A travel vlog by Kara and Nate documenting their departure from Uruguay and spontaneous arrival in Santiago, Chile. The couple travel early (4:30 AM), take a bus to Montevideo to fly to Santiago, face last-minute accommodation cancellations, struggle to obtain Chilean pesos, sample local street food/empanadas, and decide on plans after a canceled camper-van booking; they note Santiago is their 46th country and that they must return to Patagonia by the 5th.
Questions this video answers
4:30 AM
46th country
the 5th
Chapters
There we go.
It is 4:30 in the morning. We got like two hours of sleep, but I got a vlog uploaded this morning and we're heading to the bus station.
He's surprisingly awake for 4:30.
I don't know why we do this to ourselves.
What are we doing? Where are we going? How long is it going to take?
We are going back to Montevideo, about a three hour drive to catch our flight to.
We're on the bus. It's really quiet. I'm probably about to sleep for the next few hours. Moving. That was so bad.
They're on time.
Carlos, coming to this. We haven't had enough coffee yet. We haven't had any coffee yet.
But we made it to Montevideo. We got a few hours of sleep on the bus. Now we just called an Uber to head to the airport.
Hopefully there's a good lounge in this airport.
According to our lounge buddy app, we had access to one priority pass lounge and we got here and they said they only accept priority pass from 2 to 4 in the afternoon or something like that, which is really silly. And so now we're just sitting here and we haven't had breakfast or coffee. We're really sad and I'm spoiled.
Let's make it a little better. Yes. Thank you.
Not a bad view.
We do have to sit in the airport.
We survived sitting at our gate. It wasn't that bad. And now we're boarding.
Sam.
We're in our 46th country, Chile.
So we just landed in Santiago, made it through customs and immigration, no problem. But we do have one problem. We only decided we were coming here yesterday. Since then, I've tried to book four Airbnbs and all four Airbnbs have stayed, said that they were available, and then once I booked it, they canceled the reservation and said that they didn't have availability. So we're here and we have nowhere to stay. So we're on Airbnb trying to find a place.
Kara, I think, is a little hungry right now, so that's not helping.
Nate told me he was going to figure out the bus and then he came back with M and M.
I.
Knew we were on the verge of hangry.
We have a place to stay. Now we just have to figure out how to get there, how to pay for it and where to go.
It's not quite as easy when you don't have the magic debit card to pull money out of the atm. We got our tour bus tickets and now we're heading to the middle of the city and we still don't know exactly how we're getting to our apartment from there, but this will get us happy.
We haven't been able to figure out how to get money, so we're calling an Uber to get the rest of the way.
A lot of technology.
Whoa, check out this view.
We really lucked out this time Booking minute. And I mean, like, the very last minute. This is probably the best view we've had from an Airbnb.
It is, like, weirdly hazy, though.
Yeah.
Ever since we touched down. Like, since we came over the Andes Mountains during the flight. Like, as soon as we got over the mountains, it got super hazy.
I was sleeping.
You missed the best part. That flight was worth paying for. Like, just for those views.
I was so tired. We've spent the last few minutes in our bed watching the presidential inauguration in the United States and waking up at 4am Just really caught up with me. I was useless. The last few minutes, I've caught a second wind because I know I'm gonna eat soon.
But we still have no Chilean pesos, so I'm gonna have to go find somewhere to exchange money because I'm trying to avoid withdrawing money out of the ATM with my credit card because cash advance fees are, like, ridiculously expensive.
And he lost our other card.
Yeah, yeah, they know that.
First impressions of Santiago. There are so many people. It is way hotter, and there's a lot of street food, which I'm really excited about. And it looks way less like Europe than the other places we've been so far. This is what I really expected all of South America to look like in a good way. I love it. Has great vibe.
Let's get some money and some food.
Let's get.
All right, we need money because I need to eat. Let's go.
I found the vlog cash in a very, very real moment.
So we finally found a bank where we could exchange money. It turns out it was really good idea to wait to exchange at the airport. I'd always heard you got really bad exchange rates at the airport, but we always just use the debit card, so we never have to worry about it. It was 615 pesos is what we were going to get per dollar at the airport. Here at the bank, it was 657, so I was really excited. Unfortunately, our bill had, like, the tiniest rip ever in it, and she wouldn't take it. So now we still have no Chilean pesos. We have 20 minutes till the restaurant closes, so we're just gonna go and hope they take credit card.
They take credit Cards. I'm so excited. Let's go.
I read really good things about this restaurant. It seems very local.
Muy rapido. We literally ordered 30 seconds ago. And our food is being set out in front of us right now. We got empanadas. I'm sure you're not surprised, but they're empanadas than the ones that were in Argentina. They're bigger and fresh and I'm so excited. I have no idea what we ordered. We just started saying things on the menu and it just happened. It also comes with this delicious looking salsa on the table. I think I'm eating shrimp and queso.
I have salsa running down my leg. But it's so good. It's so good. So happy. They take credit card and we weren't too late. I don't think this will be the last time we come here. El Rapido really lived up to its name tonight. I don't even think we've been in here 10 minutes. Seriously, it's on fire from the salsa.
Everybody who got served got served in less than 30 seconds. I've never been to a faster restaurant.
And they were all so good. They just all dropped from this little box elevator thing.
It was so good. Strong start to the food here in Santiago.
We'll be back here. We just got back to our apartment and we are both so exhausted. So we are definitely in for the night. But before we go to bed, we thought we would explain why we're in Santiago.
So we had no clue we were coming here yesterday morning when we woke up. And then I read on the Internet that you could do a camper van trip from Santiago north to the Atacama desert for like 10 days. It looked amazing. I found a camper van company. I contacted them. They were like, yeah, we can probably get you a camper. So I went ahead and booked the flights. And then as we landed here today, I got an email that said they had no more camper vans.
So those plans are kind of out the window. And we knew we wanted to come to Chile at some point anyways. We just didn't know when. And right now we have this two week period where we didn't have any plans. But we know we have to be back in Patagonia on the 5th.
Buenos Aires to go to Patagonia.
That's right. So it just seemed like the right time to come to Chile to do a really awesome road trip. But now we don't know what we're gonna do.
So we're not like disappointed that we're here, but our plans did get messed up, so we have no earthly idea what we're gonna be doing for the next two weeks.
So stay tuned.
Sorry, ruin the shot. K.
We just got back to.
Wait. What are you doing?
Resting my leg.
You look so weird. Don't do that.
Nobody can see my leg. It feels good. I'm stretching it.
This empanada has just turned into a vessel for getting salsa into my.
