Blogs from Chile, South America - page 671

03.12.04 - 06.12.04 Mann, war das ein Stress, die Woche als ich noch zu Hause war. Und ich dachte, ich haette alles gut vorbereitet. Aber immerhin, ich habe alles soweit vorbereitet, dass ich es vom Ausland aus abwickeln kann, ausser die Steuererklaerung, aber wen interessiert die schon, ausser die Gemeinde ;-). Und dann gings schon los. Freitag um 15.30 Uhr fuhren wir frueh genug zum Flughafen, um ja nicht zu spaet anzukommen. Aber anscheinend wollte mich die Schweiz nicht gehen lassen. Der Flug nach London wurde annulliert. Somit durfte ich schon in einer langen Schlange stehen und hoffen, dass doch noch alles klappt. Ich erhielt ein Ticket von Alitalia, juhee. Nur als ich dann am Check-in stand, hiess es, dass ich nicht auf der Liste sei. Ich musste am Gate warten bis zum Schluss, dann konnten ... read more

From Santiago, we took a 23 hour bus ride to San Pedro de Atacama...a desert oasis in the north of Chile. The bus ride was actually very pleasant, we went Cama class, which is to say, the seats completely recline to beds, and there is meal service, movies, all the mod cons, while moving up the coast. San Pedro is in the desert, needless to say it's real dry, real hot during the day. It's a big backpacker destination, and for a small town, it seems the backpacker population may actually rival that of the local population. We stayed at Hostal Katarpe, which was lovely, quiet and calm, especially coming from crazy Santiago, and the eminent Bush-Apec protests. First thing we did was book an astronomical tour, which left at 8:30 at night, took us a ... read more

Hi again, I´m just goint to recount a few things that happened while we were in Santiago. Just a short summary of October. If you managed to see our JourneyFile blog, please go straight to the next entries. It just makes me feel better to have some sort of starting point here. We arrived in Santiago on October 2nd and started our Spanish classes two days later. For five days a week, four hours a day we struggled and made our heads hurt for the rest of October. But it is paying off now. In between classes and on weekends we did manage to get out of the city a couple times. In Valparaiso for a weekend, which was like being transported to a small Italian coastal town. Steep, winding street that we didn´t mind getting ... read more

And so, South... after the eventful final day in Venezuala, we spent a long day flying south, to Santiago, the capital of Chile. At first impressions, this is a grey, drab city - the weak spring sun fails to penetrate the blanket of smog, and the stern government buildings seem to be straight out of the 70s cold war architecture handbook. It is rather reminiscent of eastern europe, and the cold wind echos this mood. But on second inpection, you see the modern skyscrapers of western banks and mobile phone companies, and the steets buzz with fast food stores and designer clothes shops. The metro, again, is clean, fast, and there is even large plasma screens playing MTV on the platforms... there is also a real bohemian atmosphere to the place.. our hostel is in a ... read more

Hello! This was our last day in Santiago, we´d had a ball. After a marathon 24 hour, 3 flight journey, we finally arrived in Santiago, very tired and more than a little smelly. We had been very organised and arranged an airport transfer to take us to our hotel, but when we got into the arrivals hall it was nowhere to be seen. There followed a very scary taxi journey to the hotel, where our taxi driver tried to find us an article in the local paper as he drove along the motorway. Quote of the day according to Graeme: Jo: Here, I´ll look for it if you want... Taxi driver: No, no, I good driver lady, don´t you worry. Eeek!! We got there in one (two?) pieces however and all was well. Our hotel turned ... read more