Santiago De Chile

Chile

March 2007
2 days

SANTIAGO DE CHILE

3rd to 4th March

You'll remember we were very glad to be leaving Montevideo in Uruguay, after our bad episode with the insect population there. My ranting had obviously put a curse on the place for, the afternoon we fled, on a bus back to Colonia, the heavens opened and thrashed the living daylights out of the place, with the heaviest rain I've ever seen. Good! Within five minutes the streets were flooded and cars were being swallowed, all very exciting and I had a chuckle as we sped off in our very capable big autobus. What a stupid name for a city anyway!

So to keep this part brief we got the bus to Colonia and then the boat back across to Buenos Aires in Argentina. Existed there for two nights before catching our first flight in two months to our final South American country - Chile. We landed in the capital, Santiago De Chile, making that three countries in so many days. All three used the currency Pesos, but with widely varying exchange rates. Our British pound would get us just 6 Pesos in Argie Land, 50 Pesos in Uruguay and a mind boggling 1,000 in Chile making us feel rather flush, but we soon learned that here we could expect to pay European prices, so lucky we were only staying eleven days.

The short flight of less than three hours was a mere blip in our day and soon we were feeling fresh and excited to be in a new country whilst we made our way to our hostel in the burbs. It was situated in a bustling party neighbourhood, much like Camden Town, littered with restaurants and bars all packed with happy people on this glorious Saturday afternoon. We rang the bell at La Chimba (our hostel) and a man resembling Cat Weasel (for you 80s kids) opened the gate and beckoned us inside. Long grey hair and a wiry goaty beard to match, the man showed us around and we liked it straight away. Basically a large converted house, all open plan, with inviting sofas, TV, free Internet and a cool shaggy black dog. It had won awards for being the top hostel in South America, which we thought a little over the top, but we enjoyed our stay very much.

Night fell and we ventured out in to the Bella Vista neighbourhood, our goal being to locate a collection of edible objects and call it dinner. We ate Al Fresco in a place recommended in our guide book and watched the locals go about their business. From many venues we could hear rock music and we'd already seen a few kids with spiky hair or Mohican's dyed red or blue so that rock genre had a big influence here. The dinner turned out to be very edible indeed , so with our bellies full we retired for the night, but unfortunately to separate dorms, due to a double booking. For which Cat Weasel was very apologetic and resulted in us blagging a free bottle of Chilean Red wine. Nice.

Sunday morning arrived and we made a decision to head north the next day to try and see the desert, volcanoes and maybe if lucky a trip to an observatory. So off to the bus station downtown and sorted our tickets, then spent our afternoon browsing around the city, mainly in the political region similar to Whitehall. We admired and photographed many a handsome courthouse or state building before moving on to the more sociable plaza where we treated ourselves to a very large ice cream due to the fact that it was damn hot. We studied the map and decided that the large park would be a suitable place to cool off so we picked up some cold beers from a shop and walked in that direction. The park turned out to be situated on a steep hill, surrounded by very beautiful buildings and fountains, and perched up on the hill were old battlements and excellent views of the city. The park was abundant with benches and on most, couples were kissing which I thought a little weird as there were just so many of them. It was like everyone had been drugged or harpooned by cupids arrow so I did the only right thing and sat on a bench myself and sank a cold beer whilst I pondered this strange event before me.

We made it back to the hostel, by sunset, for the Sunday night barbecue and joined them in watching the full lunar eclipse that I'd read about earlier that morning on the BBC web site. Whilst enjoying that free bottle of vino we sat and watched as the moon turned red due to the Earth blocking out the suns light and it was a unique experience, which strangely were becoming weekly events on this trip. The wine destroyed all chances of a restless nights sleep so before we knew it, the moon had stopped showing off and now the sun was out in full force heating up a new day. And on this day we had only one thing on the agenda..... a long bus ride north to La Serena, where I had my hopes resting on the fact that we would visit an observatory at night time and be able to see the stars up close. The comet we'd seen back in Argentina had prompted this desire and now the lunar eclipse had compounded it, so with my fingers crossed we rolled up the state highway in search of a large telescope.