Luckily the flight was not crazy early, so that we could enjoy our breakfast and relax a little in the lobby of the hostel before the taxi came to bring Kai to the airport. Crazy how fast these three weeks with Kai went by.
It was a great time and we had a lot of fun and explored the two extremes of this great and immensely long country which stretches from 17 degrees South all the way to 56 degrees south... well to 90 degrees south if you take their territory in Antarctica into account.
It's great to have friends who come around to the other side of the world to go trekking with you, explore the country and spend 3 weeks of their annual holiday with you. Thanks for coming around Kai, we gotta do this more often.
Now, it was back to the routine of being on my own in shared dorms and having meet new people every day.
I wasn't quite ready to set out on another explorational trip quite yet, so I decided to hang round the hostel another hour to relax a bit. But soon I was up for another adventure again and since the tallest hill in the Santiago valley (San Christobal Hill) was right behind the hostel I decided to have a look.
I didn't want to take the cable car up so I tried walking and find my routes up, but all the routes were closed and "no paseo" signs were hung out.
It was probably a good idea to not challenge these, so I headed back to the hotel another route. This led me past the Escuela Bellavista, the school I should be attending next Monday for my Spanish course. I decided in San Pedro, to learn some spanish during the last week that I was going to spend in Chile.
It was anyway time for a bit of a holiday from travelling (I know, life is tough) and stay in one place for a few days, so I though best to combine it with something useful. Learning Spanish is probably the most useful thing you could do with Mexico and Cuba as my next destinations.
I had already survived 10 days in Panama and 3 weeks in Chile (and don't forget 3 days in LA) without Spanish but I wasn't sure how it's going to be in Cuba. Aside from that I have started to endear Latin America and hoped to come back some day with Yuni to explore Peru and Bolivia.
Anyway, so there, I walked by the Escuela that I had signed up for a few days ago. It was Friday and I just walked in and they did a placement test with me.
Not surprisingly this put me into the beginners class, but it had the advantage that I didn't have to do the course on Monday morning and I could stay in bed half an hour longer. I also got some materials from the school to look through over the weekend.
For the rest of the day I had planned to go back to the Hostel, have an ice cold Coke from a glass bottle and then at 3 go out and do the free city walking tour of Santiago (Kai had done that the first day he arrived and approved of it).
When I came back to the Hostel I remembered, that I hadn't booked a bed for the next couple of nights, so I asked if they had anything available.
They didn't... So I booked a hostel just around the corner through the web and walked over. Turned out that their online booking system didn't reflect reality and they also didn't have anything available. But the stressed out girl there arranged a bed in a hostel called Aji (Chilli) "only" two kilometres away.
After I had finally carried all my luggage through the heat of Santiago's city centre I found the place and checked in.
It was 10 minutes to three... 10 minutes until the tour from the Museo de las Bellas Artes (2 km away) would start.
So no chance for an ice cold coke... I had to run, catch the subway and run over to the museum. I arrived 5 minutes late but the groups were just gathering and I could join in.
These tours are springing up in many places now, run by students for free and you just give what you think is appropriate at the end. This way, the guides try their best and if you are not satisfied, you don't feel ripped off. Win/ Win I would say! Why doesn't this work with food the same way?
Our guide was dressed like Waldo, (but we never had a problem to spot her) and our tour passed through the area near the Museum (area also called Bellas Artes), we passed by some Mural of these little figures that represent items of Chilean life.
Then we were told about the quiltros (street dogs) that inhabit Santiago and apparently ride the bus, passed by the Plaza de Armas and the Club Union.
We had some interesting information about all these places, the parliament that was bombed and in which Salvador Allende, the former president of chile was killed. The how Pinochet took over power, the stories about Cafe with legs and all the other interesting things I can unfortunately not recall any more.
It's always the same. You take a tour, get thrown so much information your way and if you are lucky 10 % stick.
we finished our tour in a little craft beer bar near Sant Lucia Hill. The Beer came with Pizza and was quite strong...
All in all it was good tour, but not as good as the one in Saigon. It was much more personal and direct.
I decided to not continue too long and head back to my newly aquired hostel bed to catch an early night (somewhat a rarity these days).
To my surprise, I did not have a bed anymore because it was double booked and occupied by an Argentinian guy.
Funnily, I was chatting away with this guy in the common area after I came back from the tour for a while and it then turned out that he had my bed.
I had to talk to the somewhat incompetent staff and get another bed (only just as some other cancellations came in just a few minutes earlier).
The reason for all this Mayhem with hostel beds was that the Lollapalooza Music Festival was on in Santiago this weekend.
All that mattered - for now - was that I had a bed.
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