We ended up spending 3 weeks in Santiago. We didn't originally plan this but after 2 days we realised that almost no one spoke English and a sudden urge to learn Spanish struck us. Luckily there was a well regarded Spanish school about 3 blocks down the road from our hostel where we signed on for a 3 week course.
The first week was so stressful as we didn't know ANY Spanish at all and the class had a couple of people who already seemed like they knew quite a bit of Spanish. It was really frustrating for me struggling to learn as I felt like I was thrown in the deep end - we didn't even start with basics such as counting or pronouncing the alphabet. However, the second and third weeks were heaps better - we had great classmates and we really loved our teachers. At the end we kind of wanted to stay but we thought we should probably see a bit of the country. Of course, after only 3 weeks our knowledge of Spanish was still incredibly limited but it was rather expensive to learn in Santiago so we told ourselves that we would do another course later in a cheaper country.
Santiago itself was a nice city to live in. The area where we stayed had a lot of nice old buildings and was really close to the subway and the centre of town. Our hostel was nice and we ended up meeting quite a few other travellers over the 3 weeks. On two of the weekends we went to Valparaiso, a town a couple of hours north of Santiago. It was a really cool town with a deep harbour and surrounded by hills which were covered in these really cool, colourful houses. We went for a few walks and bus rides up into the hills and it was really interesting - there are all these escalator things to help people get up and down the hills. There was heaps of lovely seafood there and it was heaps cooler than Santiago with the sea breezes so all in all it was a nice place to escape to for the weekend. Our other favourite thing about it was this traditional dish called chorrillanas which we had there. We ordered it at a pub and it came with two beers - it is hot chips topped with fried onion, sliced steak and sausage and fried eggs. It is basically a heart attack on a plate but since then we've been craving it. It always comes for 1, 2 or even 4 people - even the dish for 1 person is huge!
The Chilean food was a lot of meat and potatos. One of the main things we would see the Santiago professionals eating at lunch time was a quarter barbeque chicken and chips. There's also tonnes of steak around (one of the most popular variations comes with chips and fried eggs). The red wine was really good and really cheap - it was so nice to finally have a nice glass of wine after so long travelling around Asia where the wine was either tragic or way too expensive. Then again, the beer is not as cheap here....
Compared to Asia, the cost of accommodation (and everything else really) came as a bit of a shock. Suddenly we were staying in a dorm and it was costing us US$12 a night for each person whereas in Asia that $12 would have bought both of us a double with a tv and ensuite! Eating out was also expensive, but thankfully most hostels have kitchens so we have been managing to eat quite cheap if we cook for ourselves. It makes a change to be shopping and cooking food instead of eating out for breakfast, lunch and dinner. In some ways it is nice as it allows us to meet a lot of people in the hostel but sometimes it is a pain when we are tired.
The weather in Chile was lovely the whole time we were there - there was only one day when a few drops of rain fell, although some of the days in Santiago were quite hot and the subway didn't have any aircon.
After finishing up at the Spanish school, we headed south to Pucon and Valdivia, before crossing the border to Argentina. More to come on that later.....
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