Bernadine takes South America: Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right, here I am stuck in the middle with you

February 4th-5th, San Pedro de Atacama, Santiago, Chile

Today was our epic 23 hour bus ride to the capital of Chile, Santiago. I was actually excited about this because Chilean buses are renowned for being luxurious and Bernie and I were planning to take the premium seats on 'Tur Bus Chile' which recline into full beds and they give you meals and drinks! Unfortunately, you cannot book tickets online as you need a Chilean ID card number as well as a Chilean bank account. So by the time we got to the actual office, there were only regular semi sleeper tickets left.

Bus tickets are pretty expensive here ($70 for semi sleeper compared to $20 or less in Bolivia). Bernie was really dreading this drive, I didn't even think about it. I vetoed taking a flight as it cost more than $250 per person and we have super expensive Brazil coming up where we will ultimately be forced into taking a $700 flight to Colombia.

The bus was really nice and clean with a working toilet, and they even gave us a snacks! They played English movies the whole way (The Proposal, Thor 2, The Boat that Rocked etc.). In true form, I fell asleep at 10:30 pm and only woke up at 7:30 am the next morning. Love when this happens! Even Bernie slept for atleast 7 hours which he doesn't even do normally. This morning, I looked out the window as we passed through a town called La Serena and felt like I was in the USA! Huge long malls, lots of open space, wide roads, clean and well kept gardens... And McDonalds!!! Didn't see a single one in Bolivia so I'm very excited to try it out.

We got to 'Almirante Riveros' and it is so calm and beautifully decorated I want to stay right here for a month! Seriously it's the best place we've stayed at so far and there's a lovely black lab pup here called Xika Da Silva who just made our day. We walked around for a bit in the warm sun (yayy finally!) and ate sushi and ice cream for tea. It feels like we're back in the first world, Santiago is such a huge city filled with beautiful gardens and parks and skateparks. It's really nice to see people lying in the grass and playing in the parks with their kids and dogs (they really seem to love dogs here). We walked a lot today but the main road that runs across the city is very long so I don't think we've seen anything really, maybe tomorrow we'll try the metro. Shipra put us in touch with her friend, lovely Sophia, so we met up for dinner. She's a Santiago local so she knows the good haunts and we ended up eating some yum steak and chips (again) in a traditional restaurant. I'm really interested in Chilean history as I know nothing, and since Sophia works in Politics, she was the perfect person to get us up to speed. Now I know why the Bolivians and Peruvians are so negative about Chile.

Most tourists we've met who've already travelled through Chile didn't actually like this country as much as the rest. Maybe because it's expensive (though it offers quality so I'd expect it to be), so originally we'd planned to stay here not more than a week. However, so far I love it here and the people are so warm, so let's see what happens.