South America Part 24 - Feliz Navidad (aka Merry Christmas) from Santiago

Last night´s x-mas dinner organised by the hostel ended up being more of an x-mas binge drinking exercise. Things kicked off around 7pm - and everyone downed a few beers on the upper deck of the Hostel. Most guests here are from Australia, but there are a few people from here and there around the world (including the States, Sth Africa, Netherlands, Argentina and Norway).

Some people had some hellish experiences including being in a bus crash in Peru (the bus flipped over a couple of times down a 10 meter bank - but no one was killed) a couple of weeks ago.

Things (for me) started to get a bit out of hand when I started drinking Champagne and Red Wine. To top that off - Pedro (the ex-pat Colombian / now Australian resident) started handing out shots of Pisco (Sth American spirit) - I think I had about three...

After being out on the deck for a couple of hours - we headed downstairs, where I (in my true cd nazi form) got on the reception computer and acted as the DJ. Ant at this stage - mysteriously headed for bed.... I opted for going with the rest of the people to a nearby salsa club (yes - all the nightclubs and bars appeared to be open on X-mas eve in Santiago). By about 2am - I was getting tired and did "an Ant" and mysteriously headed back to the hostel and crashed.

All of X-mas day, for me, was being extremely hungover and confined to either the bathroom or the bedroom. Ant pretty much chilled out the whole day (minus the sereve hangover) - chatted with the guests, went on the internet, had a little excursion in town and got some empinadas for lunch.

About 6pm - Ant was concerned about the lack of food I was having today so he went down to the shops to buy some greasy hotdogs. However, when he came back - I was in the toilet (doing you know what) - so no hot dogs for me. About 10pm - and I finally made it off my pisco deathbed and had a shower and went down with Ant to find some greasy food (for breakfast). After attempting to order hot dogs from the same place Ant went this afternoon - and failing to solicit any sort of response from the guy running the place - I stormed out of there and went to the Empanada place Ant went to for lunch. We are strongly coming to the conclusion that the food here in Chile is very expensive and usually very junky. We are missing the Argentinean cuisine greatly (don´t trust us - you can talk to other guests here who also strongly agree) including its variety, quality and cheap cheap price. Some guest here said that they totally digged the Argentinean diet - 100% protein and no carbohydrates. Here, the Chilean diet is 50% fat (from greasy hot dogs and empanadas) and 50% sugar (from their addiction to soft drinks) - plus the price for just about everything is fairly close to Australian prices.

After wandering back from "breakfast/dinner" - we got heckled by the local punks (first time we have been called the "c" word from complete strangers before). According to Ant - lots of other guests are getting hassled by them. Perhaps Ant should don on his Sex Pistol t-shirt and my Clash t-shirt (that we both had bought in BA) and we could join them for a bit of heckling tomorrow.

Adios for now.