Santiago 8th April 2009

We woke up this morning in Auckland knowing that today was going to be a very, very long day. After a late night yesterday finishing off our packing, we were up at 7am to try to work out how to convert the large pile of stuff that was left unpacked either into some useful cash, or to at least pass it onto someone who would be able to make use of it.

Most stuff went onto the communal shelf in the hostel or was foisted upon some ´lucky´passing backpacker or another. However, we still had a camping lamp (which I had brought over in my hand luggage from Australia), and sat-nav Ken, both of which we thought might hold a bit of value. We had also made the decision to post our laptop back home, not wanting to lug it around for the next few months backpacking, or having to worry about leaving in hotel rooms while we went out.

We dragged our stuff onto the local bus and hopped off ten minutes´drive away, in a shopping area that we had cased out through the bus window the day before. First stop was the post office, where we spent a large amount of money posting back both the laptop and a box full of odds and sods that we couldn´t bear to part with but didn´t want to carry. Next stop was a second hand and pawn shop, where we managed to get $35 for the camping lamp. And an unexpected bonus was selling Ken to the brother-in-law of the taxi driver who had driven us back to the hostel from the Spaceships office for $120. Sweet as!

We bus it back to our hostel, where we get a lift to the airport for $5 each, and zoom uneventfully through the usual airport formalities and onto the 12 hour LAN Chile flight to Santiago. It´s our longest flight yet, and our first ever trip through the international date line... meaning that our flight leaves at 5pm, and we arrive in Santiago at just before 2pm on the same day, after 12ish hours in the air (we´re a little vague on the details). Exciting as this was, we were both quite boggled by the concept and decided to just adjust our watches and get used to our new timezone, rather than risk dwelling on our new time travel skills.

After doing some serious haggling at the airport, we eventually found a taxi that would take us to our hostel for $10,000 (Chilean Pesos) all in, which is about 12 pounds, rather than the $19,000 each (i.e. $38,000) that we were first offered. Although it seems like less of a bargain when the taxi driver can´t find our hostel and we end up walking a couple of hundred metres when he gets stuck in the one-way system and gives up. No hard feelings though, and we even tip him, as we really didn´t fancy negotiating the metro system after such a long flight.

Our hostel is the Green House in Santa Lucia, and it´s basic but comfortable. We have a double room with TV (luxury!), a shared bathroom, and a breakfast of a bread roll, jam, butter, and coffee included. Plus the family are friendly, and it has a great location, being close to the main east-west metro line and near to most of the things that we want to see in the city.

However, first things first - much as we know that it´s important to adjust to your new time as soon as you can, get plenty of sunlight and eat at the new proper mealtimes, neither of us can stay awake; we nap, watch bad tv and sleep our way through the afternoon and night, waking only to eat the packet of biscuits that we brought from New Zealand with us. As an aside, we also managed to smuggle a carrot in by accident, this and the biscuits being the only food we had left on our last day in NZ. We had put them into Dave´s rucsac, ready to eat at the airport in Auckland, and then forgotten about them... but luckily we had the chance to quickly bin the carrot before the sniffer dogs got to us, and we got to the bag scanner.

The following day, I wake up at 6am and can´t get back to sleep, and Dave follows soon after. Other than that we feel pretty good, and after breakfast we are ready to explore Santiago and get some first impressions.

Our first task is to get to the bus ticket office, as we need to work out how we can make good our plan to get as far south as possible before it gets too cold. After speaking to our host family at the hostel, we gather that at 24 ish degrees, the weather in Santiago is unseasonably warm, which should hold for a while longer; and also that as it is the easter holidays this weekend, the largely Catholic population of Chilé will be mostly coming to a standstill for celebration and worship. We decide not to move on until Monday when everything starts running properly again, not wanting to risk getting caught in a small village with nowhere to buy food and everywhere full.

We make it on the underground metro system ok, having put our phrasebook Spanish to good use and asked for ´dos boletos por favor´and discovering that it costs the same wherever you go, making life a lot easier for us, as so far we´ve found the language a bit overwhelming - everyone speaks so fast, it´s difficult to pick out familiar words from the little that we´ve learned so far... I think our few months here may end up being a crash course in the Castellan language!

Seven stops and a bit of stilted negotiation later, we are the proud owners of two tickets to Pucón for the following Monday, veterans of the subway system (by employing a mixture of both Delhi and Perth train tactics, ie. shove on, squeeze in, hold tight and try not to breathe in), and are still in possesion of our sanity.

Deciding to walk back to our hostel, we admire the beautiful colonial style architecture, and taking a detour to Barrio Brasil, enjoy the pretty and dinky square at Concha y Toro. We also walk by the closed up, earthquake damaged, Basilica del Salvador, complete with a very miserable looking Jesus hanging from the cross outside.

We walk on, looking for a cheap lunch and a public toilet. Succeeding in finding neither, we end up sharing a sandwich in a mid-range restaurant, and making use of their facilities. Aside from fast food, Chile (or at least the capital of Santiago), doesn´t seem to be as cheap as we had imagined, working out only a little less expensive than New Zealand. We decide to implement our time-tested ´noodles and looking at free stuff as often as possible´tactic, with immediate effect.

The afternoon is spent wandering up, down and around the hill at Cerro Santa Lucia - it´s a park on a hill near our hostel and in the midst of the city, with a spectacular view of the surrounding mountains from the top... although the smog in Santiago is so thick that we can´t even see past the outer buildings, let alone the mountains. It feels a bit claustrophobic, like being in a bubble, and we´re hoping that the air is a lot cleaner as we head out of the city.

There are some pretty buildings in the park, and we almost trip over some of the dozens of kissing couples that are littered about everywhere - we soon find out that this is a constant everywhere in the country, possibly the continent - as are the hundreds and hundreds of stray dogs. The dogs mostly appear to be in good condition, with a mix of mongrels and what appear to be pedigrees wandering around the streets and lounging about. They don´t beg or intimidate, and just seem to potter about, making a living as best as they can, just occasionally following people who look interesting and teaming up with each other when they need to.

Arriving back at our hostel before dark, our first impressions of Santiago are good: it smells familiar, with a mix of pollution, grime, urine, food, perfume and dust scenting the streets. The people are friendly, with a tolerance for our poor Spanish and a willingness to help - they don´t seem to be as jaded or desperate for money as locals that we´ve met in Asia. We saw some slum housing as we drove in from the airport, but the standard of living in the city appears to be good, albeit very smoggy, with Chiléan and other South American tourists making up a large percentage of visitors to the places we have been and seen. Unfortunately, the down side for us is the increased cost of living (combined with the lower value pound), and it´s noodles for tea in the hostel, with an evening of tv watching in our room and chatting to other backpackers in the communal area rather than going out to a bar or for dinner.

We´re almost over the jet lag now, and spend Saturday exploring a bit more of the city, firstly by doing the Lonely Planet walking tour, which takes in a few churches and the cathedral (all very busy with worshippers and full of very dramatic Catholic icons and murals), skip the closed-for-the-holidays museums, and enjoy looking at the wonderful buildings (a free activity!).

Later on, we decide to walk to visit the giant virgin Mary at the top of the Cerro San Cristobal in another park in town, stopping in a restaurant for seafood empanadas on the way (mussel, squid and onion, actually very nice!), although we balk at the lengthy queue for the vernicular railway to the top. Unusually for me, I decide that we should walk instead, and the gentle (although lengthy at 5.8km for a 480ish metre climb) walk to the top proves to be enjoyable. The statue of Mary at the top is 15 metres tall, and looks out over the city. As we´re a lot higher up than the other park, we can even see a bit of the mountains, although the smog makes sunset pretty but not fantastic.

It´s very busy, with lots of families and couples around - there is a church service at the top later that evening, so there are people getting things set up for that. We decide to leave them to it, and join the much shorter queue for the vernicular downhill... it takes all of two minutes to get to the bottom!

Getting a little lost on the way back pays dividends when we find a much bigger and cheaper supermarket than the one we have been using, and we find our way back to the hostel eventually for a meal of pasta and sauce. Tomorrow is Easter Sunday, and although we had originally planned to visit the nearby town of Valpairaso, we have been dissuaded by bad reports from other travellers, and decide to either give it a miss, or otherwise visit when we are next in Santiago before we leave Chilé. However, since absolutely nothing apart from McDonalds is open, we laze about for the day and get packed for our bus to Pucón in the morning.

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