Santiago

So we have arrived to South America in the midst of beautiful colours, busy streets and very fast spoken Spanish...;) Our hostel is really lovely, located in Barrio Bellavista- a lively but peaceful neighbourhood dotted with cosy reastaurants and cafes, and away from the madness of central Santiago. We are also only two blocks from Pablo Neruda´s home (now a museum) and the Parque Metropolitano - the first that we anyhow didn´t succeed to visit as we read the opening times wrong...such a disappointment, but at least we will have something on the list for when we return here in about a month. We did however drag our exhausted selves to the park after arriving yesterday afternoon. Foolishly we thought we could walk up the top instead of taking the touristy cable car - only figuring out after a wee climb that the cable car is actually our only choice unless we wanted to walk 6km up the hill...hmm...might have to start reading those maps properly - and before heading to a direcion - that shuld really be our motto for the trip from now on I´d say, after walking in circles in the centro most of the day...and thus missing the visit to Pablo...oh well, you learn as you go I suppose ;) However, we did manage to get up the hill in the parque and witness the amazing views of all of Santiago - so breath taking despite the greay smog hovering over the city. On the way down Brett experinced a close encounter w a scorpion - I didn´t even know to expect them - luckily this individual was a dead one...;)
Anyhow, we did manage to find our way to where we needed to go with my bad spanish and Bretts awesome map reding skills ;) we managed to get a RUT (tax) number sorted, which you need to purchase a car in Chile, found our way to the bus station to book ticket to Mendoza tomorrow morning, managed to order a vegetarian meal at a restaurant and sorted out prices for a SIM card - which we decided to get once we land in Argentina, since they ony work nation wide. In the end, I think we have done pretty well for our first few days, our brains being on slow mo and still tired from the time difference...
We shall post more as we go along, untill then hasta luego y besos para todos!! ;)

Petra.