As much as we all love the very affordable `no frills´domestic airlines, problems begin to arise when the airline decides to cancel your flight for no apparent reason. This combined with the schools holidays made for a long wait at Melbourne airport. However, a few hours of wondering aimlessly around duty-free with no intention of buying anything and a short flight later i arrived in Sydney and caught a train to Newtown where i would be staying. I stayed with a group of students at STUCCO, the only student co-operative in Australia. It was set up by a group of students and opened in 1991, set in an old glass-making factory with an open courtyard in the middle surrounded by the units (individual flats of between 4-5 people). There are currently a total of 38 students living there at the moment. I was staying in the spare room in flat 6 with Amy, Owen, Lou and Mark. My arrival coincided with the Sydney
Fringe Festival and so after dumping my bags and quickly changed I went with Amy and Lou to an event that their friend Jess had arranged. The mystery bus tour was a series of nights where you meet at a certain place and get taken to a secret even, so its sort of luck a lucky dip because you don´t know where you will end up. This night the bus took us to a quirky/warehouse-esque bar/club where a band were playing. It was sort of Eastern European hippy gyspy music, but rather entertaining and fun for random dancing! The next night was spent enjoying a gig in the courtyard of Stucco, by the Barons of Tang (
http://www.myspace.com/thebaronsoftang) who describe themselves as Gypsy Deathcore.
This led to more jigging around dancing and flayling of arms. The night continued at The Hatch, another warehouse residence where much time was spent getting down to some grimey dubstep and other melodic tunes. Evidently, much of the next day was spent sleeping! My last night in the company of the Stucco kids was spent staying in, chilling out and making pies. Amy made a hearty vegetable pie (which you can see her attacking) and i made my signature pumpkin pie, delish. Unfortunately our final attempt of watching Harry Potter without falling asleep ( Amy and i had been trying for some days now) failed in favour of much needed sleep.
For my first day in Santiago, after a long sleep recovering from severe jet lag and general exhaustion, Carmen booked me onto a bicyle tour with the aptly names La Bicicleta Verde. The title of the tour that i did was Parks and Politics and was a great introduction to the politcal history of Chile. I arrived expecting there to be a group of other cycle loving tourists but it turned out i would be peddling solo with my own personal tour guide! I felt quite lucky to have my very own private tour and made the most of it by asking lots of questions. We cycled around, stopping off at important sites including La Moneda (seat of the President), The National Library, Santa Lucia hill and Barrio Paris-London to name but a few. One thing that i found particulary interesting was a small library called Cafe Literario set within both Parque Bustamante and Forestal.
These had been originally set up to improve the publics access to reading materials which due to high taxes were very expensive to buy. Nowadays they function as a great spot to come and read and have coffee in a nice park setting. We finshed the tour by having a nice coffee at a little spot close to La Mondeda and chatted more about Chilean life and culture.
