Starting off in Santiago

It's become quite normal to land in a new country and not instantly know what the time is but never before have we been unsure of the day. However, when we flew to South America we quite literally travelled back in time, having left Auckland on Monday morning and arrived into Santiago on Sunday night. Cool but terribly confusing. Even more so, perhaps, because we hadn't slept for so long. After over twenty-four hours of fighting to stay awake I could barely work out what my name was let alone what time zone I was in. 

Certainly, I was in no state to be deciphering a whole new language but that's the situation I found myself in. We'd been warned previously that South Americans don't speak any English but somehow I just didn't quite believe it. How I wish I had! Having never so much as glanced at a Spanish text book in all my life, I could do nothing but stare blankly back at the dozens of Chileans babbling away at me in their native tongue. They spoke slower, they spoke louder and they even tried speaking with their hands but nothing was making any sense. I made a promise there and then to teach myself Spanish in every spare second i have; better late than never!

Once we finally arrived at the hostel we found Fareed there waiting for us. The excitement of seeing him kept us awake for another hour or so before we all collapsed into bed and slept out the jetlag (a sixteen hour difference, the worst we've had yet!)

Santiago has a lot to offer but sadly we were too short on time to explore it properly. Rather than choosing just one or two places to visit we decided we'd climb to the top of San Cristobal Hill for a three hundred and sixty degree view of the whole city at once. We were surprised to find how huge the city is and how impressive it looked with the Andes Mountains enclosed around it. 

We'd love to come back and do Chile properly but as it's one of the most developed (and therefore most expensive) countries in South America, we're going to leave in until the end and only delve further if we find we have leftover time and money. For now we're heading through the Andes to Mendoza, the wine region of Argentina!