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| The check-in desk |
Having never stayed in a hostel, I had this romantic notion
of sitting and drinking tea, carrying on a boisterous conversation in perfect
Chilean Spanish with people from all over the world late into the night.
Unfortunately, rolling into a hostel in Santiago, Chile at 9:30 a.m. after a
ten hour international flight, with only shaky Spanish skills at best, does not
make for a notion come true. Rachel and I booked ourselves a two person suite
with a shared bathroom (for around 19,800 pesos, or $40—not bad) in the
Bellavista Hostel located in the Providencia barrio (or neighborhood) of
Santiago. The hostel is a hipster’s paradise, with brightly painted walls, a
purple exterior, tons of art, and more graffiti than wall space—with surprisingly
few genitalia, if you can believe it.
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| Come on in! |
So, at 9:30 a.m., in came two exhausted gringas ready for
one major siesta, only to find that our room would not be ready until 1:30. We
were beckoned towards the kitchen and dining room for tea, which we obtained,
before we were promptly and not so subtly ushered out. The woman working in the
kitchen took one look at our haggard facial expressions, blonde hair, and blue
eyes and laughed, saying “Ayyyyy de gringlandia” meaning something along the
lines of “Oh you suckers from the U.S., I pity you”, or something like that, I’m
just postulating.
After what seemed like four days, but was realistically 3
hours and 21 minutes, not that we were counting, we collapsed onto the bed.
Emerging a couple hours later from a dream about sleeping some more, I listened
to the rumblings of the city, and was amazed by what we had managed to sleep
through. Santiago is loud. Pipes
clanking, people yelling, sirens, dogs, something that sounded a bit like
Godzilla, came together in a fury of noise, much like a John Mackey piece on
crack. Momentarily refreshed, we looked forward to an exploratory meander into
downtown, only to look outside and see the sun setting. Oh yea, it’s winter
here. Forgot. So we settled for a meander down the block (but what a block it
was!) to dinner, where I enjoyed my first pisco sour, and then promptly started
dancing on tables! Kidding, Dad. Like
two tired gringas, we returned to our hostel without saying a word to anyone—so
much for boisterous conversation and impressing world travelers with my
impeccable wit.
fun!
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