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Hi everyone,
I am now in Cusco but i didnt have enough time while in Santiago to update my blog!! Basically after arriving in Santiago after a crappy flight and a very long day of travelling which included a breakfast in Syd, morning tea on the plane, lunch in Auckland airport, dinner on the plane, breakfast on the plane, lunch in Santiago and dinner in Santiago we had a fairly relaxed day.. after being dropped off at the hostal we went out for lunch (and we got severly ripped off and began to call it the ?gringo tax?). With our lunch we also tried Pisco Sours (the national drink of Peru which is very sour and is also very strong). Trying to order our food in Spanish was hard as we had absolutely no confidence in speaking the language but luckily we were with an American guy from our hostal the same age as us who had already been in South America for some time and spoke decent Spanish.. in the arvo - evening we chilled around the hostal getting to know the people and we also managed to get ripped off again badly when we went out for dinner.. the hostal was awesome and also very multicultural - people from iceland, denmark, ireland, Aus, etc etc
On our second day we left the hostal about 9am (due to the jetlag) to find most of the shops were all still closed. Our destination was San Cristobal (the big hill - statue of the Virgin Mary) and also to look at The Santiago Zoo which was half way up the hill. As we arrived at 9.30 and it only opened at 10.00 we went for a walk around the local neighbourhood. When it finally opened we caught a funicular up to the Zoo - Virgin Mary.. the zoo was average (highlight being a white tiger) and the Virgin Mary at the top was good.. the views from the top should have been absolutely amazing had there not been any smog (because Santiago is surrounded by the mountains it is hard for fresh air to sweep through as it runs up the side of them).
After San Cristobal (and lunch- where we tried the local Chilean beer Escudo - very nice i might add) we went for a walk down town to the Plaza De Armas.. the centre of the city is very much like any other CBD with lots of franchises and fast food.. we then walked back to the hostal via Santa Lucia (another small hill with nice views)..
Today we had decided that we would catch a bus down to Valparaiso (a world hertiage listed city 90 mins from Santiago on the coast). If possible we also wanted to get to Vina Del Mar (a classy resport area 1km from Valpo). In order to make this day drip possible we first had to catch the metro to the bus station. It is unbeleivable how clean, quick and efficient the metro is (trains arrive every 1 min or there abouts, there is a standard fare no matter how far you are travelling on the line (bout 70c AUS) and the trains are clean and quick). The bus that we caught down to Valpo was also very clean, cheap and comfortable.
Valpo is a harbour town and is surrounded by hills covered in houses, and when I first arrived it reminded me of photos of Rio and the favelas. Theses houses however were not shanty towns and are probably quite expensive because of their views. One thing that I noticed in Valpo was how clean the air was compared to Santiago as fresh air comes in from the coast. We also had possible the worst meal of our time in Chile (although none were great) in Valpo and we the target of ´gringo tax´ once again. Come 3pm all of us were tired and after searching for a taxi to take us to Vina De Mar for quite some time we decided to give it a miss and go back to Santiago. We were also planning to go Skiing in the Andes the following day so we needed to get back to Santiago to organise it. (it would have been possible to organise it but came close to $200 USD so we decided to give it a miss).
Our last day was a chill out day with the expection of a visit to these markets close to Santa Maria and the National Library of Chile. We also had a few quite beers with an icelandic and an irish guy but went to bed around 12 in order to wake up at 5am to fly to Lima then Cusco..
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