Leonardo Da Vinci Santiago

... had mailed him the fleece that I left back in the states, and I wanted to leave a backpack of things in Santiago that would only be a hassle to carry on the rest of my trip (which would be largely spent camping/trekking). Yu graciously offered to let me stay in his home Wednesday night and to drive me to the airport the following morning. I happily accepted; as if the free meals, lodging, and transportation weren't great enough, Yu and his family were incredibly friendly. After ...

... parties before Pinochet came to power and fled the country in 1975 staying in Cuba where he met Ernesto's mother. He returned when democracy came back with Ernesto and the rest of the family but the scars of the dictatorship are still there. I spent hours talking politics with Ernesto's mother and father. This past weekend I went with Ernesto to Valparaiso (Valpo for short) which is about an hour and a half west of Santiago on the coast. The picturesque city is the cultural ...

... their silly fight. Fitzy leap frogging Jack.<br><br>Trying on the Ski gear &#8211; Yellow jacket &amp; silly goggles!Getting stuck with the silly last pair of pants - dungarees!<br><br>Dominos &#8211; 2 for 1. Originally went for pizza in a pizzeria &amp; they had no pizzas?<br><br>Spiderman mask with ski gear!<br><br>4th July<br><br>Snow Boarding.<br><br>Up at 6:30am after not more than 5 hours sleep &#8211; Spanish dudes again getting up earlier &amp; making noise and flashing ...

... we woke in the morning we hoped to get a view of the Volcan Villarica - fat chance, you could barely see 5m in front. We went for a walk into the town getting very wet and managed to attract a following of stray dogs, 6 of them trotting along behind us! They even waited for us while we got a coffee! You know it rains a lot when they have planks from the pavement to the road so you don't have to walk through the puddles. We spent the day cursing the ...

... the hopon and hop off bus. This took me a good few hours and took me in to the new town too. Found a huighe shopping mall hada stroll round. Then i went to the National History mesuem, which tested my spanish but i seemedto get by. I also went to another art Mesuem with old photos in which was really nice and kept me amused for a while. Then i started my way back to the hostel ...

... the area food and drink. Oh...and we returned our car, all bus/train/boat from here on out. All in, we drove over 11500km in 2 months. We slept in the car only twice, stopped at numerous police checkpoints, and it was our hideaway on many windy and damp evenings. Overall, a good experience but we did miss a lot of interaction with local people. But due to our lack of Spanish, this may have been limited anyway.

... as the word for "handcuff" - no comment! The 2 Brazillian guys had flown down to watch their football team play here in Santiago. That sounded like a true South American experience. So the next day we found ourselves at Estadio do Colo-Colo sat with around 1000 Brazillians surrounded by 40,000 Chilean fans - an interesting seating choice! Sport Recife (us) beat favourites Colo-Colo (them) 2-1 in the Liberatores Das Americas - the S ...

... to buy some soft drinks. It´s funny that prices here are far cheaper than on the main tourist stretch! To get into the park, we had to use the Furnicular - an old tram like cable car. This was really good and gave us great views of the city. We actually bought a combo ticket that included some more cable cars (the gondola type) for when we got to the top. After the ride on the furnicular, we went to see a couple of religious ...

... I needed something, and addressed me as joven, which basically means "youth" or "young person". I looked around at first, thinking she was talking to somebody else - nobody's called me a young person in probably over 10 years! I explained to her what I was looking for, but all the journals she showed me were not pocket-sized. I asked if she had anything smaller, to which she nodded and, dripping with sarcasm, told me "Yes, but only in this ...

... br>They seated the 2 vegetarians together, so Katie was put next to a nice English girl who she could merrily chat away to, while I had the pleasure of a couple of German guys. How does that work?!<br><br>The girls were doing the whole "so where are you from then?" business when ...