EMPANADA DE NADA DE NADA... HOLA SOUTH AMERICA - SANTIAGO & VALPARAISO

Did you know that we´re a little younger now than we were when we published our previous post? Yeah we left New Zealand in the afternoon only to arive earlier in Chile on the very same afternoon, could you credit it?! I did feel rather spritely getting off the plane I must admit. We were met in arrivals by our brand new travel buddy Shephali and we continued into town.



So there we were in South America feeling a bit bored with staying in guesthouses and hostels so we decided to try something different in Santiago and stay in a fridge. The fridge was cunningly disguised as a hostel but we soon uncovered the truth as we pulled the icicles out of our beards. We weren´t going to let the fridge spoil our fun however so we ventured out and found our way to the Barrio Brasil, a funky boho area, where we sampled our first of many empanadas (tasty pastries with veg and cheese filing) yum yum, followed by a few litres of vino tinto (that´s red wine for those of you who aren´t fluent in spanish like myself) in an attempt to keep off the cold and show the fridge we weren´t scared to stay put.



Following the showers from hell the following morning we gobbled down our breakfast and took to the streets yet again. It was a beautiful sunny day in Santiago and the city had a sparkle to it as we sauntered up the main avenue. A big change from Asia certainly and we kinda had a holiday feeling about us.



First stop Santa Lucia for some fantastic panoramic views with snow capped mountains as a backdrop, very huge mountains at that, Los Andes perhaps?



Had a spot of lunch at a sunny sidewalk cafe and then carried on to the very grand Musee Belles des Artes to ingest some arts and culture.



More art then in the form of street art which is hugely popular in Chile. Every wall of every alley is an explosion of colourful and interesting work. There´s no ´I woz ere B4U´s here! Most of the rest of our day was spent taking it all in. Empanadas for dindins again after.



We bid farewell to the fridge the next morning and jumped on the bus to Valparaiso two hours up the road. All agreeing that the fridge thing wasn´t really working out for us, we checked into Patricia´s (pronounced Pahthreesseeah) B&B and treated ourselves to a nice room with cable TV and a shower next door that sprouted a great stream of hot water at the turn of a tap, magic and luxury combined!



Following our magic showers we took our nice clean bodies aboard a small boat for a wee trip of the harbour viewing some fat fat fat sea lions, a few stray pelicans, some military vessels and the beginnings of a beautiful sunset, we even had a go at being cap´n for a short spell.







A majestic breakfast served up by Patricia herself geared us up for the next day´s activities which basically entailed just walking around and taking in the fairy-tale-like beauty of Valparaiso as well as taking our chances on a few rickety old escalators which link up some of the streets lying on different levels of the city. Definitely one of the most colourful cities I have had the pleasure of spending a few days in, and the graffiti? Even better than Santiago we think.









We received a surprise visit from Carolina, a lovely chilean friend whom we had met in Asia, in the afternoon of the next day and she very kindly spinned us around for a bit. We stopped off at Cierro Abierto for a look at more outdoor art, this time in the form of abstract murals painted by some famous chilean artists and stretching out over a series of winding stairs, streets and alleys.





Valparaiso is a place we could have quite easily stayed for much much longer but time is ticking by at this stage and we wouldn´t want to arrive in Rio a week or two late and find that our flight had gone home without us now would we?!