Santiago, and goodbye to Chile on a sour note :-)

We have spent the two last days of our trip in Santiago, the capital of Chile. As we have said before, we are not enthusiastic about visiting large cities, especially when surrounded by mountains that trap the pollution as a grey cloud hanging over the entire city. Santiago is also plagued by frequent earthquakes, the latest big one in 2010. The Richter scale had to be extended recently to cover the Chilean earthquakes!

To get a proper taste of the city we went on a Tours for Tips walk, which happened to be almost private for the 4 of us. It was guided by Sveta from Siberia (!) who gave us an excellent introduction to the center, interesting stories and some secrets that most tourists don't discover, like the completo and coffee with legs. We can't disclose these in public, but you can ask us privately. As a bonus to the walk we got bikes for the last few hours before heading to the airport. Here is David joining the trumpet playing (or star gazing?) cyclists.

Our Last Pisco Sour:

It`s the last transfer of our trip, from our Santiago hostel to the airport. We had spent all our pesos except 16,000 for the taxi. At the last minute, we make an executive decision to dump the taxi in favour of a much cheaper bus, saving the surplus funds for a final round of Pisco Sours.  (Pisco Sour is a favourite Chilean and Peruvian cocktail made by blending pisco (kind of brandy), lemon juice, sugar, egg white, and bitters.) For over a month, we had been regularly drinking Pisco Sours, which tasted only slightly stronger that a benign lemonade.

Near our gate, we found the perfect drinking spot, `The Last Pisco Sour` bar.  We quickly noticed that our last pisco was indeed special; everything was a lot more interesting and challenging, including walking - either all our previous Pisco sours and been watered down or our bartender decided to make sure we would remember our last one. All I know is that soon after, Air Canada was paging Esther; I was in the woman`s bathroom shouting for Esther and Annice; and, when I finally got to the gate, the agent was tying Esther`s shoes. 

We did manage to get on board and back home, safe and sound but with a determined plan to keep replicating our ``last pisco sour``.