Chilling in Chile: An Update

Acutely aware that we haven't posted an update for this whole year (ha), we thought this would be the perfect opportunity to catch-up on what we've been up to in Chile.

Given that we have been working full time hours in a place that isn't exactly accessible by public transport, our main time for exploring comes at the weekends when we can spare the hour and a half it takes to get into central Santiago. Our first weekend saw a whistle stop tour of the main sights of the city, including lunch at the tourist hotspot Patio Bellavista (with the addition of one of those ice cream rolls where a man hacked at milk on a frozen plate until he had managed to make a delicious lemon, basil and mint creation). We wandered up to San Cristobal hill (where the famous funicular was closed due to ongoing maintenance!) and made our way to South America's tallest building, the Costanera Center, which houses a 6 level shopping mall of epic proportions. This was closely followed by a quiet Christmas as we baked in the 33 degree heat and found ourselves longing for a turkey dinner with all the trimmings.

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The New Year weekend saw a slight change of pace as we decided to get out of Santiago and travel to the coast. Before we made the journey, it was agreed that it was time to catch a showing of the latest Star Wars film, because who can wait a whole year to find out what happens whilst dodging spoilers? Answer: Not us. Luckily the cinemas in Santiago have showings in the original English with Spanish subtitles so we were able to get our sci-fi fix. The next day, on the 31st, we travelled to Chile's Pacific coastline to catch the largest fireworks display in South America at Valparaiso (but we'll make a separate post about our NYE celebrations because this is already pretty long!)

Highlights working at Odfjell include a quick tour of the vineyard during which the car we were travelling in got stuck in the mud. We ended up having to give it a push as mud flew in all directions, covering the white Audi and our shoes. The resident fjord horses have also been proving a wonderful distraction, with their excited whinnying ringing out all through the day. In an extra special event in the early hours of New Years Eve, one of the horses give birth to a healthy and particularly beautiful foal. We managed to see him still finding his feet about 3 hours after entering the world.