jason, franz and i arrived santiago de chile smack bang in the middle of rush hour, so had a great time storming onto a packed metro train with the massive unwieldy bags. some cheeky sod tried to pickpocket me on the train, but luckily had nothing in my pockets so he ended up just feeling my leg for a bit, then looked rather embarressed when he noticed i was looking at him sternly so he got off the train. should probably have slapped him about the face but couldnt really move. anyway ended up at another che lagarto hostel like in buenos aires, which was good because it was cheaper. not really much to do in santiago in terms of sightseeing, its just a big busy city, so spent a while wandering around the market and eating hotdogs with jason, then went for quite a long siesta.

found loads of irish girls to drink with that evening (two from galway!) so me and franz had a great time, probably really impressed everyone else in the hostel with all the irish drinking songs (especially jason). ended up going to a club in the bellavista district, where loads of locals seemed really interested in us. at first we presumed they wanted to mug us, but it turned out they just wanted to talk to us and teach us how to dance to reggaeton music and leer at girls, which both seem to be popular chilean pastimes. left at about 5am and noticed rather a large street brawl forming outside the club, so thought it was probably best to call it a night and bundled 5 of us into a taxi. awesome night.

packed franz and jason off to mendoza the next morning, wasnt exactly feeling on top form but eventually got my act together and went to valparaiso for the day, which is a nearby city on the coast. it was really good there, it reminded me quite a lot of naples, really big and noisy and old with loads of dogs running around and everyone shouting at each other. its built on loads of hills which you can get a cable car up for a view of the harbour, bit overrated if you ask me, but i was impressed with a dog slyly sneaking onto the cable car and hitching a free ride up the hill. had a really good lunch as well, ordered cazuela de vacuno from a little cafe in the market, where a big surly waiter gave me a massive stew with beef and pumpkins and vegetables, accompanied by a whole loaf of bread, loads of chili sauce, massive salad and beer for about 2 pounds. very suitable for me. basically just wandered around all day enjoying the atmosphere and taking photos, then got the bus back to santiago where all the irish girls were still unsurprisingly in a whole world of pain! had completely forgotten about the deep purple gig till i checked my emails at about half 8 and had a message from sarah saying that my free ticket was all sorted out and the gig started at 9! got really excited and ran out into the street in my sandals looking for a taxi, eventually found one and had a mad dash to the venue, got there in the nick of time and sure enough, there was a "privileged" ticket waiting for me. got ushered to my seat really close to the stage, really enjoyed watching loads of old chileans rocking out to heavy metal riffs. deep purple were awesome, despite being about 100 years old, loved it. wasnt really much point staying in santiago any longer so got the bus to mendoza the next morning, it goes across the andes through the pass that general jose de san martin took when he liberated chile from the spanish, incredible scenery. really tedious border crossing though. anyway really glad to be back in argentina, chile was immense but loads more expensive and didnt have as much steak.