12th-13th October: Santiago de Chile

We had a slow start in the morning, but made it to the city center in time to enjoy avocado-on-toast at the sunny terrace.  We then met Macarena for lunch at a bar called "The Clinic". It is named after a (left-wing) satirical newspaper, and the walls were covered with funny phrases and pictures. The meal was really nice too, chopped chicken with yet more avocado! We then wandered around the city center, up to Santa Lucia hill, from which we had a broad view of Santiago.

View of the Plaza de Armas, with mounted policemen

The bottom of Santa Lucia hill

View from the top of Santa Lucia hill

At the bottom of the hill, I was dragged into the museum des Beaux Arts by an exhibition of sculptures by Degas.  It was a collection of Bronze sculptures from the museum of Sao Paulo. As I understand, they are reproductions of wax sculptures made by Degas. I really enjoyed the series of graceful dancers, and in particular the arabesque.  I joined John in a café nearby, where we lazily sat while plotting our next move.  We resumed our walk around the city to meet with Macarena after work.

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High school students on strike against the price of education

Thankfully, we managed to avoid traffic and arrived at her place early in the evening. Her sister (Carolina) had prepared dinner, which was lovely.  We managed to communicate thanks to Maca who would translate from French into Spanish for her sister, while I would translate into English for John (where necessary, since he mostly managed to keep up with the French).  Most of the time, we would however manage to comunicate using the little Spanish we know. After dinner, we went for a thrilling hunt in the garden in search for an avocado (having let slip that it was John's favourite).  Carolina, a very lithe mother of three children, climbed up the tree (thankfully, she was the only one who had not had wine) and started looking for an avocado.  In the dark, it was not that easy to spot, so we guided her with torchlight from the bottom of the tree (ready to catch her if necessary). The scene was pretty comic and eventful.  Maca finally spotted one and after a couple of tries, a huge avocado fell of the tree, nearly hitting the dog.  Carolina came down as gracefully as a gymnast and we celebrated this with a shot or two of really nice Mexican tequila.  The avocado was wrapped in newspaper to help it soften, and immediately became John's most prized possession.

Avocado (palta) of Champions (plus newspaper celebrating Chile's 4-2 victory over Peru)

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Macarena dropped us in the centre early the next day and we took the modern and clean metro to the bus station.  There, we hopped on a direct bus to Valparaiso.