Our 12 hour flight to Santiago, Chile left Sydney on Monday at 1150 and arrived on Monday at 1050; one hour before we left.   That felt very strange.   We tried our best to not go to sleep during the day and failed miserably.  By 1PM we were in bed and we didn’t surface till 7PM.    So when it came to actual bed time we were not tired.    Its Friday today and Dom is still jet lagged and wide awake at 330AM every morning. 
Anyway, we have had some pretty torrential rain here (its Autumn now) and its  quite cold too so in between bouts of rain we would escape our hostel and go and explore.    We went to the market one morning and were warned to be careful by one of the market ladies as there would be a disturbance? or something in the next hour.  We didn’t know what this meant , but quickly got worried when we noticed riot police with full riot gear, horse and armored vehicles piling up in that area.  Shops were locking up.  We decided to get out of the area but not before stopping to take photos of the police and then watching (from a safe distance) hundreds of people marching with banners.  Then we rushed home.  We later found out it was a protest against education fees and it turned out to be a peaceful protest, which was good.
We did have one sunny day where we took full advantage to explore the city by foot, till  our legs ached.  They offer a free walking tour here and it was "bueno".   We have found these walking tours to be a great way to explore cities.  The guide was really friendly and gave us lots of tips on local food and drink to try, showed us buildings damaged by the 2010 earthquake and gave us lots of interesting history, delivered in a non boring way.  We didn’t realise just how many earthquakes they have here.   The guide told us they virtually have to rebuild a region every 8 years or so when a big earthquake strikes (Santiago’s cathedral has been rebuilt 5 times)  and they feel tremors in Santiago about twice a month.
Santiago is quite nice as it is surrounded by the the mountains of the Andes and we got a good view of these at the top of a hill called San Cristobal which we reached by cable car.  Ski slopes are only an hour away from the city and the coast is 2 hours away.
We quickly discovered that Santiago  (and the rest of Chile, we hear) is pretty expensive – the accommodation (which isn’t great so far!) , food and activities are all twice as much as we have been paying to date.  You can find cheap food at stalls and markets, but forget eating out on our budget.  In fact this is how we discovered one of the local foods here - “The Completo” is available everywhere and is cheap.  It’s a hotdog filled with chopped tomatoes, onions, avocado and mayonnaise.   We have also enjoyed "porritos" a chillean version of bean jar.
No one here speaks English!   I (Shelly) have been forced to use my school learnt Spanish everywhere and its not really the same as they teach you at school!  There is a lot of slang in Chilean and they speak so fast I haven’t a clue what they are saying most of the time.  If you really concentrate, you can pick up on one keyword in their sentence and basically invent in your head what it is they are trying to say to you.  It seems to be working, as I have had full blown conversations with the locals in my broken Spanish (who knows what we are really talking about though).   Dom’s Spanish is really coming on too, he has been practicing since we started travelling, and just as well really,  as we are definitely going to need it here!
We have also found Chilean people to be very friendly and helpful so far.  On the public transport, at the shops, when we are lost, when we don’t understand what they are saying or when they don’t understand us (which is just about all the time really…) , they are still polite and smile.
Apart from the bad weather we have had a good start here and we really look forward to exploring Chile.  We have decided to head North after this, as Chile is so long we don’t have the time (or the money) to explore the South too, which is a great shame, but South America is massive so we just cant do it all!