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Since i crossed the date line i landed in Santiago after a 12 hour flight before id set off which was a bit strange, it made wednesday a 40hr day i think it was. id forgotten slash coudltn be bothered to fill the immigration cards in on teh plane so had to do them when i got to customs. there was no queue so i went to the table before hand in the hope id make it while there was still no obne there. not the case, i reckon 6-10 jumbo jets landed just after me and i managed to get behind them all, andrew then rings me to say hes still in the airport, where am i, he may as well wait. just as he dopes this a school of kids gets in front of me as well. and in true andrew style decides to tell me how quick it is getting through customs, no, no its not!
eventually got through and he was there waiting with his pack that pat prepared, ha. its ace, havent had to wrory about anything since i got here. its all booked, accomadtion sorted in each place for the night we get there, airport transfers, its luxury!
got to the hostel which was a pretty standard place really, somewhere to sleep and had a good atmosphere, plenty of people about and they said they did transport up the mountains for skiin/boarding.
bought a couple of litre bottles of beer for 80p and headed off down the street to see what was about, got 10m before one of the workers fromt eh hostel said you go straight to jail for drinking on the street, turned around and went back to the hostel to finish them. good start.
santiago isnt really the nicest of citys, its big, busy, and there is some nice buildigns and places but they seem to get swamped in all the old and drab places. taxis everywhere though and dirt cheap. the traffic is horrific, stray dogs everywhere (but surprisingly healthy and very friendly). they dont seem to bother anyone, they just run after you like pets, play with each other, sleep in odd places or run after cars barking and snapping at the tyres and headlights.
language - oh dear, no espanol! may aswell be from the moon. not that its wrong, we shoud speak their language i suppose but you wouldnt belive how little english is spoken here. even the poorest peasants in asia spoke some form of tourist english but these guys dont have a clue and they dont care because they dont need to. we�re on their continent so speak their lingo, well with me and andrew and no phrase book it doenst work that well.
ive had three months of being called Jerr and people not understanding my accent so i think its got significantly plainer, even to the point ive noticed andrews accent when hes talking to foreigners (int it, ant it, etc.) mostly english speaking europeans who think we�re speaking a different language when we talk to each other.
andrew has developed a new form of speech. speak english the way someone who cant speak the language does. so you get broken englsih words in a spanish/french accent with no grammar a raise in the pitch at the end, the odd french word and an increase in volume when no one understands. pretty funny but it does actually work sometimes (although i dont know why two has become deux when everyone speaks spanish). was a bit of joke though the other night when he kept speaking the same way to me. think he forgot i can actually speak english.
so we booked to go skiing the next day and headed out to find the clubs, apparantly most places are shut ona wednesday. a big group fromt eh hsotel were going out but we got bored fo waitign so we took ourselves to the area where we had been told to go. since we couldnt communicate anything to the taxi driver other than �le disqotheque, BelleVista� where we ended up in Belle Vista was all down to luck. nto that much luck in teh end. we found two clubs, one with a wierd fat drag queen and another with go go dancers and a wierd porn room downstairs. we made fairly quickly exits (well, a beer in each) and then got a taxi back tot he hostel to find out where the big group had gone. foudn them a ta club called clandestine just round the corner from where we had been. but its a ring the doorbell type place so we wouldtn have found it anyway. turned out to be a pretty good night and we even blagged a free lift of a chilean guy.
with pretty much no sleep we headed off skiin. turned out to be a huge effort to get there, the guy doing it was from england and only doen it one before, i.e doesnt knwo his way round teh city which resulted in us getting their at 1pm. no gondola up the top from the resort type thing. its a two hour treck up a mountain road with chains on the wheels since they are covered in snow. very impressive views, you can see the whole of santiago int eh flat between the mountains and the layer of smog that hangs over it.
anyway, the skiin was great and was well worth the effort to get there. infact, i didint even fall once, ive just thought about that. maybe i wasnt being risky enough?
the plan was to go back and sleep for a few hours and then go out. both fell asleep and didnt wake up till after 1, even though we probably could ave made it out the bed won and we stayed in.
this meant we could get up and see a bit of the city. it was pretty horrific weather but we made it around, went up the fenicular railway to the hill that overlooks the city. stopped at the national zoo half way up, what a mess that is. felt guilty for giving the place money to keep it open but whats done is done.
by the time we got top the top the weather was that bad we took a few pics of teh city and then rushed back down ont eh cable car, forgetting to go and see the jesus statue, oops! the city is huge, sprawls out across what looks like a bit of a valley and then as you come down the cable car does teh same thing off round the corner. i think the population is about 6 million but there are next to no skyscrapers in comparison to other citites which i guess makes it look alot bigger.
when we got back we were pretty annoyed to fuind that the ski trip had gone again today even though we were told it wasnt. but it was probably a good thing int eh end. there had been a blizzard so nobody got to ski and they had to be excorted down the mountain as cars and buses had gone over the edge meaning they didnt get back until after 9pm with no skiing time at all.
me and andrew took ourselves off again that night back to teh original strip we were taken to. this time it was busy and evrything was open. the locals loved us, some because they wanted drinks , some beacuse they loved all things manchester and some just becuase they were nice.
we made it into just about every place on the strip for a drink and then moved on before meeting a couple that the girl spoke good english and they took us up toa club which i remember being really good but thats about it, they gave us contact details to take us to a party the next day. got back to the hostel and chatted to the receptionist for quite a while which more or less left the day for sleeping.
some new people moved into our room that night so together with a couple of people we´d met since ended up being a fairly big group of us. went next door to a really nice restaraunt, all got a good meal and drinks and then one of the irish guys decideds he paying for everyone as well as a glass of pisco sours to finish it off. not entirely sure why but lets not disagree. so we all got a free meal, evryone was merry and it was down to me and andrew to decide where were going. enede up going to clandestine again since it was pretty mixed for everyone music wise and loads of locals to mix with but a few backpackers aswell. met some interesting characters, and a really good night. left at half fourish to go straight to the airport and catch the plane.
andrew was still drunk so developed his spanglish accent pretty strongly and we were both missing an exit card which didint help. eventually they let us through but didint seem inpressed we didint have the original (neither of us were given them in teh first place belive it or not, we hadnt lost them!)
boarded the plane pretty tired by now and then had a full blown argument about who had the window seat and set off to Buenos Aires!
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