Disclaimer: Same as the previous post, our camera was down for the count, so the images are from Google
Our stay in Santiago for a few days was similar to the first few days we were there.A bit too much beer in the bar, making some fantastic meals in the epic kitchen at the hostel, and enjoying the last few days in relative modernity before heading back to Bolivia.
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| Our kitchen at La Casa Roja http://santiagotourist.com/wp-content/uploads//2013/02/DSC_1189.jpg |
At one point we decided to play some frisbee in the park near the hostel, which was pretty fun because it was kind of the bohemian part of town so people drove slow, it's where everyone took their kids to play on the dinosaur laden playground, and there were some pretty solid bakeries around the perimeter of the square. While we were hucking disc, we had another random guy join us for a bit, and then a group of high schoolers approached me. It seemed like they were working on a school project or something? So I was friendly with them, and the conversation went a bit like this, all in Spanish of course:
Random girl from this group: "Hello?"
Me: "Hi"
Entire group: everybody giggle super hard
Random girl: "Yea, can we record you for some reason or another that I couldn't understand?"
Me: "Yea, sure"
Random girl: "Ok, here's what you have to say. 'askljfgkl jahslk jfh lkjhgasrglkj ahsdfg kjlhasfgk jlhn,m.nvc'. Now repeat that back to me."
Me: (with a look of impossibility upon my face) "Alright, here goes"
And then everybody laughed super hard again. I had absolutely no idea what I was saying, or even how to say it. It was really difficult to remember since I was basically just trying to remember a string of syllables and not an actual sentence. Was I probably doing something to help out with a school project? Hopefully. Could I have been promoting something political, terrorism, or condoning drug use? Possibly.
After that my frisbee game was all off. I kept tossing it into the street and dropping the disc when it hit me square in the hands. I just couldn't handle the pressure anymore, so we quit and I probably went to go get some baked goods.
While we were eating baked goods, a marching band of sorts came by and was playing some music. Basically, Plaza Brazil is where all the fun stuff happens in Santiago as far as I could tell.
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| Plaza Brazil, the one near our hostel http://cescap.files.wordpress.com/2010/12/s-10-plaza-brasil.jpg |
Also, since we were recovering a bit from the jet lag of a lot of time zone change, I was up super early the second day and went on an early morning run to Parque Quinta Normal, the park with some trails, fountains, and museums. It's basically Santiago's version of Golden Gate Park in San Francisco or Balboa Park in San Diego. While running I met a dog who jogged with me a bit, and then some guy thought I was a local (I love when that happens) and asked me where some museum was. Fortunately I had already run by it so I knew where it was. Unfortunately, I didn't know how to make a complete sentence in Spanish, so my atrocious accent and poor grammar probably blew my 'local' cover. There was also a coast redwood in the park, so that's exciting.
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| Parque Quinta Normal http://trotabarrios.cl/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/quinta-normal.jpg |
Anyway, we spent a few hours playing backgammon on the board Justin had made for us, and did a bit of gift shopping at a couple of artisan markets Acacia had read about, only to discover that things were either super expensive or factory made by poor laborers in Bolivia and then shipped down to Chile and branded as artisan. Cool Santiago. Needless to say, we didn't make any significant purchases.
Our last night in Santiago I went on a search to find a battery for the camera which you've probably noticed by now was lacking said battery due to the Google pictures which clearly are not the quality of pictures you're used to from Acacia and I. This turned out to be a bit of an adventure because I looked up Canon camera distributor, tracked it down in the financial district of Santiago, which required a several mile subway ride. Turns out it was closed. NOT what the website said. So I searched around the area in a few of the electronic stores asking for the battery, and every time got sent to a different place that was supposed to have the battery. After a while I just gave up and bought a new camera, our third of the trip. Don't ever lend me your camera people! Anyway, things were looking up at this point. I had a new functioning camera, the rain had stopped, and there was some kind of fountain light show happening on my way back to the subway station. I got myself a subway ticket, walked down the stairs (faster than the escalator because of the billion or so people trying to squeeze onto it, which I guess should have been my clue of what was to come next), and then I waited for a subway. Only two minutes away, good. And then it happened; the subway came, and it was so full of people that when the doors opened people literally popped out and knocked over a couple of the people waiting to get on. What!? How was I going to get on this thing? People were getting running starts to plow into the mass of people inside the train, and then when the doors closed you could see noses squished up against the glass as some members of the riding class I'm sure were suffocating and risking death to get on. I ended up having to wait for about 10 trains before one was empty enough for me to fight my way in, elbows up for protection of course.
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| Santiago Subway Rush Hour http://cachandochile.files.wordpress.com/2009/04/mst-metro-200904-039-500.jpg?w=500&h=363 |
The next morning we flew out of Santiago back to Santa Cruz, Bolivia, which, like our flight into Santiago, was indirect with about a 6 hour layover. This time, the layover was in Iquique, a small city in the north of Chile sort of famous for its beaches. Since we had 6 hours to kill, we looked into getting a ride to the beaches and the town to check it out, but turns out the airport was 43km south of the city, without regular bus service. So that was unfortunate news. After about an hour in the airport, I had already read the menu at both the restaurant and the snack bar in the airport, done a few laps of the place (hoping to find something new or something? I dunno), and had tried to get my passport stamped for leaving Chile only to discover that they don't open the customs booth until 30 minutes before the flight. But, the airport lounge was available to us for some of the rewards points I had on my LAN credit card, which I only had for a 20% discount on our flight to Brazil way back in January. I had been to these lounges before and new about what to expect, but it was Acacia's first time. And we took full advantage of those points! We ate about 4 sandwiches each, probably half a dozen baked goods, several jars of trail-mix and dried mangoes, AND there was an open bar so you can probably imagine what we did for 5 hours. We played some cribbage and then worked on finding a WWOF, Work Away, or some similar type of program for down the road in Bolivia or Peru. We were actually so engaged in looking into these programs that 5 hours later we nearly missed our flight. Man did we feel like idiots then...
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