Santiago

Have had a couple of days in Santiago now and we are here for another night before heading to Valpariaso on Sunday. Yesterday we went on a walk and took a cable car ride up a mountain to a lookout. At the top is a huge open air church with an enormous white stone statue of Mary looking out over Santiago, which by the way is absolutely huge. It was a really nice day, with hot weather again even though it is Autumn here. We then found a restaurant in the Bellavista district and after decifering the menu had a great meal together.

Today we spent hours planning our route up to Peru, working out what there is to see on the way and how long we want to stay in places. We then headed to the bus office and managed to book the five of us onto five different buses all the way up to Arica (on the Chile/Peru border). Im picking up bits of the language quite quickly, enough to get by and am really enjoying learning it as I go. Our hostel is a big house with about 6 bedrooms so there are not many people here, and when we arrived the owners told us that it is our house now, so we are very comfortable. They all call me Juan and try to speak in Spanish to us as much as possible which is very helpful if not a little difficult still! Each morning we wake up and head to the dining room where a small Chilean woman treats us like restaurant diners bringing in fresh fruit salad, scrambled eggs, bread and hot drinks. Its quite a luxury!

Tomorrow is Ashling´s birthday so it should be a good day. We were trying to get tickets to a musical they have on but they are sold out so we may end up in the cinema instead! If the weather is good, we are going to go on a walk up to a different lookout and have a picnic.