This is my first blog entry from Latin America, a world so far away from good old home, in so many different aspects. I had only been there, and I realised straight away that it was so different.

The plane journey which took under 11 hours was mainly bog standard. I set off at around 4:30pm from Auckland on the 19th of April and landed around 1pm on the 19th April in Santiago. Me singing Cher a few weeks on Karaoke "If I could turn back time" really did come true it seemed. I usually have a flick through the interactive map of the flight path that the plane is taking, but there was not much to see due the plane just flying over the Pacific Ocean practically all the way. One of the flight attendants wrongly presumed I could speak Spanish (don't know what gave her that impression as I struggle to say "olla"), and she just kept speaking fast paced fluent Spanish about what food was on offer during the flight. She soon realised her error when I replied with "er...eh?"

An Irish girl at customs started talking to me and 2 girls who I met on the plane, and she seemed lost. Within two minutes she came out of her shell and was bragging about how she never ever declares she has fruit in her bag when she enters a country. What she did not expect though was to get her bags at the other end and for around 8 sniffer dogs running around the baggage carousel with their handlers. The security weren't impressed and they were toying with the idea of giving her a 200 dollar fine, but they did let her off in the end....booo.

Right, let's crack on with Santiago then. It is the financial and industrial centre of Chile, and therefore it is no surprise that it is the country's capital city. I think (but don't quote me on it), that around a third of all Chileans live in and around Santiago, which makes some seem to say that Santiago, is Chile. When reading a few guidebooks, the city seems to try and portray the image that it is more like London, rather than comparing it to any other South American city. I think Santiago is been a little bigheaded there, as Cities such as Sao Paulo in Brazil and parts of Lima in Peru are way ahead of Santiago in terms of looking fresh and modern.

We climbed a big hill the first few minutes I arrived (did New Zealand not teach me anything?), and looked down on the city. The smog all around means you can´t see too far ahead, but as with many cities across the world, the HSBC building is the tallest, and towers over most of the others quite easily.

The hostel provided a free tour, which was good to meet new people and see the city. I met some nice people, but the best people I probably met were not even staying in the hostel, they just tagged along. We went in a traditional Santiago coffee shop which is called "Coffee on legs", and for those that have ever been in one, they will know why I have mentioned it on here. No dancing though, no music, the girls just serve coffee. We had a bbq in the evening which consisted of nearly every meat in the book. Two Germans who could fluently speak Spanish wanted to go out at night so as they could speak the natives language, I thought it did seem a good time to see what the place was like at night, as I would not have been too comfortable going with people who were as useless at speaking Spanish as I was. We headed to a Latin bar in the Bella vista neighbourhood, and half the music sounded like the ´can can´. The Germans were speaking to each other in German, me in English, and the taxi driver in Spanish, I wish was multilingual. I however seem to struggle with English.

Santiago was a gentle start to South American adventures.