*few days under the santiago smog

we spent a few days in santago, which to be honest looks and feels like a european rather than south american city.if only one would remove the shoeshiners and lower the temperature a bit it could be somethere in europe. same shops,same clotes and the same feeling of hectic rush hour. if compared to argentina senores just stare at us, but dont coment nor whisle. we havent decided which we like better yet ;)
we are staying with a really cool guy, and it is such a relief! we spent one of the evenings playing drinking games with pedro and his mates and we just laughted our heads off when at the early hours the guys were trying to pronounce ´chrzaszcz´ - ´beatle´ in polish.
however the biggest headline of santiago was meeting angela and david! we spent a day together,went to plaza de armas (the main square where old men play chess, just like in hanoi), we had a stroll around party-markety bellavista and took an elevator to the hill of san cristobal where we could admire the views. santaigo is huge and is souranded by the andes. someone says that almost a half of chilean population (16mln) lives in santiago. but because it is surrounded by the mountains the air does not move much so the whole city is bathed in smog. someone also says that there are 8mln tress in santaigo, but for the people to be well it should be at least 22mln. a bit of trivia.just so you know :)
angela and david cooked lunch and dinner ( mniam mniam thank you guys) and it felt as if we were back at the jervis street apartemnt in dublin. well agnes and veronica were missing...
the next day we went to see an excellent exhibition of photography by gert weigelt and to the museum of pre-columbian art where we saw how inkas were expanding from cuzco to the modern santiago territory,how waynu people in venezuela and columbia still bury their dead by removing ´soft parts´ and putting bones into the urnas and we saw how the fishermen who lived 7000 years ago near arica performed the surrgeries on their dead by removing soft parts and replacing them with wood and mud. 2000 years befor the egyptians! wow! we then spent some time in the bohemian barrio brasil and went to the fish market.... and there when i asked if i could take a photo of the fish the sellers called me over to their stand, handed in a huge fish and agnes took a great photo (coming soon). the only problem is that they were wering wellies and i had my flip flops on and the floor was floded by the fishy water... i can still smell it... oh well, what can you do? :)
we said goodbye to angie and david who were heading to atacama dester and we took our bus to mendoza. was so great to see you guys :)