Jim and I were in Santiago for New Year's eve. Remember that it is summer down here...so it's HOT.
We spent a total of 4 days in Chile's capital. The first 2 nights we stayed at a 'party' hostal...I had ear plugs in and a sleeping mask, so did Jim...he slept well, and I didn't sleep at all...needless to say, we moved.
Our first day in Santiago we hit the ground running, we got up early and were determined to see as much of the city as we could. We hopped on the subway and went into the city. We shopped and saw sights, rode busses, taxis and subways till we were exhausted. We returned to our hostal sun burnt, sore and sweaty. What a great city!
The hostal we moved to was called the Happy Hostal (in Barrio Brasil), it's not in the guide books yet, so it's very mellow and the staff is great. They were having a New Years Eve party on their terrace, but we decided that we wanted to find something going on in the city as we walked to the subway we noticed how empty the streets were in our neighborhood. So we hoped on the subway and went to the typically hip neighborhood of Bellavista, we were astounded to find EVERYTHING closed and the streets empty. We had waited until 10:30 to go out even though our stomachs were growling, because we knew that in South America they don't go out until late. We were quite disappointed and ready to head back to our hostal when we decided to try one more place. We walked about a mile toward the center (no cabs could go in) and there, in the middle of the main road were tens of thousands of people. (hurray!!) Bands were playing, people were drinking and dancing in the streets, and everyone held a huge bag of confetti. We bought a bottle of champagne and some confetti and fought our way into the crowds. As we were waiting for new years we met a family, Rolando the second, his parents and brother. They adopted us as their own for the night and we spent the last minutes of 2004 teaching Rolando and his family how to say 'Happy New Year'. Needless to say, we had a wonderful night we ended up walking back to our hostal around 4 AM(at least 5 miles) due to the lack of taxis we were full of confetti and champagne but happily danced along the streets as the bands played.
New Years Day we ordered in pizza and watched the Lord of the Rings...it was perfect!

Preparing to go out for new Year's