The Great Valdivia

Our personal crusade against an early morning continuing today, we left the hostel again after noon, walked for half a mile, and then headed back again. It was bloody boiling! So, quick discarding of winter clothes, we headed out again.

We caught the Metro to the Universiad De Santiago stop, to check out the bus station there. We will be heading to Valparaiso, which is supposed to be Chile’s most beautiful city, on Saturday so thought we’d investigate the buses to get there before we have to lump our packs around with us on Saturday.

Having established how much it cost (very cheap) and how frequent the service was (very frequent), we decided to grab some lunch from the shopping mall adjacent. And our lack of Spanish speaking ability didn’t stop us getting a brilliant Chicken dinner from a restaurant; stick that up your arse Mr Mexican Know-It-All from yesterday!!!!

Because we’d left it too late in the day to do anything of great significance, we decided to head back to Paseo Ahumada and do a spot of shopping. Namely, looking at clothes and finding the Chilean National Football Team shirt I wanted.

Arriving at the metro stop for this, we came out of the wrong exit and were briefly disorientated for a minute. But, camera in hand, we took full advantage in our unexpected surroundings to snap a few pictures of buildings around us!

We could see the street we were meant to be on across six lanes of traffic, and it was absolutely heaving with people!

So before crossing the road, we took a look at the nearby Plaza De La Constitucion. And wished we hadn’t bothered. It was only a big grassed square, and the architecture wasn’t anything brilliant.

We left the Plaza De La Constitucion and crossed into the mayhem of Paseo Ahumada. Now neither of us are particularly good shoppers as it all seems like a major effort and, not surprisingly, after an hour of looking at clothes shops and slowly realising that everything was the same and not what we wanted, we headed to the sports shop to get my football shirt.

Weighing up between paying 34,000 pesos for a #7 “Ramez” top or 29,000 pesos for a #10 Valdivia top, I made the wise decision that I hadn’t heard of either player so went with the cheaper option!

And then magically, I became the Great Valdivia.

Which is no surprise, as I learned later that his nickname is The Magician (and no Harry Potter jokes please – I’ve heard them all before and Harry Potter doesn’t have a beard!!!)

So, taking on the persona of the Great Valdivia, I became a South American football player.

Which of course meant arguing with the referee who had a problem with me playing football in the hostel room. I couldn’t see the problem with what I’d done

but, I got my name noted down and then was sent off!

Never fear……. The Great Valdivia will be back!!!!!!!