Traveling Adventures Hi! Welcome to my travel journal. I created this so friends and family can keep track of me on my adventures. I'll update this when I can.

Hello again! I am currently in Lima, Peru for one night and have spent the last week in Santiago and in transit to Santiago.  I really only got a taste of Santiago and Lima, being in each place for only 1 or 2 days, but I am really anxious to get to Cuzco!  Oh yeah, I was going to write about my last hike in Bariloche in this entry, but I just somehow deleted everything I typed and don`t feel like doing it again SO you`ll have to wait til you talk to me to know what happened!

On my birthday I was in Puerto Montt waiting for the bus to Santiago.  Puerto Montt is really boring, but the lady who owned the guesthouse I was staying at was so nice!  She made me whole wheat bread for breakfast, a jello-ish dessert and then gave me half a loaf to take with me on the bus.  She also let me watch BBC news on the TV in the living room.  In the evening, she even walked me to the bus stop!  She was so cute!

I arrived in Santiago on the morning of 3/5 via a 12 hour night bus and walked to my hostel downtown.  This hostel was hilarious- it was really really cheap for Santiago, but looked and felt like it.  It was a sprawling 9-floor apartment building (of course the elevator was broken) with huge rooms.  The bunk beds were much higher than normal ones, but there were no ladders so it was basically a 5.10 move for me to get in and out of bed and it looked like two pipes in the bathroom would burst at any time (and it looked like the place hadn`t been cleaned for at least a week).  BUT it was cheap and breakfast was good!  After getting settled into my room, I walked up one of the pedestrian streets to the river- a mean dirty boiling river with concrete banks- and along it through a really pretty park with lots of trees and dirt paths.  Eventually I crossed the river to the Bellavista neighborhood and the city park.  The city park is a huge open space with two cable cars to the top, two city swimming pools, miles and miles of trails, and a giant statue of the Mary at the top.  There was some amazing people watching though- it seemed like all of Santiago was out in neon spandex exercising in the park...very entertaining.  I ate lunch on a bright green lawn by one of the swimming (which was incredible for a city pool, it seriously looked like a pool at a fancy hotel with a rocky waterfall and everything!) and then headed up to the top for some smoggy views over the city and the distant Andean foothills.  After hiking back down, I walked to the Provendencia neighborhood for dinner.

On 3/6, I met a Canadian girl and an Irish girl and we went to the history museum (best for all it`s portraits of famous dead rich people trying to look stoic in awkward military dress) and to another city park.  In the evening I caught a shuttle to the airport and spent the night there since my flight today was fairly early in the morning.  I still had almost 12 hours at the airport though.  Luckily I had a few extra pesos so I had a couple beers at a restaurant, bought some candy, finished my book and got about 4 hours of good sleep.  I checked in at 4:30am, had breakfast at Dunkin Donuts (don`t make fun of me- nothing else was open and actually their egg and cheese wrap isn`t that bad)and then slept some more at my gate.  I slept most of the flight too.  When we arrived, I was one of the first through customs, so it was quick and my bag was one of the first off the plane (that NEVER happens!!!!!).  While we were waiting for the baggage thing to start, I was talking to a French businessman who had a fancy car from a fancy hotel waiting for him and he and the driver let me go with them!  So I got into town for free cause the French guy wouldn`t let me pay him anything!  After checking in to the hostel (a really cool old colonial mansion in the fancy neighborhood of Miraflores), I walked to the grocery store and then to a natural food store/ vegetariain restaurant!  It was so yummy!  I had a really good salad (probably best meal of the trip so far) for really cheap and stocked up on snacks at their store.  Happy after my awesome lunch, I walked down Avenida Arequipa to the ocean.  The neighborhood is really pretty- most of the main boulevard has a little pedestrian path in the middle with big trees on either side and little brightly painted houses along the road (most have the ubiquitous compound though- some complete with buzzing and popping electrical fences!).  The boulevard leads south a Parque Kennedy, a pretty shady park with lots of flowers and into more little house, shops and restaurants.  I sat on the cliff at the end of the street above the ocean for awhile watching the waves and surfers.  I made a really yummy dinner at the hostel and now I am probably going to go to bed soon!  Tomorrow morning I am flying to Cuzco (aka Machu Picchu)!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Hope all is well at home!