Santiago...Of Dorms And Penthouses

Haha! Lordy lord lord lord - so much for my clases de espanol! A delightful recount of a typical Sarsie reaction to a Chilean talking directly to me in Spanish, truthfully must go a lil somethin somethin like this: ............ insert here: blank stare, more blank stare, look to Nick for help, look back, more blank stare.... Well done Burger, well done - next time....DO YOUR SPANISH HOMEWORK!!!!!!! Hehe! Hehe! But DOH!

Manage we have though - all by our little selves - the following seriously unbelievably ridiculously draining and time consuming Santiago exercises: supermarket food purchasing, awesomest-metro-ever catching, sightseeing (and a wee bit o naughty nuaghty shhh shhh we-didnt-do-it adventure sightseeing), bus terminal finding and bus ticket buying. No applause please, no applause....We know we know... we are SO very very awesome!

Best Santiago bits n pieces:

1. Moving straight from our 8 bed dorm room to a 17th floor penthouse room with magical sweeping views of Santiago and the Andes straight out our floor-to-ceiling glass doors...just beyond our terrace!

((To give you the 4-1-1 on the whole 17th floor thang - Nicks wonderful wonderful mind blowingly generous friends, Vanessa and Oliver, offered to have us for our last glorious night in Santiago, took us for our first Spanish drinks - ohmigosh its all about the pisco sour* people - , took us for our first fantastically fun Spanish dinner experience and generally bolwed us over at ever turn with their beautiful generosity and kindness - biggest TA ever to wonderful V&A for making Santiago so very very special!!!!!))

2. Refer to 1. above then add the following item of intense soul-smiling enjoyment - watching the sun rise over the Andes from our bed in the morning. W.W.O.W.W.

3. Shhh shhh sneaking off the marked tourist path at Cerro San Cristobal (Virgin on the Hill) and climbing high high high up a lookout tower that we maybe kinda sorta werent really probably allowed to do! Hehe! Awesome! Heart racing! Awesome! Hehe!

4. Walking walking and more walking - I love the walking! Walking around ogling people, ogling places, ogling builings, ogling stores, ogling landscapes, ogling anything, ogling everything - ahhhh sweet ogling, its always been my fav part of travelling!!

Ogling-observations of Santiago from me to you: mucho mucho like Brisbane but wayyyyyyy sprawling-city-to-the-horizon biGGer; well-kempt doggies roam freely everywhere; anywhere there is grass people lie; Santiagoans (?hehe?) are quite the calm happy bunch; pisco sour could possibly the best discovery this side of 1 A.D.; the metro is superduperdoo with trains every 3 minutes; the city cant decide who it wants to be - old, young, short, tall, dirty, clean, rich, poor, colourful, bland, open, closed, everything, anything - its quite confusedly enchanting!

*Pisco sour - pisco (chilean liquor), egg whites, sugar, lemon juice add BANG! equals YUMYUMYUMYUM IN MY TUMTUMTUMTUM!

One week in - its already amazing - completely amazing - no work, travelling the world, hot man beside me, gorgeously generous friends... Does life get any better?!?!?!?!!

The future from me to you: Post some massive tas and massive hugs for Vanessa and Oliver - next, we hit the road jack! - onward north to Arequipa in Peru via a 32 hour bus trip, a 2 hour car trip and another 8 eight hour bus trip. A long long haul - but two countries in four days is a mighty mighty amazing special thing - and there is so much to see and do and experience and I want to do it ALL!