Santiago

11/03/13 to 25/03/13 - We woke to see the Andes through our window, and knew we were about to descend into Santiago de Chile. The connection from the airport was easy enough by bus and we jumped straight onto the metro from Estacion Central to go to Providencia district to enrol for some Spanish lessons. We would begin the following day and would stay with a chileno family in their apartment for the next 2 weeks.

Santiago was refreshingly less humid than Oz or Asia, but the sun was still warm and it was hot in the afternoons until the sun went down and the altitude made the evenings "chilly" (lets leave the puns there shall we).  In the mornings there was a lovely orange haze over the mountains, and in the evening the peaks lit up red as the sun dropped. 

There are many parks in Santiago, which were full of couples lying on the grass and snogging, or people taking a siesta under the trees. There were a few sights, but as we were here to study, we had to manage fitting sightseeing in around our busy schedule.

Our spanish, or rather chileno teacher was Karen. She was a similar age to us and although she spoke only Spanish to us, we eventually began to understand most of what she was telling us. She was very patient with us and by the end of the two weeks we'd learnt so much our brains were hurting, and we knew we had lots to practice.

In between lessons and at the weekends we went to the districts of Bellavista, Barrio Lastaria, and walked up the hills of Cerro Santa Lucia and Cerro San Cristobal, which both had good views over the city and the Andes. We also visited Mercado Central and La Vega market, where we tried some authentic Chilean dishes. The food in Santiago was awesome, and our favourite dishes were Pastel del Choclo, Charquican and Chorillana as well as some fine steak sandwiches packed with guacamole. We tried to balance out the beef with an Ensalada Griego here and there, but even they were huge and full of chicken and cheese.

In the evenings we'd generally revise or do our homework on the balcony of our apartment, and chat with Mascha, a german girl who was also staying in our place and studying at our school. The long daylight hours meant we could make the most of the balcony. We were glad we could at least practice a bit of spanish with her as the family were not so talkative and seemed to be busy cleaning everyday (we're sure we didn't make that much mess, and the cat didn't either).

Santiago seemed to have a lot of students, with universities all over the city. We also saw a juggler at traffic lights most mornings and while the lights were on red he would entertain the drivers waiting for green. We were invited to watch the Peru vs Chile world cup qualifier at a guy's apartment that we met through the school. Unfortunately Chile lost, but it didn't seem to dampen everyone's spirits too much.

Santiago's few old buildings (due to earthquakes there aren't many left) were mainly the museums. The Museo des Bella Artes was most impressive and we were visiting the old train station which is now a museum, where the star-studded Expo of Energy Efficiency 2013 was taking place. This was full.of overweight middle aged men in suits talking shop, but it became obvious to us that the real experts in the inner workings of solar panels, vegetable oil generators and cutting edge insulation were the well endowed, scantily clad, blondes that were doing most of the chatting to potential clients. We took our free biscuits and cup of Nescafe (we passed on the free tree seedlings, as we didn't think it would survive very long in our backpacks) and left, only for the lady on the door to ask us why we hadn't taken more free pens and stuff out with us like everyone else.

On our last day a Chileno friend of Mascha (Niko) invited us on a day trip out to Algarrobo to see the penguins and eat some Ceviche.  Unfortunately, there were no penguins and Ceviche was off the menu, so we had to make do with watching surfers, pelicans and sealions, which we were still pretty amazed by.

After 2 weeks of study, we felt like we'd been back at work for too long, and were keen to be back on holiday again.  We were also excited to finally practice our spanish and quickly realised that we couldn't really make a sentence using the past or the future, or even the present.  So it was time to move on and see what the rest of Chile had to offer, which was quite a lot as it happens...