Snake eyes in Santiago

So first things first.......Leicester in the play offs, there`s an actual surprise! blog on.

Having completed Argentina, we rocked up to Santiago with some partying in mind following our lazy Mendoza lifestyle. Via the wonders of facebook, we had conversed with our travelling chums Cyrille and Derek and booked into the same hostel that they were in. 8pm was the time as we walked through our hostel door, only 3 hours later than we had planned to meet up with our fellow world wonders, but fortunately they were still both at the hostel but literally about to leave for something to eat along with a spanish girl called Helena. Being the kind soles that they are, the agreed to wait a whole 5 minutes for us to drop our bags off and get our things to go out, but they didn`t allow us any more time, even though Jen was desperate for a shower. Might not be so kind after all. So as our showerless selves hummed a bit, we ventured out to a place recommended to us by the hostel for some traditional Chilean cuisine. 

With me and Jen being the only two who`s Spanish was about as good as Joey Barton`s French, we sat back and let the other three order the food........ two plates of the Chilean norm "Chorrillana" (which is a plate full of chips smoothered in onions, egg, sausage, meat, olives and sometimes cheese) with a pitcher of beer. This by the way, is one epic plate of food and I will be attempting to recreate it when I get home. If someone supplies the beer, I´ll cook it up for them!

Suitably filled and following a few beers, we thought the best idea would clearly now be to go on a pub crawl of Santiago......what better way to discover the city?! Rocking up to a karoake bar we paid our entrance fee which got us into 3 bars on route, with a shot in each bar, and then free entry to the club at the end. Entrance also meant that the first hour in the meeting bar, was as much free beer as you could possibly drink so what is the best way to yam beers in a short period of time???? Drinking games of course. So with a lack of playing cards, we played what we could such as the legendary cigarette packet flip game (Loughborough lads will know what I`m on about), and a new game we`d learnt out here involving coins amongst a few others. Did the trick though with plenty of alcohol being consumed. At this point we questioned how much we had drank, as we looked at a flyer of the pub crawl we were on and in big letters it read "Gay pub crawl". Not knowing what we had got ourselves into and whether we were heading to some gay bars, we looked a little closer at the flyer to read that was saturday night`s pub crawl and we were on the friday crawl.

After some free shots and discounted drinks from the first few bars we played some silly games in another one. The guides looked for 3 single guys and 3 single girls but only found 1 male volunteer and 2 girls so being the sports we are me and Jen volunteered and forced our mate Derek to join in too! The game turned out to be a little flirtacious, with the lads putting a shotglass down their pants which the girls had to drink and the girls putting a shot down their cleavage for the lads to drink. Luckily, me and Jen love to play such games anyway so we were pros, but Derek was forced into it (by me) to do this with a total stranger. What fun. I`ve emailed him for the photo but not sure we`ll get it as he refused to get it on facebook! If I do, it will proudly be posted right here.

Not much else to report on the pub crawl night, other than Cyrille pulled one of the pub crawl guides, who was a woman (no mistaken Saturday night pub crawls here).

The following day we were going to go on a free walking tour, however we were too lazy but our mate Cyrille took us on the same tour as he had been on it yesterday! We had a look at a cool church, nuff said about that.

There were some crazy sculptures in the central plaza, this one was a bit freaky and didn`t fail with the customary pigeon sitting on a statue.

On our way to a cool viewpoint we heard some harmonious tunes coming out of a cave. Yes, a random cave in the middle of the city! Following our ears we stumbled into a cave where folk were selling little nic nacs and local things, but the impressive thing was the guy playing tunes on his ocarinas. Now you might not know what an ocarina is (I wouldn`t have either if it weren`t for the legendary N64 game "Zelda, Ocarina of time") but its a small wooden musical instrument with holes allowing you to make a tune with your fingers. Mesmerised by the smooth melodies of a random old guy in a cave, we listened along for a bit and convinced ourselves that we definately needed one of these to recreate such soothing sounds.

Ocarina in pocket, we went onto the viewpoint which we had set out to visit in the first place. It had some cool statues and after waiting for a while for some people to get out the way so our photo would look cool, we got bored cos they were taking freeking ages, so we just took one anyway.

Climbing many sets of staircases, we finally reached the top and got a good view of the city. Sadly, Santiago has a fairly thick smog engulfing the city, probably as it`s such a huge city and theres lots of polution etc, but it meant that the impressive views were somewhat tampered with. If you look closely enough you can just about make out the moutain range in the background, as the city lies in the Chilean central valley (the depression between the Chilean coastal range and the Andes). Don`t think I`ve mentioned it before but the city is swarming with dogs, similar to pretty much all south america cities and we couldn`t work out why there was a dog right at the top of the viewpoint who had bothered to walk all the way up there. Weird.

Cultural activities completed we headed back to the hostel for some drinks and a BBQ. Supposedly starting at 7pm we waited whilst drinking for it to start which would eventually be 10pm. Along with other hostel dwellers, we starved away and could only think of one way to surpress the hunger....more alcohol. By the time we ate we were already pretty tipsy and following food, some bright sole came up with the great idea of drinking games (definately wasn`t me!). This turned out to be one of the funniest nights of travelling so far. Along with Derek and Cyrille we were joined by 3 American`s and after a few drinking games, we came to the ultimate drinking game "ring of fire". Most people will recognise this game, however we played with some rules I had never seen before. New rules meant that if someone was dealt a King, they were the president and could literally tell anyone playing what to do, the 10 card meant that anyone else could tell that person to drink at any time, and if you got an ace, you were snake-eyes meaning that no one could look you in the eyes. The reason this night was so funny was purely down to these hilarious American`s, one of which (called Matt) got super drunk quite early. First off, our mate Derek got snake-eyes and Matt kept looking at him so kept having to drink. Then Matt got snake-eyes and thought it was hilarious and tried any tactic possible to get people to look him in the eyes. He`d get right in your face, or shout your name, or hit the table hard...anything he could with his eyes super wide open. Reading this back, it doesn`t even sound that funny...but it was super hilarious, maybe cos we were all pretty drunk.

Jen got the president card, and after I sent Jen under the umbrella in Mendoza, her first move was to send me behind an easel for a while.....payback isn`t so sweet.

Half way through the game, others were becoming intrigued seeing as we were all in stitches. This lad Danny couldn`t resist so joined in, as soon as we did, we made him sit with his shirt over his head. He soon thought joining in was a mistake, but after a few drinks, he was in stitches with the rest of us.

After drinking all night and getting through everything alcoholic we had (including two more trips out to get even more liquer) we called it a night.

Sunday being a new day, we went out in search of some more cultural activities and went off to see a museum we had read was good. Getting to where it was shown on the map, we were dumfounded that we couldn`t find it, and after 5 minutes of looking we finally saw a tiny sign and found out it was closed. Onto a different museum then, which turned out to be pretty interesting. It had an English newspaper from the 70`s with the cover story being about the Chilean president at the time, but I was more interested to read a small piece also on the frontpage about a bizarre decision for WestHam to drop Bobby Moore against Man U.

Following the museum we visited the fish market which was pretty cool, but we were a bit late so there wasn`t that much out.

Walking back to the hostel we crossed this weird horse statue, which is clearly out of proportion but pretty cool all the same.

The next day we went off to another viewpoint of the city, accessible via this cool funicular.

They bloody love a statue on top of a hill here, and here is one depicting the Virgin Mary.

And the view from the top.......and before you say anything about the hair, I decided that it was a good idea to grow it in following Pique`s decision to shave his off, and no-one has called me Pique since. Pique 8, Rogers 1.

Being a nice day an ice cream was on the cards, which was supposed to be a pointing finger and I was gutted when my finger had broken off in the packet.........

....which Jen obviously found hilarious as hers was intact.

Having eaten out a fair bit, we ventured out to the supermarket to pick up some munch. We fancied some steak as we clearly hadn`t had enough in Argentina and were over the moon to pick up this massive lump of steak which was about the size of my head. Why over the moon? No, not as it was the size of my head, but because some half arsed member of staff had put the weight of it down as 0.002kg, and as they price meat by weight here, that meant that this head sized piece of beef cost us a whole 10 pesos, which equates to 1.4 English pence.

With Jen not able to control her excitment at the check out, she had to look the other way as I saw it pass through as 10 pesos hassle free. If anyone else can say they have spent 1.4p in a better way then let me know!

The next day was our last in Santiago, so we thought we would revisit the fish market seeing as it wasn`t in full swing the first time we went, and it was pretty cool. It stunk though, but still pretty cool.

Thankyou very much Santiago......next stop Valparaiso