I get up in the morning and have a quick breakfast with one of my roommates before going on a first walk into town to go for some grocery shopping. While strolling through the streets, I notice big groups of students being stopped by the local police (los carabineros de chile); whilst checking their rucksacks, I get signalled that I am fine to walk through. Curious what this is all about, I continue my walk to the supermarket and I am once more stopped, this time by a huge demonstration (marcha) of students, musicians and as many carabineros trying to control them. I learn from one of the locals on the street that is quite a common phenomenon on a Thursday morning and the students are protesting against the cost of higher education (without much success so far).

I have a quick sandwich lunch back in my hostel, la Chimba, and I am heading direction Plaza de Armas this time, as I learned they have free city tours at 15h00. I meet up with Aaron and Amanda (USA) who are in my hostel as well, and together with about 15 others, we get a 3,5 hour tour around the centre of Santiago. The guide, a Scottish guy, is extremely knowledgable and gives us a first good idea of what Santiago is all about. We get to hear some interesting history and apart from that some interesting tips on where to get the best food and drinks. We try a typical Mote (peach drink) during our break and we are told to try a Terremote if we want to feel Santiago shaking! The tour ends near Pablo Neruda's house where we tip the guide and where I arrange to meet up with two girls from Kirgistan to go and try this so called terremoto ... to see how much it can shake us on Richter's scale.

We meet up around 21h00 near La Bar La Nona and hardly find a place to sit down ; quite impressive to see the big crowds in this part of Bellavista on a random week day.

We do not manage to get a Terremoto in the place we sat down, but instead we have a quite pisco sour before calling it a night.