The gay capital of South America!

After New Zealand we flew to Santiago, Chile with our new recruit, Alex. Alex is an English guy we kept bumping into all over the world, after initally meeting him in Ko Phangan where we played football against him (dressed as a ladyboy). Thailand, Australia, New Zealand, everywhere we went he was there! We spent the last part of NZ with him and then realised he was on the same plane as us to Chile, so we decided to get a hostel together. We got a bus from the airport to town and then walked to the hostel soon realising that South America was not going to be as easy as Australia or NZ. Nobody spoke a word of English, every shop had at least one armed guard and we later found out that the park that we cut through to get to the hostel had recently been the location where the remains of an Irish backpacker had been dug up!

After wandering around all day we managed to stumble across a street entertainer comedy show who spotted us 'gringos' a mile off and kept the crowd entertained at our expense. We didn't have a clue what he was saying but everyone else seemed to find it funny...

Later that evening, after several tequila slammers at the hostel we decided to go into town. We began to realise something wasn't quite right when we noticed lots of strange looking men with moustaches get excited dancing to 'It's raining men' as we queued for the club. We quickly moved on and at the next place it was the same story - the whole city seemed to be having a gay night! Eventually we found a straight club and continued the drinking there. The next day we headed to Rio for the carnival (and Alex decided at 1am to book a flight and hostel and come with us). (DD)

written by

Sean, Karl & Dan on January 30, 2008 from Santiago, Chile

from the travel blog: Around the world in 180 days...

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