Hostal Casa Club La Reina Santiago

Its a beautiful day in Santiago, sun is shining, pollution in the air, poverty in the streets, not in Patagonia anymore....

Bus ride to Santiago was a breeze. Watched a movie in spanish and slept next to an old guy named Hector. Thats the 1st. Meet with Jorge at the bus station, we take the subway to Lisa's apartment (Jorge's ...

... flower clock ...

We also ventured out to the skiing area of Colorado. It was all nicely organised and at 11am we were on our skies, taking the first Chilean slope in our stride. The pistes were all very nicely prepared and the area was much larger than we (spoilt Europeans) expected, but as it was all smooth sailing, the skiing was so easy that I even ventured down the black pistes! Of course Ivo was much faster and cooler than I was, but then my ...

... the 70% raw product. Our lips and throat burned for hours after that! Then, they gave us a shot of the 40% refined product for sale...after the first shot, it tasted like grape juice! Lastly, they gave us a Mango Sour, a 12% cooler made from pisco and mango. The next morning we hoofed it to the bus station for a 7 hour drive to Copiapo where we planned to do some hiking in the surrounding National Parks. Upon arrival though, we found ...

... different way, the favourite being to purchase the required chapters online and print them off. The next couple of days were very lazy and we decided that the stress of selling the van in the previous week was also taking it's toll. We amused ourselves by chatting to other guests or taking short walks into the city to idly look around some more. We also found a few bits of information in the Lonely Planet guides in the hostel. We decided to ...

... blessings, some inscribed on marble tablets, others on little pieces of paper stuffed in cracks on the wall. That evening we met up with Emma for a pre-pasta pisco sour (the national spirit) and got to hear all her stories about Peru and Bolivia. This left us both excited and apprehensive...apparently we had better make the most of hot showers, paved roads and good food while we can! Despite this it sounds like an amazing experience and I ...

... good friends Elvira, Emily, Martin, and Lucia and Kese who hosted us to showers, luggage storage, and finally a celebratory bottle of champagne at a famous Argentinian café minutes before we jumped in a taxi to the airport. What a sendoff!

The final final conclusion was a 11 hour flight (in United's business class thanks to Jen) followed by a five hour flight to LAX. Wow. The time change made it tough to calculate but it was over ...

... t get elsewhere. Lots of stuff to see and do here for a couple of days. Great place to buy an overpriced cup of coffee in the expensive coffeeshops with great views of the harbour and Pablo Neruda (famous Chilean poet and Noble Prize Winner) had a really cool pad here and that was great fun to see. He really did have some funky stuff in his houses (he had three) and they are definitely worth a view. Closeby is the beach area of Vina ...

... side, the first stop is at Estacion Tupahue, where there is a swimming pool (perhaps worth a return visit later today, during the peak afternoon temperatures), and the Casa de la Cultura Anajuac, a ****** art gallery. There was a bit of a hiking trail you could take from the area, but it was getting too hot for that. At Estacion Cumbre is a 14 metre statue of the Virgin Mary - neat, but a lot smaller than I expected, from photos I ...

... slow' and seemed pleasantly surprised when she realised that I could actually string a sentence together! I must have been all over the shop yesterday.

After paying our US$48 for our room, we strapped on our backpacks and walked down to the local metro station. We were ...

... were a few non-Spanish speakers on the tour and 1 lady had her own personal guide who translated for us all!

We really enjoyed the tour and the tasting of course. The walk back was a bit longer as we were weighed down with wine!

Then it was back in to Santiago for a dash to the airport and suddenly the holiday was over!

Chile and our short time in Argentina had been fabulous and we would love to go back!