Santiago, Monday

Mon 1640 In small, deserted but quite nice little down-at-heel bar with reggae playing near Parque Almaro. Got up about midday but only left flat 3-4ish and decided would walk over to park and back. Sat in park for a bit, felt quite safe and had a half hour's musing, decided would stop off for a beer or coffee on way back and this place looked OK. Only 2k for a litre of Becker, made is 2300 with tip and offloaded 1300 of change (apologised but woman at bar said she liked change), tho my receipt shows 2888 for some reason.

Feeling a bit guilty (too strong a word) about doing nothing again today. But then I did come over here. I don't have to rush around like a blue-arsed fly "doing" tourism all the time. It feels like I'm wasting time but if I'm quietly enjoying myself am I really wasting time? The only thing is that I could sit around all day in my flat in London much more cheaply than in this flat in Santiago - and I'd be more "engaged" in interesting personal projects which I can't really do while travelling. So I think there is a genuine argument for needing to "get out and about" a bit - not *every* day, but "most" days. But coming out for a walk and just being here and seeing the city is fine, I think, even if it's doesn't pass the probably-dumb-but-acknowledge-it-exists "what will I tell people I did?" test. Maybe coming out for more/longer walks would be better, of course.

My musing in park was on Brazil, I think I'm going to book some travel and accommodation tonight and then I can largely forget about it until I go, and perhaps just focus on quietly enjoying my long-ish break here in Santiago.

Few photos on wall (generic, not of people who have been here and signed them), one shows Ramones outside CBGB and another shows Los Prisioneros.

Finished off the pizza at flat this morning, plan to pop into supermarket for black pepper (and coffee and water) on way back and cook spaghetti for dinner tonight.

1656 Reggae version of The Killer's "Human". Quite good actually.

1736 And now a version of Europe's " The Final Countdown". Nearly finished beer, will go home via supermarket after it, this is a restrained afternoon beer, not a session!

1756 Just left. Place was Bar Almagro, just might return at some point. Still only customer but I like the fact they were open despite no custom at this time...

2228 Booked bus ticket for Brazil. Had to go via a thirty party site as the official one for the bus company has an explicit button you can click if you're a foreigner and then insists on validating your "zip code" ; oddly enough, as a foreigner, my zip code is not Brazilian style. To simply not support foreigners would be one thing, to do a half-arsed job like this is another. I managed to pick a third party company which only added about 4-5 USD in fees, which I don't resent in the least. But at least the ticket is booked now. I could have maybe bought a ticket in person at the terminal the day before but I don't want to get stuck finding there are no available seats or ending up on a bus arriving after dark, and I'm (doubtless irrationally) edgy about about Brazil-as-Brazil (or perhaps better Sao-Paulo-as-Sao-Paul) and Brazil-as-country-I-don't-speak-the-language-of that all the above reasons plus the linguistic challenge of buying a ticket seem worth avoiding.

0103 About to go to bed. Have also booked a hotel in Sao Paulo for that one night; massively unclear exactly when my credit card will be charged so bit worried I'll end up paying twice but probably be OK. Now all I need to do is book a private transfer to Santiago airport (I already have a company in mind) and decide how to get from Guarulhos to the hotel, which I haven't researched yet - past research did imply Uber would be a good option, but I'm reluctant to rely solely on something which assumes Three's Go Roam feature will work (it *probably* will but no guarantees), though I may keep that as first option and just try to find a fallback, but will look at that another night soon.

Got pretty worked up on getting back from supermarket on way back from park/beer because there's apparently no salt in flat - I thought there was because I put a small amount on my food on Saturday, but having ripped cupboard apart twice I can only infer I actually put sugar on my food (it was a very small amount so I just might have got away with it) instead of salt, so I had to go out again just to buy salt. (And not that the amount was material, as is so often the case the price on the shelf was wrong and my carefully pre-counted change therefore wrong too.)

I think going out and having that beer made today feel a bit more like I "did" stuff, FWIW.

Oh, keep forgetting to mention - the first Sat afternoon as was sitting on couch watching Youtube (LTDB!), either because my attention changed or atmospheric haze did, I suddenly noticed the faint-with-distance-haze mountains on the horizon, which are really pretty fucking high up (in terms of degrees of altitude), which was both cool and strange. Similar thing happened to me again yesterday - I think the mountains are mostly visible but they're sufficiently faint that you can overlook them in favour of the much more intensely coloured cityscape (flat is on 16th floor local style, 15th floor UK, and has v cool views) but then eventually you do notice them half blending in with the blue of the sky.