them to step down. Turns out that many Venezuelans have fled to other South American countries but are still eligible to vote.

The Indian restaurant we chose was called The Raj and was pretty good. We had a fish curry, a chicken curry, onion bhajis, naan and rice, plus a lovely bottle of Carménère wine. The curry could've been spicier but overall it was a nice meal, though we are looking forward to getting home to Nottingham and going to The Rajah or Noor Jahan again. The evening was spent relaxing with some sparkling wine as we reflected on our first 2 years of married life. The only interruption was the Brizen apartments guy knocking on our door to say the credit card payment had failed. Luckily we could log into the bank app and prove it had. He didn't seem convinced though.

The next morning we took our time leaving the apartment as we were moving to another hotel near the airport bus stop. We got another laundy done so all of our clothes were clean in readiness for Ecuador. We left the apartment at 12:00 and jumped onto the metro. We were soon checked into our Ibis room right next to the main bus terminal. We bought our bus tickets for the next day and then walked to a park. Our only plan for the day was to take a stroll round this nearby park, sitting by the lake and just taking it easy. Unfortunately what we didn't bank on was that like all the museums in Santiago, the park was also closed. We ended up walking to another park by the river and strolling round there before heading back to the hotel.

We decided to have a typical Chilean meal for our last proper food in Chile and went to Santo Barrio, famous for it's beer and chorillanos. We had 2 beers each, my draft Bock being particularly nice, and had a chorillanos to share. This is basically chips, beef, chorizo, onion and cheese all piled high. It was very good. While there we met a guy from Sheffield called Tom and his Chilean mate. Small world. It was nice to chat to them for a bit.

We noticed that we were quite close to Taberna Rock again so jokingly said we should pop by to see if it was open, fully expecting it to be closed on a Monday. It wasn't, it was open and quite busy. We stayed for 3 more big beers before sensibly calling it a night just after 22:00. We were tucked up in bed before 23:00 in readiness for an early start and long day of travelling.

After a very comfortable nights sleep in the Ibis, we showered, packed up and were on our way to the airport by 08:00. Chile has been a fun experience. Expensive, but we've done many things here that we've never done or seen before, like the geyser tour and the ghost town of Humberstone. The food hasn't blown us away and we didn't think the wine was as good as in Argentina but we have found travelling around Chile to be easy and the one thing that is reasonably priced. It also has some stunning scenery that would've blown us away at the start of this trip, however after Peru and the like, we've become a bit blase about snow-capped mountains!

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