Welcome to Chile!

Wow! What a crazy couple of days... We are really glad to be settled for a week or so, and especialy in such a cool place...

We left Brazil on Monday and arrived in Santiago that evening... Upon landing, we were informed that it was Chilean Independence Day and everything in the city would be closed for the next two days!!! So funny that we managed to hit both Brazil and Chile during a major national holiday when all banks, museums, post offices, and major attractions were closed... We headed directly from the airport to our super-strange lodgings: the east Indian-themed Majestic Hotel, home to Santiago´s only Hindu restaurant... Despite good Expedia reviews, the hotel itself is really run down and is located in the strangest area: right on the very edge of downtown next to a busy highway, amoungst burned-out office buildings and boarded-up warehouses... Thankfully (and bizarrely enough) the Hindu restaurant was both open and absolutely spectacular!!! and we both agreed that it gave our favorite Indian restaurant back in Hove (the Ashoka) a real run for it´s money. We acutally ended up eating there twice! We spent the entire day Tuesday just wandering around Santiago´s empty center, checking out the beautiful plazas (Plaza las Armas and Bella Artes were the standouts) and ended up discovering a really fun open-air market, where we spotted gorgeous Alpaca wool sweaters for about $10 US each... what a steal! (I think we´ll have to buy a few when we head back through town in a week or so...) Most of the businesses in the city were shut down for the holiday, but we did end up scoring movie tickets and went to see The Lady in the Water, which we both liked. We left Santiago on Wednesday morning by bus for Valparaiso, about 60 miles north-west of the capitol on the Pacific coast. It hasn´t taken us long to realize that this is a magical and paradoxical place, stuck in the past and yet simultaneously far, far ahead of the game. There is a distinct feeling here that things haven´t changed in 100 years: the strange, slanted houses, steep cobbled streets, and creaky iron elevators that connect the upper and lower parts of town... and yet the people seem to be incredibly hip and progessive: trendy cafes playing scratchy Billie Holiday LP´s on antique phonographs, art-house cinemas showing Japanese films, and cute boutique hotels like the one where we are staying: Hotel Ultramar, a refurbished warehouse decked out in chrome fixtures, ultra-modern furnishings, and a service staff dressed in classic black and white French maid uniforms! Plus, our room has the most fabulous view of Valpariso bay. www.hotelultramar.cl Today, we had lunch in this little restaurant that was sort-of a combination junk shop-record store-cafe, serving a fixed lunch menu of chai-tea seared salmon on a bed of wild mushroom risotto... Unbelievable! Our cute waitress was speaking the worst-sounding Spanish ever, until she broke down and asked in a thick Australian twang "Do ya mind if I just speak English?" We´ve firmly decided to stay in Valparaiso for at least a week, which I have a very strong feeling will not be nearly long enough. xxx Jason