Week 1 : Santiago

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Geo: -33.4691, -70.642

Now after a few days in South America, I finally start writing about this amazing experience.

When I arrived at Santiago's airport, of course I had no clue where to go and how to get to my hostel. There was no tourist-info to be found : great! :S But "fortunately" I met his helpful guy from the non existing tourist-info who showed me where to find an ATM and where to take the mini-bus to get to my hostel. Well, in the end this cost me 30.000$ (CLP) where the regular bus would have cost only 1.500$ (CLP).... The guy from the non existing tourist agency wanted a tip - of course.... But WTH... Couldn't let this wasted money kill my good mood! :-)

The Che Lagarto Hostel turned out to be great. It's located close to the center and within walking distance to every "touristic" place. The staff was really nice and the roof-terrasse was great.
Right at the beginning I met a nice girl from Argentina, Flo, who asked my if I wanted to cook with her. We had a good time together and she told me that she didn't really like living in Argentina and that she's travelling the world to dance in different cities. Right now she wants to stay in Santiago and get a small job so she can take dancing classes there.

Thanks to her I met Sarah from Munich and later her boyfriend Johannes. They are really nice people and I'm grateful I could spent some time with them. They want to do more or less the same route as me but they have to be back in Germany on January 8th because he starts working as a teacher so that they went south earlier than me. Otherwise we would probably have travelled together.
In the hostel I also met Kirstin from Ostfriesland. She has been travelling for a few month and it was nice hearing about her experiences. Maybe she'll visit me in Sao Paulo, that would be cool. :-)
Then I met a guy from Slovakia who now lives in London. First I wasn't sure I wanted to talk to him, he looked quite scary with bruises all over his face. But then he told me what happened to him : he met this friendly chilean guy, they talked and went for a beer and after one beer that guy called them a taxi. That's the last thing he remembers before waking up lying outside of the hostel. This chilean guy and the taxi driver completely robbed him and forced him to get money at the cash machine (that he remembers). Very scary story because it happened in the middle of the day... I'll sure be more careful now...
At last, I met a nice guy around his 40ies or 50ies from Brasil who told me that he this is his first travel abroad. But now that he found out how easy it is to travel abroad (alone) and what an amazing experience it is, he will travel a bit further every time and hopefully one day across the Atlantic ocean to Europe. He also told me that most peole from Brasil stay in Brasil and don't travel so much.

In Santiago, I did 2 free guided tours operated by "Spicy tours". The first one wasn't so good because the guide was quite young, unexperienced and shy. The second was much better and I learned a lot about Santiago and Chile, for exemple how the Spanish came and conquered the place, what is the religion of the Mapuche, etc. On those tours I met 3 young travelers from Belgium and it was nice exchanging with them. I also met there Andres, a nice guy from Buenos Aires. We went for a drink in the evening and he invited me to his place in Buenos Aires which is great so I'll probably spent my birthday there and celebrate Carneval with him and his friends. :-)

Now let me tell you about Santiago itself. It is a big city sparkling with life and liberty. There are a lot of beautiful old buildings next to new (mostly nice) skyscrapers, but there are also some old buildings that would be really pretty if they weren't completely abandoned and neglected. I was quite surprised by that but some people told me that the government and the inhabitants of Santiago don't care much about what is old, they prefer what is new, shiny and big which is quite a pity in my eyes.
Another thing that surprised me is the fact that some restaurants close quite early and I heard from some people that some restaurants close quite early in the afternoon. Like the restaurant where I went the first evening, it closed at 8 PM... For me this is really strange because it's sooo hot here and at 6-7 PM you're just not hungry yet...
In this restaurant I also learned that there are 2 different licences in Chile for bars and for restaurants : a licence for serving alcool and a licence for serving food and that quite some restaurants have only a food licence so that you can only get a drink if you order something to eat. I actually went there just to get a glass of wine because it looked like a pub where you can eat too. The bartender was nice enough to bring me the drink but he explained me that normally he couldn't do that. Since I'm a person that likes to respect the rules I got some salad then. And when I wanted to leave because they started to close, I got 1 glass of wine on the house. Seems like chilean guys like blond european girls. ;-)
Another surprise were all the public bars where from early in the morning business men can go to havea coffee and "just" talk to some pretty women in a short skirt. I mean everybody can see them, it's just talking and it seems to be socially accepted but for me that was quite strange.

One more thing that really surprised me in Chile in general is the amount of dogs everywhere. People don't seem to have dogs at home, the dogs on the streets just belong to everybody and nobody at the same time.

So, what did I see in Santiago... I visited the center, went on Santa Lucia and San Cristobal hills, saw the Bellavista area (beautiful with nice bars and restaurants, perfect for going out), the area of plaza Brazil (lots of street art) and much more. Also the shopping areas and the markets were great with a lot of fresh food and a lot of beautiful clothes and shoes. You should come here and see it for youself!

I almost forgot to that I went to the Cementerio general. This place is huge, it's like a city. I don't know if it's bigger than the one in Paris but I think so. I should check that some time.
There were big monuments of rich or important people but also huge blogs with hundreds of comemoration tables. A lot of them were decorated in christmas style which is really odd to me.
And there were so many cars going through the streets of this cementary and quite a lot of people selling food and drinks. It was an interesting experience.

Oh, I almost fogot : I did a half day trip to Santa Rita vineyard. It was a 10km bike-trip where we kearned a lot about the wine-making-process zmand we tasted 4 different wines. It was very interesting and I met some nice people : a girl from the south of France, Audrey, and a woman from Santiago that has been living in Belgium for many years now. It was a beautiful spot and the trip was worth it's 40.000$ (CLP).

I can only conclude that this was an amazing experience in a very beautiful city and I'm definitely coming back!

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