Martijn's Blog

We decided to visit Chile because we were very close and also because Sam needed to extend her Argentinian visa. We were very unprepared for this visit and didn't even have a travel guide for Chile. We tried to find one in Mendoza but none of the 6 book stores we found had any information about their neighbour country.

So we just took a bus over the Andes and hoped for the best. This time we took a small Mercedes van instead of a large coach and that was a good choice. The roads were very narrow and there were many trucks that needed to be overtaken. Our driver enjoyed a bit of risk: overtaking where you couldn't see more than 10 meters ahead, pickjing fights with other drivers and racing over the snow covered roads.



When we arrived in Santiago it was about 21:30 and we still had no idea where to go for accomodation. Normally no problem, right ? We quickly wrote down some names and addresses of hotels/hostels that we found on the web in an internet cafe.

The first name on our list turned out to be right across the road from the internet cafe. A stroke of luck, not. The receptionist told us there was no room free and we'd have trouble to find anything free in Santiago because there was a big conference on.

We decided to take the subway to the next name on the list which was a hostel. Better chances we reckoned, because conference goers are not likely to stay in a hostel.
While walking to the hostel I saw another sigh for hotel so it seemed only logical to check whether they had room for us. In the hotel we were greeted by a toothless Chilean who assured us we could stay there until midday for a mere 8000 pesos ($14 ), which is really cheap for Chile (at least 2x as expensive as Buenos Aires). We were a bit worried by the host so we asked to see the room. A lady told us to look into any room because "they are all the same". When I looked inside the first thing I noticed was the jacuzzi next to the bed. I remember thinking: hey cool a jacuzzi, before realising these rooms were normally charged by the hour.

We kind of hurried out and found our original choice a couple of blocks further. The room they had was not much but we immediately accepted.