Santiago de Chile

Hola!  We made it.  It was an incredibly long journey with a few major delays for me, but our final flight from Toronto was fantastic!  We had great food, got to sleep and time went very fast.

Our apartment is cute and we now have wifi so that's good.

Today was an interesting day...

After relaxing at the apartment for a bit and having a quick nap, we went out to get some food and go for a walk.  Food was okay - not Chilean - it was a French bistro called The Normandie.  We couldn't be too picky because we were starving and we needed to get back here to meet our landlord about the wifi.  Wifi got sorted out and then we were supposed to be getting ready to go out to a club in town with Mary's Chilean friend that she met at the Grey Cup in Vancouver...and his friend.

We were so tired but we decided to suck it up and meet them.  We got ready for the 'semi-formal' dress code (this is what Adolfo told us), but of course we knew it didn't mean to dress like you're going to a prom, and we took a taxi.

I should back up a bit and tell you where things started to go wrong in this evening.

We didn't want to go.  We had changed our minds.  Meeting these guys to go to a club in Santiago was not sounding appealing.  So we tried to ask them to come meet us somewhere a little more low key for a drink near us.  We ended up feeling bad and telling Adolfo that we would suck it up and meet him.  We said that he should call us back in a bit but that we would make it happen.  He warned us that his phone might be dying.

We pulled ourselves away from our beautiful rooftop pool to go get ready for the club.  I can't even remember the last time I was at a club.

We headed out, slightly late, but thought it would be fine.  We got half way down the block and Mary realized that her feet were going to hurt her too much in the new shoes that she was wearing, so we turned around to get her a pair of mine.  When she took her shoes off they had turned her feet brown from the cheap leather - too funny.  So after washing her feet off, putting on my shoes and regrouping, we headed back out.

The first taxi we hailed had absolutely NO idea where we wanted to go.  We actually had to get out of the taxi. He would not even try.  So anyway...  We stood outside the Normandie to get free wifi while we checked that the place we were going to existed (After Office at Alto San Francisco) - it did.  So the next taxi driver claimed to know the place.  But I had my doubts...
We ended up at the Hotel Plaza San Francisco.  At least it was a nice drive and we saw some beautiful fountains and a bit of the city, but of course, it was the wrong place.  Thankfully the concierge at the hotel told our driver where the After Office club was.  So he dropped us off there. 

I started to think we were headed to a rave.  It was in a parking garage, then up to the 9th floor and through another part of the parking garage.  Hmmmm...

Still no phone call from Adolfo.

We stood around waiting and people-watching for at least half an hour, tried to convince the ticket people that Mary should go in and look for him, but nothing worked.  No Adolfo, no entry, no rave.

We decided to leave and got yet another taxi.  The girl told us that we were in a bad part of town and that we should not walk around at all.  We got into the taxi and it was clear that he had literally JUST been smoking pot.  The smell was overwhelming!  He took us on a crazy trip that cost us almost double what we paid to get out there.  Nice.  Ripped off already.

We thought we would try to go to a local restaurant/ wine bar that we had heard about.  It was packed and after being ignored for a while, we left.  Really, the evening just could not be salvaged.

We got some mojitos and then headed home. 

Mary managed to befriend a stray black pitbull.  It followed us all the way home.  He is probably waiting outside for us right now.  Mary has said "he was so nice though" twice since I have started typing this sentence.

So we ate some Clif bars that I packed for emergencies and now we are going to bed.  It's been a long day!  We are hoping that tomorrow will be a bit better...

Idiots Abroad 3?