:) Santiago, Chile

Terra Extremus Vicuna Mackenna 38, 1 minute from the Baquedano subway stop 7000 pesos x person

Santiago greeted us with an exhausting 3 hour hostal search in suffocating heat. Great, just great. We suffered silently with our behemoth backpacks as we were told time and time again "No room." We were ready to scream. Actually, I think melt would be a better word. Apparently there was a 10,000 person HerbaLife convention in the city (ask Lori about her existing views on HerbaLife) so we went door to door with no luck.

Pooped and dripping in sweat, we stopped to eat and stretch out our breaking backs. We wolfed down our food and when we paused from our food coma, we noticed musicians at our neighboring table. We started chatting. They were dorks alright, good ol´ orchestra boys. A french horn player, a trumpet player and the first chair violin player, all in the Symphonic Orchestra of Chile. They were just coming back from a week long tour in another Chilean city. They seemed nice, harmless and best of all - music geeks just like us.

We told them our sad story about hostals and asked if they knew of any places around. At that point we would have taken anything. They thought for a second and then one said "I mean, I have an extra room in my house. You guys are welcome to stay..." A few moments of silent conversation between Lori and I (thanks to Lori´s new sign language knowledge, we have the basic signs down pat) we decided to take our new band buddies up on their offer. Band Camp 2009 here we come!

With our new friends Hector, Italo, Wiston, Rodrigo and Cristian (are there no girls in the orchestra?) we lugged our body bags to Wiston´s house outside of the city. His house was like a nerd fraternity. We sat around cooking, watching "Amazing Mozart" videos on YouTube (internet in a house!! wow!!), taking dips in his backyard pool and of course, doing what we do best - playing music and dancing. Our new friends set the Chilean cool standard!

One day sort of rolled into the next with a midnight BBQ followed by a day of performances. We tried to hop around from one show to another... live cumbia, jazz (Cristian is a famous Jazz musician, who knew...), accordions, guitars... as we repeated many times, we were with the coolest nerds in Chile :)

Finally, 3 nights later, we decided to mature and move into a real hostal. (What do dead people and guests have in common? They both stink after a few days.) We thanked Wiston for his hospitality and got our own place (which turned out to be awesome and brand spanking new - so new that we celebrated their 1 month anniversary during our stay there.) The owners, Rodrigo and Alex, and other travelers at this hostal were also stellar.

During our last few days in Santiago, we visited the other 2 houses of Pablo Neruda. "Isla Negra" was right on the beach and the other "La Chascona" was about 5 blocks from our hostal. Both of which were beautiful with Pablo´s spirit but neither of the two outshone the house we visited in Valparaiso. Now, we´re Pablo Neruda experts - just try us!

The last noteable event of Santiago happened while taking the subway to the bus station to head off to Temuco. In our half full subway car, Lori suddenly yelled "Tomaste algo, amigo?!" (Did you take something, buddy!?) in a very angry voice. Now tomar is a funny word in spanish because it can mean to take and to drink. I didn´t realize she found this grimey man´s hand in her pocketbook. I thought she was cracking down on the drunks in Santiago. Maybe she had secretly turned vigilante of the Santiago drunks. Watchwoman Lori, cleaning up the streets one drunk at a time.

But no, he was actually robbing her. Thankfully, he was unsuccessful and didn´t take or drink anything. She got everyone on the subway car all riled up. It was great (and funny now in retrospect). Gringa power!

Anyways, on a brighter note, the people we met in Santiago really made this regular hustle and bustle, big time city, stand out above the rest. Our hostal friends and orchestra friends were by far the best things that had happened to us in Chile :)