Portillo Hotel Las Condes

... dish called Pastel de Choclo which is an interesting combination of a sort of corn pudding, several meats, dried fruit, and egg. Oddly enough it was extremely delicious and I finished nearly the whole thing. Then later for dinner I ate Ceviche de Congrio, which is conger eel mixed with spices and fresh vegetables. Also amazing. Afterwards we all went out, in different groups of course, to try some Pisco Sour, the super Chilean drink. Personally, I am not much of a fan. I feel ...

... and then proudly walked into my advisor's door to show him the good work I had done.
Unfortunately my advisor, the head of the foreign languages and cultures department at my school, thought I had it all wrong. The program in Cuzco focuses mostly on culture and less on the actual learning of Spanish, which is somewhat of a problem for a Spanish major like myself. Instead he made me come to terms with the fact that I would ...

... simultaneously! It took a day or so, but we got used to it and also met a lovely couple (Lizzie and Chris from Leeds) in our dorm. On our first day in Santiago we explored the city admiring the sheer grand scale of it and it's beautiful surrounding of mountains. On our second day we did some more general exploring, and visited a wonderful little touristy market to buy some fab tacky junk to make our backpacks all the more heavier! We also ...

... have red wine and ice cream mixed together?! Fine, whatever floats your boat I suppose.  Still, we had a very funny night and ended up meeting some locals and spending the evening with them, which was interesting considering they couldn´t speak a word of English. Come to think of it I have no idea how we managed to yabber away to each other for the entire night. Must have been the icecream and wine cocktail... After 3 days here though we´ve decided we´ve had enough ...

... sing. Mocha was fabulous! She sang perfectly in English, French, Italian and Spanish--- including a jazz rendition of Francisco´s and my favorite Portishead song. She was a freaking star. Her pianist accompaniment was also quite famous in the area, so the place was packed full of people. What most surprised me was that Francisco and his friends were actually REALLY good friends with her! After her performance, the place started booming with ...

... top for some refreshments - I grabbed a pineapple juice popsicle that tasted great at first, but ended up being sickly sweet at the end. My lips were feeling nasty after, because they were sticky with the syrupy pineapple juice. We wandered over to Plaza de Armas, via a few pedestrian zones. I´m sure these would normally be great strolling areas, but being Christmas Day, everything was pretty ...

... as the best wine tasting tour you could get. We weren't disappointed. On the way we stopped at Quilmes ruins, which were a group that lived through the Inca times, but did not survive the Spanish occupation. Unfortunately, we only had a Spanish speaking tour guide, so our guide who is not fluent in Spanish had to translate. That night we were expecting to be camping completely 'au natural', no facilities whatsoever, but stumbled across a campsite and it even had a little shop selling ...

... this to you but the coffee for the majority of the time in Peru was disastrous. (Random note... some little old man just came up to me and asked me where I was from and then told me I was a long way from home. Us blondes have some serious game over here in South America). Anyways, yep, coffee in Peru. you order it. it comes out like this: A mini jug of coffee, a jug of slightly warmed milk and a jug of slightly warmed water. You do the rest. It was shocking. The French ...

The Arrival I left Australia on the 13th of January and headed for South America. The first country that I set foot on in South America was Chile in the south. I landed in the capital Santiago, I was very jet lagged since it took 26 hours of flying to get there. Although the funny thing was that I left Australia at 12 O'clock Eastern Standard time and arrived in Santiago the same day but at 6:00am so I gained 6 hours ...