Santiago and Valparaiso

Things change fast. Just a few weeks ago I was sat in Leeds at my desk at work with no future plans. Now I'm in South America. Sometimes I catch a moment to pause and suddenly realise that it's real, I really am back on the road ... and there's still well over three months of it left!

Even over the last few days things have changed fast. It's incredible how you can say goodbye to people each and every day like they are your best friends, almost forgetting that you had no idea they even existed when you woke up. And its new people each day.

My first few days in Santiago included a walking tour, a museum, a cathedral visit, and a couple of lofty hilltop views of the city. One of the first people I met was a Brazilian guy called Eric, who I joined for some food and drink on the first night, and amongst other things, we talked about travelling in South America. Prior to leaving home I had anticipated that my lack of Spanish, and indeed my inadequacy at learning languages, may become an issue on my forthcoming journey. I therefore bought a Latin American phrasebook in preperation. However, chatting with Eric made me realise that I can remember Spanish words easier by thinking of English words and names that remind me of the Spanish word.

It was Sunday evening when my language skills were first really put to the test; I went to a cafe for a cheese burger alone. After somehow bumbling through a couple of options the waitress offered me, I hit a stumbling block. 'Quen-ta?', asked the waitress, or a similar sounding word to that effect. 'Quen-ta?' I replied, scrambling to the Q section of my Latin-american dictionary. A few seconds later the waitress herself was scouring for the word on the pages, but even after moving me to the C section, we failed to find it. "Errr ... si!" I answered, giving up the ghost and blindly accepting whatever I had been asked. As it turned out, 'Quen-ta' appeared to mean 'Would you like your chips placed literally inside your burger, and have the whole thing swimming in a sea of a light mayonnaise?'. Despite the mayo-sea though, it was rather good!

After finishing my meal, I proudly prepared myself to redeem my language frailties; Eric had taught me the word for 'bill' a couple of nights earlier. To trigger my memory, I knew I had to think of the first name of my favourite film director, Quentin Tarantino, and remove the last letter. The word for 'bill', it turned out, was 'Quen-ta'! I later discovered that 'cuenta' (as it is really spelt) means 'bill', and 'cuanto' means 'how much'. Possibly I had been asked one of these, and maybe I actually was defining the quantity of sauce on my burger!

I've now moved on to my second destination in Chile; Valparaiso. Valparaiso is the city of hills, graffiti art, and friendly street dogs. I met a bunch of people on a great walking tour yesterday, and today we caught a bus to nearby Concon to try sandboarding on the ocean-side sand dunes.

After the trip we found a couple of locals whose truck was stuck in the sand, but there was little help we could offer. It turned out that they had pulled off the road to smoke marijuana, but now were stuck in the sand ... but at least they were chilled out about it.

I've now returned to my hostel to plan where I will go next. Only time will tell cuanto fun it will bring. Ciao mi amigos!