(More Pictures)
(Night on the Patio. I show this one for Dave, our shirtless friend holding up the peace sign with the beard. Unfortunately, you can't make out the long braids coming off of his chin. He has tried drugs on nearly every continent he has traveled to. What a dude. )
(Patio)
(Pooooooooooool)
(Bar and Patio)
Oh, how interesting my visit to Santiago was. Initially I planned to be there a matter of days. Two to three perhaps, but I still found myself there after a week and a half. Initially frustrating, the extended stay was actually a blessing, and I ended up meeting some great people and having a great time.
The reason for the extended stay had to do with my passport. Running out of space for entry and exit stamps, I found out you can have pages directly added to your passport at an American embassy. Santiago was the closest one, but I arrived on Saturday, and had to wait for the embassy to open on Monday. No worries. I randomly chose an amazing hostel; a giant red house in a chill neighborhood a few blocks from downtown. La Casa Roja came with a TV room, 3 sort of living rooms, 2 courtyards, a big open space out back, complete with a bar-patio area, pool, grass area, ping pong table, and cricket batting cage (the owner is Australian). You can spend the whole day there and have a great time. I met some awesome people, some odd balls, and some people that were just downright strange. I won't really go into all the stories, partly because some are uninteresting, some long, and others just inappropriate. Anyway, with a couple days to see the city, I figured I could get my passport taken care of Monday and be on my way.
(Hostel Dog)
(Night on the Patio. I show this one for Dave, our shirtless friend holding up the peace sign with the beard. Unfortunately, you can't make out the long braids coming off of his chin. He has tried drugs on nearly every continent he has traveled to. What a dude. )
(Night lights of the ping pong table. One night, some people actually stayed up all night playing. Had more to with the beer than the ping pong, but a feat nonetheless.)
(Some Cricket mate?)
(Bar and Patio)
(Grass area next to bar patio and pool)
(So yeah, pretty wicked hostel, right?)
I missed the embassy hours for US citizens on Monday (only 8:30 to 11:00 in the morning for
some reason), so had to come back Tuesday. I soon found out that the incredibly complex procedure of taping pages into the passport takes an impressive 4 days, which meant I couldn't pick up my passport until Monday of the following week. Having seen and done all I wanted to in the city over the weekend, this was unwelcome news. It was at least comforting to know that American beauracracy is just as efficient here 
as it is back home.
(So yeah, pretty wicked hostel, right?)
I missed the embassy hours for US citizens on Monday (only 8:30 to 11:00 in the morning for
some reason), so had to come back Tuesday. I soon found out that the incredibly complex procedure of taping pages into the passport takes an impressive 4 days, which meant I couldn't pick up my passport until Monday of the following week. Having seen and done all I wanted to in the city over the weekend, this was unwelcome news. It was at least comforting to know that American beauracracy is just as efficient here 
as it is back home.As it turned out though, I was glad I ended up staying a while longer. I met some great people and had some of the best fun I have had yet on the trip. I met a guy named Nick from England, an Aussie named Sean, and an American named Andrea. It is amazing what can start with just a simple hello in your dorm room or as 
someone passes you in the hall. We did quite a bit together and had some great fun and a lot of laughs. I hadn't gotten so attached to anybody as with this group, and being the last one to leave was hard. It was the first time I have actually missed people I have been with. Usually you just have a good time and move on, but it would have been nice to stay with this group a bit longer. We played all over Santiago, dancing up a storm in some interesting clubs, lounging by the pool, wandering aimelessly all over the city, sharing our travel stories as we walked city blocks, and continually making each other laugh by being goofy or sharing past experiences. That is a great thing about traveling. 
Sometimes your plans don't work out, you get stuck somewhere, etc., but then some how, some way, you find yourself having the most fun you have had yet in a most unexpected and unplanned way. I will miss my Casa Roja friends dearly. Hopefully our paths will cross again sometime, someplace, but until then, we each will be burning our own trails with new friends in new places.
someone passes you in the hall. We did quite a bit together and had some great fun and a lot of laughs. I hadn't gotten so attached to anybody as with this group, and being the last one to leave was hard. It was the first time I have actually missed people I have been with. Usually you just have a good time and move on, but it would have been nice to stay with this group a bit longer. We played all over Santiago, dancing up a storm in some interesting clubs, lounging by the pool, wandering aimelessly all over the city, sharing our travel stories as we walked city blocks, and continually making each other laugh by being goofy or sharing past experiences. That is a great thing about traveling. 
Sometimes your plans don't work out, you get stuck somewhere, etc., but then some how, some way, you find yourself having the most fun you have had yet in a most unexpected and unplanned way. I will miss my Casa Roja friends dearly. Hopefully our paths will cross again sometime, someplace, but until then, we each will be burning our own trails with new friends in new places. (As of yet, I haven't received pictures from anyone, so hopefully those will come soon! They unfortunately include all the photos of people, proof that I didn't just have imaginary friends in Santiago...)
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