10:50pm. Come down, partly by accident, to the 'other' Scala. (The beer mats are the same and show two addresses.) This one has karaoke - I shall not indulge, but although it's quietish the atmosphere is a bit more lively - and draught beer at 1500 for a probable half litre. I suspect I shall remain here until I leave, whenever that may be.
11pm. Yeah, this is more like it. Maybe 20-30 people in here but there is a bit of a party (aka drunk, in a good way) atmosphere.
Oh, I went for a walk on some slightly grotty bit of beach earlier. I gather there are nice beaches here, but this was the bit I stumbled on. I kind of liked the isolation and enjoyed observing the odd dead crab. There were some biggish crabs scuttling around a touch spider-like when I arrived, but they all buried themselves in the sand before I could take a good look. There were a few smallish whitish ones left scuttling around which gave me a semi-pleasant frisson of spider fear when I saw one. Would have been cool to have observed the larger ones up close though.
11:50pm. Clearly not going back by midnight, although how late I push it is very open right now. A guy in the bog just now recognised I wasn't local, he wanted me to go to a nearby bar but I said I was OK here. Sorry Chubbard/Ives, I don't think he was propositioning me, although I have a vague suspicion he was trying to pimp women at me, although his English and my understanding of Spanish make it a bit uncertain.
It's both interesting and a bit disheartening how few (none,or maybe one was slightly familiar) of the songs I recognise here. My knowledge of Spanish-language music is not fantastic but it's not as if this is my first karaoke bar on the continent, or in Chile for that matter (in fact I have only visited Chilean karaoke bars), and I might have expected to at least vaguely recognise more than I have so far.
It isn't obviously getting busier here, which I might have expected. There may be a few more people but there's not much in it.
12:20am. A certain exodus. I can now count the people here and there are 11 excluding me. I spoke to a group of women nearby earlier and asked them to sing "El Sol No Regresa", turns out they don't have that but I think they will sing "Algo Mas", which is cool if it happens. I find the lack of people a touch disconcerting but the atmosphere is not bad. I am a bit worried about getting into the hostel but fuck them, they said 24h access and I will hold them to it. As I said before, worst case I stagger drunkenly across the road to the hotel there and pay for a room there. The banker's solution. :-) Just been given free peanuts and olives, as in the other bar by this name earlier, I am fairly sure they are free but my cynicism makes me a touch dubious. Still, even if they charge me it's nothing to what I might have to pay thanks to my hostel's dubious status.
1:50am. Well that was all a little odd. The bar was clearly emptying. I met (in the toilet again, maybe it's a Latin thing) a bloke who invited me over to join him and a woman I assumed was his girlfriend, although he denied it. We were the last to leave, I gather he knows the owners. He seemed to want to meet in Santiago, he was going to give me his e-mail address but I gave him my card as it was easier. We got thrown out and they didn't invite me on. Did pass an obviously open bar on the way back to my hostel and was vaguely tempted but I am slightly drunk and figured it was best not to push it. Knocked on the door of the hostel and got in within about five seconds, although the old bloke who answered the door (who was admittedly not in the least surly) had my key in his hand. Anyway, it's all good, I can sleep now and I may (although I doubt it) meet Juan in Santiago. (Unless I am tempted otherwise by an e-mail from him, I vaguely plan to go on Saturday night to the Peruvian resta
urant/bar/club there I went to with Stefano, though unless my blog postings contain a clue or the web can help I may struggle to locate it, my memory says no more than that it is near a metro station, probably Baquedano.)
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