Before leaving Valparaiso we encountered the dutch girl we met in baños, who came into our room to be reunited with one of our roomates. We took a taxi to the bus station and then the next bus to Santiago - a 2 hour journey that took almost an hour longer due to a traffic jam. We had planned to stay with a former colleague (and current friend) of mine - Victor Perl, and he had provided comprehensive instructions on how to reach his apartment. First we took the metro across the city to Escuela Militar, then a taxi to his building (which wasn't easy since the driver didn't seem to have a clue), then retrieve the key from the concierge and make ourselves at home.

Once we arrived we went straight off to the mall to get some lunch and then to the supermarket to get some supplies. We spent the rest of the afternoon enjoying the pool on the roof of Victor's building, and his first sight of us was when we came down to the apartment making lots of noise and with glasses of wine in our hands. Victor drove us to Barrio Bellavista, which is a neighbourhood full of restaurants and bars. We went to a great place that did (more) epic sandwiches plus a jug of red wine and strawberries! Two of Victor's friends (Christian and Consuela) joined us and we were pretty grateful that they could all speak english - Chilean spanish is another language altogether! Ya Bo!

Day 137 - Victor went off to work and Alex and I spent a while doing his washing up and messaging him on facebook trying to find out how on earth we get back to the metro! We ended up taking a taxi and then returning to Barrio Bellavista to visit the house of the famous poet Pablo Neruda, named La Chascona. We took a tour of the house, which didn't look like much from the outside, but had a really cool interior. From there we went to a neat little cafe to buy sandwiches and beer, and took them up the funicular (yes, another one) to the top of cerro San Cristobal - a hill in the middle of the city that has more than one church on top, a statue of Mary, and amazing views of Santiago. We sat under a tree and had our picnic while a man read from the bible over a loud speaker.

When we reached Mary, Alex realised she'd left her sunglasses in the cafe, so we returned to reclaim them and then decided it was time to return to Victor's pool. We tried to walk back from the Escuela Militar metro stop, but the city is so disorientating that we couldn't even get the right direction. Another taxi. At the apartment I had my siesta on Victor's nice, new sofa and then we went to the pool. By the time we came back down Victor was home, but about to take a nap before his after-wedding party that night.

Alex and I (well, Alex) cooked spaghetti bolognaise and we were enjoying a nice evening in with a bottle of wine, until Victor suddenly emerged from his sleep just as we were thinking of going to bed. Excited to be going out, Victor invited a friend round and went out to buy pisco, and so Alex, myself, Victor and Cesar shared a couple of rounds of piscolas (pisco and coke), but we drew the line and shots. At 12:30am Victor headed out to his after-wedding party (!), and Alex and I went to bed.

Day 138 - We did well this morning to get up and leave the apartment at 9am, catch a public bus to the metro and then arrive at the museum of fine art - the meeting place for our walking tour - ahead of time. We grabbed a coffee (which I spilled mostly down myself) and commenced the tour that took us through the markets of Santiago. First was the Central Market full of seafood and then on to the huge main market called Veda. The people were extremely friendly and one even took a look at us and, in english, commented "dang girl, look at that thang", which we enjoyed a lot.

We had a sopaipilla, which is a delicious, fried pumpkin bread with extremely salty salsa on top and then continued the tour to the General Cemetary via the metro. The cemetary is the size of 117 football fields, but we mostly stayed in the historic part. We were told about animitos, which are saints created from real people after they die. We also saw the grave of President Allende, who committed suicide with two shots during the Pinochet Coup on in 1973.

At the end of the tour we went to a cool bar and got to sample the most famous of Santiago drinks - the Terramoto (earthquake). The drink is made of fermented white wine, pineapple ice cream and grenadine, and has it's name because if you have more than two, the ground moves like an earthquake. Alex and I planned to return to the Central Market from lunch, but we ended up with most of the rest of the tourgroup, who also decided they were going there. They were pretty infuriating and Alex and I unanimously dedided that lunch with them would be too awful. We tried to shake them off when we stopped to buy Victor a Christmas tree, but bumped back into them at the metro. Once we got off the metro we went off to buy some strawberries and buy the time we returned we had lost them. We went to a restaurant called Tio Willy and shared razor clams with parmesan and crab cakes - both cheesy and delicious.

After lunch we bought some ingredients to make guacamole and then went to check out a bar called La Piojera that Victor recommended to us as a Santiago Institution. We hadn't planned on entering the bar since we'd already had a drink that day, but it looked so intruiging. When we got there we found a lively place with people everywhere and musicians playing accordians and singing... and this was mid-afternoon. We ordered two terramotos, but this time I had the macho one, with fernet. We had only been there 5 minutes when some long haired Chilean came over and literally stared at me, 20 centimetres from my face until I was forced to initiate conversation "can I help you?". Jose turned out to be quite nice actually, and we made many more friends in the hour we spent in La Piojera (see photo). Once we had finished our drinks we realised it was 4pm, and we had to leave immediately if we were to catch Victor before his next wedding. Jose said he would wait for us to return, which I half-believed.

We took the metro and awkwardly bumped into two people from the tour group that we dropped earlier in the day. We made it back to the apartment just as Victor was leaving, but in the meantime he had put us in touch with his friend Jean-Paul to take us out tonight. Jean-Paul picked us up and we went back to Barrio Bellavista with his friends Luis and Josefa. On the way to Bellavista we saw a tribute to Paul Walker (the actor from Fast and Furious I, II, III, IV, V and VI who died a couple fo days earlier) outside the American Embassy. Some of the cars in the procession had "RIP Bryan O'Connor" written on them, which is actually the name of the character in the films!!!

In Bellavista we went to a bar surrounded by bars and sat outside enjoying more piscolas and some Colombian snacks. We then went to a club in a house and returned home around 6am. We knew Victor had made it back before us since his shoes and tie were strewn on the floor in a trail to his bedroom! Finished off the guacamole before bed.

Day 139 - Woke up too early at 10am and made a cup of tea instantly. Alex went off to buy some provisions and then made the three of us fried egg sandwiches, which were divine. We did our laundry in Victor's building, which was funny just because he didn't even know where the washing machine was (he has a maid), and then the three of us decided to head out of town to visit a vineyard. It was only when we made it down to the parking garage that Victor remembered he had left his car at his parent's house. So we took a taxi there, and because he was not currently attending his family lunch, we had to get in and drive off without being seen!

We drove to the Concha y Toro vineyard and on the way my hangover kicked in and I had to concentrate to avoid being ill in Victor's lovely, new car. The vineyard was beautiful, and the wine samples actually saved me. We took a tour with a hilarious guide ("the alcohols are in there, they're hiding") and an even more hilarious Ukrainian guy who asked if he could just go a taste the wine if the tour got too boring, and during a tasting session he was playing on his phone and the guide totally called him out on it! Victor spent most of the time making fun about my sticker-phobia, but the best part of the tour was when we were shut in the historic Casillero del Diablo (Devil's Cellar) and subjected to a haunting display of how the cellar (and the wine) got it's name.

We loved spending time with Victor after barely seeing him all weekend and on the way back we enjoyed reggae Christmas music and then went to buy some empanadas. Victor heated up the pastries and made us a cup of tea while Alex and I packed... we were already late for our welcome meeting with our Patagonia tour group. Victor dropped us off at the metro station and then it was a somber ride to the centre of the city. Luckily, whenever I feel really sad, some nice, random person usually comes up and talks to me (like Jorge in the Galapagos) - this time it was a nice old man who had just flown back from London that morning.

We arrived at Hotel Las Vegas at 8:30pm, thinking that the meeting was at 8pm. It turns out it was actually at 6pm, so we were more than a little late! Oops. We met our tour guide - Nati from Cordoba, and once she had given us our own briefing we spent the rest of the evening in bed watching Geordie Shore.