Santiago, Chile

Hola todo mi amigos! Today is the first day in Santiago, Chile, another one of the latin american bustling cities, however Santiago is known as the most polluted in South America, although it's not as bad as I'd expected. Yesterday was a big travel day which gave a chance to share some photos and videos with the guys I'm travelling with, who've all begged for copies of my funny and quirky videos with random acts of sillyness of crazy to commentary on some of the sights. So Kris, Gary and Johan, rest assured that the nutty loungeroom videos we made prior to me leaving, haven't stopped at all. Santiago bears a lot of similarities to Buenos Aires, and although the skyscrapers in Buenos Aires are much larger, Santiago has a very New York-esque feel to it in certain parts of the city. Buenos Aires has the well dressed men and women who all look like they've stepped out of a Calvin Klein ad, and Santiago doesn't, to put it simply. Also, there's a few little changes, like paying for access to the toilet, and you can find McDonalds and KFC on most street corners if you like that. Although, Chile is an expensive place and a beer in some (rip-off) joints will set you back as much as $8000, but that's for a 1.8litre glass, and the exchange rate is $500 Chilean pesos to U$1, so it's U$16 for that beer, which is around $20 AUD, but we managed to find a latin place which was charging only $4500 for the 1.8´s and even $800 for a stubby, so it varies a lot and the scammers are everwhere. The food is pricey too, and the Chilean's tend to have a large lunch and a small dinner, or even just eat hotdogs, which seems to be the staple diet for a weak wallet, and they're not too bad for you either. As with most big cities, everyone is walking somewhere with purpose, and Santiago is the type of place to keep you on your toes, just like Buenos Aires once again, who had the very dodgy guys waiting up on Florida Av laste at night. At night you get around by cab unless you're 10ft tall and bullet proof. Talking of cabs, they seem to be privately owned as a lot of them have mags and souped up exhausts, and the cabbies have no understanding of speed limits. The cabbie last night was flooring it past another which was sitting on 120 km/h, so it'd be safe to say we were doing at least 150km/h down a main street in the city centre, so at least you get where you want to be fast! So, now the challenges await, from finding an Apple store to see how much to fix a broken iPod, testing my Spanish to post a bunch of items back to Oz, and find the airline office to switch a flight to Panama City next month. Tonight looks to be a big one with a few people I've been travelling with are departing here in Santiago to go elsewhere, fom the Galapagos, Easter Island, to Australia and New Zealand, as a lot are British backpackers and it seems to be the right of passage to go to Oz for a while, because they only ever get one working visa in their lives for Australia, and I never realised how tough Australia is to get into until now. Irasema, I love the photos of the Great Ocean Road, you seem to be seeing quite a few of the Australian sights these days, good to see. Miguel, how's the flatmate and uni working out for you these days? Learning much Italian? :-) BJ, how was Snoop, I read there was as shooting scare in Sydney at his after party! Hasta pronto! Adam