Time is flying here in Santiago, and we’re starting to realize that we’re much closer to the end of our trip than we are to the beginning. On the upside, we realized on about Tuesday that we still had as much time left as many people have when they first start a trip to Chile, so there’s plenty of time to do some fun things. Here’s what we got up to this week, excluding the details of our trip to the Andes, which will be a post all of its own!

• Mon 4: Worked from home during the day, then met up with Simon and Aida (friends from the Tren del Vino) and some more Swedish friends of theirs in Bellavista. Had dinner at a local place there, plus a few drinks, then caught a taxi home.
• Tue: 5: Went to dinner on Pedro del Valdivia, then to the Providencia Jazz Festival which was in the Sculpture Park, right on the Maphocho River.

  

• Wed 6: Got some work done at home in the morning, then relocated to a cafe for the afternoon. Had a delicious chicken lasagne cooked in a clay pot and some tea, served from a neat pot/cut combo. Later in the evening, we attempted to go to Santa Lucia, but it was closed, so we ended up walking around to one of the restaurants near Cafe de Museo for dinner.

  

• Thu 7: After a long day of working from home, the only exciting thing that happened on this day was meeting up with Robin and some other folks from her Spanish school in the evening. They had been at a language interchange session, where Chileans learning English and English-speakers learning Spanish all get together and take turns talking each others languages. We met at a really called place called Basilica over near the language school and had a few drinks, some food and conversation.
• Fri 8: In the evening on Friday, we met up with Emily and Rodolfo again (and got to meet Lola, their super-cute dog!) and went to get some dinner at a very authentic-feeling place. We also had some tasty wine + fruit drink (kind of like Sangria, but not) along with our beers. From there, we picked up a few more cervezas, then headed to the Centro de Entrenamiento Olimpico de Chile (Chilean Olympic Training Center) to watch a few games of Handball. We had heard a lot about the game, because Rodolfo is on the Chilean national team. It’s pretty awesome to watch actually — it feels like a mix between Lacrosse, Basketball and Soccer (futból!), but it really is a game of its own. Something about the speed and passing also reminded me of indoor Netball, but only a little. There’s a lot of contact and it is quite high-scoring (30+ goals per side per game), so it’s fun. We were quite surprised that there weren’t more spectators, considering that it was some sort of playoffs going on, but we made up for it by cheering along 🙂
• Sat 9: In the morning, we headed into the center of the city to go to Centro Cultural Palacio de la Moneda and see the Teracotta Warriors exhibit which was pretty awesome. Our waitress at breakfast was from Israel (living in Chile) and said that she wanted to move to the US but that it was really hard for her to get a visa. After that, we went back over to Patio Bellavista to meet up with Max (from New Year’s Eve) and have a few drinks and some food. Jorge called to let us know that he was back in town, so we all (Robin, Max, Me) made our way to meet up with him (and his dad) at a beer festival! We tried a bunch of Chilean beers, I scored a Mestra beer glass, and we ate some tasty meat on a stick. On the way home, Robin, Max and I saw a dog get hit by a taxi, which sobered things up a bit, but other than that it was a great day.

  

• Sun 10: Up early and on the road, we had a full-length day trip out to the Andes on Sunday. It was such a trip that it deserves a post of its own.

I’ve had a bit of an upset stomach, which has stopped me from exploring too far from home for places to work unfortunately, but it has meant that I’ve stayed home and got a bunch of work done, so I guess that’s a good thing. Hopefully I’ll be all good soon and can get out a bit, because it does feel like a bit of a waste of my time here to be couped up in an apartment working the whole time :-/