Santiago and the Trip Home

Last time we left off, it was evening time in our last night in Valparaiso. Luke and I went down a few blocks and found a restaurant and ordered hamburgers and fries. Luke ordered his new South American favorite drink, leche con platanos, which is basically just milk blended with bananas. It doesn't help our image has a homo couple when he orders that. We picked up some beer on the way back and ended up playing cards with Nikki and Maria, our two hostel mates from England and Spain. We did this 'til about 1 and decided to go check out a bar down the street just to see what was going on. It ended up being pretty humorous. Although the place is right next to a few hostels, we were the only caucasions there. We went upstairs in the pub, grabbed a table and ordered some beer. About two tables over was a group of locals, maybe 7 of them, who seemed pretty excited that we were there. They were drinking and singing and keep shouting "salud" to us. We thought it was pretty friendly, and then they started to chant "gringos, gringos, gringos..." which in south america is a friendly thing to say and they even came up and took pictures with us. In Buenos Aires we stood out a little but I think mostly because of our hairstyles and dress. In Valparaiso, we stand out completely for every reason and we get lots of looks just walking around. So the events in the bar were no surprise, but we laughed thinking about if we were with our friends back home some Mexicans walked in and we started chanting at them. When we left the bar, we were approached by two shady guys who acted like they just wanted to chat with us. One guy was wearing a tank top and baseball hat, they other normal clothes but sunglasses, and they came across as sheisters so we just sort of kept walking. Maria took the lead in dealing with them and gave us a good lesson in how to deal with that. First of all, she speaks Spain spanish and I think a lot of south americans are excited when they find out she is from Spain, but she also told us just to give chile compliments and talk about how nice the people are. Whatever they wanted, they left us alone after we got near the hostel. Tank top kept asking me why am I nervous, which was odd because I really wasn't and explained that to him; Maria just said he was trying to seem tough to foreigners, which is basically what I figured. It was not a problem at all though.

We left the next morning to go to Santiago around 12, caught the Tur Bus which is direct to Santiago. The drive from Santiago was great, very pretty. We saw tons of vinyards along the way. The bus right was about 2 hours long and cost us $7, so that was great. We realized that we had no idea where it dropped us off and thought about getting a cab to the hostel, but that can be expensive. Instead, Luke asked some guy where we were and he ended up telling us how to take the subway to near our hostel and that worked out great. However, their numbering system is odd. Our hostel was building number 0184, which is different from 184, so we got lost and took a while to find the place. We got there around 4, and the place was really nice. The guy working here doesn't even speak Spanish...I think he's from California. That works out fine for us. But this place has nice beds, lots of nice computers and bathrooms that can handle flushing toilet paper, and its walls actually intersect at right angles. A nice place to finish the trip up.

Our first night in Santiago was relatively uneventful. We were under the impression that Jamie was going to Santiago on the first night; we were wrong. She actually showed up the second night. But our first night we walked around the neighborhood and ate dinner at a local restaurant. The food in Chile is all the same; some kind of hot dog or burger food with a ton of mayonnaise. Our hostel is near this big street called Pio Nono, and all along this street there are tons of pub/restaurants with outdoor seating. Everyone grabs a table outside and drinks Escudo, a Chilean beer. So we did the same. When we got back to the hostel we played pool with some guys staying with us, then went to bed.

The next day we decided to explore Metropolitan Park, this huge hill in our neighborhood that at the top, you can see the whole valley where Santiago rests. We brought Dre, some guy we met in the hotel, and the three of us checked it out. Seeing the valley was really cool, but the park was very touristy and we got over it quickly. Afterwards we walked downtown and checked out some stores, got lunch, the usual. We got back to the hostel, napped, and woke up to Jamie checking into the hotel! It was a nice surprise. The night turned out to be pretty awesome.

Earlier in the day I read in a Santiago newspaper about this popular local band called "Banda Conmocion." Check out their website: http://www.myspace.com/bandaconmocion. So I go to their website and see that three blocks from our hostel, they were having a concert at a club. I didn't know anything about the band, but for $5 I thought it was worth checking out. In the computer room, we meet Jason, an outgoing guy from Michigan, and Mark, a bloke from Manchester. We all decide to go out to dinner, and this turned interesting. First, Jason orders this massive beer contraption at a pub down the street, it was like a 3-lilter glass with a tap. Everyone else is drinking from 1-liter bottles, but he saw it necessary to get the loudest device possible. It was pretty cool but kinda loud. Then the night's conversations turned wierd. I was sitting next to Mark and we were talking about books, but Jamie and Luke got into a heated argument with Jason that I tried to tune out to not appear rude to Mark but had a hard time. Jason seems to be the type of person that believes everything in the Loose Change documentary. Basically, he was saying that he doesn't feel he has to payback student loans because he doesn't agree with how the US spends their money and because his loans would go towards things he doesn't agree with, and whenever Luke or Jamie would argue with him he would smugly flail his arms and say "you just don't get it!" Luke and I earlier were talking to the table about how much we loved food in Buenos Aires and how inexpensive it was. He had to correct us and just say that since he lived there for 6 months, he knows that it's not that great and not that cheap and we just don't know any better. When I pay $15 for appetizers, a tenderloin entree, a liter of beer and glass of wine that is all delicious, I have a right to say that Buenos Aires has good food for cheap. Anyway, it was arguments like that all night and Mark and I decided to take the group to see Banda Conmocion. Thankfully, Jason had no cash and knew nobody would give him any, so just the four of us went. The concert ended up being really, really fun. The band had like 20 members and it was very intense latin american polka-rock really hard to describe music, but there was a ton of energy in the crowd. Everyone loved it. We left a little before the concert actually ended and grabbed some more beer down the street. While drinking, two local guys drinking next to us asked for a lighter and we invited them to join us. I forgot one of their names, but the other was Claudio. These guys spoke English very well. I guess Claudio is studying to teach English and has lived in the US for a few months. These guys were very interesting to talk to and were very well-educated vegans. Most importantly, they loved Avenged Sevenfold and Killswitch Engage. It was great being able to talk to Chileans about music and politics. We drank with them til closing around 5 and walked back to the hostel to go to bed.

Friday was spent packing and buying last minute gifts. At 6pm our shuttle came to take us to the airport and we had to say good-bye to Jamie. It was cool that coincidentally, our trip was the same as Jamie's basically. Once we got to the airport, we met a really ridiculous Canadian in line to check in. We didn't get his name, but he first asked about San Luis Obispo cause Luke was wearing his shirt and he just read a biography about Chuck Lidell. This guy was very friendly and candid, and outspoken. He kept loudly talking to us over other people about mixed martial arts women and how big their jugs are, stuff like that. It got really funny when he asked us what we were doing in Chile, and Luke told him that we were impregnating locals. His response was literally: "Oh really? You guys were having sex without condoms down here? Yeah me too, I'm pretty nervous actually." We almost laughed out loud at him but kept going. Luke told him he was burning and the guy was all excited and said "No way!" Later in line to board the plane, he asked if we were brothers and I said "No, actually we're gay." He was like "OOOh, gay!" I told him actually no, and he laughed about that. Then he asked if we slept mostly with hookers or non-hookers (his literal words were "hoes or girls") and then how many women we slept with. It ended with him informing us that his doctor friend told him that if you have unprotected sex with a female, you have a 14% chance of getting HIV so the odds were in his favor. Anyway, the rest of the journey was not too exciting...shuttle, waiting in the airport, plane rides, etc. The whole thing was about a 24-hour process. But now the trip is over.

Thanks for reading and making comments during our trip, we had a great time talking about this stuff and reading the responses. Especially the polls results. Check our Facebook profile for pictures and we left out a lot on this blog for purposes of being somewhat concise and to not mortify our family members! Thanks, ciao!