Santiago, Chile - Entiendo Castellano muy, muy poco

· Chile, Featured, South America

Buenos Dias from Chile! Our first travel post.

Well within an hour of landing in Santiago we paid our first Gringo tax! After failing to decipher the public transport, we ended up being shown to a taxi by a man outside the airport – who then jumped in with us. On the drive in he told us about the various places in Santiago he had been punched or mugged (reassuring!) Despite agreeing the price in advance, he then demanded payment halfway there (plus a tip) and jumped out at an intersection. So 5000 pesos paid for dubious “services”! Seems obvious in hindsight, but it was pretty overwhelming at the time.

The next day we went on an English-speaking walking tour around the central city. This was a great way to get to know Santiago a little in the one full day we had here. Best story of the day: apparently Chilean coffee was so terrible a few decades back that, in order to get some business, some enterprising Chilean businessmen came up with “Coffee with Legs” – a café where the coffee was served by women in skimpy dresses. This innovation reportedly overcame deficiencies in the coffee! Coffee with Legs was then taken to the next level behind shaded glass doors:

The new Coffee with Legs

The skimpy dresses have been replaced with bikinis and there are reportedly four daily “Happy Minutes” where the doors are locked and it all comes off. No we didn’t go in!

We spent the rest of the day with a Kiwi we met on the tour and enjoyed some traditional (?) Chilean food in the evening. It genuinely seems like the locals eat this sort of food a lot (by the way, we did share these dishes!)

Chorrillana (front) and Pastel de Choclo (rear)

To explain the title of this post, we are certainly out of our comfort zone with the language! Entiendo Castellano muy, muy poco means I speak Spanish a very, very little. Which is probably still an overstatement! We’re trying to learn some key phrases and we’ve had some very brief conversations in Spanish (Hello! How are you? I’m from New Zealand. And you? … Goodbye!)

Although we’re still feeling very “fresh”, we’ve really enjoyed our couple of days in Santiago. With a third of all Chileans living here, it’s a huge city.

Plaza de Armas, Santiago

We’re writing this on a bus to Mendoza, Argentina where we will be CouchSurfing for the first time. The guy on the hostel reception desk had some wise advice as we walked out the door: “For godsake – learn some Spanish!”

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