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Our South American adventure begins in Chile. Flying across the timezone was a very strange start to our time here, and living Wednesday twice was not good for our jet lag! But we´ve recovered and managed to see some of the sites of Santiago.
Our first taste of Chilean food was the BBQ in the hostel - for $3 we ate as much delicious meat and spicy sausages cooked over coals as we could manage and drank lots of local beer while I made a fool of myself trying to play pool with jetlag (not a good look for me).
We spent a day wandering around the city and taking in the sites, like the changing of the guard at the Presidential Palace, the Mercado Central and the Cathedral which was fabulous. Santiago feels very European as a city with wide avenues but I´m afraid the river doesn´t compare to the Seine or the Danube, it´s filthy and dark brown in colour because all of the untreated waste is released into it.
Then we headed for Cerro San Cristobal, a mount on the north side of the city which has a statue of the Virgin Mary on top to watch over the people of Santiago. We took the funiculare up to the top where there´s basically a church laid out in front of the statue where they have masses. It felt very peaceful up there looking over all of Santiago. The view from on high gives you a much better idea of the size of the city as it just seems to sprawl out in front of you as far as the eye can see with the Andes flanking it in the background with a fog hanging over it.
One of the best bits of Santiago was Bellavista - a really colourful area with huge murals outside restaurants and bars. We took some time out to absorb the atmosphere over some local beers and food. It´s a hard life!
Instead of spending more time in the urban sprawl we decided to spend the next day at Concha y Torro vineyard, the makers of Casillero del Diablo wine (a big favourite which literally means Cellar of the Devil). We tasted about 8 different wines and took a tour through the vineyard and the cellars - a great way to spend a sunny day.
We´re heading for the coast now to a town called Valparaiso to make the most of the sunshine and hopefully swim in the other side of the Pacific Ocen.
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