Santiago...The whale´s blowhole

We arrived to Santiago around 7pm on Saturday night, after a not so grueling 24 hour bus ride (our butts must be getting flatter by the minute). After stepping off the bus and into the most amazing weather yet, literally perfect by definition, we jumped into a cab and were wisked away to Residential Londres, praying for vacancies. This beautiful old hostel is located on none other than Calle Londres, a side street from the main drag of Santiago. The cobblestone road is lined with trees and cafes and makes you feel like you´re in the countryside of Italy. To our delight the Hostel had room for us, so we decided to stay for 3 nights. Our room was at the end of the hall over looking the courtyard below, in my opinion, our best room yet. We didn´t stay here long before heading out to explore the nightlife Santiago had to offer. Santiago is broken up into Barrios: there is the Barrio Brasil, Barrio Londres/Paris, Barrio Central, and the Barrio Bellavista, etc. The Barrio Bellavista is acclaimed to be the up and coming restaurant area, so go figure, we headed there first. Now, since we´ve been in South America for what, like 3 weeks, we´ve began to adjust to the late night eating...and drinking. We walked around the Bellavista area, scoping out different restaurants, taking in the night life, and mostly killing time before settling at a place in a main square for some appetizers and wine (mind you it´s around 10:30pm...perfect). We stayed at this restaurant for about an hour, drinking and eating stuffed red peppers before we decided to head somewhere else. We left this square with nothing but the highest intentions of finding more food and wine in an even better location. Along the way to our next destination we bought a few gifts for loved ones (which didn´t seem to be such a good idea 2 days later when we attempted to send them home) and eventually settled in a little cafe on one of the side streets. We ordered pizza and wine and sat there with the feeling like we´ve been here before. That´s when it came to us (pretty much simultaneously), this looks just like Chorro Street and we´re right outside of Bulls.....hummm I think this may be a sad point in our lives. We stayed at our SLO gettaway for about 2 hours talking about home and our friends and family, then oddly enough, the clock struck 2 and back to the hostel we went.

(A view from Plaza de Armas)

The next morning we awoke to, quite literally, birds chirping outside our windows and a nice breeze flowing through our room. We got up, mulled around for a little bit then set off to really check out the city. Well, I guess one could call it poor planning on out part, but to our dismay, it was Sunday and the city is pretty much deserted on Sundays, really! We searched for over an hour looking for first, New York Bagel, which Blake found in an outdated guide book we borrowed from the hostel, then for food in general. We basically stopped at the first place that was open and had a not very impressive salmon and boiled chicken lunch. At this point, we decided our best option was to go back to the movie theater we´d pasted earlier and relax there for 2 hours. After the movie we headed back to bellavista area, grabbed some more food, again mediocre at best, did a little shopping then called it a day and went back to the hostel.

Monday was a whole different story. From the moment we stepped out of the hostel the city seemed back to normal, people everywhere, cars on the streets, all sorts of noises and smells, it was alive again. We spent the first part of morning checking out the Plaza De Armas (seems like every city in SA has a Plaza de Armas) and more importantly, searching for the illustrious post office that was said to be located in the plaza. After a never ending search (here we are back the never ending-ness) I found it! It seemed like the most difficult was behind us, all we needed to do was throw our stuff in a box and ship it off, not to be seen until we return in March. Well, as one may expect, there was a tiny problem with the throwing it in a box part...they didn´t have a box big enough. This is the point, which I alluded to above, where we began to regret buying our loved ones gifts off the street. After some quick thinking we decided to go back to a electronic store we past earlier and attempt to buy a box from them. We walked in and asked a man if we could buy a box, we looked at us, laughed and said, ¨that is your spanish?¨, we couldn´t do anything but laugh, too. This savior of a man took us downstairs and brought out box after box trying to fit these oddly shaped items. After continuing to fail, we all decided the best thing to do would be to combine 2 boxes. This may not seem like the smartest thing to do, especially with something fragile in nature, but we didn´t care anymore (Dad-this goes against everything you taught me about effeciently shipping things). But after cutting and folding and a whole roll of tape, it was perfect, ready for anything the post office was going to put it through.

We spent the rest of the day exploring the city before settling down for dinner at a little cafe we found. This experienced proved to be the best dining experience not only in Santiago, but the whole trip so far. The food was excellent, our waiter was great and we got to chat with the owner/chef about his life and love for food.

(Felipe, our new best friend)

On our last day (Tuesday) we planned on taking a bus to Valparaiso, a local beach town, but that never happened. While we were at breakfast we met a Chilean man named Eduardo and wound up sitting and talking with him for over an hour. At that point we decided it best to just head over the Andes into Medoza. Ciao Chile.