It's Chilly in Chile

Been sitting around wondering if we made it safely to Chile? Well, good news...we did! After a 9 hour flight to Brazil from New York and then a 4 hour flight from Brazil to Santiago, we landed in Santiago, Chile. We then proceeded to do all of the wrong things. We didn't have a black or blue ink pen so we had to borrow one from the reciprocity fee lady, she was nice, we were embarrassed. Now, picture us both completely exhausted, shell shocked, and wishing we had looked up the exchange rate of US Dollars to Chilean Pesos BEFORE we got to the actual country, plus being up for at least 24 hours, and you get us, saying yes to a sketchy taxi, you know, like the first thing people tell you NOT to do. Well anyway, then we got totally ripped off on our taxi ride, after agreeing to an overpriced ride, we then did the math in our heads and found that indeed we did not need to pay the man almost $40 US Dollars. We're still trying to get over this mistake, so cut us some slack here people.

Anyway, the first 2 days, it was pouring rain, I'm talking torrential downpour. I'm talking, streets became rivers (literally) and rivers became rapids. So, what do you do in a foreign country with no pink Hunter rainboots (I know, I'm in South America, I obviously wouldn't bring fancy rainboots, but still...) and a shitty 4-year-old rain jacket that truly makes me more wet than keeps water out? Well you run around like lunatic Americans with soaking wet everything leaping across the rivers (which prior to this we think, were streets) and laughing with Chileans who were literally picking each other up to make it over the rivers (again, streets). So let's be real, we were pretty lame the first couple of days because we were in a state of shock from the amount of rain happening outside. We did go to a museum called the Museum of Memory and Human Rights and learned all about Pinochet and his dictatorship and the mass tortures and killings that happened in Chile in the 70s and 80s for 16 years. 16 YEARS. It was a terrible, awful, disgusting, horrible thing, but we both learned so much and it was a really impressive and educational museum trip.

Our socks and shoes soaked, we then found out that the pass through the Andes was CLOSED. Do you know what this means?! No, why would you? It means our trip to Mendoza was CANCELLED. It means that all of the torrential downpouring in the city, transfers to snow up in the mountains and makes the windy, curvy, probably dangerous to start, road that we were going to take to get to the beautiful land of Malbec, Argentinian wines, more dangerous and also closed. So there's that. The bright side of this truly tragic situation was that we got to travel to the beautiful Chilean coast and see the beautiful Kelsey Gibbs in a town called Valparaiso. Valparaiso was by far our favorite part of our week in Chile because let me get real with you, Santiago is lame.

So Valparaiso is on the Chilean coast as I just stated, geez stay with me here, and it's just absolutely unreal it's so pretty. Imagine San Francisco with bigger hills and more colorful houses and you get Valparaiso. Plus you get Vina del Mar and some other cute little coastal cities that Kelsey took us too that I now have forgotten the names of. Here we frolicked around town drinking Piscos (the national Chilean drink), climbing giant sand dunes, checking out Pablo Neruda's house (famous poet, check him out), walking through open air art museums, taking crazy buses and fancy metros (subways), watching the sunset over the ocean, and just overall having the BEST time with Kelsey. Valparaiso is a wonderful town and we loved it. Not to mention we stayed in the cutest hostel EVER that just so happened to be near an adorable cafe called Cafe Jardin where we could get incredible mocaccinos with delicious little baby cookies that they really should've given us more of.

We begrudgingly left Kelsey and the beautiful Chilean coast for smoggy Santiago for our last day and a half. Luckily, it had stopped raining long enough for us to actually enjoy Santiago and climb a little mountain to get some incredible sights of the city and the Andes. Here we met some guys from Austin, Texas, who were super strange, very braggy, but had gone to Easter Island, which obviously we're extremely jealous of, but whatever they were braggy and lame. I mean come on, Texas. Just kidding, but seriously...kind of. We found out that although the neighborhood we're staying in seems safe and is cute, it also turned out to be extremely expensive and the hip place to stay...whoops. We accidentally spent $40 US dollars on our first dinner so last night we decided to make spaghetti to make up for our expensive mistake. Oh Santiago, how we will not miss you at all... 

Okay our two best stories: the man we met at a restaurant on the coast who told me I have big feet and said some racist things about rice to Kelsey. Let's get one thing straight here, I wear size 6 1/2, that's small! This guy was so inappropriate, but we decided that he was probably drunk from piscos, or at least we hoped he was or else we probably would've left more offended. But seriously, this guy was out of control. He wanted to give Eric and I his phone number in case we got into trouble in Brazil. What a weirdo. Second best story, showers. There have been many a cold shower...there have been screaming and jumping up and down and mentally preparing ourselves for showers. It's real intense. I think I had some excess soap on my body just for a few days because it was too cold to wash off and I was like, meh, I'm in South America...

Well this has been long enough already, if you made it here then WOW I am sincerely impressed, you're a true friend or extremely bored, I'm not sure which. Off to Brazil in the morning (4:45am to be exact)!

Ciao!

Mandi and Eric

Ps. This post is dedicated to Laura & Amelia, my birthday buddies, happy birthday today to Laura and tomorrow to Meels on Wheels! Love you Geminis!

Pps. Here's a picture of us from Valparaiso so that you know a computer didn't type this and we really are alive...I'd be really impressed if a computer can type how I speak, but whatever anyway details...