Santiago is a beautiful place. The views from my 13th floor apartment show a sporting field, some fantastic architecture along with some small hills (I must point out here that it is the locals who decribe these as small. In Australia we would be quite proud of these!!) Chilling out on the balcony looking out across Las Condes in the evenings, enjoying a stubbie of Cristal before doing my various nocturnal activities has been amazing. . These views however, no matter how stunning have nothing on the views from a Santiago taxi. I have discovered in the last 48 hours that any view, even if it is of the speedo of a Hyundai Excel pushing 140km/hr is absolutely wonderful if you truly believe it is the last thing you are ever going to see. I had completed my shopping and was catching a taxi home from the shopping centre at Parque Arauco when my extremely friendly taxisto decided to try and set the land speed record in a moderately well maintained vehicle that felt like the wolf would have only needed one puff to blow it down. Honestly, I think the only person in history who was less safe doing those sort of speeds was Burt Monroe - at least I didn't have to take a collection to pay the fare!!
Aside from near death experiences I am loving it here. Everyone in the office is really friendly, and my Spanish is rapidly improving. On Sunday, the Santiago Saints have their first training session for the year, and I am greatly looking forward to having a "kick with the lads" something which I haven't done in several years! Aside from that, I'll just be finishing setting the apartment and getting acquainted with Las Condes. Hopefully the next update will have some interesting stories and be posted using a stable internet connection.
Que Tengaman un buen fin del semana!
