Spending two days in Santiago was not enough, but from such a short amount of time here are my impressions of this amazing place.

 Flying in after 11 hours on a plane, Chile felt strangely familiar. It reminded me a lot of flying down the east coast the South Island of New Zealand. Lots of green land and glorious mountains. Then we saw Santiago, kind of. You cant really see it much from that height, just the smog that covers it! Welcome to a big city.

 It was really warm and sunny and we were there on a weekend, so the people were very relaxed. Our first venture out of the hostel we passed a number of bars playing typical 80’s music, the sound of Madonna blaring from a bar made me feel like I was walking down Courtenay Place, not on the other side of the world. We stayed in Bella Vista - party central, and Saturday night the music went until well into Sunday morning (7am we still could hear the drums!)

The people there were amazing, really friendly and patient with me and my lack of Spanish. It was a lot safer than I thought it would be (although in our short time we didn’t really venture out of main areas). And, like many big city’s there was a lot of stray dogs. These were friendly but the travel doctor in Welly had me so scared of rabies that I kept my distance!

 Overall I was very impressed with this warm friendly place. At the airport on the way out a tourist officer asked us a bunch of questions about our stay, I guess they are trying hard to become a popular destination.

Now I am continuing my crash course in Spanish in Argentina

UPDATE: you can view a few of our photos from Chile here: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=51636&l=90340&id=553261784

Filed under: South America, Adventure by Louie Date 26 November, 2008