Santiago

Santiago.... a city of smog. Apparently there are mountains around Santiago.... well, we didn't really see any. At one point we thought we saw a faint outline of mountains on the horizon, but it was difficult to tell.

We walked around town a lot, going to eat sushi, ice cream, and of course the fancy dining at the fish market... where you could dine beside the locals and eat a big bowl of fish and seafood surprise for about $3-4, if you went to the beautiful places where the locals ate. The tourist traps were much more expensive.... maybe $15 for the same thing. Even though the food was good, the waiters were hassling us way too much to eat at their restaurant, and when the bill came they added on a little tourist fat or missed 4th grade addition, depending on where you ate. FYI - mariscal is raw seafood surprise and ceviche is raw fish surprise... we kind of thought mariscal was cooked by what we saw in the picture.... ;-)

We stayed in a hostel that looked like a boutique hotel on a budget. All the girls loved the place and wished that their places looked like this.... and hence, this drew the single guys to the place as well. So even though the hostel was aiming their marketing at women, it seemed to pull the men in even more so, as the single men figured there would be lots of women there.... ;-)

But all in all, one of the cleanest, brightest, and most beautiful places we have stayed at so far. It's called the Princess Insolente hostel in case you're heading to Santiago.