Santiago 1

Aaaargh! Well, here I am! I can´t believe I´m finally here after all the months of planning (or lack thereof)... I was extremely lucky my flight wasn´t cancelled on Monday, as loads were, due to the crazy amount of snow we had during the night. I´ve never seen anything quite like it in London - there were 8 inches on my balcony, which makes it even stranger to be in summer clothes and sun-cream now.

I was lucky to be sat next to Alex, a guy from London, on the Heathrow to Sao Paulo leg of the flight, and we teamed up with Geert, a Belgian guy, after the flight to Santiago, so I had some ready made friends to go out with, which made my first night here much nicer than it might have been. We went out with some friends of Alex´s from home, and I had my first taste of pisco sours, which are yummy! Unfortunately they made me so thirsty in the night that I also had to have my first taste of Santiago tap water, which is even worse than in London, but luckily hasn´t made me ill.

Today myself and Geert managed to get a bus to Valparaiso for the day. Saw a small kid riding a large horse onto a petrol station forecourt to fill up a container with petrol - made me smile, as it´s things like that you just don´t see at home. Valparaiso was good for a day, spent exploring the Cerros, or hills, which were very ramshackle but photogenic, with lots of peeling paint and graffiti, but all lovely bright colours. I could imagine it being used as a film set, for something like a Bond film, or the Bourne Identity, with wild car chases through the maze of streets. It was incredibly steep, with a network of ancient funicular railways taking the effort out of the worst bits.

Today´s attempts to buy bus tickets were marginally better than yesterday´s jet-lagged efforts, but even so, the Spanish still has a long way to go. I´ve booked a night bus to Temuco for Friday, and have also managed to book my bus onwards to Zapala, in Argentina, for 8am on Sunday. So that gives me a couple of days to explore Santiago before heading south. I haven´t got particularly high hopes for Zapala, the name of which apparently comes from the Mapuche words for dead swamp, so I´m not expecting it to be a hive of activity or culture!

Hostel Don Santiago (Avenida Ricardo Cummings, 95, Santiago) has turned out to be lovely. It´s only small, but the staff are great - very helpful and welcoming, and much more what I was hoping for than the huge Casa Roja that we went to meet Alex at last night. Ok, so I was very jealous of his swimming pool, but still glad I picked this one instead. I have to change hostels tomorrow though, as they´re now fully booked, so am going to one called Che Legarto, just a few blocks away, so fingers crossed that one is ok too.