A final Post: Santiago

So it's over and we are back. Back to work, back to life. Back to normalcy. Unfortunately things didn't go that smoothly this morning. After celebrating that our car batteries were not flat yesterday, Brandon promptly (and accidentally) left my headlights on overnight. Stress and calling road side assist ensued. I eventually got to work.

I realised too late that I had forgotten to cover our first few days in Santiago, so I will do them all in this post.

After out flight from Calama we met up with Carson for a late (very late) dinner. The next morning we slept in and then had to check out and check back in again because we had to book two different rooms. We left after they told us our room wasn't ready at check in time, and went out to search for ski options. There were none near Santiago. Luckily, Carson was very keen for the snow and found Pucon was still open. Later in the day we caught the metro to the bus station to buy our tickets and managed to find dulche de leche ice cream, which was fantastic.

The next day we slept in again and then raced out to get up San Cristobal Hill to the lookout over Santiago. The fenicular is very cheap up to the top and it is a great view over the city. Ignoring the smog that is. Even though it was a super hurried trip to the top and back again, it was a pretty awesome view and well worth the effort. We met up with the English people for lunch again and ended up having 'Peruvian' for lunch, after walking around for an hour or so. We decided we had time to catch the metro to Los Dominicos to the Artisan markets with them, and managed to find them with a little bit of help from a local. They are actually really close to the metro station. None of us bought anything, partly because most of it we didn't want. The only thing I did want was a two sided beanie that was far too expensive. 20 bucks, no way! After we got back into town we went back and packed up our stuff at the hostel. We had to collect our washing from them too, because their dryer had broken, it was much later than expected. For ease of movement we just got a taxi to Carson's before we all left to get public transport to the bus station with all out stuff. That night was our overnight bus ride to Pucon. It was actually a pretty good trip; we both slept a fair bit and got off the bus feeling half decent.

After our trip up the coast and before our leaving forever, we had a few days in Santiago to recover. They were great, and lazy. We rented a small self contained apartment and cooked ourselves most meals, leaving very little reason to leave the apartment. We went to the "cheap" markets in the town centre and bought the last of our souvenirs, including a two-sided beanie that was less than $10 and nicer than the one from the Artisan markets. We caught up with Carson again, packed and left. Just as a side note, it was an awful flight home. Only because the plane was filled with thoughtless people who came to the back of the plane to stretch their legs, talk and repeatedly open the windows near us to see endless ocean... I ended up making myself a blanket fort of rage to try and escape the frequent bursts of bright sunlight... Please think of the people around you next time you're on an intercontinental flight.