Santiago...again
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Santiago,
Chile
Saturday, January 5, 2008
We left Arica on time, by South American standards (i.e. within an hour of the published departure time). We were going to be travelling on this bus to Santiago for 28 hours. Unfortunately, Kirsty was already feeling off colour. McDonald's curse, possibly?
The bus journey passed as bus journeys do: sleeping, watching the scenery go past, idly watching forgettable films which were in Spanish anyway, occasionally going to the toilet to be sick (that was Kirsty), watching the scenery some more...etc. etc. We were periodically fed, mostly with sandwiches and cartons of Sprim, Sprim is a drink, in case that isn't obvious from the highly descriptive name. In this particular instance, it was peach flavour. We were also brought tea, which was horrible. It was served black, which is how we usually drink it anyway, but came pre-sugared. This seems to be another South American trait: tea is generally served black with an avalanche of sugar already in it.
What do you mean, you don't want sugar? Tea comes with sugar. No arguments. No, you can't take it out, and yes, we could add the sugar individually, but why would we do that? It's not tea without sugar. Drink up.
At least it may have helped rehydrate Kirsty.
During the night, Jacob, feeling too hot as usual on these buses, took of his Buff (scarf). However, being pretty much asleep, he didn't put it away anywhere and instead just held on to it. He thinks he probably dropped it at some point in his sleep and it would appear that an opportunistic type found and kept it, as we were unable to find it again despite extensive searches around the bus at the various stops. It seems that we were relatively fortunate though, as other people we were talking to had had money taken whilst they were sleeping, so we got off relatively lightly. Not that it feels less annoying for that.
Another superheated night, then we arrived in Santiago in the early hours of the morning. Santiago is becoming one of those places we pass through but never see - we had an hour before our next bus was due to take us away.
