The first half of our trip was go-go-go! After all the craziness of Machu Picchu, we needed a little rest from our adventures. Alastair definitely needed it, because he ate a bad empanada the night before!
The night before arriving in Santiago, we were in Cusco and Emre fell asleep pretty early. Alastair wanted to see the city at night, so I just stayed behind in the hotel with Emre while Alastair went out on his own. He came back with a bunch of food, even a whole chocolate cake! Alastair and I ate out in the hallway while Emre was asleep in the room. I was so full by the time he offered me an empanada, I only ate a small bite, but Alastair ate the rest. Big mistake on his part! The next few days were spent with some gnarly bathroom trips. It was pretty bad!!! After a few days, he was much better!
We stayed in a town called Los Andes at a monastery, which was beautiful. The relaxing days spent in Chile were much needed. We were all in need of some rest, so that's pretty much what we did! We had the whole hotel to ourselves! We were literally the only guests during our 3 day stay, which was odd to us! It was a nice hotel in wine country, and yet, we were the only guests. During the time we did go out, we drove around the countryside, it was gorgeous! Our first night, Alastair went out and bought a ginormous pizza! He was gone for so long and I was starting to get worried. I sent him an email because my messaging didn't work, so he sent an email back saying that he was on his way. It was the BIGGEST pizza I had ever seen! It was the size of a table! Really good pizza, but massive! And he bought a giant sized orange soda, party sized! We definitely did not finish it!
Our original plan was to drive to Argentina, but our plans were foiled due to rental car paperwork and snow in the mountains. Another blessing in disguise because we tried to drive up into the mountains to see how close we could get, but all drivers were sent back because the pass was closed due to snow. If we did go through, we probably wouldn't have been able to get back.
Visiting Vina Del Mar was actually right when we arrived in Chile. We arrived around 5 in the morning and Emre did not want to fall back asleep. One of our favorite things is to just drive or walk around and admire the view. We also spent some time playing in playgrounds for Emre to stretch his legs and to be a kid. While in Santiago, we walked around a park that had a great view of the city. We spent majority of our day there, it was a big area! Emre loved seeing all the stray dogs walking around. They were feral, but really friendly. Chileans would even pet them! We also might have been in a music video. There was a guy heavily coated with cologne being filmed for what we believed to be his music video. We tried to avoid him, but would usually end up being in the same area. We should search for it on YouTube or something.
We spent the last evening meandering through Santiago. It was fun to see everyone walking around and window shopping. We didn't do too much research on Santiago, but it's always fun to be part of a crowd. Once night fell, we headed to the hotel for a nice bath and slept in our super comfy bed!
