Santiago Chile - March 29 and 30

Landing into Santiago between the Andes is a pretty cool way to start south America.

We got a hostel in the Bella Vista district - lot´s of students and a bit bohemian which meant everything was a bit cheaper (at least prices can only drop as we travel out of Chile)

Sanitago is a pretty relaxed city, not a lot to do so we spent the days walking around the Plaza Mayor, looking through the markets and idly wasting time till it was acceptable to go and drink and eat. The nice thing about the beer in Sth America is the fact Litre bottles are the norm. Okay so people normally share them, but Nic not being a beer drinker meant it was my cross to bear.

We didn´t warm to the local music too much - we hope to never hear heavy metal pan flute fusion again.

Proving th Hutt is truly a global place - we met a guy in our hostel who grew up in the hood and now lives in Rio meaning we have a tour guide for when we arrive towards the end of our trip. Nice.

All the flights out of Santiago were very expensive but Nic managed to translate a local budget airline site and we got some flights for about a thrid of the cost. The fact they made everyone write the contact details of a next of kin down on paper and give it to the ground staff before boarding, and fumigated the plane cabin (and passengers with it) before take off, meant as we watched the new airbus 380 "avion gigante" leaving for it´s first trip from Santiago, we kinda wished were on that.