Santiago de Chile

So there has been much slacking lately on the blogging. The last time I wrote was 10 days ago! I just have been spending too much time sitting in plazas and cafes drinking espresso...Yes, no longer is it just instant Nescafe. We have like totally moved out of the third world. Just kidding.

So after leaving San Pedro de Atacama, Amish and I went to Salta, Argentina and John went to the beach in Chile. After a 12 hr daytime bus ride with some pretty sweet movies (I sat by the dvd player with a bunch of foreigners and we commandeered the dvd player) we arrived in Salta in the evening. I had been here 3 yrs ago visiting my friend Jonas, and I revisited some of his old digs. We had a ridiculous steak dinner at 11:30 PM (normal time for dinner it seems) and then went out the main strip where everyone goes out. The streets are closed off to cars and there were TONS of people, young and old, walking the streets and going to bars, clubs, etc.

We decided to go to a casino close by, attached the local mall. Now, on the outside, it looked really classy..frosted glass doors, plush carpeting. When you walk inside though, you see a TON of slot machines, and only two blackjack tables..with table minimums of 2 pesos (66 US cents). The clientele is very similar to that found in many Atlantic City casinos (old men with their shirts half open and gold chains. Those are the high rollers that spend 5 pesos per hand)

We spent the next day walking around Salta, which is a beautiful, but more suburban city, making sure to get our fill of empanadas. We booked a tour to go see the countryside near Salta, which takes us in a car along the route of what used to be the highest train in the world, as it weaves through the Andes.

We have been having a huge problem with the time changes when going back and forth between destinations. We went a whole 28 hrs thinking it was one hour behind the actual time. Needless to say, we are idiots, and were woken up for our tour at 7:30 in the morning and had to rush out. Since we were out the night before, much of the 12 hr tour was spent sleeping...Kind of a waste.

After spending a significant time putzing around Salta and eating some good steak, we bussed it to Mendoza, a 20 hr bus ride, where we, once again, sat around a lot of terraces and cafes. We went on a wine tour, as Mendoza is the wine capital of Argentina. Not bad...not bad at all, except for some annoying co-tourists, that is. Other than that, we just spent a lot of time people watching, and commenting on how we could significantly improve our mullets.

We then hopped onto another overnight bus to Santiago, where we met up with John. We get into the Santiago Bus Station at 3:30 AM when we are supposed to get there at 5, and then are lucky enough to get TOTALLY hosed by the cab driver. Luckily, we had a hostel picked out and reservations already made.

We spent most of the next day catching up with John, walking around plazas, and going to the central market, which is a HUGE seafood market, with tons of different types of fish, oysters, clams, sea urchins, etc..and we actually saw a stray CAT milling around. We had an amazing lunch here which consisted the largest single seafood consumption of my life. I´m SO happy I got a Hep A vaccine before I left.

Yesterday, Bill, our other friend from Med school came into town and we went to the horsetrack here, which is beautiful, and we definitely were not classy enough to be there. Amish almost won 100 bucks, and a jockey fell off his horse in the 3rd race..Dangerous. Right after you see the jockey fall off the horse however, you see a stray dog run across the track. Priceless.

Post racetrack, we had what possibly is the best dinner we have had so far. Once again, a steak dinner, followed by going out. We were fortunate enough to talk to some locals while we were out and found out that the word for stray dogs is ´vagabundo.´ Yeah all of you might think that this infatuation with stray dogs is bizarre, but if you just saw the sheer number of these mangy animals roaming the streets, you´d understand. They follow you and try and nip at your food. If Bob Barker were here, he would have a FIELD DAY.

Anyway, we are off to see Colo Colo, Santiago´s main soccer team play today. Be ready for some pictures of us with face and body paint...or just some team jerseys. Let´s just hope we don´t get stabbed for chanting the wrong thing.

Cheers.