Wow, so I finally arrived in Chile and what a week it´s been. It all began with my flight to Santiago when I began to wonder the reason as to why I was so tired… sure enough, the next day I had the flu. I spent all evening in bed, followed by the next day and much of the day after, drinking lots of water and sleeping as much as possible. Then I had the bright idea to find a pharmacy, which I did and to my pleasure was provided with 15,000 pesos worth of medication. Thankfully prescriptions aren`t exclusively required here and within an hour I was feeling much better!
First stop was to head to the market which I spotted from the taxi prior to checking in, I wished to buy some food as I hadn´t eaten in almost 2 days!
The market is very cheap, a kilo of cherries is 450 pesos, which is about $1AUD. I stocked up on fruit, nuts, some travel chargers and a butterfly knife I saw for about $2AUD. The market was a good way to learn to deal with money when you don´t speak the language as charades will certainly see you pay gringo taxes! My advice is to always purchase products with pricetags if possible, if you can´t understand them then give them a pen and paper and ask them to write down the price. Always confirm the price prior to handing over any money. After figuring this out it became very easy to barter with them too, I bought a crappy watch at half price.
A couple of days later, after undergoing some vegetation recovery and some major culture shock, I met my new roommate who was from back home, not far at all from my house. We elected to hike up San Cristobal which is a mountain overlooking Santiago.
There is this big statue on top of the mountain
People leave their messages of thanks here
Well we didn´t really ´elect´ to hike, we arrived and the cable car was closed for repair
Many animals roam freely in Santiago, this mountain is a nice place for them
There was a neat little church nested into the side of the hill
Santiago was an interesting place but I was eager to move on. Therefore I was glad to purchase the motorcycle which I will be using for my trip and load her up for Valparaiso.
It´s certainly not a KLR 650… but could you guess what it is?
Adam
