I think I will treat myself to a stay at a nice hotel for a couple of days when I get back. Fortunately, I can redeem my American Airlines miles for hotel stays, not just flights. I was very pleased to discover that, as I probably won't be taking any AA flights for at least the next 1735 days!
There are so many entrepreneurs and executive assistant types in Santiago offering places to stay on Airbnb! This time I'm going to live closer to the action; Ñuñoa is a great place to live, but I found myself taking the bus up to Providencia every other day!
Most of the rest of today was spent working, although I did take a few minutes to converse with my anfitriona, and I met another guest here who speaks English. Apparently he arrived over a week ago... how did I miss that? Ah well.
Officially, I'm in Viña del Mar until the end of the year, but I might come back a little early if there's something fun to do in Santiago for el fin del año. Hit me up in the comments if you have any suggestions (:
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Viña and Valpo are THE place to be for New Year's Eve. The fireworks display is the largest in all of South America, lit off from over a dozen places from Concon to the port of Valpo, as well as from several barges in the bay. We saw it last year; it's amazing!! Roughly one million people come from Santiago to Viña & Valpo to celebrate. Who knows how many come from other parts of Chile (and other countries...) Given that 8-900,000 people live in the area during the rest of the year, that's a big party!!
ReplyDeleteBuy enough food to get you through to January 2nd, though. It's likely that almost nothing will be open on New Year's Day (other than the bus stations). We saw both Valpo and Santiago on New Year's Day. Valpo looked like a war zone, with confetti everywhere, still-drunk partiers milling around, piles of burning trash, and cars splashing through puddles of alcohol in the street. Santiago felt like a ghost town, as if aliens had teleported all of its residents elsewhere. It felt like the whole country was hung over.
What a party!!
Hi Kaspian! Wow, that sounds like a ton of excitement! Maybe I'll be in the right place after all (:
DeleteThanks for bringing up whether the bus stations might still be operating on the 1st; I had completely forgotten about that. I think I'm going to go buy my ticket a few days in advance just so I can make sure that I'll be able to make the trip!