Kasatobalaba Hostel Santiago

... I then spent a leisurely 5 hours taking in the sights before going back to base, had a couple of expensive Chilean beers - Escudo beer - then I watched the big match online with Rodrigo... Universidad Santiago v Cniversidad Catolica, the big local derby game !! Catolica won 3-2 - Rodrigo was not happy... Good game though.<br>The glorious Stockport County lost again ... I might chance a prayer in one of the many ...

... bus ride down the coast. I thoguht I´d better get the Santiago blog out the way first so will send another one tomorrow. We are very relaxed now staying by the beach and getting some r &amp; r away from big cities for a change, I can see Shell has fallen asleep on the sofa in the sun, and hear the crashing waves just out the door. So nice here, and even after 3 days of all the 3 countires the one we want to come back to the most is Chile.<br><br>Cheers<br>Ian<br> <br><br> <br> <br>

... either. I decided to just go home and stopped at La Signoria to have a snack on the way. It's an Italian bakery/coffee shop north of the Rio Mapocho and they have good passion fruit pie. I will miss that stuff. For dinner I had my last empanada with Beatrice, a German girl I met in the hostel. She snores like crazy but was good company during the way. She's going to study in Antofagasta. More power to her.

... last time we were at this latitude it was T-shirts and shorts weather (Mendoza) &#8211; 3 months later and winter had arrived meaning a shocking temperature of only 8C! Not only that it was raining and raining really heavily! We caught the bus to from Santiago to Valparaiso found a hostel and stayed there &#8211; it was torrential and there was little point in venturing out. In 5 months we have been very lucky &#8211; we hit bad weather ...

We went from Valparaiso and spent the day in Santiago. The city gets a bad rap from most people as being bland with lots of shopping malls and nothing to see, but we had a great day and glad we made the stop. Being Sunday, it was quieter than normal, and we walked through the parks up to a hill with a stunning view ...

... vendor that was some sort of peach-flavoured syrupy juice. Alma, Efrain's wife, met up with us a short while later after an encounter with "the cable guy", and we all walked up to Cerro Santa Lucia and hiked to the top for a panoramic view of the city. The hill was a fortress used in defense of the city in the past. These days, there are parties and corporate events hosted in the fortress. For dinner, we all wanted to try typical Chilean food ...

... youve ever seen for a few pounds. Weve really enjoyed Santiago, except for the minor setback of Sam getting flu as soon as we arrived here and being unable to get out of bed for 7 days. Santiago is really a city for just wandering around, which suits us perfectly. Its pretty small due to being surrounded on all sides by spectacular mountains. The journey in from Buenos Aires was ...

... walked from our hotel which is in the Provendencia district of Santiago (Another residential area that has a few smart hotels, and some really nice 'local' bars and restaurants}, and the main historic centre of the city is about an hours walk away. The walk takes you through some really nice parks, and they seem to be doing a lot of regeneration to the city, with new parks and amenities being built all through the city - The city ...

... website mentioned that the head chef was named Isabel, so I was hoping to catch a glimpse and see if a chef named Isabel could be as cute as a hotel receptionist named Isabel ... On the ride over, I chatted with the driver Renee, and I casually mentioned the beautiful Macarena, to which he responded "Macarena? ESPECTACULAR!!!" You don´t need to speak Spanish to understand that, do you? He´s a pretty chatty and nice guy - he gave us his card to ...