Che Lagarto Hostel Via Del Mar Vina del Mar

... and Rosemarie for over 20. Rosemarie is from Canada and proudly shared that she met Wayne Gretsky once. Few people in South America can talk hockey, a skill that I learned from living with Mandy.

I went to church with them today, which is good because I havenīt been to church in a long time and have missed it. This church has a large population of British Chileans so the service was bilingual and the congregation contained a mix of hair, skin ...

... osjecam super. grad je pun palmi, uz plazu se nalaze standovi s nakitom, torbama, carapama (morala sam si kupit vunene carape jer iduci tjedan idem u atacama pustinju gdje temperatura preko noci bude ca. -8)... jela sam churros, neko jaaako slatko pecivo s punjenjem slicnim karameli. ovdje je inace sve uzasno slatko (sokovi npr.). nisam jos nijednom jela vani tako da ne mogu reci da sam probala nesto tipicno cileansko :-/

... they only take cash. This just goes to show that plastic is dominating small, family businesses even in Chile.

Today was also the day for our second Caminata de Valparaiso (City Tour). The ISEP group took a bus to Cerro Bellavista to visit the house of Pablo Neruda. He won the Nobel Prize for Literature and is highly known around the world for his poems and other writings. We only visited one of his houses, but there is another here in Chile and one ...

... guide, was closed [because it was Monday]. That said, there were swarms of young art students sat around drawing things whilst listening to their iPods. Day 3 was spent visiting Santiago. First stop was to be the Anthroplogical museum. However, hunger pains incurred during the 2 hour bus journey needed to be satisfied first so I elected to have a huge healthy lunch at a veggie restaurant, because the diet had ...

... limited time. Since it was a Monday and things were quiet, we got the entire van tour and driver to ourselves, which was awesome because we kept asking him to stop to take lots of pictures. Starting off in Vina del Mar, we saw a panoramic view of the city, and then headed to the archeological museum to see the giant moai statue out front. Scott had seen loads of them in Easter Island the week before, but for the rest of us, it was our chance to get up ...

... in Chile. Nice retirement plan! We split up, allowing the girls to shop, and allowing us guys to do anything BUT shop. Off to the Museo Palacio Rioja, the former mansion of a rich Spanish accountant, a chap named Fernando Rioja. There wasn't much English info given, so upon finding that I spoke some Spanish, an older lady who worked part time there offered us a tour. It was a good tour, and she asked us to leave a comment in the ...

... central plaza (pictures of our time in Mendoza can be seen in the next blog). Fed up of uncomfortable overnight bus journeys, we decided to splash out for a change, and booked a luxurious bus for our overnight to Buenos Aires! We were served free champagne, relaxed in fully reclinable chairs and were entertained by personal TV sets built into the seats! Fully relaxed, we were able to get very excited about our impending arrival into Buenos Aires!

... of 'world music' on the scene, long before 'Afro-Beat'. Why has it faded? Is it too simplistic, too folksy? Have we simply outgrown it? Certainly the fact that many of its proponents are playing for tips on street corners and in subways doesn't help, making it seem too common. Dressing up in American Indian costume like I saw in Barcelona and even in Buenos Aires doesn't help much either. Those Otavalenos don't miss a trick. The ...

On my way to Viņa del Mar (I beach resort town) i decided to get off one stop early in Valparaiso because it was foggy in Valapariso, which was very close to Viņa del Mar, which meant it would be most-likely foggy there, and therefore a bad day to sleep on the beach!. However this was decided two minutes before the bus was about to leave Valparaiso and therefore included me jumping around and dodging people sleeping next to me to ...

... eventually arrived and immediately we got into great discussions about the poverty in Chile, teen pregnancies, birth control and social issues. I couldn't be more excited to hear what they had to say. Ricardo's mom, who was once a nurse, told us of a time when she made the front page of the newspaper for taking care of a baby which was abandoned in a shoe box on the street. Our conversations then shifted to music and Joe couldn't get over the fact ...