Painful flights and Sleepless nights...

Buenos Dias!

I�m now in Santiago, so I guess I�d better give you a quick run down of what�s happened to me since my last blog entry:

I left Wellington and started hitching North after catching a train to a town just outside the city. I got a lift after just a few minutes and was soon on my way to somewhere or other... My second lift was with a middle aged kiwi couple who gave me a running commentry/guided tour of the highway for the entire journey: "Now those trees over there are indiginous trees and they flower twice a.. oh look, this town is an old railway town, and these houses are all railway houses...", "No they�re not dear", "Are they not dear? Oh no, that�s right, they�re not railway houses, but they�re very old... and up ahead is Mt blah blah blah".... It was a most informative journey I can tell you!

Eventually I arrived in a place called Turangi which I decided would be a good stop-over, and checked into the "Extreme Backpackers", which was run by a deceptively un-extreme old couple. Anyhow, they were extremely nice, so that was ok. I wanted to do the "Tongariro Crossing", which is a cool walk along volcanic craters, but the weather decided I shouldn�t go, and I ended up just going for some small walks in the rain with a few lads i met instead. After the walk we went to the local "Hot Springs". I was expecting natural rock pools full of steaming clear water, but it wasn�t like that at all. It was actually a load of small rooms with concrete pools in and the water was fed into the pools through a series of pipes. Boring. Anyway, we went up to the counter and asked for a hot pool. "Normal or Magic water?" asked the overweight mouri girl behind the counter. We hadn�t anticipated this and were a bit stumped to be honest. What was this "magic" water? Was it hullucenagenic? Did it make you immortal? No, it turns out that the most magical quality this water has to offer is that if you get any up your nose it will give you amoebic meningitis and kill you. Now that�s magic young man! So after a very relaxing time in the pool trying not to scratch out noses with our wet fingers, we eventually headed home.

Back at the hostel I met a couple of german guys who started raving about this hostel they�d been to up in the north of the North island, and then they said "Actually we�re driving up that way tomorrow, why don�t we drop you there?". So that was that, I didn�t need asking twice, and me and Greg (one of the lads) both got a lift with these two fantastic german doctors all the way to the small village of Waipu (pronounced "why poo?") and the incredible Ebb and Flow hostel. It was without a doubt the best place I stayed in NZ, and the group of friends I made there in just a few days were like best buddies. The owner, a crazy german ex-punk, instead of making me fill in forms, show my passport, and pay up front, just showed us round, introduced us to everyone, and then when I started playing my guitar, brought me a crate of beer and told me to drink it!!! Bargain!

Anyway, it couldn�t last forever, and after a few days of rugby watching, beer drinking, and nocturnal Charlie kicking, it was time to leave. I got the bus to Aukland and caught a flight at 5pm to Santiago, Chile.

Now you might think that coming to S America would require a certain degree of planning. I mean after all, S America always conjures up at least a few images of scary shit in most peoples minds, so best to be prepared eh? Well you�ll be pleased to know that I bought myself the "Footprint South America Handbook".... 2 hours before i got on the plane! I started reading it in the airport before i checked in, and I have to say that the "What to do before you go" section was a little demoralising! Anyway, it was too late for regrets now, all I needed to know was how to get from the airport to a good hotel. About this time I suddenly realised that I had absolutely no idea what the time difference in Chile was, how long the flight was, or what time I arrived. Mmmm, perhaps a little bit more planning would have been not such a bad idea after all....

I finally found out what the flight duration was when boarding the plane... 11 hours!!! God Damn!! I didn�t think it was anything like that long! And I also discovered that my flight arrived at midday, which was a bit of a godsend really, as I so didn�t fancy arriving at night! The flight was pretty awful tho. Lan Chile economy class sucks arse. The seats were so cramped that you got Deep Vein Thrombosis just from looking at them. Luckily I was sat next to a really friendly Chilean girl called Paula who was on her way home after a year in NZ studying english, so I had someone to chat to. After a while I needed the loo, but every time I looked over my shoulder there seemed to be about 10 people crowded around the entrance waiting, so i�d decide to wait a while before getting up. Eventually I could wait no longer, and I headed up towards the toilets/stewards area, where i was amazed to find that the toilet was actually free after all!! All the people crowding around the area were just "hangin out" and munching free food!! The poor stewards were trying to prepare the breakfast for later whilst squeezing through this mass of old ladies gossiping! It was quite a sight!

Eventually, after a sleepless and freakily short night (god knows how many hours i lost with the time difference!) we finally arrived in Santiago. I said goodbye to Paula and promised to call her after a couple of days when she�d finished her family duties, and got on a bus to town. By the time I arrived at my hotel I was too tired to even take a shower and I just crawled into bed and fell asleep. I woke up at about 8pm feeling incredibly disorientated, and figured I�d better find some food, so I headed outside to look for a restaurant. The area I�m staying in is really beautiful. All old buildings and cobbled streets, which is such a welcome change after NZ (Look at that building! It must be at least Fifffffty years old!!!). I found a nice restaurant, and picked up the menu. It was about then that I realised that i don�t know how to read spanish... then the waiter came up and I was reminded that I aslo don�t know how to speak spanish... mmmmmm. In the end I opted for the only thing on the menu that I understood, which was "Fettucine Neapolitana", and only after it came did i realise the irony of my choice: 2 months of surviving on pasta, and when i finally get to eat in a proper restaurant, what do I order?....

After dinner I headed back to bed, and had a really good sleep and woke up feeling refreshed and alert..... at about 2am. Shit. To add to my disorientation, I wasn�t actually sure whether my watch was right, as I had only guessed at the time difference and hadn�t checked with anyone. I kept thinking it must be morning by now and peeking out of the windows only to find the same orange glow of the street lights... So I tried to go back to sleep, but in my confused state of semi sleep I kept having THE wierdest dreams ever remembered by man. In one of these dreams I was stood in the street with about 3 other people around a gas cooker. On the cooker were 2 saucepans with boiling water in them (and maybe an egg), and one frying pan with a mixture or corn and beans simmering away. Now comes the wierd bit. For some reason, someone was really sick, and we were trying to get them to hospital, but the pans of boiling water were inextricably linked to the the ill persons life, and therefore the cooker needed to go the hospital with him. Luckily the cooker was on castors which sat on a set of rails going down the street. Unluckily, the rails ended and a wall blocked the path of the cooker. We kept checking that the water was still boiling as if that might somehow help the situation. Incidentally the corn and beans simmering away had nothing to do with the ill guy and were in fact our dinner. I distinctly remember at one point thinking "fuck it, let�s forget this guy and just eat the food, I�m starving!!". Selfish, I know, but hey, I was hungry and I didn�t even know the guy! Why couldn�t he find his own cooker to boil his metaphorical life force on? Ok, I rekon by now you�re probably starting to appreciate to a certain extent what a fucked up night I had last night, so I�ll stop.... :)

At about 6am I decided it was better to turn the light on and just wait for the sun to rise, and by 7am I was out on the streets looking for shit to do.... and I�ve been there ever since! Well I�ve just spent 1.5 hours in this net cafe, and I think it�s about time I had some lunch.... but i still haven�t got round to learning spanish! damn! I refuse to give in and get McDonalds! I guess i�ll just have to order something random and see what i get....

ciao for now.