Santiago

Day 1 – Nearly Scammed!

After an 11 hour overnight coach trip with fitful sleep we arrived in Chile’s capital at 7am in the morning and had to work out where our hostel was.  We quickly located the metro system and purchased a Bip Card to travel on the metro.

Jumping on the tube we only had to travel about 7 stops which took us just outside the area of Bella Vista where we were staying.  Emerging from the station we sat down and had a fag whilst Shell fired up her mobile so we could find out where our hostel was.  Whilst we sat there a down and out rocker came over to beg for some money but ended up just getting Shell’s cigarette whilst swaying and holding onto my bag, I made sure I was also holding onto it tightly.  Welcome back to a big city!!

We then walked around in search of our hostel which took some time as it was about 1/2mile away and down a back street, it also didn’t help that there was no signage for it and that it was well and truly locked up.  Deciding we had the right place we rang the bell and after a few bolts slid back we entered the hostel, but as we were early we could only store our bags there and we kept hold of our valuable’s in our day packs and headed out to find a coffee.

Everything was pretty closed but we did manage to find a little café which served some machine coffee. After the caffeine injection, we then caught the Metro to the main plaza as we had seen there was a free walking tour there (which we love) which would fill the time before we could check in, plus give us an orientation of the city.

 

Arriving early at the meeting point in front of the cathedral and spotting no red t-shirts I suggested we walked around the back, just to check that it wasn’t the front.  Walking around the back we could see that it must be the other side so we headed back to the plaza only suddenly to be soaked up the back with bird poo or builders waste.  It appeared to be muddy water that had covered our trousers & tops, suddenly a very helpful woman appeared and produced a toilet roll from her bag and started to clean Shelley up, it was then that I clicked that it was a scam (luckily I had read about it in our travel book a few days earlier).

Whilst trying to clean Shell up, Shell handed me her bag, suddenly the woman wasn’t interested in cleaning up Shelley now and turned her attention to me.  Starting to clean me up she insisted on me putting my bags down, which I did but held on tightly to them, alarm bells now really ringing I picked the bags up, shrugged off the woman and said to Shell that we should just get back to the plaza very quickly.  As we walked quickly I noticed the woman in conversation with a younger male accomplice?

Back at the plaza we thanked our lucky stars that we twigged this scam as we had all our valuables in our bags, the only annoying thing is that we had two pairs of clothing with embarrassing stains on them which may or may not come out.  Again, welcome to the big city!!

Around 10am we spotted the guys running the free tour so we stood around waiting for it to start, as we did so we got chatting to  a UK ex-pat who was living in Hong Kong and visiting her daughter who was living here.  She attached herself to us throughout the tour as she was on her own, but she did like to natter whilst we were trying to listen to the tour guide!

 

The tour started in the main square and we were given the story of Chile’s independence from Spain and shown various historic building in the plaza before heading down some street being told various facts and stories, the guide was very good.

One interesting stop was a coffee bar and the guide gave us the low-down on what was known in Santiago as ‘Coffee with Legs’.  Apparently, coffee in Chile is so bad that some entrepreneur decided that in order to get punters into the coffee bar and to take their minds off what they were drinking,  he introduced scantily clad women to serve up the brews.  The idea caught on and the bars became more and more risqué, some with darkened windows where the waitresses were topless.  It escalated to the point where one coffee bar had a happy minute (at any point during the day, designated by the owner) the doors were shut and the waitresses were naked for a minute!   At this point the government cracked down on it and some regulations were put in place. However they are still serving up coffee dressed in basque’s and we were invited to peer through one window where we could see ladies in a state of undress serving coffee’s surrounded by well heeled businessmen. So in Santiago if your boss says he’s popping out for a coffee, you know what he’s up to.

 

 

We then headed through to the government area where we were given a very interesting history lesson on General Pinochet and the last revolution/coup in the 90’s?  where the army rolled tanks into the square and together with the air force took over the place.

From here we headed down some more streets until we stopped in a pretty little area where we took a break in a nearby café where we had some Empanada’s and a beer to wash it down.

After the break, we walked back through the Bella Vista area where the guide pointed out markets, the cheap student area. He informed us about the cheapest places to drink and information on the various local beverages (a volcano and tsunami), also the various local dishes we should try.  It also turns out that Chileans have very sweet teeth with sugar on everything, which also extended to having lemon juice in their beer with the glass rim being dipped in sugar – yuck!!

 

 

Three hours later we were at our final stop of the tour which was Chile’s most famous poets (don’t ask!) house or at least the house where he kept his mistress.  It turned out to be a real bonus as we realised that our hostel was about 40 yards away – result.  The tour was one of the most interesting ones we have been on and if you ever find yourself in Santiago I would highly recommend it.

 

Paying the guide what we thought the trip was worth (that’s the way with free walking tours) we then headed back to the hostel to check-in.  The room was pretty pokey with just enough room for a set of bunk beds. The top bunk with about a couple of foot clearance from the ceiling. Also, checking the shared bathroom, we discovered that it was very dirty, which Shell pointed out to the receptionist with the hope that they might do something about it.

As we didn’t fancy hanging out here very long we locked up our bags (glad not to be carrying round our valuables anymore) and headed out to check out the area for ourselves.

Soon, as we were quite tired we found ourselves sat outside a bar drinking a few beers whilst people watching.  Later in the early evening we decided to check out one of the restaurants that the walking tour guide had recommended.

Checking the menu, we thought we would try a couple of authentic Chileans dishes that the guide had told us about.  I had a sort of hot-pot which was some sort of meat covered in creamed corn, covered in sugar and caramelised (odd, but not bad) and Shell had cooked pork pieces rolled in a coating of the pork fat, which we thought would have been crisped up, it wasn’t it was rubbery (not bad but the fat put Shell off a bit).

A couple of bottles of nice Chilean wine later and after a long day we headed back to the hostel for some shut eye.

Day 2 – Gun’s n Roses!!!

Today was the day I had been excited about for some time, I had bought tickets to Gun’s n Roses at Santiago National Stadium in the hope that we would be able to fit it in to our Chile itinerary.  I was excited because it was the most complete line-up since I had last seen them in the early 90’s, and a line-up I never thought I would see agai due to acrimonious splits in the past.  Hence the tour is named ‘Not in this Lifetime….’ Which I seem to remember is a direct quote about Axl and Slash sharing the same stage together again.

But that was later in the day and Shell wasn’t happy, as a result of our volcano hike (which she was still bitching about) her nose had blistered up and was starting to scab up, so she wasn’t feeling very pretty.

We headed down and grabbed some basic breakfast before going back to our room to pack as we were moving to an Air BnB apartment that we had booked for the next three days.  As we couldn’t check into the apartment until 1pm we sat in the communal room of the hostel and killed some time reading, catching up on internet stuff and playing cards.

Fortunately, we had booked the hostel close to the apartment so we dragged our bags a few hundred yards down the road and tried to check in.  There appeared to be some problem at the reception (my Spanish was not good enough to understand) and we had to hang around for about ½ hour until we were finally given the keys to the apartment.

After a bit of confusion when the keys did not work and checking with reception and finding it was the 13^th floor not the 3^rd floor as I thought I heard, we got into the apartment.  It was quite a big place with a balcony (although it had low railings which gave us a bit of vertigo), that had great views over the city.  Over the days though we discoveedr the kitchen wasn’t that well equipped and the laminate floor was very dirty, when you looked at your bare feet they were black.

Next thing was to stock our cupboards so we headed out in search of a supermarket which after a few requests for directions we found about ½ a mile. It wasn’t a very big shop and we struggled to find the ingredients we needed to cook our favourite meals so we did our best and picked up the basics and some beer and wine before returning to the apartment.

We unpacked and for the next couple of hours I was like a cat on a hot tin roof waiting to go out to the gig, killing the time by listening to Guns n Roses whilst sinking a few beers.

Around 6pm we headed out, although Shell wasn’t feeling great, we headed to the metro to catch the tube a few stops to a station close to the stadium.  Out of the station there were loads of street vendors selling bootleg Guns n Rose’s stuff, including quite amusingly for me, left over Irish paddy day hats (resplendent with bucket) which they were trying to recycle as copies of Slash’s top hat!!

Following the crowd we headed towards the stadium which was 15 minutes away, passing people on the street selling can’s of beer.  We had learned that they did not sell alcohol in the stadium, but we also were told that it was against the law to drink beer on the street, so not being local we passed up on this option.

Arriving at the entrance of the stadium we tried to locate the ticket office where we needed to pick up our tickets and on enquiry we were pointed in another direction around the stadium.  Being unsure on where we exactly had to go I noticed a couple of locals who appeared to have asked the same question, so we hung back and thought it was a good idea to follow them

It was boiling hot and with Shell not feeling great so we were not that impressed when we walked for miles going backwards and forwards around the stadium following this couple when they kept getting different directions from each official they asked.

I recon we must have walked a couple of miles until we finally found the box office which was right around the back of the stadium off the beaten track and located in what looked like a row of concrete toilet blocks.  Queuing up I finally got my hands on the tickets and we headed to a café across the road where we had a couple of Sprites to quench our thirst.

 

By now it was around 7.30 and I did not anticipate the band hitting stage until about 9.30 (I saw no details about any decent support act), so we decided to head around to one of the entrances to see if we could find anywhere to get a proper drink.

It didn’t appear we would find anywhere when shell suggested that we crossed the road where there appeared to be some shops, we were in luck there was a Chinese restaurant, although full they let us sit in the foyer and have some drinks.

We sat there for the next hour or two drinking some beers/wine to get in the mood, which seemed to do the trick as Shell was feeling better.  Around 9pm we thought we should head into the stadium in case the band came on earlier than I expected.

After gaining entry and getting directions to the section we were in we then squeezed our way through the packed concourse and then entered the packed stadium.  Muscling our way through the tightly packed crowd until we came to a standstill, where we thought we would stay put.  Looking around us it looked like there were far more people in there than the 50,000-capacity suggested.

No sooner had we plumped for this position then the Looney Tunes theme tune came on which heralded the start of the gig (what timing!) and shortly Axl, Slash, Duff et al bounced onto stage and launched into ‘It’s so easy’ and the crowd started to bounce as one, including me and Shell.

 

Continuing with some more lively tracks the crowd continued to bounce around and checking with Shell she seemed to be holding her own and quite enjoying it.

As the band continued to crash through their hits the crowd calmed down a bit and we could concentrate on the music.  The band were pretty tight apart from the odd bum note from Axl I was pretty impressed.  We also amused ourselves watching the large screen and noting that fat Axl seemed to have had some very dodgy plastic surgery that made him look quite scary!!

The band went through loads of their classic tracks ‘Welcome to the Jungle’ ‘My Michelle, ‘Coma’, and one of my personal favourites ‘Night Train’ backed by really funky projected graphics and the odd explosion here and there.  The new guitarist seemed pretty good and tried to hold his own with Slash.

 

Axl’s voice seemed to be improving throughout the gig and Slash and Duff were absolutely killing it, rolling back the years and running around the stage.  There were some interesting solo’s with Slash playing the intro to ‘The Godfather’ which morphed into ‘Sweet Child of mind’ and then of course the sing-a-long during ‘Knockin on Heavens Door’

One of my favourite moments was when Duff took centre stage and vocal duties and then did a blistering cover version of ‘New Rose’ at which point I lost it (I think my neck will hurt in the morning).

 

After about  2 ½ hours the band left stage only to return for the inevitable three song encore which concluded with a rip roaring ‘Paradise City’ during which loads of pyro’s and fireworks were set off, accompanied by tonnes of ticker-tape being released over the crowd, quite an impressive finale.

 

Being honest, Gun’s n Roses 25 years on were far better than I expected them to be, very professional and an impressive 3 hour set.  Slash absolutely owned the show, with Duff a close second and Axl was decent.  Also, I am pleased to say that Shell said she really enjoyed the show too, thanks to my coaching she pretty much knew all the songs (I think she has a new found respect for Gun’s n Roses and in particular Slash’s stunning guitar work).  I am pleased I forked out for this as you never know if the cracks in the band will open again before they manage to hit Europe, it’s the closest I will ever see to the original line-up again!

After the final bow, Shell and I clung to each other whilst we squashed sheep style out of the stadium until we could walk freely.  On the way out, we managed to pick up a gig T-Shirt for Shell (looks much better on girls, retro rock type style), before getting out to the road where it was total  gridlock.

We knew the metro was shut for the night so we headed back to the Chinese restaurant where we thought we would have a beer or two whilst we waited for the traffic to die down.  It appeared that nothing was going to move on the street so we took the decision to ask directions for the centre of town and walk hoping to pick up a taxi along the way.

Luckily, we did pick up a cab about ½ mile up the street and we headed back towards home, the taxi driver playing some sort of funky jazz music along the way.

Back in the Bella Vista area we were still pumped from the gig so we headed towards the student bars where we shared a few litres of beers sat outside whilst we chewed the fat about the gig.  Whilst we were sitting there in a bar across the road, a small fight (local gangs?) broke out and a few chairs were thrown around, but it quickly died out with the combatants heading off in opposite directions.

Entertainment over. We headed back to our apartment to play Gun’s & Roses, sink some red wine and have one of the latest nights we have had in a long time!

Day 3 – Schnoz!!

Waking up late and both supporting fairly decent hangovers we took it easy. Even worse Shell’s nose had got even worse spreading even further, she wasn’t a happy bunny.

The volcano trip had really done her schnoz in and so after a quick search on the internet I found a pharmacy nearby that was open so I suggested we went there to see if they had any cream to help.  We headed out and quickly found it, the only thing was it was very busy and Shell had the indignity of having her nose inspected whilst she showed the chemist a translation of the problem on her phone which translated as ‘Nose herpes’.  Fortunately, the chemist saw what the problem was and we were given the appropriate cream to deal with it.

 

As we weren’t feeling great and Shell felt like the Elephant woman we went back to the apartment to chill out for the day, Shell plastering cream all over her nose and relaxing whilst I caught up on doing our washing in the basement laundry room.

Shell still did not feel like facing the public in the evening so I headed out to find some food to bring back to the apartment.  I thought I had found a take-away but in reality, it was a restaurant, but after a few broken conversations I managed to get understood that I wanted some food to take-away.

 

Back at the flat we just had our food and watched a bit of TV for the rest of the night, which was a bit of a shame as in the streets below it seemed to be lively and happening.

Day 4 – No ATM

After getting up and making breakfast we thought that as we were in the capital we would try and find a ATM where we could finally unblock our cash card, as advised by the bank.

 

Following our map. we found the first ATM on our list but to no avail, there was still no option to unblock the card.  We then walked further into the centre of town trying two or three more banks, all with the same result, also seeing if we could find a shop to get a new battery for Shell’s phone (which now had a battery life of about an hour).

Having no luck with either tasks we then thought we would go to the bus station to purchase our exit tickets for the next day.  Getting off at the wrong metro stop (train station not the coach station) we then got directions from a policeman and found that the coach station was a short walk down the road.

It was a pretty straight forward thing to get the coach tickets to Valpariso and whilst we wandered around the coach station we found a place where we managed to get the phone battery (fingers crossed) so the day wasn’t a complete write-off.

 

We then returned to the Bella Vista area where we stopped at one of the student bars and sat outside and had a couple of beers before returning to the apartment to chill out and relax for the rest of the afternoon and early evening.

In the evening, we headed back out to the street bar and had a few drinks and sat there people watching and chatting.  As it was Halloween there were a few people out and about in their costumes and we also enjoyed one of the buskers who came along and played a few Pearl Jam covers.

At one of the rock bars in the area they had a Halloween special gig that included 4 cover bands, including Black Sabbath, Megadeth & Metallica tributes which looked interesting, but as they didn’t start until 11pm and we had to get up fairly early the next day we decided to give it a miss.  Instead we just grabbed a take-away (not a restaurant this time) and went back to the apartment to eat it before a bit of TV and bed.

I must say that I really enjoyed Santiago as a city as it was vibrant, funky and lively and I think we should have spent another day or two here.  Although this may also be because I saw one of my favourite bands, reformed and playing for the first time in 25 years!!