So its now day 2 ½ in Santiago… half day, because we spent half a day traveling to Santiago. Cristina was called for work to Peru for the week so we’ve been hanging out in her apartment without her. The internet isn’t working, we’ve tried everything we can from our end and have now come to the conclusion that its all at the ISP end, of course though, we cannot ring them. I don’t think calling and saying; “hey, do any of you guys speak really good English to solve our problem with an internet connection that’s not even ours?” is going to work well.
Thankfully though, Cable TV is working fine. This means we pass a lot of time watching movies in English with subtitles in Spanish. Surprisingly this is actually quite helpful for learning the language.
Yesterday, after much convincing I dragged Joseph into Santiago city.
The funny thing is we both like a different style of traveling. Joseph likes things to be organised, there to be a plan of sorts. Like knowing what you’re going to do and where you’re going, and how you’ll get there. I figure out I’ll learn how to do something while I do it. So today Joff was just frustrated with doing things my way.
So we went down to the main avenue that intersects Pedro de Valdivia and jumped on what I guessed was the right bus to get into town. When we tried to pay the driver he informed us we could only travel on the bus with a “tarjeta”. On observation we noticed everyone was using a card with the word Bip! On the front. The driver let us take the free ride into the city, where I directed Joff to get off at the stop after Univesidad Catolica, which I assumed to be Santa Lucia. So we wandered around the bottom of Santa Lucia hill, and looked for somewhere to purchase one of these Bip! Cards. Joseph also decides at this point that he wants to purchase the Lonely Planet guide to Chile as it will stop him being stressed out by my travel style. Its funny because I’m a crazy planning kind of person in my normal everyday life.