Santiago 710

... in 1540, naming the town Santiago, and from this place the city grew. Besides nice views across the tops of the surrounding buildings, it has some Moorish fountains in a park that is littered by young locals intertwined gumsucking. We had to step over the bodies on our way out.

We enjoyed our brief visit to Santiago and enjoyed the company of Lauren and her friends. We wrapped it up with a very pleasant birthday dinner for James (where were your cards????).

... person or an American so they are very curious to meet me. I am mobbed with stares, hugs and kisses. I feel like a rockstar. Everyone here knows Barrok Obama and now the will know Nakia Ford. I am in pretty good company.

On Saturday ,June 20th, I went shopping in the Parral down town area with Pilar ( one of the co-english teachers) and her family. She is a good Haggler and got me a good price on a few sweaters ...

... 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 ...

... I was gazing at the incredible mountain chain - the andes - up to nearly 7000 meters the mountains where appearing right next to the plane ... Soon after we passed the highest of these mountains we were starting to descend to Santiago, what reminded me of the narrow valley landing in Innsbruck I experienced a long time ago ...

After Mendoza, feeling a great deal hungover, it was off to Santiago, th capital of Chile for a few days. Luz, who was on a hiking trip with me in Huarez in Northern Peru had very kindly agreed to give me a kind of guided tour of the city and the neighbouring port city of Valparaiso which I had heard good accounts of from other travelers. So we spent about 5 days touring around seeing the sights. Being honest Santiago gets pretty poor ...

... up our coffee and asked the waiter to call us a taxi. Needing some fresh air, I suggested that we all wait outside, which coincidentally, also offered a nice view of the reception area ... Having time to kill, I figured I'd chat with the beautiful receptionist. It's a funny thing - after the brief chat, Wade asked me "So did you get her number?" I chuckled because I wasn't even trying to hit on her - we were leaving Santiago pretty ...

... I packed up everything I would need for my hospital visit-all my medical information, my Chilean identity card, my student card, a debit card, my keys, my cell phone, and everything I needed for the volunteer orientation that day. The morning got off without too many problems, although I did have a number of runs to the bathroom during the 3-hours of "charlas" (different talks about various themes we will encounter in the orphanages we are working in). After the morning ...

... best of the internet cafes over here, as I tried valiantly to transfer our last NZ photos onto CDs so that we could send them home before flying to Chile.

However, the bloke in reception was about as much use as a punch in the face (they had no blank CDs and he didnīt know how to use the burning software), so this ...