Santiago, Santiago, Santiago so big and yet so... meh. I think the truth I really have accepted is that my state of mind is directly dependent on the quality of the last few meals consumed and the effort required to obtain them. And Chileans just don't have my best interests in mind in this regard, food is either a expensive and unsatisfying, expensive and all right but hard to find, or it's a completo. A completo is both cheap and easy to find but it is just a hot dog with tomatoes and avocado so while its novel the first time, after walking round town for ages looking for something decent to eat it really stops doing you any good. Here ends the whinge.

Santiago is a big big city, largely built around the same time as physics building at auckland university but with a really attractive metro (aka subway). Seriously while Mexico City had extensive, functional and clean, and Buenos Aires has scary ghetto-chique. Santiago has big art installations and plenty of space to wait the two minutes till the next (not really crowded at all) train.

So where did the metro take us you ask? Well we visited some hills. There are two of them nestled within the clutches of downtown Santiago, one very small, and one very big. The smaller one is accessed via a crazy edwardian entrance way and is cross-crossed with whacky paths, that combined with the dense tropical planting and the sprouty rock formations means your never quite sure where the top is or indeed what is around the next corner. We discovered several elevated plazas, a teeny tiny chapel, tropical gardens complete with baby monkey puzzle trees, and eventually the top from which we could boggle that the great big apartment blocks seemed to continue into the distance in every direction or at least as far as the smog allowed us to see.

We also saw what we thought was either soccer hooliganism or a student protest but turned out to be more of the well dressed begging students we had encountered in La Serena. It turned out (as explained to us by a long term student occupant of our hostel) that at the start of every year here abouts the first year students are ceremonially stripped of their nice new books and fancy bags, there shirts, and shoes, and their cleanliness. And so the first years swarm onto the streets often enhancing their decripidness with flour and mud and beg for coins from the hard working masses and surprisingly often receive them. Then the coins make their way back to the second year students holding the shiny new bags of books, and then there is the purchasing of beer and much fun is had by all.

The second hill was much bigger and more organized, it featured a great big outdoor catholic church and statue of one virgin or another. A cable car (aka funicular) for getting up the hill, and a gondola for traversing it. Swimming pools, restaurants, greenery and all in all far less charm than the completely random paths that we had enjoyed earlier in the day. Although we were amused by our encounter with a reformed Afghanni stow away, who after drifting through various ports in the 70's with no valid passport or visas finally 'legalized' in Sweden and now seemed to be dragging his two boys round South America.

We went to some museums as well, flooded with stolen mexican antiquities and spanish colonial military art and artifacts, oh and some more freeze-dried mummies (much older than the egyptian ones blah blah blah...).

On our last day we just caught the subway 14 stations east and then walked home through the business districts, the central plaza, parks and many shady tree lined boulevards. But then another lng bus trip beckoned and we were off to Pucon.