We're on our flight up to Guayaquil, Ecuador. Looks like we're finally heading in the appropriate direction for where we're supposed to end up. We're down to the final thirty minutes of our five hour flight and Dair's just fallen asleep with his mouth slightly agape, a little drool running down his chin, and the odd snore escaping--but it's cute, so I'll leave him that way for now.

The main things we noticed about being in the capital of Chile were that it was incredibly expensive, especially having just come from the ultra cheap Bolivia, and they definitely had different emissions laws. We could actually breath without any random choking on exhaust.

We spent time wandering around Santiago, stumbling upon sites of interest such as the presidential palace and the Cerro San Cristobal, which had fabulous views of the whole city. To try and conserve what little money we had left, we started dining from the local supermarcado and were grateful to have a fridge in our room. After two days we were ready to leave the big city and get somewhere a little more relaxing, so we decided to head to Valparaiso in hopes of spending new years eve there. Unfortunately, every other traveler and Santiaguino had the same idea. We were lucky enough to find a room for two nights and after being laughed at by every hotel in the city, accepted that we would be returning to Santiago for the big night. I'll talk about Valpo in another post though.

We headed back to Santiago and checked ourselves into a fancy hotel- Dair's new year's treat for us. It was comfy and clean and had a solid wifi connection and consistently hot water. Yay!! We took a long nap and then got ready to go out for a fancy dinner and toast midnight. We asked the concierge for suggestions. He gave a small chuckle and then upon realizing we were serious uttered, in amazement "You want to find a restaurant now!!?" Aahh, he doesn't know what he's talking about!!! We'll find something. What we didn't know of course was that half the restaurants in the city were booked up with reservations, and the other half were simply closed. What kind of restaurant closes for New Year's Eve!!!? This just didn't compute at all with our North American sensibilities.

We stumbled into the main street and found a couple million people waiting. They were all wearing tinsel wigs and masks and carrying tubes that would later explode with little bits of paper all over the place. We grabbed a disgusting boiled hotdog, loaded with weird pickled cabbage stuff and continued looking for a nice place to eat- yeah right, looks like more crappy pizza for us. At least dinner cost under ten bucks and the one store that was open was a liquor store that kept it's cage down and did all transactions through a little cut out. Now armed with water bottles filled with wine, we were ready to fiesta! At the stroke of midnight confetti and foam flew everywhere, and then the fire works started. They were awesome and put even the Festival of Lights back home to shame. They went on for a solid twenty minutes as the crowd repeatedly chanted, "ole, ole, ole, ole, chile, chile, chile, chile" It was hard not to get swept up in the madness of things, and a couple of Chilean families took us under their wings to make sure we understood what was going on, and who was up on the stage that we were too far away from to properly see. Overall it was a fantastic night.

The next day we faced the issue once again of everything being closed. Man we were getting tired of seeing those metal grates pulled over every store, restaurant and even hotel!! We actually ended up walking for two and a half hours with our packs on trying to find somewhere to spend the night. Apparently January first is "family day" and many of the hostels simply close up. Oh well, lesson learned. We worked it out eventually, and all's well that ends well. We slept well, managed to eat, and as you already know, we made our flight the next day.

Ughhhh…my ears are popping, the Xanax is wearing off, and sir is stirring, so this will be continued when we're safe and sound on solid land…Ecuador, here we come!!!!!