Blitzkrieg then Valparaiso

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So in the middle of the night Abby and I were awaken by the sound of broken glass. It came about once every 10 minutes, but it was loud and it was violent. At one point I thought someone outside was breaking windows, and as my bed was inbetween two I became very worried. We woke up to find lots of broken plates and glasses outside our apartment, so I can only assume that's what all the noise was. Either way, it was an agressive way to end our stay in Santiago.

Abby and I woke up in the morning and headed to the bus station to make our way to the last city, Valparaiso. We managed to get tickets for a morning bus, and wound our way to the costal city. Once our bus stopped we hopped into a taxi who took us way into the hills up to a flight of stairs. He immediately stopped and told us we were at our destination and told us our cab fare was 4000 pesos. Abby promptly handed him 40,000 pesos, because we have yet to understand the money. Fortunately, our cab driver was honest, laughed and handed us back the money, keeping 10,000 pesos and giving us our change. We thanked the driver as he drove away.

Abby and I were left starring down a steep staircase wondering what to do next. We dragged our bags down the next level but still couldn't find our hostel. We kept walking around the corner until we hit a dead end, frustrated, we turned around and thankfully found our hostel door.

Here we were led to our room and given a map. We decided since we had such a late start to the day, we'd take the metro to Vina del Mar to walk along the board walk.

What a treat!!! The board walk was amazing and lined with huge rock outcrops. Here we saw GIANT pelicans (4 to 5 foot wingspan) flying along the coast. We slowly made our way along the coast until we found a giant high end shopping mall. We quickly dove in thinking this would finally be the place where we could pick up a camera. Sure enough we found a small kiosk selling cameras. We were able to pick up one and carry on. We retraced our steps taking care to snap shots of the beach and all the sand sculptures along the way.

After we had walked the whole city, we stopped at a beach front bar to grab a drink. After a bottle (or two) of wine, and some delicious ceviche we found our way back to our hostel.

Learning from past mistakes, I quickly pulled the memory card from my camera and kept it in my pocket. There were also a few large dogs waiting outside the metro that Abby and I managed to convince to follow us. They protected us up until our hostel were we waved them goodbye and walked inside.

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