One week in Chile

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After a 12 hour flight from New Zealand we arrived in Santiago, Chile, for the next leg of our journey. After no sleep on the plane, and having arrived 3 hours before we even left on the same day (due to time going back), we both zonked out and ended up sleeping for 8 hours. Unfortunately when we woke up it was only 9pm, so after stupidly sleeping during the day we then both got no sleep that night. Which meant we had Thursday night TWICE, how often do you get a chance of repeating the same night, and we didn't sleep on either! This began 4 days of jet lag where we just couldn't get used to when to sleep and when to keep our eyes open, it also didn't help that snorers seemed to follow us to every dorm room.

Anyway we explored Santiago for a couple of days, it was nice, but a bit of a shock to the system after a month in barren New Zealand. Lots of plazas and tall historic European looking buildings. The Cathedral was astonishing, it was filled with chandeliers.

We then headed 2 hours north to Valparaiso, a port city which is famous for its hilly old town with colourfully painted buildings. It is where all the artsy, bohemian types have congregated so there are lots of cool crafty shops, and art galleries. It is also where the famous poet Pablo Neruda had a house. We had never heard of him but he seems pretty famous in the poetry world so we visited his house which is now a museum. It had 360 degree views across the whole city and was filled with objects that he had collected from all over the world. It was a fascinating house. Valparaiso also had an open air art museum which consisted of paintings at various points in various streets. You got a map and just wandered up and down the steep streets looking for the art. The city is also famous for its graffiti so it was often difficult distinguishing the official paintings. On our last day there was a big parade to celebrate an old battle so all the local school bands and children marched through the streets. Valparaiso was definitely as colourful as we had hoped.

After our short stop in Chile we got the bus across the Andes into Argentina.

Lots of love T & A xx

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