South America ’23

Not letting our feet fall into a false sense of hope, we had back out again into the city for the night.

When Bill Clinton visited Santiago as president, there was a late night portal event. After leaving, the President of the United States, decided to walk across the street to a small store where he purchased a diet coke. He drank it, had a photo, and left. Almost immediately after that night the store rebranded and then became a shrine to the man. La Picá de Clinton. Even displaying the actual empty can that was left behind.

Next we walked around the now bustling with life streets and markets of Santiago. Everything on sale, vendors calling out their wares and luring you in.

Every time we reach an open space, like a bridge crossing, the ever present Andes mountains appear with their snow capped peeks. Coming from a country that has nothing like that in comparison it takes my breath away each time I see them. They are just so beautiful.

Heading to dinner at a place called Santa Colonia. This was where we were meant to stop and spend a couple of hours waiting for our night activity. But instead, my Spanish failed me again and somehow I must have said I wanted all the food to come out at once. Not only that, the portions were massive, the table could barely hold everything. We also forgot that smoking is fine here, so going to the terrace roof wasn't the best of ideas either. Delicious as the food was, we would have enjoyed it better if we paid attention to our extensive notes and planning we did.

At the end of the night we met up with two local gay men Chris and Fransisco who took us to a LGBTQ club called Moulin Rouge, Chile is famous for their Drag Queens so we were in for a show. We were very mindful though that we were starting this evening at 10pm with a tour at 5am the next morning. We sat down and chatted about life in Chile and Brisbane over my new favourite drink Mistrel Ice - a premade Pisco alcopop. I don't know how I've gone all my life without finding Pisco. I think I could be convinced to start drinking again now.
We got to try another famous drink here, Terremoto which means earthquake, it's a cocktail with wine, ice-cream and grenadine.

The show began and it didn't take long before noticing the non Spanish speaking Australians in the audience. Quickly being targeted for jokes and comments that we were completely oblivious to except those translated to me by our new friends. Somehow the subject got to animals, and it turned out there was a song about Koalas. Next thing I knew, I was standing on stage with a much taller Drag Queen in front of me positioning herself with a run up to the cheers of the audience - to be a koala. Running and jumping up onto me, wrapping her legs around and supported completely by me... That was until she started bouncing and that's when the tree came falling down until we were on the floor together.Lue lisää