Santiago

The trip to Santiago went alright. Our bus left arround 2pm and the guy we rented our bikes from was "busy" apparently till 4 or so, but we realy neded to catch that bus. So after some running arround trying to use pay phones in this country, we decided to go talk to our campground owner. He was super nice and helped us by calling the guy and arranging that we leave them at the campsite. He even gave us our 10 thousand peco deposit back. (12 dollars) The bus cruised by the campground gate as soon as we got out there, so we jumped on and were on our way. The bus kinda sucked because it stops every few minuates to let people off and pick up more people, normal in a city bus but not a greyhound thats taking us 300 kms.

The minuate we got into Santiago we grabed another 2 hour bus to Valpariso. We got in at arround 10 or 11 and were met by an elderly woman who said she had some rooms in her house. We desided to take a look so she let us the 1/4 block to her house. There was the steepest set of stairs I have ever seen that led up to her place, and probly 100 feet of them. Once we tackled that, we were in. The place was a little cluttered with crap but on the whole prety clean. We asked her for some directions to a good place to grab a meal. The map was a little hazy and we had a little trouble finding the place but after some walking around in what felt like a sketchy city we found it. The windows in the front had the security doors pulled down already and the doors were yellow glass that we couldnt see through but we decided to poke our heads in. The place looked a little empty but we were craving some chinese food so we went for it. As we walked in we got a little more uncomfortable seeing that the place was completley empty. As we were looking at the menu Sage noticed a cockroach crawling on the table......the waitres showed us a different table.......we left quickly. A little turned off of eating at this point we settled for some cockroach free (hopefully) pizza. There were other people in there so we felt a little better about it.

The lady we were staying with, whos name is Sonja didnt have a spare key for us, wich we didnt find out untill after we had paid, but she left us her cell phone number to call her when we were comming back. She did leave us a lock and key for our room so we figured our stuff would atleast be safe even tho we might never get back to it. So after dinner we headed to the bus station to hopefully find her or give her a call. Luckly we found her prety quick cause she didnt seem to answer her cell phone. She led us back to the house while she told us, in terribly fast Chillian spanish (different from the others) that she had locked her keys in her house and had the police on the way to get in. GOD, Sage and I were worried now. Here it was midninght and we are sitting on the street with a crazy lady locked out of the house. She quickly ran off for some reason and told us to wait for the cops. The bottom 2 doors she left unlocked but the top one was the problem, I ran upstairs quickly to examine the door and figured that I could break it in 2 with a swift kick, if things got bad. We desided to call the cops ourselves and headed next door to a closing down shipping company. We spoke with the man and got him to call the police, I realy had no idea what was going on at this point and I figured if this thing wasnt resolved in 5 minuates I was kicking in the door and getting the hell out of here. The guy who called the cops for us came over and gave Sonja his keys, just then the cops showed up and Sonja and an officer went upstairs. While they were up there we asked the guy who gave his keys if this woman was crazy. He said shes very nice and gave us the thumbs up. The key worked somehow and we got in with all our stuff the way we left it. Our nerves cooled a little and we went to bed.

That was definatly some excitment that we didnt want to go through again, so we checked the book found a place and grabed a cab. Both feeling like mabie we should be leaving the city, we were blown away at how much nicer the northern part of the city was. It reminded me of San Fran but a little steeper and the building and roads a little tighter! The hostel was beautiful and gave us top notch service. We took off for a day of wandering arround the city enjoying its crazy architecture. There are few streets, but lots of little pasageways leading arround the city with old elevators on tracks to take you up and down the hills. We took alot of pictures and headed back to the hostel for some sleep. In the morning they had a great breakfast waiting for us, and after we headed for a museum. Im sure Sages blog will tell you more about the museum, but I can tell you it was a poets house, I think, whos name I will never remember.

We are out of Valparasio and killing our 5 hour layover in Santiago to catch the next bus to Mendoza, Argentina. Its about a 6 hour ride over the Andes so it should be exciting.
Orin.