Wednesday, December 28, 2005

A couple of observacions

OK, so I´m still suffering a bit of jetlag, but that happens when you venture halfway round the globe. Spent last night in Santiago de Chile, the capital of that slender nation, and now your correspondant is hunkered down in an internet joint somewhere in Buenos Aires, trying to get a handle on these weirdarse keyboards. So cut it with any nonsense about dud keystrokes and dogy spellings. I´ve got this far, but that´s because I´ve already knocked out a swift one to the olds, and am getting familar with the strange shift key and the ñ. Kinda like in Turkey, when the i key wasnñ the i key and I had terrible trouble just logging on to my hotmail account. Those were the days.
¿So, what has impressed me so far?
Chilean food is the pits. As far as I could tell, the national dish id the sandwich, or a variation thereof. Or many variations thereof, stuffed full of strange looking hams and vegies. Mind you, I was only there for 18 hours. And all I could get my hands on was the ol´reliable cheese and tomato number. They did have some nasty looking hotdogs smothered in mayo (the guidebook aptly described it as a blanket of mayo), and it seems to be what one scoffs with a cerveza, but I´m waiting till I return there in a coupla weeks to sink my pearly whites into one of those. Or more.
Fast food joints must outnumber restaurants in Santiago by about 6 to 1. And most of them sell these hotdogs. Or atleast are named things like "Doggis". Otherwise you´re next best bet is ice cream, which they seem to dig over there.
Santiago wasnñt what I expected of the richest and most westernised nation on this here continent. Way more dirty and traffic-clogged and low-rise that I´d expected. And that magical view of the Andes wasn´t visible through the smog. Though I did get an awesome view of the mountains as we flew over them this morning.
And while Í´m on flights, the Auckland-Santiago leg was hell for a fairly big bloke like myself, wedged there in economy, with, as always, the person who immediately puts their seat ALL THE WAY BACK as soon as the seatbelt sign goes off. Ho`pe your trip sucks dogs balls bitch.
But all was redeemed when checking in this morning the requisite two hours before departure, when a lovely Chileña sidled up to us asking what time we were departing, only to suggest the next flight was available, leaving us with just a half-hour wait at the airport AND bulkhead seats. The clanging of the spheres or just my own hapless charm? I´ll go for the latter.
BA on the other hand is an amazing looking town. Just like Paris or Barçelona, only warmer and with madder drivers. And yes, it is true what they say: this city seriously sports the best looking men and women on the planet. Itñs a constant battle not to phwoar and turn your head as they amble past...
talking on their mobile phones as though they are two-way radios. They hold them to their mouth to speak and then to their ear to hear. As opposed to holding them in the one place to get both things happening at once, they talk into it with not even the slightest pretence at listening to the other person.
Beef. Bring it on. I´ve always been a red meat man, and this place is meant to slice and char the world´s best. So look out parrillas, here I come.
Now it´s time to sample the local ale.
¡Hasta luego amigos!

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