Arriving in Santiago at the ongodly hour of 5.30am, we wandered around the deserted city and sat at the Plaza de Armas feeding pigeons whilst waiting for the city to wake up.
Finally at 8am, life stirred and the European style capital came to life. Quickly, we looked for the first available café to get out morning wake-up call. Without much choice, we ducked out of the cold into Café Tahiti, a cozy joint serving coffee around a stand-up bar with smoke drifting out.
“It’s cute! Small and cozy…”
“Yeah. Coffee must be good here. It’s packed for the morning”
“Mhmm…” Fidgeting from the cold as we stood waiting for our coffee…
“Her skirt’s so damn short! And it’s so cold…”
“Yeah. They’re all dressed so skimpy. Very sexy, huh?”
As we sipped at our steaming cup of coffee, we noticed around us a predominantly male clientele. Flipping through our handy Lonely Planet, we realized it was the famous Santiago “coffee with legs” – where coffee is served by scantily dressed women - Now, there’s a wake-up call!
Starving from the bad (or lack of) food on board the bus from the previous day, we followed the aromas of the city which took us to the seafood market. Despite being 9.30am in the morning, we scoffed down a huge steaming bowl of King Crab casserole – a delicious blend of crabmeat, herbs, béchamel and cheese baked to perfection!
For the next several hours, we walked around central Santiago – a modern and highly developed metropolis with wide pedestrian streets dominated by capitalist enterprises. Highrise mingle amongst the intricate colonial buildings and we were stunned to see them all as the smog was not half as bad as we expected (or what we have been warned). Efficient metros service the city and everything seem to run on city clockwork – not really our cup of tea…
In the afternoon, we collected our bags from the station and headed for the airport. Saying goodbye to South America was tough although we were looking forward to the warm island weather of Tahiti – our next stop. Needless to say, our South American experience was a tremendously heart-felt one which will go down in memory as one of the best!
In the meantime, we had sun and surf to look forward to. Just need to endure the next 18 hours of being on a plane (at least they serve decent food), transiting in Rapa Nui and just one more night at Faa’a Airport….
Just another….
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