Santiago de Chile

km 16326
We´ve had some unexpected time to kill here in Santiago, recovering lost paper, plastic, etc. But it´s been nice to relax a little. As with any large city there´s enough to do here, that´s if you like museums, parks, and old buildings.
You might think that after what happened last week we would be a little more careful with our stuff. I (Pieter) decided that I would never put my camera in the outside pocket of my bag. Of course, after a week I start letting my guard down and got lazy. Yesterday we were walking through the city. My camera was in the outside pocket of my bag, accessible by opening just one zipper, but I had my bag in front of me with my hand over the zipper. I thought I was pretty smart. Once we hit the main square, with less people, I put my bag over my back. While we were walking Clay noticed a silhouette walking right behind me. He turned around to see what she was doing. I checked my bag, the zipper was all the way open, but thankfully my camera was still there. I hadn´t felt a thing!
I (Clayton) am really glad that I looked back when I did, because she was putting her hand into his bag when I said something to her. She immediately tried to say that she was only warning us that his bag was open. Amazing how brave they are. Should say that we meet a lot of nice people here too, even some that don't want money for their kindness.
Other than that things are great. The food here is good. They eat a lot of avocado. They have something called Churasco which is beef with tomato, and either mayo or avocado on a bun. Even the quarterpounders at McD´s come that way. They also have Completo, a hot-dog with tomato, mayo and ketchup. And then there´s the Italiano, the same but with avocado.
On Friday we went to Valparaiso for the day. It´s 2 hours from here, on the coast. Most of the city is on a bunch of hills (cerros) around a bay. To access the cerros you take an accensor or funicular if you don´t want to take the stairs. There´s about 20 of them. Most of them are on rails at a 45 degree angle but one of them is an elevator that goes straight up which you access by walking 100 metres into a tunnel in the side of the hill.
In a few days we will start travelling south to the lake district and then to Torres del Paine. We want to say that we really enjoy reading all of your comments and are glad that you're enjoying following along.
Pieter and Clayton