December 28th
I had mapped out a number of shopping areas I wanted to visit and Joe insisted on creating maps of each area and planning out how and where we were going to go and in which order.
Since we were staying in a Marriott hotel we had access to the executive lounge which was a nice comfortable lounge with excellent service. A breakfast buffet was available each morning, snacks and complimentary wine in the early evening and otherwise complimentary soft beverages and beer for the rest of the day.
We started our day with breakfast in the lounge. Since Joe was insisting on planning out the areas to visit we spent a good part of the morning doing so. I started to get annoyed as I felt as though we were wasting our day and I just wanted to get going. In the end the map process did not change my plan for the day so I was a bit grumpy for having wasted the morning.
Our first plan was to go to a shopping area Las Condes. I had reviewed in advance a particular shop that was on this street and it indicated that it was open 7 days a week so I figured that other stores in the area would be too. We walked to the street which was a bit of a walk but not that bad.
One suggestion in crossing the major roadway, there are passovers to get over the roadway, take them when you can find them otherwise you may find yourself back tracking or walking out of your way.
We arrived at the street and it was not looking good. All of the stores were closed. We eventurally found the store I was looking for and it too was closed! Urgh!!!
While all the stores were closed, this is an excellent street for fashion shopping. There are a number of international luxury brand stores here as well as local brands. If you like designer fashion I would recommend a visit to this street.
We walked back to the mall near our hotel and grabbed a light lunch. I had discovered that the bus station beside the mall had a route that goes directly to the metro. We asked inside at the restaurant, where to buy bus tickets. We had already asked at our hotel how the bus works and understood that you have to buy a card which you load with a given amount and it is deducted when you get on the bus.
We kept being told that you have to buy the bus tickets at the metro stop, which frankly we found really strange since how are you supposed to get to the metro if you can’t buy a bus ticket? We were eventually told that there was a place in the mall where we could purchase the bus pass. After searching for it we eventually did find it only to be told that we could not buy our pass there, we must go to the metro.
We gave up and decided to take a taxi to the metro and buy our pass there. We tried our best to figure out how much we needed for each trip on the bus to and from the mall to the metro. We also understood that there was a minim amount that you could put on the card and specific increments. This all made sense to us however we had great difficulty in understanding how the cashier kept getting to the amount that she was charging us. At this point Joe just decided he didn’t care and bought the amount the cashier said he needed.
We looked at the receipt and I kept wondering why were paid 2300 pesos and only got 800 in trips. Then I noticed that there was a charge of 1500 for the card itself. Now everything made complete sense. What the cashier was trying to tell us all along is that you need to BUY the card and then load it. We understood that we needed a card we just hadn’t understood that we had to pay for it! We were embarrassed that we had taken up so much of her time trying to explain it to us and we had to go back and add more to the card so that we would have enough for the next trip.
One thing we really noticed about the people we encountered is that they may not speak English but they are very patient and will try to help you. They are also very resourceful, if they don’t know the answer they will try to find someone who does.
Read Other Posts In This Series:
Part I
Part II
Part III
Part IV
Part V
Part VI
Part VII
Part VIII
Part IX
Part X
Part XI
Part XII
Part XIII
Part XIV
Part XV
Part XVI
Part XVII
Part XIX
Part XX
Tags: santiago, South America Itinerary, South America travel
