Valdivia and Santiago

We had a quiet end to the month of January. We were quite tired from a number of overnight buses and we also wanted to chill out before the Rio Carnival. So you may want to skip this section of the blog and move on to the Rio section!

Saturday January 26th
The day started early as we had a bus at 7am. The bus crossed the border back into Chile and we reached our destination around 2pm. We discovered that there was a beer festival on, good timing. The sun was shining so we checked into the Buenos Aires Hostel, ditched our bags and headed for a few beers and hotdogs. The local brewery Kunstmann put on a massive beer festival every year and have loads of German dancing, drinking games etc.

When we arrived the main tent wasn´t open so we had a couple of beers and German hotdogs sitting in the sunshine. We then wandered back into town and booked an overnight bus to Santiago for the night of the 28th. We returned to the beer festival at night and watched a load of Chileans act like Germans complete with traditional costumes and dancing games. If you´ve ever seen National Lampoons European Vacation, it was a bit like that!

Sunday January 27th - My 32nd Birthday
We didn´t make breakfast as we woke up at 11am. We obviously needed the rest after our early morning bus and beer festivities the day before. We had a very relaxing day strolling around a park, by the river and around a market. We booked flights from Lima to Cusco for our Inca Trail hike in March and got a good deal of $211 for the three of us (our friend Craig is coming out for that).

We phoned our folks and had a very quiet night in, deciding to save my birthday celebrations until Rio. We watched the Jack Black movie ´School Of Rock´ and had an early night.

Monday January 28th
Overnight buses are, in theory, a good idea. You sleep through the night and wake up in a new town or City. However you have to spend a day waiting for the bus and when you arrive you tend to be pretty tired after a broken sleep. Valdivia is a pretty riverside town on the West Coast of Chile, but there isn´t a great deal to do in it. We did go on a short boat cruise in the afternoon, but we spent the rest of the day killing time until the bus left at 10pm.

Tuesday 29th January
The bus arrived in Santiago at 8am. It was our most luxurious bus yet with loads of leg room, seats that reclined to almost 180 degrees, a waiter serving snacks and drinks and the usual dodgy film. We headed back to the Bella Vista Hostel, where we stayed when we first arrived in Chile. We slept for a while and had a late lunch. I treated myself to a lovely swordfish steak and Lynn had a massive steak sandwich. We wandered round the shops and Lynn bought a nice dress for the carnival and I got a new shirt. At night we had some drinks in the funky Bella Vista Social Club and then pizza and a bottle of wine.

Wednesday 30th January
We woke at 11am but we hadn´t slept well as some people had been out clubbing and woke us up coming back into the hostel. After breakfast we headed back up to the outdoor pool on the hillside above Bella Vista and had a pleasant afternoon sunbathing, snoozing and swimming.

At night the Manchester United v Portsmouth game was on ESPN. The hostel has a brilliant lounge with widescreen TV, so I plonked myself down in front of that and watched Cristiano Ronaldo continue is amazing streak of form with two brilliant goals, the second being a screamer of a free-kick. In this form Ronaldo could win the Champions League for United. Portsmouth were dire and United should have scored a lot more.

We had an early night and dreamt of the carnival, football and samba dancing.