Sentimental in Santiago
I never thought I'd say it, but for some reason, the sight of a big, clunking (frankly quite ugly) yellow bus pulling away from the kerb and into the Santiago traffic seemed to be something of a moving experience.
Not tear-to-the-eye moving of course, nor strictly speaking transported-from-one-location-to-another moving, but the sight of what had been our home for the past two months or so trundling off and leaving us behind had some kind of emotional punch no matter how insignificant.

And so it was. Jock was gone. We were on our own in the captial of Chile for then whole days. Ten whole days. San Pedro asside, our spending for the past month or so had plummeted in such an alarming fashion that I half expected a call from my bank asking if I were still alive. After the budget delights of Bolivia, the commercial centre of Stantiago proved something of a culture shock to my wallet. No more could we get a huge bottle of beer for about thirty pence. Admittedly when compared to the prices back home, things here were pretty cushy, (big bottle of beer for about a quid ... in a bar facing the main square, not really that bad) but we had been depleting our funds for the past two months and finally we didn't have the bar on the bus to fall back on, or the fact that we might be getting at least a huge lunch every day.

We had one final night in a three star hotel paid for already thanks to the trip and so made the most of it by going out and getting wrecked enough to not get back until four (or six in Gary's case) in the morning at a pleasant enough bar in which the coctails flowed as long as the studid gringos kept ordering them. Earlier in the day we found a new hotel to move into, a far more economic prospect in the seedier side of town offering twin rooms for about nine quid a night for the pair of us. That this room had a mirrored ceiling was not to be off putting. It came with a free bottle of wine (a tiny one) and had a good secure lock on the door, all we needed.
The receptionist was a quiet chap who took my reservation by writing "Has reserved one (1) room" in scawly English on the back of a random piece of paper behind reception.
"Don't you want to know my name?" I asked, a little puturbed.
"I'm Alphonse." He said.
"My name." I said.
"I don't know your name."
"Don't you want to write it down with the reservation?"
There was a brief pause then he handed me the piece of paper (not yet filed away in the dustbin) and asked me to write my name beside his own handwriting.

Miraculously when we turned up the following day, he had the piece of paper to hand and let us stay. The place was booked up entirely the following night though so we were forced to find alternate accomodation. I have images of stacks and stacks of random pieces of paper filling a drawer behind his desk with all maner of lines of broken English on them: "Made a reservation", "has a room", "had nice phone call", "My name is Alphonse".

Our first full day in Santiago was spent not in Santiago at all, but in wrestling with the local public transport in order to get a glass or two of free wine. Our goal was the out of town vinyard of Concha y Torro, but getting there was a little torturous. First we needed a trip on the local metro (very nice if you're a fan of underground railways, certainly up there with my favourites) and this was followed by a bus journey which lasted two hours when we were told it would only last fourty minutes.
Eventually we reached the vinyard about half an hour late, but were allowed to join what was left of the tour. We missed being able to see inside the Villa itself, a low building overlooking the lines and lines of grapes criss-crossing the countryside outside, but were able to catch up on the free wine itself, poured into the free wineglasses that we were given, which I still have, along with doubts that it will survive the trip back to the UK with me.

The wine was great, rich and satisfying. Less satisfying was the legend tagged onto one of the varieties, one involving the devil living in one of the cellars guarding the special stuff from the uncouth public. We were alowed to have a look inside the cellar where this was the case, and a rather tacky silhutte of a bloke with horns and a trident grinned back at us. Cheese and wine. Very nice.

That evening we stopped off at the cinema to watch the latest and last Lord Of The Rings movie, not depleted by the extra Spanish subtitles, although this made the reading of any Elvish on display a mite tricky.

The following day was the last one with the rest of the trip before they headed south with a bunch of new recruits (who would be ruthlessly sitting in OUR seats on the bus. Grr.) this included a meal (not bad but mine was about an hour late, not brilliant and too expensive) plus another selection of drinks at the same bars as last time. Sort of drunken and huggy as you might expect. Email addresses were exchanged and everyone promised to keep in touch before running off to Patagonia and leaving us behind. As they so should.

Our new hostel was the Hostal Indiana, a brightly colourful place (with no mirrors on the ceiling, thank god) but which appeared to prove very popular with the Israeli travellers and thus somewhat of a stumbling block should we wish to be sociable, not speaking Hebrew as we don't.
Instead we've been being the model thrify travellers. Buying food from local supermarkets, checking out cheap attractions (usually involving walking somewhere to get a nice view) and generally being aimless. All good fun, but a little trying when you know that you've got ten days to fill this way...
- posted by Vince @ 1:34 PM