In Chile

So, I´m in Chile right now writing a post to my blog.  I arrived in Santiago, Chile yesterday at about 7:30am.  We took a bus to my sisters apartment and dropped all our stuff off.  I walked around with Rebecca and ran a couple errands while my parents took a little nap.  After that, we hit up my sis´ friends´family´s restaurant.  Traditional Chilean food was not at all what I expected it to be.  It was good though, and very cheap. The entree with a salad and a drink cost the equivalent of around $3.50 (not sure about this, my monetary conversion skills aren´t great.  regardless of the exact price, it was very inexpensive).  We walked around the city some, took another quick nap, ran a few more errands and then it was off to dinner.  We ate at a Peruvian restaurant that was AWESOME!  The food was excellent, as were the drinks.  The national drink here is something called Pisco.  It has a flavor reminiscent of a light tequila and it is made using grapes.  We had pisco sours as an aperatif, and considering that I don´t like mixed drinks, they were pretty good.  The Picante Camarones I had were reminiscent of a creamy mild orange Indian curry.  The flan I had for dessert has got to be some of the best I´ve ever had in my life.

This morning we jumped on a bus that took two hours to get us to Valparaiso.  Valparaiso is a coastal city, the second largest city in Chile.  The city´s layout reminds me a little of Seattle (as does the fog), the streets near the dock parallel the water and are surrounded on all sides by hills.  The neighborhoods on the hills are littered with narrow, windy, cobbled roads.  We are staying at a quaint bed and breakfast on Cerro Alegre, which means ¨Happy Hill¨.  We had a traditional Chilean breakfast of goat cheese, bread and fruit (I also had brewed coffee which is very NON-Chilean.  In fact, it seems that brewed coffee is quite rare).  We had empanadas for lunch while we had a boat tour of Valparaiso, and a dinner at a good semi-expensive (for Chilean standards) dinner at a place on the hill that had a view of the harbor.

My sister and I are currently in an internet cafe in Valparaiso reserving a trip to the north of Chile that we will be making at the end of this week.  I´m going to get going so that we can finish up and then go out and have a few drinks.
Have a good night all!