What to Do in Chile???

I made it to South America. Yaaaaaaaaaay!!!

REALLY excited since this has been part of the trip I’ve been looking forward to the most. (Waru has a tendency to save the best for last.) 4 months to freely wander in the continent. Wow. Seems long, but probably not long enough.

Having bought the hardback Footprints South America guide in Vancouver (based on reviews that it’s better than the LP for the region), I knew the countries I wanted to visit, the sites I wanted to check out. But didn’t have any concrete plans…
It was nearing the holiday seasons, too. Which would mean long lines, crowded everywhere, and overbooked transportation and hotels. Yuck.

What to do, what to do, what to do……….

One of my dorm-mates at the hostel in Santiago was a German girl named Natalie. On a 6 month long trip around Central/South America, she was in Santiago to study Spanish for a couple of weeks.
Chile is definitely not the cheapest place to study Spanish, but it seemed like a good idea. I’d be needing Spanish for most of my time in South America. And, it would let me stay put during the busy holidays. A few days of intensive Spanish lessons before Christmas and New Years wouldn’t hurt!

With that decided, I needed to figure out activities for the remainder of this week. There was no way I’d be staying in Santiago; the city isn’t known to “happen”. Even the Christmas atmosphere here was BLAAAAAAAH.Seriously, Santiago doesn’t have much to offer for tourists. But on the positive side, what it does have, can mostly be done for free : )
Natalie and I spent a couple of days exploring the city together. Wandered around the Plaza de Armas (big, old cathedral), climbed the Cerro Santa Lucia (view sucked), ate seafood soup at the fish market (quite expensive), tried to get into La Moneda Palace (unfortunately happened to be closed for the day, but a side building had a free Frida Kahlo exhibition which was interesting), visited 2 museums (pre-Colombian and Bella Artes), and had a few Starbucks.
(FYI – Chileans don’t believe in normal coffee. An order of coffee will end up as a cup of hot water and a bag on instant Nescafe. Gross, right?! A cup of Starbucks, therefore, was heavenly!)

Now, back to the conundrum of what to do for the rest of the week. The 5-6 days I had seemed like a perfect time frame for a side trip to Easter Island.
I went to the LAN airlines office to set a date on my flights (I already had the tickets as part of my RTW). One of the bizarre quirks about this RTW ticket is that the Santiago – Easter Island flights (and there’s only one operated by LAN) can only be booked in economy class. As expected, all of the economy seats allowed in my booking class were full on the return date. Darn it!!! I’d need to think of something else…
But after a little bit of pleading, the agent grabbed my ticket again and gave it a long look. She let me get a booking in business class, and for both legs of the flight too!!!

Happy Waru now had a plan – Hola Moai manana!!!