Sam and E-J's Adventure

The bus ride to Santiago was six hours, with the most spectacular views of the Andes between Argentina and Chile. E-J managed to sleep for the majority of the ride, suffering from all the rich food and drink from the day before. When it came to passing the boarder, it seemed to be the most lengthy process to date. First, we had to queue for ages to be stamped out of Argentina and stamped into Chile and then all our luggage had to be taken off the bus and passed through a security, surveillance camera to make sure that nothing illegal was passing into Chile. Finally our hand luggage had to be sorted through.

When we finally reached Chile, we were completely confused by the currency, with 998 Chilian pesos equalling the pound! We grabbed a cab to our hostel at a cost of three thousand pesos! We spent the evening wandering around, close to the area we were staying in. Londres, with its cobbled streets and lined with little trees, sounded so beautiful, yet it had a run down feel to it which wasn't helped with the graffiti all over the walls.

The following day, Sam was forced into doing some tourist attractions, much to his dislike. We first wandered into Bella Vista, which is described as the trendy, bohenium area of Santiago. We then caught a tram like train up to San Cristobel. San Cristobel, is the statue of Mary, which some people consider to be the equivalent to Christ the Redeemer of Rio. We found it to be a little spoilt by the tourist gimmicks, with tacky music played as you wandered up to it and an adundance of seating to use as you stared up at the great statue. It was also surrounded by lots of lights and telegraph poles, which completely ruined the simplicity and view of the statue.

At this height, we had a good view of the vast city, but at this stage, Sam had really had enough of the place and wanted to get back down the hill. After a (what felt like a treacherous) cable cart lift down the mountain, hitting the tops of trees as we passed down, we made our way down to a small area just outside Bellavista where we had a quick bite to eat and then headed back to our hostel.

Aware that we had spent a ridiculous amount in Mendoza, we decided to spend the rest of the day and evening in our hostel room, watching trashy TV on the box and ordered a pizza for supper.

The next day we found out our great friends, who we had met in the jungle, Veronica and Ben were in Chile. Both extremely excited to bump into them for a fourth time during our trip, we hurried our chores of the morning and headed over to their hostel for the rest of the day and evening.

The next two days we followed the same pattern of turning up at Veronica and Ben's hostel at around lunchtime, making a mammoth sandwich and spending the rest of the day enjoying a few beers, table tennis, pool and a good banter with our friends.

Finally the 10th arrived and it was time to depart South America for New Zealand. At the airport, we were celebrating the fact that we had survived South America and then resorted to having a massive row about who got the drink they wanted with the last amount of Chilean money. The poor waiter, misunderstanding the argument brewing, managed to turn up with the wrong drinks and almost experiencing the wroth of E-J, became desperately apologetic giving us a complementary drink, which saved the day, completely defusing the argument and leaving us all in high spirits!

We then prepared ourselves for the next part of our adventure, New Zealand!

Sam's commments: Great to catch up with Ben and Veronica, have to say E-J has completely worn me out on statues and Plaza's! Bring on the Rugby and Cricket in New Zealand!

E-J's comments: I can't say we really gave Chile a fair chance as we only visited Santiago and did very little in the actual city. I would love to revisit Chile and see it properly as it is far too expensive for a backpacker. I can't believe that our time in South America is over. I have absolutely loved this place and a part of me will always been drawn here. My heart belongs to South America.