Hello Santiago

After a one hour delay because of a sick passenger, a total of 17 hours on a plane, 30 minutes in a bus and a 1km walk, we made it to our AirBnB. Safe to say, our trip has officially started!

Apollo y Lina
The AirBnB is a cosy antique colonial house filled with all kinds of art and trinkets that, judging by the layer of dust, have not been moved in a while. You feel almost as if you are in a museum. The coolest thing about the BnB are the owners Apollo and Lina who, even though my Spanish is far beneath the level it used to be, will always ask about our day. They live in the main part of the house, while two rooms, a bathroom and a kettle, tea and instant coffee are reserved for the BnB guests. And it’s cheaper than staying at a hostel!

Walking is the way to go

We are on a budget. And we are a tiny bit competitive. These things combined make that we will approach budgetting as a sport and will do almost anything to stay under our day limit. And with almost anything I mean, questioning the value of everything that we want to spend money on.

One of the things we stopped doing, is buying water. Chilean water is relatively safe to drink and with the Lifestraw Go we got at our going away party, tap water is the new botteled water.

The other thing we have refused to do until now, is taking public transport to get from A to B. We have probably walked 30 km in the past 2,5 days in 30 degrees celcius. We have seen every corner of the city center. The damage so far is three blisters, two for Thomas and one for me. Today we have plans to climb to the highest point of the city. To get to the foot of the hill, we would first have to walk 7 km. So with all the money we have saved by walking, we are going to splurge on a metro ticket. I can hear my feet applauding this plan.

A bridge too far

There is one thing that we will not do to save money and that is skip our veggies or fruit. Being active all day, combined with not being able to cook your own meal, means you have to treat yourself to a vitaminboost every now and then. The score so far: Three salads, a salad within a tortilla, watermelon, blue berries, apples, nectarines and some sort of combination between an apple and a nectarine. Santiago has enough fruit stalls to keep us well fed.

Pictures or it didn’t happen

If you want to see some pictures of our time in Santiago, there is a whole page dedicated to that 🙂

♥ Dagmar