Santiago I

Santiago was the first city in South America that we actually set foot on as a team, in December last year. Back then we only saw the airport, anyway, so it was time to properly see and explore it.

Continuing our tradition, we arrived hitchhiking... or almost.

 We actually had a couple of lifts since Talca, and then a slight silly mistake that took us a couple of km in the opposite direction.

An artsy shot of the side of one of "our" trucks.

Close to my old dream of being a truck driver.

At some point we realized we had to walk those couple km back to the main road... which after the horrible day we had the day before, was an absolute piece of cake.

Chey checking the road.

Ministry of silly walks.

Once we were on the right track again, we were picked up by the grumpiest old man I can remember. He yelled at us about what we were doing, the time it took us to put our backpacks on the back of his car, our traveling style and other 1000 things I can't remember right now.

But he was kind enough to leave us at the exact spot where we could get a bus into the city centre.
...
Once in the city, we found a wonderful hostel, where the owner made you feel like we were actually staying at a friend's house. Like most super nice small hostels, it atracted all kinds of cool people that we enjoyed having late night talks with, after exploring the streets of Santiago.

Knutsen hostel

More of our hostel

The city is nice, though some might say it lacks a bit of personality, especially compared with the hectic and diverse Buenos Aires. We did, however, find some streets with beautiful street art, took a "funicular" (a sort of elevator that takes you up the mountain), explored a local market, took tons of pictures, sweated a lot in the crazy summer heat, started a debate about the real origin of Pisco, and had one of the nicest meals of the trip, that funnily enough was actually Peruvian food (more on Chile's food culture soon... spoiler alert: it's kind of bad).

Chile's capucchino comes with a lot of whipped cream.
Also, finding real coffee is almost impossible, since
people are strongly into Nescafé, to Chey's dismay.

Some weird street art.

South America means all the way catholic.

More street art

And more!

South America also means siesta. Siesta everywhere.