Everything according to plan.
The arrival in Santiago was business as usual. Transfer via bus to hostel. Get WiFi details. Wait for the check-in. Quick tour around the block to get some water and a taste of the relaxed life in South America, a city in bright and warm summer light. The omnipresent street art. The stray dogs. The colourful houses. The parks and busy streets. The old run-down houses and new cold glass monsters. The noise of the cars and the smog. The toilets where you cannot throw the paper into but use a waste bin instead.
After having seen a lot of cities in the past, Santiago seemed strangely alien to me. Like I never had been there eight months ago. But as soon as Axel and I came across the Bellavista main road with its student pubs and restaurants and tourist traps, it all came back to me.
We both were rather exhausted and didn’t sleep too much on the planes, so we promised ourselves to take it real slow during the first days. After walking through the centre for a while, passing by the places I remembered from the last tip-based city tour, eating good ice-cream and often resting on benches for people-watching, we returned to the hostel but not without grabbing a couple of beers.
Yes, Santiago might not be a beauty but there’re always ways to have fun. Like drinking. Like meeting travellers at the hostel. Like refreshing the memory on the funny game I knew as “Shithead” from ten years ago. Did I mention drinking? Specifically, sharing some more beer with two girls from the Netherlands and a guy from Cologne. One of the girls had been seriously devastated by bed bugs (oh, how I still hate these critters so much) and was completely covered with bites. She kept scratching herself all the time and it didn’t make us any more comfortable to know that she had slept in our dorm room the night before. But we were lucky. Except for one insect bite (mosquito? bed bug?) I got while sitting on the couch inside, we stayed unharmed. That one bite on my arm though is huge now and really annoying.
It got a bit late and we were already well past the third beer when we finally headed out for the restaurant for some nice and tasty Lomo de bife. The first dinner was a bit expensive with the Cebiche as a starter, the huge steaks and a bottle of red wine. We must have appeared slightly drunk, because the waiter really asked us if we had a car and were driving when we ordered the wine. He was worried we wouldn’t make it back, already being drunk ducks. But really, no hay problemas. Just around the corner.
While Axel went to bed at midnight, I was still up an hour later. So much for the plan.
To avoid the heat we quickly hiked up to San Cristobal with the Virgin Mary statue on top early the next morning. The view from there was not bad, and you could see how vast Santiago is — although the smog made the Andean mountain range and even some buildings almost disappear in the haze. Trying out my new photo equipment (pol filter) I nearly lost it when it fell from my lens and down a wall. Luckily, I was able to retain it.
Coffee and snack break (empanadas).
We returned to the Plaza de Armas for the free city tour and most of it was like last time. Although the guide was a bit better. After paying the guide at the last stop I suggested to have a couple of beers together. We were a group of seven people from Canada, Australia, USA, India and Germany and we had a lot of fun chatting and drinking. And lots we drank. We also had a tasty fish dish in a recommended restaurant. And wine.
After “cleaning our balls” and changing clothes for the evening, we met again, playing guitar for some minutes. And then, well, drank some more, doing our own private pub crawl. Unfortunatly, the sword of Damocles hovered above our heads as we had to catch a flight the next morning. And so we had to depart a bit earlier, but we exchanged contact details. It was a reasonable decision to leave. One more bar and the chances had been much higher that both of us wouldn’t be able to get up in time, at 6:45 in the morning.
So much for the plan of going slow at first. Indeed, we both had two great days but they were fuelled by great encounters, alcohol and… money. At that rate, it’s gonna be a pretty expensive four weeks. But keep the great people coming.
