BREAKING NEWS: We finally spent time apart

A lot has happened since our last post. There has been laughter (Amelia got weed on by a stray dog and the locals pissed themselves). There have been tears (Elle got too drunk and cried because she wasn’t allowed to take a  different stray dog into our apartment). And potentially the most shocking plot twist of all: the two of us have actually spent a significant portion of the last month away from each other, leading to several ‘where’s your girlfriend’ related questions. The gist of it is that Amelia has a lot of friends and Elle does not.

For the hectic month that has been September, I have hosted not one, but two visitors from home. 

Given the hype of all the ACTIVITIES we’ve been doing here in Chile, the pressure was on to show first Megan, and then Jack, what it’s all about. Under these circumstances, I found myself on a random fishing boat in a remote coastal town, nearly broke my leg on an off-piste ski slope, and mistakenly dragged someone who doesn’t speak a work of Spanish to an unsubtitled show at the Santiago planetarium (sorry Jack). That said, it was the perfect excuse to see a load of awesome places outside of Santiago, including La Serena, Zapallar and Valparaíso.

La Serena with the ultimate idiot abroad

At one with the ocean/finding ourselves in Zapallar

Valparaíso, a city of street art

Gone fishing

Just getting some ice poured on my head
by Manuel Pellegrini's best mate

Oh, and I don't know if you've heard (she hasn't mentioned it once to a single person), but Elle went to Buenos Aires, so she'll be writing a post on that.

As soon as the visits were over, Amelia met the rest of us at the beach town of Viña del Mar for the biggest celebration in the Chilean calendar year, dieciocho. Essentially, the whole country sacks off the entire week and instead engages in daily barbecues and drinks far too many ‘terremotos’ in massive carnival settings with fairground rides and nightclub tents. Terremotos translate to ‘earthquakes’ and consist of fermented wine and a scoop of pineapple ice cream. See below for the aftermath of said terremotos.


Amelia awoke from her lil nap in the taxi
and entered the hostel in style

We also went to a bar on Alex’s 21st birthday called Spazio Badoynk (or Spaz as we lovingly labelled it), did some weird dancing then ended up in the Casino, where we discovered that Ally actually has a gambling problem. Much persuasion was later needed back in the hostel to tear her away from her Paddy Power account, drunk naked and angry.

Spot the gambling addict

Elle finally lost the 'I can drive I just don't have a pink licence'
argument when she spectacularly crashed into a curb

It’s fair to say it has been a good month. Other ACTIVITIES included a bike tour through a vineyard, salsa classes and Abbie head-butting the occasional Chilean.

However, post-visitor issues Amelia is currently experiencing:

• Having shared a room with someone every night but one from 25th August to 21st September, I am officially scared to sleep alone.
• I actually have to do some uni work.
• I must now return to spending a disproportionately large amount of ‘alone time’ with Elle.

EVERYONE LOOK HOW MUCH FUN WE'RE HAVING

Here are some of the ACTIVITIES we’ve been doing in Chile (it's making our heads spin), so we can now justify our all-too-frequent imitations of the following video clip for the past half a year:

Hiking in Parque Aguas de San Ramón

Nip slip

Pensive and at one with nature

We are not in the peak of physical fitness and we are not Bear Grylls. However this hike only takes 3 hours and gives you an awesome view of the city, the mountains and a waterfall.

Horse-riding in Cajón del Maipo

Our little tour guide

Given that we’ve never really done a lot of horse-riding before, we expected there to be some initial basic instructions on how to ride a horse before trotting up steep mountains. There was none. Not to mention our tour guide was an 8-year-old boy. Not to worry though, there was the reassuring safety reminder that a girl went to hospital with a broken rib the day before. For the purposes of putting relatives’ minds at ease, we had extremely comprehensive insurance, we definitely had all our contact and passport details to hand for case of emergency, we had efficiently planned the logistics of the whole day before turning up and getting on a bus, and we didn’t hitchhike back *. All this aside, we had the best time and the view speaks for itself.

* We cannot guarantee the validity of the aforementioned claims.

Zip wiring in Cajón del Maipo

Zip wire man checkin' out the goods

Parque Bicentinario

Tours 4 Tips

La Vega Central

So happy together 

Each of these can hold up to 12 bodies

Meeting bright and early on a Saturday morning (special mention goes to Ally lasting the 4 hour tour on an hour of sleep), we began our ‘Offbeat Santiago’ trip around the lesser-known areas of the city, sampling the sopaipilla and the terremoto as we went. From there the tour led us to the oldest, biggest and most important cemetery of Chile. Currently there are some 2,200,000 bodies buried there, which only fills 3-4% of the available space (an area the size of 117 football pitches). 

Museo de la Memoria y los Derechos Humanos

Cheers Elle

The museum of memory and human rights was an incredibly moving insight into some of the events which occurred during the Pinochet dictatorship. Interviews with torture victims and letters written by children were two of the most hard-hitting, in a museum that was amazingly modern and well put together. This is, however, just one particular outlook on that period of time. It’s very interesting to hear Chileans arguing their separate cases for both sides.

Skiing in La Parva

Amelia pooed her pants

That's pretty much the final thought we'd like to leave you with there.