So Santiago…
We arrived in Santiago with all our stuff (except my bag that I’d mentioned) and fetched our dear cat sushi on the Monday. All had worked out great so far.
The family took us out the next day to see some of the city; it truly is interesting coming from South Africa. They have these Orange bicycles that you can hire anywhere and return them at any bicycle station. They have a metro, now I know for many of you this is quite a mundane thing, an everyday means of transport, but like I said, I am from South Africa. When I went to Paris in 2006 I saw the metro entrance but never dared leave our school group for the fear of losing them and my only near metro experience has been South Africa’s Gautrain. A recent venture that makes commuting from Pretoria to Johannesburg much easier, but it only has eight stops (I think) and only one station is underground; the train is also a lot more luxurious than a general metro. Santiago had essentially been my first experience taking the Metro anywhere in the world. I was pleasantly surprised; trains run all the time, busses are on time (and run throughout the night). It means I can travel this huge city with just a swipe of my ‘BIP’ card. The Gautrain really needs to re-assess its time and cost. A trip to anywhere in the city at peak time in Santiago costs less than CLP800, now to put that in perspective, CLP800 is only R14.54, that’s about US$1.45 (give or take a few cents). It is definitely an upgrade to city life in South Africa.
Three days after we got here Andy got his first job, only for about 3 weeks but it is keeping him busy. I’ve been pretty lazy while he’s away, but I have managed to do a few things. In a mall called Portal Lyon that I went to I found a goldmine. Anime, any anime, manga and figurine fans out there? South Africans, you would have sparkles in your eyes. This mall has comic book stores at every curve (it’s set up as a spiral) and each comic book store has a manga section and the one store (I think it was called Crazy Comics) had a HUGE selection for a non-Asian country. We managed to find Blame manga. “Blame! (Japanese: ブラム! Hepburn: Buramu!?), pronounced “blam”, is a ten-volume 1998 cyberpunk manga by Tsutomu Nihei published by Kodansha” – Wikipedia. I mention this manga because it is as many fear to hear, OUT OF PRINT. Santiago is filled with comic book stores, Vintage toys and weird and interesting nooks and crannies. There is even a big anime expo coming up on the 31st of January 2015 (see more here: http://www.anime-expo.cl/ in Spanish). We might consider going.
Apart from all this, we have found many interesting restaurants (which I will attempt to address later in a post solely for the “gastronomic” side of things). I will hopefully also get to write up more about places, things to do and of course the amazing shopping experiences one can have here (I am a girl who likes her shops). This is still only my second blog post but as I go I hope to address more things, in the meantime, stay posted and let me know what you all think. I will keep my notebook filled with ideas to address and keep writing.
p.s: hopefully by next week i’ll be posting up pictures too :)