Santiago

After some pretty gruelling air travel (using frequent flyer points seemed like such a good idea at the time!) I arrived in Santiago. Headed straight to the hostel, La Casa Roja, to meet up with Zac. The hostel was pretty nice, in an old mansion, very big and noisy! But with nice common areas and a pool out the back, it made for a good stay. I walked into our room to be greeted by four naked English lads asleep in our room - I´m sure there must be some sort of "don´t sleep/walk around naked in a mixed hostel dorm room" etiquette that someone had forgotten to tell these guys about!!
Not that many people speak English so it´s been fun and games trying to get things done! It will be good when I get to Buenos Aires and do a course, my aim is to speak fluent Spanish by the time I get back home - well at least as good as someone with my total lack of talent in the area can be!
Everything is incredibly cheap here - it´s appealing to Zac´s tightarse ways and to my spendrift nature quite well!
Can´t say that I thought that much of Santiago, it´s a big city, dirty and not that nice to look at. A few good places to check out, but didn´t need more than a day to do it, which turned out to be just as well, because i spent most my days here asleep and all the nights out - they sure know how to party in this part of the world! I seem to have lost all concept of time here. It gets dark quite late and you wouldn´t even bother going out for dinner till at least 9! So after a few beers at the hostel, we headed out with our new found friends - Darren and Rod from Australia and Matt and Louise from England. After a bite to eat it was off to do more drinking and we didn´t roll into the hostel till about 6am. No one arose that day, except for Zac who doesn´t seem to need as much sleep as a normal person! The next night we did pretty much the same, except Zac stayed behind for a good nights sleep in anticipation for our long bus journey to Pucon the next day. We went to a restaurant that Rod had been recommended in a pretty groovy part of town and then onto a nice bar after that. I was supposed to go out for just dinner but it didn´t quite work out that way - ended up getting on our bus at 08:45 without having gone to bed!
To sum it up: Santiago - not that pretty, but sure was fun!