Marc & Nora ROUND THE WORLD 2005/2006 - Join us!

Arriving from Valparaiso we checked into the ´Casa Roja´ hostel in Santiago.
As we had known Santiago only from a very brief visit as a stopover from Auckland to Buenos Aires we were eager to explore it more.

Chile isnt very famous for its cuisine and apart from cheap but rather uninspiring set lunch meals and hot dogs or pizza there is not much more to discover culinary wise.

Our first mission was to get to Plaza de Armas, a beautiful square in the centre of Santiago. We watched street performers (dads and their little kids) which was very entertaining.
On one side of Plaza de Armas is the Cathedral which was often rebuilt. It still contains the chandelier which lit the 1st meetings of the Congress after independence.

On the other sides of the Plaza de Armas are different museums, among others the "Museo Chileno de Arte Precolombino" which has a huge display of pre-columbian objects, and the Museo Santiago which covers the history of Santiago.

Our most important ways that day however were the General Post office to pick up Marcs new bank card (the magnetic strip of the old one peeled off and finally stopped working a few days ago).

Believe it or not - it took 2 days (!!) for the card to arrive from the UK. It must have been the packaging of marc's mum that speeded up the whole process!
(marcs mum safely placed the card into a make up packaging!)

Hallelujah! 1st fantastic news! (it was only a few days later that we were to find out that the card didnt work properly)

2nd important mission was to get to the Austrian consulate so I (Nora) could collect my new VISA and Bank card which was sent via UPS and DHL (thank you visa and thank you Bank!) to the consulate in Santiago.
Everything was there and after a short chat with the Austrian consulate (so nice to hear the Austrian accent again) we were off to explore the city.

Santiago is the oldest city of Chile and was founded in 1541.

We visited all the most important tourist sights such as the National Library, the Bolsa (stock exchange), the Palacio de la Moneda (the presidential palace) and the casa colorada (the home of the governor in colonial times and later the home of the 1st president in Chile)

Early next morning we walked up the Cerro Santa Lucia - a small hill on the east side of the centre - from which we had a beautiful view over the city - despite some smog!

The hill is inhabited by humming birds, even though we saw some in Brazil already it was amazing to see this little creatures to fly around so fast.

In the evening we set off for a loooong journey to San Pedro de Atacama (northern Chile).

We couldnt get a coche cama seat (the more comfy one) but ended up getting the last 2 seats together in the very back of the bus.

Marc had no problem sleeping - as always he slept like a log. I couldnt sleep at all. --> more about this "wonderful" 24hour experience which resulted in me being sick for 2days in the next chapter (nice description of the native speaker Marc)