Having left the glittering beauty and modernity of Sydney and arriving into Santiago was potentially the most depressing element of my travels to date! The city was shrowded in fog and the people were extremely pushy. The language barrier which granted is purely my own fault was a lot greater than I had been expecting. Having minimal French can be useful in Spain, not in Chile. I spoke to a Spainish woman who told me that the verb to take in Spanish actually means to...well, to "fornicate" in not so many syllables in Chilean! Having been on a plane for 17 hours, being harrased by taxi drivers was the last thing I wanted!

This said, I did manage to make my way to a hostel I had prebooked on the Plaza de Armas. It was on the top floor of a beautiful colonial building with extremely friendly staff, warm showers and comfy beds. Regardless, I was a grumpy shit! I had the beginnings of a cold and the fact shorts and flip flops was no longer a viable dress code deeply upset me. One highlight to my arrival was the guy at the hostel, he was on his own little planet which could brighten anyones day!

Santiago offered very little, I spent a great deal of time catching up on my journal, writing postcards and blogging. I did befriend a lovely American girl, Alex, who was in Santiago to learn Spanish before being shipped off to Patagonia to do some volunteer work for a few months. We took a walk around the city, on a Sunday in a Catholic country this wasn't a great plan. Although I did see a more appealling side to the city, everything was closed! We walked through several different neighbourhouds from the very affluent to areas where a shanking was pretty much all there was to do! We saw some very cool graffiti though, apparently in Santiago, a lot of restaurant owners will pay artists in food in return for some wacky mural! In an attempt to brighten my life, Alex and I had a pizza party complete with party hats! The locals staying in the hostel were confused to say the least when they asked whose birthday it was and we replied nobody's...



My final days in Santiago ended with the decision to totally sack off Chile all together, the weather literally put a dampner on all of my plans. The parts I wanted to visit were apparently near on innaccesible and therefore unless I wanted to stay in Santiago for a few weeks, it was time to high tail it out of there! I'll have to come back when the weather is a little more accomodating...Chile isn't going anywhere fast! A bus booked, a mad dash to the bus station and I was on a bus through the Andes, Argentinia bound!