''Wine-tasting all round!"

Viergen
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What a reception....we landed in Santiago on Wednesday early evening and were quite surprised by the place. Having come from a Portuguese former colony, to a Spanish former colony then there were quite few differences. For a start I actually stood a chance of conversing with the locals - however they were all so keen to speak English (unlike Brazil) that it was quite difficult to get them to respond in Spanish but it did make certain things easier actually understanding what people were saying to you.

City view of Santiago
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Nick had booked our first hostel of the trip in Santiago and so we were a little apprehensive of how this might go but it was fantastic. We got a shuttle bus from the airport to Santiago to arrive at the supposed address of 'La Chimba' hostel - http://www.hostelbookers.com/hostels/chile/santiago-de-chile/7983/. Only open for one year, it has no listings in Lonely Planet but has already won numerous independent traveller awards for best hostel etc. The drop off looked dubious as there was no 'La Chimba' name on the white gate before us, covered with bougainvillea so I pushed Nick out of the bus and got him to go and investigate - typical woman! Anyway it was the right place, just hidden for security. We arrived to be greeted by an old American guy who had moved to Chile 16 years ago ad opened La Chimba after being a beach bum and running out of money. We walked straight in to be asked to join a wine tasting evening -red Chilean wine so right up Nick's street. We were shown around and then settled down with the 10 other guests to embark on some wine tasting. 3 hours later, a take away pizza, 10 bottles of wine and were chatting away with all of the other travellers from the States, NZ, Manchester, London, Sweden - it was a right cosmopolitan mix! We also encountered our first small Chilean earth quake - nothing too much just a little tremor to shake the glasses and believe me Nick was holding on to his!! So we concluded that I prefer Pinot Noir and Nick Syrah.

3 hours later, a take away pizza, 10 bottles of wine and were chatting away with all of the other travellers from the States, NZ, Manchester, London, Sweden

Funicular
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The rooms were nice and the staff really helpful. Next day we only had couple of hours to explore the city before our plane to Ecuador and so we took the funicular up to a high point to view the Virgin (no jokes please) and chill out in the sunshine and take some photos of the City.

Santiago was really cool from what we saw and I would definitely recommend the hostel to anyone - I think we have been spoilt by this one! The nightlife is great and things don't get going until around 3am according to the lads in the hostel - unfortunately due to our transit then we didn't get chance to experience this - next time maybe....