I have arrived!

First day in Santiago has been great. The flight over was pretty entertaining. I struck out with no seat-back tvs but got a window seat next to a classic aussie guy over to see his Argentinian girl friend some 20 years his junior. He provided some really interesting insights into the culture of South American woman that's for sure!!!!!! We yarned for ages and drunk just a little too much so breakfast before landing in Santiago was a pretty subdued affair.

Getting to the hostel was no problem at all, just jumped in my pre ordered shared taxi to Hostel Bellavista at the north-eastern end of town. Many of the hostels are marked simply by a street number so when the driver dropped me off and said 'here you are' I just stood on the street and looked around wondering if he had just left me in some random neighbourhood but when I asked again he pointed to the street number and it matched so no problem there.

My first adventure was getting money out of the ATM for food. I found the ATM no worries but couldn't understand the options. To get to the english language foreign exchange screen (which eventuall a security guard helped me to after I had returned from the Hostel with my phrase book!) one had to navigate through several spanish options that were totally foreign to me. I got there in the end and headed towards a nice restaurant with road side seating amongst the colourfull painted streets where I met a few English lads from my hostel who are all over for a snow boarding trip. We took a super walk up the hill behind the hostel where there is a miserable little zoo and a standing only cable car in the Parque Metropolitano located on Cerro San Cristobal at 485m. Amazing views of the city on sunset with the Madre de Santiago statue at the top.

We found a nice restaurant where the lads had a massive steak dinner. I actually just had a tortillia given my pork sandwhich from lunch was repeating on me a bit! Very entertaining as none of us spoke much spanish so simple requests like medium rare meat was difficult but we got there in the end.