A Santiago Rarity

Public transportation- Something that we were not familiar with before coming down to Santiago. (Though we are quite excited to ride the light rail when we return!) There are some wonderful things and there are some drawbacks to the everyday use of Public transportation. Scott and I are absolutely proficient using the buses and metro, but at times, it is a pain.

Here are the things we love!
1. Its Cheap
2. Its Easy. We can ride the bus/metro by swiping a rechargeable card at each respective location.
3. Its entertaining, usually. There are musicians, salesmen and people wanting your money 24/7. For example, some guy who sings Frank Sinatra out of tune, ridiculously loud and in a horrible english accent
4. We don't have to drive with the crazy Chilean drivers.
5. It forces us to excersie. Public transportaion doesn't drop us off exactly where we are going, hence, we walk, a lot.

The not so Good:
1. Buses are late a lot, especialy after 10pm. I think the longest we waited was about 35min.
2. The drivers. Now this is up for debate, some are just fine. However, there are some days when we feel we might just end up on top of someone, or smash a child. Which brings us to #3
3. They are crowded. Apparently everyone must get on the bus NOW, when people are already smashed up on the windows. Same as the metro. One good thing is that pretty much no one has BO, and its summer!
4. People asking us for money. 'No, I don't want Celine Dions greatest hits that you burned yesterday. And no, I don't want any of your handmade plastic crap, I mean jewelery. And I'm sorry you're blind/ you have a trach/ you're missing a leg, etc etc.'

Overall, its pretty good. we do miss having the freedom of our own car. For fun we put a picture of me on the bus relaxing. This was the only time when we were the only people on the bus. It was awesome. It was also 1:30 in the morning.


Below we have a challenge for you. When Scott and traveled to Fruitillar last week, we had the previlage of having a TV in our room. Now this was very exciting becuase we dont have one here in Santiago. However, we turned it on and the first thing we saw was the music video below. We dicided that maybe we weren't missing too much. Now the challenge. We searched and searched for this video online and alas, could not find it. If anyone is up for the challenge, see if you can find the video. We'd be much abliged. If you never want to see it in entrity, we also understand. Sorry about the quality, our lauging in the background, and our reflections- its all we got. Winner gets to choose next blog topic! Good Luck

La Familia Horta mas la Familia Morris

So we finally were able to snag a picture with our lovely host family. We just adore them. Are they cute or what?! We feel very fortunate to be staying with such a wonderful family. We're spoiled and we'll leave it at that.

More to come later. Maybe next time we will share with you the painful process of trying to book travel plans in South America. Im talking excruciatingly painful!

Dia de los amantes

Hope you had a great Valentines day. We are in Frutillar this weekend exploring the Lake District. It's about 700 miles south of Santiago. The lake district is German settled. The archituture, food and delicious pastries are a nice change. It's a sleepy town with not much going on unless you're in to swimming in the freezing lake. We're staying at a quainte little hotel pictured above. Note the hearts on the windows.. they went all out for Valentines day.

Last night we had the pleasure of listening to an awesome cover singer out by the lake shore. Well, he thought he was awesome, and sexy. He was sexy though. Anyway, it was a beautiful setting; a free concert, sunset at the lake and a beautiful snow-capped volcano in the distance.

There's a lovley picture of us, however, scott blew it- typical.. see below

We enjoyed some delicious Chilean style hot dogs called completos- spicy hot dogs with mayonaise, diced tomatoes, avocados, sour krawt and pico de gallo. They were monsters and delicous. To finish off our healthy evening, we ordered french fries, pisco sours and watched Hitch, with spanish subtitles.

mmm.. que rico!

Weekend on the coast

This weekend, we took off to the coast and finally got out of the city. Jess' mom was able to come down for a visit this week and we had a great time. We went to Valparasio, Vina del Mar and traveled up the coast to find some beaches.. and a hotel but that's a different story. We found this great local beach where we were the whitest people for miles. The water was FREEZING! This candid pic was taken after we tried to brave the ocean.

Valparaiso is a funky little port town.. well, not too little. It is Chile's 2nd largest city. Houses are piled on top of each other and there is no flat land. There are super steep streets and stairways. There are also these fancy little contraptions scattered though the city. They are 'ascensors' or elevators that were created in the 20's to move people and cargo up these ridiculous inclines. Yes, we took them and yes, we feared for our lives.

After we survived the ascensor, we celebrated by eating at this restaurant with an amazing view. We had some delicious and fresh seafood while recuperating from the death hills. To find out more about Valpo and see more pics of the city, click here.

What's a summer day at the beach without ice cream? We chowed down this treat along with 2 million other visitors in Vina. After this bite, Jessica dropped the cone on her lap... typical.

Superbowl. Santiago Style

Oh Arizona Cardinals! What a heart breaker. Scott and were absolutely ecstatic to be able to watch the Superbowl and watch it in English! However, it was on ESPN espanol so instead of awesome Superbowl commercials, we watched commercials for futbol, futbol and yep, mas futbol! We found a small gringo bar here that showed the game,but we heard it was jam packed. We actually ended up going to some friends of ours and trying to celebrate American style. (Mike and Alissa shout out! Thanks again ) We did pretty good.....Pizza, queso dip with strange tortilla chips, crackers and dip, and beer. Close enough. It was a late night, as the game didn't start until 8:00 here, but fun none the less. Above is the awesome food we enjoyed and below Scott and I about 30sec before the Steelers got that last touchdown (Hence the smiles).