LOVIN¨ SANTIAGO CHILE!

Day 322 - 324

Santiago, Chile, South America

**************************
These computers are ancient, and lack usb ports, so there are no photos for now!

But..cable is good at this hotel..We watched (Spanish commentary!) our aussie Lleyton Hewitt win against Bagdatis in his 5 set marathon thriller!! Apparently it was the latest (or earliest?) finish (4.33am EST) to a match in Open history!! Now to conquer Novak Djokovic in the fourth round! GO LLEYTON HEWITT!!!!
**************************

We´ve been enjoying Santiago this time...the last two times we´ve been here it´s only been for a night and we stayed near the airport..this time we´re in central Santiago which is fabulous!

We arrived here in Chile on Friday night...after firstly going to the wrong airport in Buenos Aires......It took us another hour by taxi to get to the Ministro Pistarini International Airport, located in the suburb of Ezeiza after finding out the domestic/international airport we went to was the wrong one! Hmmm...anyway....

And no, we didn´t have any special treatment this time! We had to pile up with everyone else to load onto the plane, had to cram in our seats, had to wait for our snack on board, were last off the plane and had to wait half an hour for our luggage when we arrived. It looks like the Uruguayan flight to BA..will have to remain one of the special 1st class air flight experiences!

Our hotel is wonderful...it has everything you´d ever want..lovely reception ladies and maids, beautiful, beautiful breakfast, private bathroom with beautiful soaps and shampoos, aircon, cable, internet, beautiful soft beds (we get a matrimonial tonight, for the next 5 nights we´re here) and it has the character feel of a really old hotel. So beautiful. All wooden and ornamental! And it has all the touches..with old leather and lace lounge chairs...and old photographs on the wall.

Chile is a long skinny part of South America (4,300 km long!) tipping the border of Peru and Bolivia in the north and Argentina in the south...It sort of spirals up the west coast edge of SA in a long thin line, with the Andes mountain range (with over 50 active volcanic peaks) on the other side, facing the east coast.

It´s a fascinatingly skinny country! And we will not be seeing even half of it!

We´re in a historical part of town called the Barrio Paris Londres. It´s very central and the museums and plaza de armas are close. We want to go to the pre columbian museum which is close so this hotel has been a great choice! It´s in the section of the city where the wealthy used to live..but they left and now the area has been taken over by the bohemian´s..

It feels a bit like San Telmo! We love the feel of the place..our hotel is on this quaint little cobble stone street which has lots of little cafe´s and tiny supermacardo´s! Good for buying water when we can´t be bothered boiling up water in our kettle! Also good for buying empanada´s - if you like the whole olive seed inside as well!!!

It´s been hot here..but not too hot (not like Perth!). It´s been around the 31, 32C and the nights have been around 27C.

We went for a long walk yesterday..to explore. And we ended up spening the day in Plaza de Armas (which is the spanish square and the hub of the city). We went into the majestic old cathedral...so huge and very baroque - full of gold and extremely ornamental. The buildings here are very neo classical. They really look gorgeous.

It´s also very neat here in Santiago. A very well designed city. Everything ´works´! The roads, the footpath´s, the building fronts or facades and even the shop front security grille´s are ornamental and not ratty tatty. The street trees are groomed and the streets are clear of litter. The street sweepers are constantly sweeping!

Being a Saturday yesterday, everyone was setting up for a big night with all their stalls..and the place was swarming with street vendors and people selling their wares and singing, dancing, playing every wind instrument you can imagine and just generally trying to make a living!

We spent ages watching the chess games going on under the gazebo in the plaza de armas...they were on timers and we picked up some moves. We just sat watching life go by...it´s amazing what you see.

A switched on fire hydrant with fresh water pouring out and the locals, homeless and other´s running through the mist, lots of beggars in the streets with all sorts of ailments from the blind to the limbless to just the down and out alcoholics with their jars.

There were fruit vendors and shoe shiners with their little cabins in the mall, a man who was holding his crowd by just taking the mickey out of the crowd and people eating at little cafes in the mall.´We enjoyed our people watching!

We also walked through the Lastarria Quarter..which is a cultural area..with lots of historial buildings..

We could see the famous statue of the Virgin Mary, atop the San Christobel..It was a massive statue of Mary. Apparently Bartholi, who designed the Statue of Liberty in the US helped to design this...It´s certainly not as impressive as the Jesus statue in Rio de Janeiro..but it does stand out over Santiago as a reminder to people that the Christian faith, is indeed, still holding it´s power.

One thing we have observed is the lunch and dinner times. Lunch is popular with everyone out and about eating from about 11am till 3pm..and all the restaurants are crammed. Dinner is a different story. That starts after 9pm so if you´re hungry between lunch and dinner...you won´t find a restaurant open. Cafe´s are still open but they usually sell empanada´s (plain pastry meat pasty´s) and pans (bread) only.

We´re getting used to the Chilean pesos...it´s 416 Chile Pesos (CLP) to the 1 Australian dollar (AUD). I´ve been carring a calculator around..or just converting using 400 to one!

We withdraw 100,000 CLP from the cash machine (the symbol is the $ sign) and we felt rich!!! But it´s actually only AUD$240!

We bought some UNO cards yesterday, for 1000 pesos ($2.30) which seemed so cheap. It´s so strange using the big numbers after the pesos currency in Argentina (ARS 2.7) and even Uruguay (UYU 18.5)

Re the UNO cards..we want to play..but the rules were not in the pack (Hence the cheapness! They were bought at a roadside stall..so what do we expect! ha!)

We ate dinner at our little cafe near our hotel..and it was just tomatoe and queso toasted sandwiches...BUT..the Chilean wine that went with it...was the focal point.

Gee Chile has beautiful wine! Even just the house vino´s!

We have a week here..and one of our aims is to go and see some vineyards to see the wine that the spanish conquistadors introduced in the 16th century!!!

To look at the tourist brochures..you wouldn´t think there was much here in Santiago..the more beautiful parts of Chile are further north and further south. We´ve been to Patagonia..and need a month to explore the whole of Chile.

That´s one thing we´ve learned about South America...there are huge distances between all the countries here..and even within the countries, there are vast distances to travel. It´s such a massive continent!

So! We´re going to stay here in Santiago, do some day trips outwards from the cicy..enjoy the break..and the vineyards!!!!

xxxx
PS Still excited about becoming a grandma.....Oohhh! :-)) And...now you know why i was so anxious to have contact with family when we were in El Calafate and had no communication! Elise was having her second Scan while we were there..and i had no communication! Everything was down...no mobile reception, no email and the phone lines were jammed at one point! (I did finally get through on the land line!) Arrghhh...........I was ms grumpy bums for sure at that time! But it´s all OK now! :-)