Santiago to Puerto Madryn

Puerto Madryn, Argentina – 6/02/10

Our 3 weeks in Santiago in January was very unexpected. Like what Naomi said in her blog, we initially only planned to stay for 3-4 days before migrating to the South. But after our little incident in the supermarket in our second day, we realised that learning Spanish is paramount here in South America.

What happened in the supermarket? We bought a bottle of vino, discovered that the price wasn't right and wanted to get an exchange. It proved way too hard as NO ONE in the whole supermarket spoke any English. As I spoke no Spanish whatsoever at the time, me and the three customer service ladies resorted to using the universal language – sign language.

I pushed the vino across to the customer service lady and crossed my hands and said "Me, No". And then pointed to her and back to me and rubbed my thumb and second finger together and repeated "Pesos, Pesos". I repeated the process a couple of times whilst they continued to speak to me in very fast Spanish. As none of us understood each other, we (and the local spectators) just all ended up bursting into laughter. After a couple of very stressful yet hilarious attempts, they finally understood me and gave me my money back.

Spanish is such a hard language. It is similar to English, but so different in so many ways! It's actually very frustrating to learn. In our 3 weeks of school, we were being treated like 3 year old kids and had to learn absolutely everything beginning with the alphabet.

I was so frustrated with the all-Spanish class in the first couple of days. I think my most used words in class were "no entiendo" which literally translates into "I don't understand". Naomi was laughing at me in the first couple of days when I was grilled by the teachers to say things in Spanish and couldn't understand much. But good days never last long – it was her turn after a couple of days.

It definitely wasn't an easy learning process. It was in fact a steep learning curve for both of us.

On our first day as we knew NO Spanish at all, the teacher asked us "¿Como te llamas tu?" which meant "How do you call yourself?". She even wrote it on the whiteboard for us. Naomi, always being a smartarse, whispered in my ear that the teacher was asking me whether I liked the animal llamas, as obviously the two words are spelt the same. So I just answered 'Si, Si, love llamas'. Everyone in the class nearly just died from laughing. Ha! Ha! Very funny. And thanks Naomi!

After 3 weeks of learning basic Spanish we were still not good at all. In fact, we still suck big time. But at least we can understand a little of what people say. We have been trying to listening to podcasts and learning by ourselves since.

Santiago was a nice city overall. I met a lot of nice people through the language school. I went out a couple of nights with them. As Spanish was often the "common" language, I had to try to make up sentences mixed with Spanish and English and hopedthat people could understand.

During our three weeks in Santiago, we visited Vina Del Mar and Valparaiso. They both around 2 hours from Santiago by bus and both on the coast. Valparaiso was actually quite a unique pretty city with many hills with Spanish houses on them. It was also well known for its seafood and chorrillanas. Chorrillanas were awesome. It is such a hangover food. I am surprised they haven't introduced it to Australia yet. I think Naomi already talked about it in her previous blog. Maybe it could be my new business venture after I get back home :)

Pucon, Chile

Pucon was another nice town. The Volcan Villarica climb was quite nice. It wasn't too easy but definitely accessible. Sorry Angus, you would be out of action as some parts on the ice were quite steep and the height could be a big problem for you mate. I was a little disappointed that we could not see the lava underneath from the top. Because it is quite an active volcano, our guide told us that sometimes the lava rises so high that you could see it from the mouth. The view from the top was nothing but spectacular though.

We discovered that even the bus fares can be bargained for in Chile. We were told by some travellers that they got on a full cama (180 degree seats) bus for a cheaper price than our lower class bus. Apparently they just rocked up to the station and asked them whether they could go on for a discounted price. As I am very very price conscious when I am travelling, I was so jealous of their luck and thankful of their tips! Next time.....there's always next time!

It always pays to find the cheapest deal. Naomi is really good looking for bargains on the internet with her clothes/shoes shopping. But she often just get stressed out about finding the best deal in our travel. If it was me, a saving of $5 on a ticket was still a huge saving, especially as I currently have no real income. I am trying to train her to think of everything in terms of how many pairs of shoes those savings could turn into :)

We met this American girl Hailey who ended up travelling with us for the next week or so there.

Valdivia, Chile

Not much to report here really. There was a German beer festival going on while we were there. But it cost $10US to get in though. I also heard mix reports about the festival. So in the end, we just got a couple bottles of vino for $3 each and watched tennis on TV. Hey, although they were cheapo, they weren't too bad.

My seafood lunch was seriously sooo delicious. Naomi not only got a little food envy, she practically ate a fork-full of her food, a fork-full of my food etc. I was a little disappointed how quickly my lunch disappeared....

This was where we say goodbye to Chile temporarily and headed over to Bariloche in Argentina – home of cheap but excellent steak and vino.

Bariloche, Argentina

I was overwhelmed by the people in Bariloche. And by this, I am referring to the amount of tourists that were there. I felt like I was back in China again surrounded by millions of people. I didn't really like how touristy the city was, but I absolutely loved the picturesque lakes and the surrounding mountains of the Andes.

It wasn't as BIG as Naomi described, it was just a LOT of tourists – many RICH tourists.

We ran into the American Hailey here again and hung out for the next couple of days.

We spent a day doing the bike riding around the lake. Although it was really hard work going up the hills, the scenery was breathtaking. I never thought this was Argentina. I felt like I was riding around in New Zealand or Switzerland (although I have never been to Switzerland). With some massive pristine blue lakes that you could literally look down tens of metres to the bottom.

I still can't believe that we are in Patagonia now. It was such a mystery place that I have heard so much about. And here I am!

Oh yes, we did have our first AWESOME Argentinian steak the first night we got in to Bariloche. It was like $10/kg for eye fillet. We topped it off with a nice bottle of vino and a fresh salad.

We went to an Irish pub with Hailey and her Irish friend Hayley the night Hailey left us. I was so disappointed that there was not many people there even at 12:30am. We were later told that it probably only gets busy there from 1am! I felt like such a grandpa!!! I don't know how people ever get anything done here in Latin America by going to dinner at 10pm and go out for drinks at 1am and go home and get up for work at 8:30am! Although "apparently" siestas don't exist in Chile and Argentina, people must just fall asleep at work to recover for another night of action! Hey Meow, if you are reading this, you should come and work over here. You will love it here!

Naomi really missed out on the views from Cerro Compania. It was such a pity that she lost her pants. I would be fuming too about it. But I had such a nice time up there eating my lunch and enjoyed the 360 view of Bariloche and the surrounding lakes and snow-capped mountains.

From there, we debated about whether to take the legendary Ruta 40 (route 40) following the Andes and go all the way to El Chaltan/El Calafate or Ruta 3 along the Atlantic Coast. Ruta 40 would have taken us 3D2N and partially on gravel. It apparently is also one of the most remote roads in the world and runs from the Bolivian border all the way to the bottom of Patagonia. They even sell Ruta 40 T-shirts in all the tourist shops.

We decided to go via Ruta 3 on Naomi's insistence. A 14 hour bus ride later, we arrived in Puerto Madryn.

Puerto Madryn, Argentina

Nothing special about the city itself. It's on a bay with some sort of a beach. It was sandy I guess, if that's your definition of a "beach". But the areas around Puerto Madryn was just amazing.

Naomi already blogged about them, so I will skip the details here.

We met this French guy called Benjamin in our hostel and he just happened to travel with us for the next 2 days to different sights around the city. He was such a strange fellow. He pretended that he couldn't speak much English at all to people in the hostels and on the tours that we went on. He even told the tour guide that he only spoke French or Spanish. Knowing us and our lack of Spanish skills (and as he knew no one else), he often whispered in us in ENGLISH and hoped that no one else could hear him. He even told us that he worked in Australia as a rafting guide for a few months, and yet he apparently speaks NO English. Hmmmmm??????

Yes, the penguinos were sooooo cute! I have never seen that many penguins in my life. Our pictures didn't turn out that perfectly as both our cameras were out of battery and I had to take the photos from my 2MP phone.

Some baby penguins were following me wherever I went for a little while. Maybe they were also expecting me to regurgitate my lunch for them too. Not happening!

Rio Gallegos

Such a boring town this one. Absolutely nothing here. Naomi did the right thing by staying indoors while I went out on the Sunday that we got there to scope around and check out "sights". After about 3 hours of walking in hurricane-speed wind and the cold, I went into a colonial museum. That was nice with some old relics from the town back in the 19^th Century. But was it worth the effort battling the wind and the cold???

We decided to go to El Calafate as the bus to Ushuaia was full until 2 days later.

One year on....

Well, it's now been exactly one year since we jetted off from the Gold Coast. Who would have guessed that one year later we would be in Patagonia??? Not us, that's for sure. Sometimes we still look at each other and say "I just can't believe we're in....".

People we meet in hostels always ask us whether we get homesick. Well, for me the answer is yes, sometimes. I tend to think about home most days (especially since I'm still trying to work out exactly what I'm going to do with myself when I get back) but mostly just in the usual way - wondering how the pets are and what people are doing. The only times I really felt like I wished I could go home were during my birthday and over Christmas. Luckily this usually only lasts for a week or so and then I get distracted by some aspect of travelling and realise I'm having fun again.

One of the hard things about travelling long term is always feeling like you have to be "making the most of it". If you have an off day and don't feel like doing anything you can tend to feel like you are wasting time - surely you could have seen at least 3 churches, a few museums and a glacier instead of just reading all day! You have to keep reminding yourself that it's ok to have a day off every now and again.

By now have gotten pretty good with watching our money. Most days we don't have to worry about wasting money (except for me when I get near any kind of market) as we are used to just spending on the essentials. Obviously to travel for 1 year + we have to make some sacrifices but it's also good not to get too hung up on money, otherwise travelling is no fun at all.

We've kept a record of pretty much everything we've spent and I thought everyone might be interested to know a few stats about my expenditure along the way.

In 365 days my total expenditure was AU$17603.49. This reflects pretty much everything I bought along the way, including souvenirs (even the ones in New York) and all flights purchased after we left Australia (including the big one from India to Chile). It doesn't include my original one way flight to Malaysia and the few bank fees we I have been charged along the way (or anything sorted out before we left like gear, vaccinations etc). Oh, and it doesn't include some internet shopping that I may or may not have done since we left (this doesn't count as the goods were sent home to Australia not to me overseas). Paul's total expenditure is a little bit less than mine as he didn't buy as many souvenirs and obviously didn't spend 5 days shopping in New York! This means that on average I have spent just under AU$49 per day since we started out (we originally budgeted for around $50 per day so this means I am still within the budget - woohoo).

[Speaking of bank fees, for anyone thinking of an extended trip overseas, try to find an Australian savings account that doesn't charge you fees for using a foreign ATM or a currency conversion fee. We did this and it really saves so much money in the long run].

Everyone would probably expect New York to have been the most expensive destination and it was, but only by a whisker at just under AU$55 per day. Believe it or not Cambodia was my second most expensive destination coming in at just a few cents a day less than New York (having Paul's birthday there might have had something to do with that). Our second stint in China (including Tibet) was the third most expensive on a day to day basis at just over AU$53 per day. India was by far the cheapest country at just over AU$23 per day (and the only country where I managed to spend less than AU$30 per day. Nepal came in a distant second at around AU$33 per day. Still, considering that these averages include ALL our expenses (food, accommodation, trains, buses and flights, tours and souvenirs, entry fees etc) I still can't believe how economical travelling long term can really be.

All in all we've had a fabulous trip with no major dramas. Although sometimes life on the road (and living out of a backpack) can seem pretty mundane, when we look back at everything we've seen and done we're still amazed.

As for what's next, as usual we don't have much idea beyond the next couple of days. At the moment we're in El Calafate checking out the amazing glaciers in the area. We have loose plans to check out El Chalten a short distance to the north and then take a bus or a plane to Ushaia in the very south of Argentina (just because when you're already this far south you just have to go the whole way). After that, Buenos Aires and the north of Argentina, perhaps the north of Chile, Peru and Ecuador. But who really knows?????

No matter where we end up, fingers crossed that the next leg of the trip can be just as amazing as the past year....

Weird fact about Chile and Argentina

Every time I go to the supermarket in Chile or Argentina there´s one thing that always mystifies me.  Just why, in a couple of countries that love beef and dairy products so much, is there never any fresh milk in the supermarket??????????  Especially since there is so much cheese and yoghurt in the fridge?  I just refuse to buy longlife milk in a country where the electricity is actually reliable.  It just seems wrong.

No matter how hard I try, I can´t come up with any plausible reason for the lack of fresh milk.  Hmmmm.....

Mary Poppins Pack

I swear sometimes my backpack seems like it should belong to Mary Poppins!  No matter how much I put in there, it always seems to fit inside.  For example, I thought my bag was pretty full when I left Australia but I only had two pairs of shoes (one of which, my thongs, I was wearing).  Now I have five pairs of shoes (one of which I also wear most of the time), yet I still seem to have all the rest of the stuff that I left Australia with (and even more).

This is very strange to me but just further proof that I have the best backpack in the world (especially since, with all this stuff crammed inside it, it hasn´t once busted a zip or broken anywhere).

Bariloche, Puerto Madryn - Agentina

From Valdivia we spent the day on a bus crossing the border into Argentina.  The good thing about Chile and Argentina is that we don't need a visa for either (although we did get slugged with a $60 fee when we flew into Santiago - luckily crossing into Argentina by land was free).  Our first port of call in Argentina was Bariloche. 

 

We were expecting Bariloche to be a bit smaller - it turned  to be a big city but it was in very pretty location.  It was very touristy and since it is the middle of high season the main streets were crowded with tourists at all hours of the day and night (and given that Argentinians don't eat dinner until about 10.30pm this meant that the streets were crowded pretty much 24/7).  Bariloche is reknowned for its chocolate and we may have fallen victim to one or two of the chocolate shops littering the main streets during our stay!

 

Bariloche is technically within the bounds of Patagonia (or at least according to itself) and is surrounded by a bunch of pretty lakes and mountains.  Some of the mountains have patches of snow on them.  One of the main tourist things to do is take a bike around the circuito chico which is a circuit of about 35km around some of the most picturesque roads in the area and we headed out to do this on our first full day.  We ended up taking about 5 hours to complete the circuit as we kept stopping all the time to take photos (yes and to rest!) but you can do it in just a few hours if you are fit enough (and crazy enough!).  There were quite a few hills which were hard going but the views from the top were great.

 

The next day we checked out the town a little bit as we were exhausted from the bike ride - not much to report.  The day after I had to stay at the hostel and do another insurance claim as the laundromat where we took our clothes to get washed lost my hiking pants!  Laundry in Chile and Argentina is simply daylight robbery.  It costs us around 30 pesos to have our clothes washed and dried which is nearly AU$10!!!!!!!  And on top of that they go and lose my clothes???????  It is very frustrating as none of the hostels have washing machines or even anywhere to hang your clothes if you do a hand wash.  Aaargh!

 

The other annoying thing about Argentina is that every single ATM we have found charges us a fee for withdrawing money.  It's the first country where we just haven't been able to find an ATM that doesn't charge the fee.  The fee is almost AU$5 for one withdrawal and the maximum you can get out is about AU$300 in one go.  Soooooo frustrating.

 

Anyway, while I was doing my insurance claim, Paul went out to climb Cerro Campanario, a small mountain close to town which had an amazing view.  We hadn't been able to decide where to go after Bariloche.  We could either head down Ruta 40, the highway down the interior of Argentina which ends up at the glaciers of El Calafate in the south.  However it was a 33 hour bus ride and we had heard that there wasn't much to see along the way except mile upon mile of windswept Patagonian tundra.  The other option was to take Ruta 3 down the east coast and stop a couple of places to see all the wildlife before ending up at El Calafate.  In the end we made the decision to take Ruta 3 so from Bariloche we jumped on an overnight bus to Puerto Madryn on the east coast.

 

The town of Puerto Madryn was not that nice - it was windy and dusty most of the time.  But we had two fantastic days there checking out all the wildlife in the area.  The first day there we went on a tour to visit Peninsula Valdes which is basically a huge nature reserve.  There we saw sea lions, elephant seals, magellanic penguins, a type of Argentinian deer called a guanaco, a couple of foxes and even an armadillo!  There were so many sea lion pups it was amazing.  They were all over the place, all lying on top of each other.  Some of them were really small and it was hard to believe that they could survive very long on the beach by themselves.  We did see a couple of dead pups too which was sad.

The only things we didn´t see was orcas - apparently they come in close to shore to try to feed on the sea lion pups but they couldn´t have been too hungry that day.  It was a long day with a lot of driving on dusty roads but the wildlife was great.  The next day we headed south out of Puerto Madryn on another tour.  Our first stop was to do a boat trip to see the Commerson´s dolphin in one of the bays south of Puerto Madryn.  We only saw about 4 dolphins but it was still pretty awesome as they were black and white and very pretty.  After that we kept going south to this huge colony of Magellanic penguins.  It was the most penguins I had ever seen in one spot - apparently there can be nearly 1 million there sometimes. 

 

At this time of year all the baby penguins are shedding their baby feathers and getting their adult feathers.  There were so many babies all over the place, most of them were squawking to be fed.  Some of them were all by themselves while their mothers and fathers were off fishing.  Some of the babies still had all their baby feathers and they were huge - way bigger than the adults.  Some of the other babies had almost lost all their baby feathers and just had some still around their head which looked funny. 

 

The penguins make nests on the coast up to 1km inland from the sea.  The path went right through the middle of the colony and you could see many penguins in their nests by the side of the path and even crossing the path in front and behind you.  There were a couple of raised walkways designed to let the penguins walk through underneath and there were heaps of penguins camped out under there to escape the sun.  I have never been so close to penguins in my entire life.  It was really amazing.  When we got down to the beach we couldn't believe our eyes - there were just so many penguins on the beach.  There were some just swimming around in the shallow water and heaps of fat, fluffy babies sitting on the rocks.  It was pretty cute.

 

After Puerto Madryn we headed south again, this time to Rio Gallegos - another overnight bus ride.  Luckily the buses in Chile and Argentina are really comfortable - if you go cama class it's like being on the plane as they give you food and a blanket and everything.  We arrived in Rio Gallegos this morning and as there isn't much to see we're heading out tomorrow.  At first we didn't know where to go - to El Calafate to visit the glaciers or south to Ushuaia to the end of the world (practically).  We eventually decided to go to El Calafate and El Chalten on the bus and to try to catch a flight to Ushuaia later.  We'll see how that goes...

Valdivia, Chile

After Pucon we headed south to check out the town of Valdivia.  Valdivia was another pretty town - this time on a river and not too far from the coast.

Our first day there we went to check out the beach with our friend Hayley who we met in Pucon.  We took the local bus to Niebla which is the closest beach to Valdivia.  Unfortunately, although we got dropped off just 100 metres or so from the beach, we misunderstood the bus guy (a frequent occurrence for us) and thought that he told us that we had to walk up the hill to get there.  We slogged up the road (it was a really sunny day although the breeze was cool) and when we got to the top we could see a beach but it didn't really look like there was much there - it was really small with no town or anything next to it.

We tried to get down there but there didn't seem to be any kind of public access.  Eventually we asked someone and he told us that we were actually halfway to the next beach up the coast!  We eventually decided to just keep going to the next beach as he assured us there were plenty of restaurants serving nice seafood.  Luckily it wasn't as far away as it seemed and we got there after about 10 - 15 minutes of walking.

 

The beach itself was nothing that special - the sand was brown and there was a big concrete wall built along it.  But the coastline itself was quite picturesque and there were some colourful fishing boats moored in the water.  The water was absolutely freezing but by the mid-afternoon there were quite a few families chilling out on the beach - some kids were even swimming.  We hung out a little bit before deciding that we were ready for some lunch. 

We picked a little seafood restaurant right near the water and ordered our food.  It was quite expensive for us considering our budget but compared to Australia it was probably really cheap.  I had "poor man's fish" which is essentially fish with fried onions and eggs on top, served with chips (a nice variation on traditional fish and chips).  Paul had the most delicious piece of fish (a type called corvina) served with this marinara sauce with all this other seafood in it.  I had a little bit of food envy when I tasted his food.

After that we lazed around for a bit longer before heading back to town - all in all a nice day at the beach.

The next day we just checked out the town - the highlight for me was seeing the sealions down in the river.  They come right up to town and just chill out on the banks of the river right in the centre of town.  It was very strange seeing these huge sealions right next to where people were kayaking in the river.  That day was pretty chilled out as we got ready to head over the border to Bariloche in Argentina.

Pucon - Chile

Originally we had thought that we would probably head north from Santiago - checking out northern Chile and then crossing into Peru.  But once we were in Santiago we met a heap of travellers who had come from Patagonia and we eventually decided that since it was the right season for Patagonia we should probably just head south first, seeing a bit of southern Chile and then crossing into Argentina to see Patagonia (the reason for crossing into Argentina was simply money - we heard that Patagonia was more expensive on the Chilean side).

 

The first stop on our trip south was Pucon (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puc%C3%B3n).  Pucon is a really pretty town on the edge of a lake and from most spots in town you get a great view of the volcano Villarica in the distance.  The volcano is active and climbing it was the main thing on our agenda for Pucon.  There is tonnes of other stuff to do around Pucon, including visiting some hot springs, lounging on the beach by the lake, visiting some national parks in the area etc but I think most tourists come to climb the volcano.

 

You have to climb the volcano on a tour - pretty much everyone in town offers one.  We just ended up going through our hostel which was fine.  We had to start off from the hostel at 6.00am for a 7.00am start.  The volcano is about 2800m high in total and you start climbing at around 1400m.  For the first part of the climb you can either take a cable car ride or climb up this gravelly section of the mountain which takes around 45 mins - 1 hour.  The cable car ride was about US$10 so being cheapskates we ended up electing to climb.  It was a pretty hard slog up that section and I think a couple of people in the group were wishing they had taken the cable car!  After that first section the rest was all on snow.  Although we had an ice axe with us we basically just used it for balance - we didn't really walk on ice at any point.  Still it was pretty steep in some parts and the snow got pretty deep - a couple of times my feet slipped in the snow and my heart started pounding - the slide down the side of the volcano looked pretty steep (although in actual fact I probably wouldn't have gone more than a couple of metres if I fell).  We also crossed a mini-crevasse which was pretty cool.

 

We had about 4 or 5 good rests on the way up and we reached the top around 5 hours after we started out.  I felt like I really only started to get my rhythm right near the top - then we where there! Unfortunately we couldn't see any lava as it was too far down the big crater in the centre of the volcano but we could hear it swishing around down there and we could certainly smell the stench of the sulphur fumes spewing out the top.  The view from the top was amazing - we could see Pucon in the distance and a number of other snow covered volcanoes around the place.  We stayed up top for about an hour and then headed back down.

 

On the way up we had seen these big channels in the snow heading straight down the mountain.  I was freaking out when I realised that these channels were how we were going to get off the volcano - sliding down on our butts!  On the way up the volcano seemed so steep I was sure I could never go down one of these chutes without whizzing right off the edge of the volcano and dying!  The first few chutes I was pretty tentative - digging my ice axe right into the snow to slow me down.  But I soon got the hang of it and was swishing down as fast as I could.  It was so much fun although on the way down you would collect a lot of snow and even though we had waterproof gear on I still got soaked and my shoes filled with water (luckily I rented shoes - Paul wore his own and I think they are still wet).  The chutes nearer to the bottom of the mountain were a lot less steep - for these we all had to sit in a big train to get enough momentum to carry us down the slope.  At one point we picked a chute that crossed the path of footprints that everyone had made coming up that morning - everyone in the train had to take their turn to bump over the footprints and it probably would have looked really funny if anyone was watching.

 

We ended up getting down the volcano in about 1.5 hours. We were both exhausted but really glad that we did it.  The rest of our time in Pucon we just ended up chilling out.  We had come into Pucon on a night bus and it always seems to take us a few days to fully recover after trying to sleep on a night bus (even though this time it was a cushy Pullman bus and not some rattletrap in south-east Asia).  So, from Pucon we headed south again to the town of Valdivia...

 

 

Santiago, Chile

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.....