After leaving Christchurch and a brief stop inbetween flights in Auckland, we arrived in Santiago around midday, a bit confusing as we left Auckland at 5pm! Santiago is 15hours behind New Zealand time so we lived Sunday twice! The flight wasn´t one of the best. Rach felt unwell and was very feverish and with the plane being hotter than usual, it wasn´t very fun for her. One of our TV screens wasn´t working either so it meant only two of us could watch films when unable to sleep.
At the airport in Santiago we were approached by a man offering us a taxi and between our little spanish skills, his english skills and the help of a woman stood near by who could speak both languages, we got a taxi to our hostel with no problems. We arrived at Chilli hostel and booked into our room where we met two other British girls who had done the same flight from Auckland the day before. They advised we went straight to sleep rather than trying to stay awake (their mistake) and then we wouldn´t feel as jet lagged the next day. Rach was still feeling unwell and we were all tired so we took their advice and went to bed with the intention of sleeping through to the next morning. However, we were woken later in the day by other people checking into the room.
On Monday, Rach still felt unwell so stayed in bed to try and shake off her fever. Luce and Vik went for a walk along the main street from the hostel. It was pouring with rain outside and even after buying an umbrella, still got soaked! We found a nice little cafe with a sweet guy who told us he spoke a little English (he was practically fluent) and had a 3 course lunch with 2 drinks for less than 4 quid!
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That evening the hostel were inviting the guests to join them in drinking Pisco Sours, a local spirit in Chile. It had been described to us as tasting like Tequila, only softer and with a lemony taste and that description was fairly accurate! Afterwards, Luce and Vik went for dinner with the two British girls from our room, Claire and Jude, another guy called Stewart and Sergio, the receptionist at the hostel. Sergio had promised to take us to a Chilean Restaurant where we could try local cuisine but when we got there the food wasn´t local, the wine was though!
The next day it was Luce that felt unwell so she stayed in bed while Rach and Vik went with Claire and Jude on a walk first with the intention to see the hill you can climb up to see the city views and then some historical buildings. Again, it was raining and we couldn´t find any access point to the hill although we could obviously see it, so ended up just walking into the city instead. We did see some historic buildings on the way but due to the weather, were not out for long before getting the metro back to the hostel. That evening we went for dinner with Claire and Jude to a small Italian cafe. The food there was good, large portions for really cheap prices! Afterwards, we enjoyed free mulled wine from the hostel while chatting to other travellers in the lounge area.
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