AN AVOCADO AND ESCUDO FARRAGO IN SANTIAGO

After having seen nothing but desert, sand and the odd cactus for what seemed like weeks, we headed further south along to the coast of Chile to where it rains from time to time and things like trees and plants actually grow without the need for elaborate irrigation systems. We took a bus from La Serena to Santiago, the capital of Chile, and continued our habit of making avocado, tomato, ham and cheese sandwiches in public - quite an accomplishment on a bumpy bus. We immediately hopped into a taxi to go to our hostel but, unfortunately, the driver had never heard of it and advised us that that part of town wasn't particularly safe. Fortunately, he then took us to another hostel in a lively area called Bellavista (nice view) full of bars and restaurants which was perfect. However, being the political anoraks that we are, we decided to stay in and watch coverage of the US Presidential Elections rather than sample the nightlife. We would find time for that the following day.
Day 50 of our trip was spent exploring Santiago, wandering the streets in the warm, sunny weather. We were lucky that it was warm enough to wear shorts as these were the only clean clothes we had left after we'd deposited the remains of our desert sand-encrusted washing at the hostel. Santiago is a modern attractive city surrounded by the snow-capped Andes. After breaking with Team West tradition by actually going into a museum (which had an impressive collection of artefacts from ancient South American civilisations dating from before Christ to the Incas), we felt we had to reward ourselves with lunch. So, on the recommendation of the girl behind the desk at the hostel, we went for that traditional Chilean snack, the…er…hotdog. We weren't entirely bowled over by the prospect until we discovered that hotdogs in Santiago are a real institution and come piled high with a huge variety of sauces including fresh, chopped tomato salsa and tasty avocado. A bit tricky to eat and we're not quite sure how all the men in suits who were crowded into the bar managed to avoid getting any down their ties, but we enjoyed them far more than expected.
We wandered around for the rest of the afternoon then headed back to Bellavista where we joined the locals in sitting at a pavement bar and tucked into a large litre bottle of the local Escudo beer. That went down very easily and we soon ordered a second bottle. We were thinking about leaving to go and get some food when a group at the next table mistakenly thought they'd bumped into us and, before we knew it, they'd bought us another bottle of beer as an 'apology'. Anyone who buys you beer has to be a good chap in our books so we soon got chatting to them and it turned out they worked for one of the Chilean TV networks behind the scenes in the production of one of the hugely popular telenovelas (soap operas) that keep housewives up and down the continent gripped with the latest scandal played out on their televisions. The group included a hairdresser, make-up artist and a particularly bonkers set designer who bore a striking resemblance to Maradona. After yet another beer we remembered that we had a night bus to catch and, as we still hadn't eaten, were persuaded to go to a restaurant where one of the group worked as a waiter. We said our goodbyes to Maradona and the make-up artists and headed there for a quick bite to eat. The three beers had worked their magic on Emma, who managed to miss her seat and ended up on the floor, to the amusement of the locals. Then, as seems to be our wont, we did our mad taxi dash to our overnight bus south to Pucon and the Lake District.