Santiago Chile

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Despite booking our tickets in July LAN airlines were unable to find Lou and I a seat together on the 6 hour overnight flight from Quito to Santiago. Which we were not very please about. LAN seem to see One World travelers as 2nd class flighers we have been placed towards the back of the plane and seperate on both our LAN flights.

We organised a taxi to meet us from the airport and take us to the Hotel Los Espanoles for 16,000 Chilen pesos. We looked for him at the airport but could not find him. An ´friendly´airport information assistant also ´tried´to find him at another exit but failed. He did however find an ófficial taxi´who agreed to take us. I asked the price and he said 20,000 Chilen pesos per person which seemed like a hell of a leap. We were mid disscussion with him when the airport information man returned and the price swiftly dropped to 16,000 Chilen pesos in total. The driver appologised for his poor English. On arrival at the hotel we asked about the taxi that we organised with them to meet us. They phoned the driver who was still there waiting for us. Apparently there are two exits and he was waiting at the other one. The hotel now want us to pay for the organised taxi that we did not get. They did this by calling us at 10.15pm just after our, then hot, room service arrived. They have several service awards on their counter that I think they must have had their kids make in woodwork class. We have agreed to pay as we feel partly reponsible having not checked the other exit but are not particulay happy about the way that they have handled the situation.

In our very nice hotel room we watch in horror the news of terrorist attacks in Mumbai and are concerned about outcome of the protests in Thailand. Some comentators saying that it could result in civil war. We also hear about more credit crunch troubles in the UK with Woolworths going into recievership. Troubled times and news that puts things into perspective. Once more I am reminded of how lucky I am to be living the life I am living, doing what I am doing.

Santiago is a very impressive city. In it´s finacial district mirror windowed sky scrapers reach into the blue skies. Mountains and the obligatory Jesus statue overlook the city where 6 million inhabitants live in a mixture of appartment blocks covered in potted plants and high level security housing. There is an underground system, a resturaunt district and the most important mall in latin america. The river that cuts through the city is blue on the map but shallow and dirty brown in reality. The city feels similar to a very, very chilled out sunny London but with less ethnic diversity. When the traffic stops at a read light a tanned gymnast in hot pants and crop top performs somersaults, flips and seat drops caught and thrown into the air again by her two fellow male performers. At other lights jugglers, the disabled and plastic windmill sales people hustle for change from the waiting drivers.

There are numerous musems and art galleries. We visited the Muse de Belles Arts today where they were showing modern and classic latin american art, a history of Chillen comic book art and an exhibition of Violent photography in which Daniela Edburg http://images.google.cl/images?hl=es&q=Daniela+Edburg&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=X&oi=image_result_group&resnum=4&ct=title was showing a series of photos showing death by female vices including death by candy floss hurricane, death by hair colouring and death by hair removal product. I was also taken by a montage of portraights of peopel in Favella windows by Julio Bittencourt http://www.juliobittencourt.com/. In the classics there was a fantastic piece by Norton Maza http://www.nortonmaza.com/home.htm, a photo of toys, cut outs and rough constutions built into a classically composed picture titles ´La avalancha del caos´ featuring Jesus with guns.

Unfortunatly we only have two and a half days in Santiago. I would like to return here someday and stay for longer, perhaps in the snow board season (June to October)

We are way behind with our photos but have made a start here http://www.flickr.com/photos/32820159@N06/

This afternoon we are visting a history of Chile musem. Tomorrow we fly to Brazil. It´s a tough life.

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Comments

[Jamie]

See you there in June then!!