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It's an early start, out at 6am. The drive was fairly non eventful as drive days go. We weren't necessarily going overly far, but it was one of those day that we spent a lot of time faffing around. We stopped an hour out of Santiago for some lunch. Everyone was over station food, so we pulled into a random restaurant on the side of the road. Once again I couldn't help myself and ordered the bife de chorizo (all 500g of it). By the time we rolled out of the restaurant (quite literally) it was fairly late in the afternoon.
Finally we hit Santiago, but along with Friday night traffic and a couple of wrong turns, we made it to the hotel at 6pm. The only hitch was that there was no parking space for the truck, so it was a half hour drive round the block while we waited for some space to free up.
Once parked up and bags in tow, we discovered that there is a muck up at the hotel and we were double booked. This meant that we then had to trudge 4 blocks to the hotel that had been organized for us. Fortunately it was a Best Western and of a fairly reasonable standard. The reports from those that were actually staying at the Hotel Espana, weren't so good, so it sounded like our move was a blessing in disguise.
I had a quick stint on the WiFi and talked with my lovely Nana for the first time in three months.
After freshening up, we all met up for our final dinner. This ended up being in the Indian restaurant at the hotel and it was just divine. Whether this was because none of us had had Indian for months, or if it was actually high quality food.
At some point over the last week, I had managed to chip one of my fillings so I went on a hunt for a dentist. This meant going to one of the local hospital clinics. This was a vast contrast to the Hospital in Ushuaia. There were people for Africa and I wasn't quite sure where to start. I eventually spoke to a receptionist to find that there were no dentists. She then kindly rung several other hospitals, all of which were dentist free as well. Although the chip wasn't horrific, I was concerned that if I didn't get it sorted in either Chile or Argentina, I would end up in some murky Bolivian dentistries.
For lunch we popped over to the area of Bella Vista. This was a lovely eclectic area with lots of high class restaurants. Like Water for Chocolate was our destination. It was a highly recommended restaurant with seven "Forks" - the Chilean equivalent of Michelen Stars, with seven being the highest.
That night we had a new group meeting, there were 11 continuing on and four more joining.
It was Mick's last night in town so we went out for sushi and then headed to a bar near the hotel. Whilst there, one of the locals gave me a One Peso note from 1913, just for good luck.
Those of us that were left then jumped onto Elle (the truck) for some spontaneous soft rock karaoke of sorts (well Anki and Mick sang).
Next we got taxis over to Bella Vista again and wound up in a Cuban salsa club. Most of the time was spent dancing with some South Americans (mainly Columbians). I finally gave in at about 4am and grabbed a taxi home. Yet again I had another interesting Spanglish discussion with my taxi driver. It seems that it is so much easier to converse with people on a one to one basis and although my Spanish is rubbish, I seem to get my point across. The taxi driver was insistent on waiting for me to go into the hotel before he drove off into the night.
Sunday morning was meant to see us moving back to the crappy hotel and I'd set my alarm for as late as possible (you have to love South Americans - most check out times are 12pm). Whilst I was trying to prepare myself, my roommate turned up and told me that we were one of three rooms that didn't have to move hotels. I could have kissed her, dealing with all my bags at that point of time was way more than I could cope with.
Although we were meant to go out for lunch for Mick's last day, everyone was way to hungover, so we all just ended up saying our fond farewells. Unfortunately I couldn't contain myself and had a wee cry, god darn it all.
Whilst I'd done absolutely no sightseeing in Santiago, today was not going to be very touristy at all. After a short walk to McDs, it was back to the hotel for some R & R. Di and I then ventured out and went to the pictures to see a Martin Scorsese film. It was a quiet way to end my time in Santiago, but as Anki said, you can either use the big cities to sightsee or to re-coup, which is what I did.
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