As always on big trips, the plane ride was long and tiring! Our days activity from June 25 was, bed at 2.30am after doing our last ditch efforts at finalising everything before leaving. Up at 4.30am to leave and head to the airport with Brett. Then our flights went pretty smoothly from Melbourne to Sydney, then Sydney to Auckland. In Auckland we felt like we were on the Amazing Race as we had no details from QANTAS about out Auckland to Santiago flights. LAN had changed their schedule and details, so we headed to what we thought was Internaional Transfer, only to find there was none, so we decided to keep walking to the gate of the flight we “thought” we were on…. Turns out it was boarding! Even though the airport signs were saying it wasn’t even open yet! We grabbed our boarding passes at the gate (saw them on the desk and pointed out that was us) then onto the plane, and 30mins later we were taxiing down the runway.
We arrived in Santiago at 3.30am , 26th June Melbourne time, 1.30pm Santiago time. Big adjustment for the body clock!
Our first attempts at Spanish were trying to work out what the lady at the Hostel was trying to tell us. After saying things different ways, then the good ole Sign Language! We worked out that she was trying to tell us the English speaking guy was out, so we should go for a walk and come back to sort stuff out with him!
Just when we thought we had it going on, we ordered 2 beers at the pub. The waiter checked a couple of times with us, Uno or Dos? Dos I said! I drink beer too!! Then he brings out 2 one litre bottles of beer… Whoops! He was wondering we wanted to drink so much at midday!! So Lesson 1 was that beer comes in Litres!! “Litro”
We’re staying in the old part of Santiago, where we found many students protesting the university system in Santiago. As we were watching the soccer in the local pub with our 2 litres of beer, we noticed some students marching down the road then the bar owner started lowering his shutters. We went for a walk and there were riot police lining the streets with Water Gun cars (picture as it sounds) ready to go. There were camera men on all the building tops filming the goings on. We stayed around for a little while but nothing too interesting was happening so we walked into town. Meanwhile we see in the news that shop fronts had been kicked in, traffic lights torn down and things burned in the streets!! We missed it all! But now we understand why everyone closed up shop, and also why that part of town is a bit of a mess! Graffiti everywhere, things smashed and traffic lights out.
Apparently they’ve been protesting every week for a few years! So I think they’re starting to get a little annoyed about not being listened to!!
Anywhoo, we found some cool parts of Santiago, Providencia is a really cool little spot with interesting streets, lots of cafes and a 6 level shopping mall with heaps of cool stores!!! That end of town is the newer part of town and worth staying in. It seems cleaner and there’ more options for eating and shopping which is nice.
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