Our leaving Sydney did not go as smoothly as we expected. After spending a night at the 'waiting area' - a small end of one of the halls, which was the only place were the people were allowed to be in the entire airport, we found our place in the waiting line for the check-in. But as it turned out, there were some 'technical' problems and our Sydney-Auckland flight was canceled. That meant that we (and about 30 other people) were not going to make our Auckland-Santiago flight. So we were taken by bus to one of the airport hotels, which was in a small 'airport neighborhood'. It was definitely the fanciest hotel that I have ever been to as we usually go for the cheapest one. But we got three free meals and the drinks were included which lead to meeting some local guys just out in a bar. And that lead to going back to the center of Sydney for another last night gathering with some new friends we had just made. Made it back in the hotel to sleep for a few hours.
The rest of the way was pretty smooth. Except maybe the way from the airport to the city. Some hustlers managed to lie to us about the bus prices and take advantage of the fact that we had just stepped out of the plane and had not slept for over 24 hours. Before we even knew it, we were sitting in a taxi that we had paid about ten times more than we would have to pay for the bus. In addition, it was 5 degrees at noon on the first day so the mood of the first day was not the best.
After that everything got better. We were staying (through couchsurfing) with a really nice couple in the center of Santiago. Danielo and William answered about one hundred of our questions about Chile and South America each day and helped us find everything we needed (a little gas cooker and other survival things for example). We even went out in Santiago a couple of times, which we have not done for months (working all the time and living in a small town). William could not speak much English, wich helped us start practicing our Spanish.
I was quite confident that Spanish will come easily to me as I speak a bit of Italian. It does help a lot with understanding, especially with written texts. But so far every time I have opened my mouth, a horrible mixture of Spanish, English and Italian has come out. After a few (half-nonsense) sentences I get totally stuck because all I can remember are words in Italian and Russian (why Russian?). So Erik has done most of the speaking so far.
Being in Santiago was very refreshing. In Australia, all the streets and buildings were relatively new (and boring) but now we saw a colorful mixture of culture around us. There were old, classical style houses with ornaments and modern highrises and small weird houses, each one different and special and a lot of graffity everywhere . Fancy expensive shops next to people sitting on the streets, selling things. You could get a meal from a flash restaurant or things cooked on street corners in modified shopping trolleys. So a lot of people from very rich to extremely poor were filling the street. Walking became more difficult because there were so many people moving around during the day that you constantly had to change direction and dodge people.
We also visited Danielos mother. These kinds of visits, for me, are the most memorable moments of every trip. When you visit a home of a local person that you never would have visited otherwise. Of course we also visit the friends we make on the road or couchsurfers, but they are generally younger people and/or have a bit more modern way of life. But older and more traditional people/homes are usually more special because they are less influenced by the modern way of life. In this case, the low-ceiling wooden interior of the house together with a very nice (rico) freshly baked traditional cake made us feel very homely and cosy.
Before coming to chile we checked some websites that compare the prices of different products in different countries and we were quite shocked to see that it was not that much cheaper than Australia. And it is true... if you want to continue living like you did in Australia. But what we have started to realize is that if you want to save money, you need to adapt to the local way of life.
For example on these very smart web pages you can see that half a litre of beer is quite expensive. But you should realize instead that the wine is very cheap. Or if you want to drink beer, then the locals buy big bottles of beer (instead of half litre ones) and share it (considerably cheaper). Or buying your food from the market and butcher etc is a lot more reasonable than going into the stores. So it is very useful to pay attention and adjust... and possibly stop buying some things that you are used to buying (if poor people are not used to eating it, it will probably be very expensive).
Anyways, we took a bus from Santiago to a random small town (Pichidangui this time) to get our first hitch-hiking experience. Since we had woken up very late, we got there just by the time the sun was setting. After getting some food from a local minimarket - (eggs, butter and onion), we made our way to a grassed area next to the town to camp for the night.
The nature here has been amazing so far - the mountains are magnificent (you could see the snowy tops of the Andis in Santiago) and the colours are bright. At our first camping spot there was the sea on one side (although we didn't see it as we didn't want to be too open to the winds and tsunamis that apparently happen here quite regularly) and on the other side (over the highway and a few kilometers away) was a big hill. The clouds came from the other side of the hill, wrapped themselves around the hill and flowed down from our side of the hill like a big blanket of milk. And the clouds did that weird (and beautiful) thing for hours. Even when the full moon rose from behind the mountain, you could still see the fog rolling down.
After our first night out over here (we survived and didn't even get cold at night... it is now about 17 degrees during the day and 7 at night) we tried to hacer dedo (hitchhike) with not much luck. After almost three hours we decided to give up and just take a bus this time. We are not giving up entirely though, we are just a bit rusty (haven't done it for a long time) and a bit afraid to just walk up to the truck drivers and ask, as we have heard is the most popular way to hitchhike around here.
So we took a bus to Coquimbo, walked 30min up the hill to our next cs host, discovered that we are in the wrong town :D, walked back down to the highway, took two more buses and finally ended up in Guanaqueros, this time in the right town.
We are staying in a small house with four other people (a french couchsurfing couple, our host and his friend). Will say here for a few days and then we'll see what happens next.
Ps. I have now officially been to every continent of the world (that is not frozen over).
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