City Exploring

Day 1 (March 2): in the morning, we walked around Santiago a bit, exploring the area closest to our hostel in Santiago Centro. We ended up at the Mercado Central where Becca almost stumbled on some floor bound headless sharks, to the amusement of some local merchants. We were too nervous of pickpockets to bring our phones for photos but since then have tried to bring our phones everywhere!

After lunch we went to Cerro Saint Lucia where we spent most of the afternoon walking around the park and looking out over the city from the various lookouts around the cerro, including the highest point; a lookout on top of the church. After going back to the hostel, we took our roommate Danielle out for a beer in exchange for her leftover Argentinian pesos where I indulged in a 2 for 1 pint deal and the ladies enjoyed some delicious mango mojitos, needless to say we left more dehydrated than we had arrived.

Yesterday (March 3rd), we woke up and checked out of the hostel, took the metro to the bus station and hopped on a bus to Vina Del Mar where we booked a cool hostel near the beach and met some dudes from Oakville… small world! We explored the beach most of the afternoon and I experimented with a Mote con Huesillo (a peach and wheat drink).

We cooked some dinner in the hostel and then ended up spending the night drinking wildly cheap beer (1.2 litre bottles for 2000 pesos which is basically $4 Canadian) and chatting with the other backpackers in the hostel. Definitely one of my favorite parts of these trips is the people you meet and the stories they share.

Looking forward to exploring Valparaiso tomorrow!!!