Hello guys

We left the sunny shores of New Zealand and headed to Santiago Chile the flight was around 11 hrs didn't think much of the flight very cramped and the service was lets put it not that customer friendly but hey.

Brian and I finally landed around one o'clock in the afternoon after getting through customs and finally collecting our bags we consulted the lonely planet book and headed to the Santiago Adventure which is ran by a gentleman called Alejandro Gutierrez.After bartering a price for the taxi we headed into the city my first observation was how smoggy the city look.

The taxi driver did not understand where we wanted to go so we spent sometime driving around until Brian decided he would do some map reading of his own which was a god send because we was just around the corner im just glad Brian knows how to read a map, after a brief walk we stumbled upon the hostel we was greeted by Alejandro the hostel itself had a very rustic feel about it and a very homely feel to.

After a quick power nap we headed out to explore the city it was quite late but places was still open and we had arrived at a time of there Political demonstrations the students and general public was protesting about the leadership of General Pinochet he took over power in 1973.

We sat with some local people one could speak ok English as mine and Brian's Spanish is poor to say the least but we are learning.

We both felt that was some resentment towards us but it came out that they thought we was Americano but the lad who could speak English defused the situation and we finally sat down and had a beer with them. We found out what the protest was about, below is just a brief insight into why the people are protesting.

"Thirty years ago on September 11, 1973, the Chilean military led by General Augusto Pinochet, crushed the democratically elected Unidad Popular government of Salvador Allende.The objective was to replace a progressive, democratically elected government by a brutal military dictatorship. The military coup was supported by the CIA. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger played a direct role in the military plot".

I didn't really understand what they was protesting about but after reading some of there history in the lonely planet guide it turns out that the dictatorship was responsible for the deaths of more than 4,000 Chileans they were killed by the notorious secret police — Dina. Another 70,000 were tortured. Hundreds of thousands were exiled. The U.S. Embassy in the Chilean capital, Santiago, was aware of the goings on. The main football stadium in the capital was turned into a temporary concentration camp and torture centre. Hundreds of people were shot dead with machine guns in the stadium itself.

We decided we would go for walk around the city we certainly had lots of interest people would stare in a curious way because I guess we look so different to them. The city itself is old looking in parts but modern in others the people seemed to be well of but there was elements of poverty as well.

Brian and I saw the protest first hand there was a very high police present but it look peaceful to us but you could see that people were still angry because the people responsible have never been bought to justice.

We stayed in Santiago for 5 days before finally deciding it was time to move on we knew that we wanted to head south so we look in the travel book and after meeting some Irish lads we decided we would head to a small town on the coast called pichilemu.So of we trotted to the central bus station which was only a few blocks away LOL it seemed we walked miles but we got there and of we went.