Santiago: 13 - 14 Mar

Mar 13:
Everyone I´d ever met said go to La Casa Roja hostal. So I did. Took me about hour and a half (enjoying the morning rushhour bustle, rather than taxing my brain trying to work subways and taxis [busses = impossible]). Plus I was accosted while resting in the shade by a well travelled old Chilean man on his way to play golf. He was waiting for his taxi, carrying golfclubs and pins and flags?!? And really, really thought that Pinochet was the best thing to hit Chile, and good bloody luck to the recently inaugurated (yesterday!) 'communist' lady president!

Got to the Aussie run Red House and it was great and huge with tonnes of people and great facilities.
Who should walk in 10 mins later, but Kevin and Christina! So we spent the rest of the day seeing the sights of Santigao, city without limits :-) .

Santa Lucia,

Mar 14:

Got up early to watch the changing of the guard, but K+C just wouldn't get their As into G :-) So we ran a couple of kms to get to Plaza De Constitucíon by 10h00, and then found out that today wasn't one of the alternate day changing of the guards. Oh well, it was a 50/50 chance. Luckily before Kevin started again, the president (first woman president ever) on her second day in office walked out of the building into us and started greeting every one she passed (with only few bodyguards trailing behind). She was on her way to the chopper on top of the Ministry of Agrioculture building, and there were snipers on all the skyscrapers around the plaza.

Then we went to:
Precolumbian musuem,
Pablo Neruda´s house where he lived with his third wife,
Cerro Santa Christobel with the virgin Mary statue looking over the city,
A furnicular to the top, and a sendero back down again.

Mar 15:

Went to see the damn changing of the guard again, and it was excellent. Almost an hour long ceremony with full marching band, drum majorets :-) and everything.

Then had coffee to plan stuff with K+C, and walked back to hostel to checkout by 01h00. In the next 42 minutes I :
checked out,
walked 7 blocks and found the Metro,
learnt how this cities one worked, and bought a ticket,
missed the train that was already there (I wanted to make sure it left in the right direction),
caught the train to the sneaky furthest out bus terminal (Pajeritos?) that cuts out 20 mins of inner city bus traffic (and cost),
found the first bus to Valpariso,
booked it,
boarded it 3 mins later,
and it left 5 mins later.

Not bad for 42 mins!

By 4 o'clock I was booked into a great old clean guesthouse in Valpariso, after driving though about 150 kms of Boland scenery (including two Hugenot Tunnels!).